After the ship’s charter had been arranged, Lugani kept me busy writing contracts with local and distant merchants. The medieval wool trade included every part of the process, from the raw materials required—sheep’s wool, dyes, alum for fixing the dye—to finished woven cloth. I loved the names of the dyes—tintore di guado, indigo, madder, robbia, burnet, saffron, oricello. Strung together, they rang like an incantation of color. The most extraordinary was grana, a vivid and particularly long-lasting red made from the Coccus ilicis insect. It was used to color the bright and elegant scarlet cloth from which Lugani’s cloak was fashioned, appropriate to his power and wealth. The thought of making a dye by crushing thousands of Mediterranean insects was daunting.
I also recorded transactions for the purchase or transport of silk, medicinal herbs, olive oil, wine, leather, wax, armor, weapons, and some of the veined marble unique to Siena. Some contracts promised goods sent “salvi in terra”—delivery guaranteed, but at a price. A cheaper option was “at risicum et fortunam Dei, et gentium,” freeing the transporting merchant of responsibility for any unforeseen acts of God or men. It reminded me of the modern insurance business.
We were ready to sail before the end of the first week of October. By then we’d eaten all our perishables, and I decided I wanted to visit the city’s marketplace to restock. The day was cool, but the sunshine softened the autumnal edge in the air. I’d have to find a cloak before long. I bought a small woven basket and wandered through the stalls. I succumbed to piles of hazelnuts and earthy mushrooms, and a few fragrant bundles of the herbs that still grew outside at this time of year. The last of the season’s pears beckoned golden brown; I chose a few as a treat. I eyed some black and white hens squawking in wood-slatted pens, considering how nice fresh eggs would be. But then one let out a loud squawk and a spurt of avian excrement that made me reconsider. Instead I bought two dozen eggs, without the hens. Fish wouldn’t keep for a long voyage, but I stopped for a moment to watch their undulating bodies and flicking fins, letting the fall sunshine warm the back of my neck.
Something made me look up. I saw a glint of silver hair, like an echo of the fishes’ metallic brilliance—and then a swing of a dark cloak. The figure disappeared into an alley between two buildings flanking the marketplace. I pushed through the crowd as quickly as I could and stumbled into the alley but found the little street empty. I made my way back through the market, clutching the basket in my hand, and with an ache in my chest.
* * *
Pisa’s port was a few hours’ ride from the center of the city. I stood beside our ship in the bustling port, recording the cargo in a logbook as the company loaded bound trunks, casks, baskets, bolts of cloth, and clay jars into the hull. The load made my enormous trunk look insignificant. The nave didn’t appear particularly fast with its stubby proportions and blunt prow, but Cane, appearing at my side, pointed out that stability would be more important than speed. There’s no point in a fast ride if you don’t survive it.
Our ship, Il Paradiso, was large, with triangular fore and aft lateen sails and a double rudder for steering. The two rudders were so far apart two people would need to operate them, which didn’t seem like an efficient use of nautical personnel. But I assumed medieval shipbuilders knew what they were doing.
Five shabby pilgrims joined Lugani’s party. We also took on a group of eight female slaves under the command of a trader who was taking them to sell in Sicily. The slaves looked barely old enough to be called women and sounded like they were speaking Arabic. Cane marshaled the human cargo down a hatch in the aft of the ship. I started to follow them, but he stopped me with a motion of his hand.
“Slaves and pilgrims will take the lowest accommodations in the storage hold. You and your servant have quarters near the aft hatch.” He made sure I acknowledged his command.
A crew of weather-beaten sailors moved about the deck working the sails and lines. Lugani checked the passenger list and the tabulated steerage fees I’d compiled for him.
“There is room in the storage hold for a few more, and we’ve need of the gold,” he said with a frown. “I shall send Cane out to find other parties seeking passage. You may retire to your quarters with your able servant.” His slight emphasis on “able” made me suspicious, and I got even more suspicious seeing the rhapsodic look on Clara’s face as Lugani left us.
“He called me able—he is so manly, is he not?”
“He’s certainly a man,” I said, edgily, but Clara didn’t notice my tone.
Clara quickly found our tiny windowless cabin with its narrow berths one above the other, and got one of the burly sailors to lug my trunk into it. It took up most of the floor space but provided a convenient way to get to the upper bunk. I was glad Clara took the top; the only time I’d ever slept in an upper bunk I’d stayed up all night worrying I might fall out.
In the cabin, Clara insisted that she redo my hair, which hadn’t ever had this much attention in my thirty-something years of having hair. I let her rebraid and coil it all around my head, enjoying the gentle tugging. We were still belowdecks when I heard the squealing of the anchor rising on its winch. Clara and I went up to the deck to watch as we sailed out of the harbor with an auspicious breeze at our backs.
On our second day, the waves got choppy, and I learned Clara was prone to seasickness. The side-to-side sway combined nauseatingly with vertical motion each time we crested a wave and came down hard on its other side. A cold driving rain pelted the decks, making attempts to seek fresh air bitterly unpleasant. Clara was not alone in her misery; wooden buckets provided for motion-sensitive passengers were soon in use. She took one of them downstairs and used it steadily in our tiny, increasingly rank accommodations. I climbed the ladders to the deck to empty the bucket between bouts. Somehow, I managed to avoid joining Clara at the bucket.
After two more days, the wind died down and the sea settled. The sun rose watery and pale, drying the wet decks and rigging. Clara had a gray tint to her skin, but she was able to sit up and drink. When she was done, I tucked her under a cleanish blanket to sleep off the previous day’s misery and I escaped for a welcome breath of air.