“You look different,” I said, not quite capturing all I’d been thinking.
“I am the same man.” Something had changed—was it him or me? Gabriele looked at me carefully. “Monna Trovato, the wind is cold, and you are shaking. May I help you to your accommodations?”
I couldn’t imagine returning to my cabin. “I don’t want to disturb Clara. She’s been horribly seasick and is probably resting.” Gabriele was quiet for a few seconds, as if gauging how to proceed. There were faint lines at the corners of his eyes I’d never noticed before. I knew from his journal’s dates that he was a bit older than me: born in 1311, and this was 1347, so he was thirty-six, give or take six-hundred-plus years. I allowed myself to study the angle of his jaw, the way a few days’ growth of beard had begun to darken his chin during his travels. I could see the dip at the base of his throat where his cloak parted. He watched me as I studied him, and I wondered what details he was taking in with those otherworldly gray eyes. Finally, he reached out his hand to touch my shoulder.
“Come below with me, then. I have a spare cloak, and another blanket to ease your chill.” I nodded, not trusting my voice. He turned, guiding me gently with one hand. “My accommodations are not as comfortable as yours. But they are warm, and quiet.”
“It sounds perfect,” I said, and followed him, leaving the bucket on deck.
Gabriele struck a flint and lit a candle, placing it carefully in an iron wall sconce. He’d led me to a storage space in the bow where bolts of woven wool and raw sheepskins were kept. The hides were stacked in high piles, and where they ended the rolls of fine cloth began, making a makeshift chamber. It smelled like sheep but it was warm and private. Gabriele wrapped me in his cloak and then in a coarse blanket, and we were quiet until I stopped shivering. He sat across from me on a low pile of sheepskins.
“Beatrice . . . may I call you Beatrice? It seems we are on good terms again, enough to merit less formality.” I nodded, happy to hear my first name. “What led you to be in Messer Lugani’s presence on deck at midnight, if I may ask?”
“Lugani seduced Clara, and now she’s under the false impression that he plans to marry her. The man is a”—I remembered my conversation with Clara before we left for Pisa—“lascivious wolf. I wanted him to take responsibility for his unscrupulous behavior.”
Gabriele raised one eyebrow.
“You went up on deck in the middle of the night in your shift and blanket, confronted your employer, and accused him of deceiving your maidservant?”
“Pretty much.” It did sound unbelievable.
“How extraordinary.”
“Can we start this conversation over? This isn’t how I’d envisioned it.” I cleared my throat. “How are Bianca and the baby?”
“Bianca is very well, and so is Gabriella, whom you helped bring into the world. “
“She named the baby after you? Rinaldo must have loved that.”
Gabriele laughed again. “In a short time you have come to know my family well.”
“It must be nice, having a baby in the house.”
Gabriele sighed. “I was hardly there long enough to benefit from her arrival. But Gabriella’s tiny presence has blessed my uncle’s home with a sweetness that had been long absent.” Gabriele paused expectantly while I gathered my courage.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I was there, in your house at the crack of dawn, delivering Bianca’s daughter?”
“I was grateful for your presence. But I did wonder.”
I said it fast, before I could lose my nerve. “I came to find you.”
“I am deeply flattered. But how did you manage to acquire such skill as a midwife, while also training to be an accomplished scribe?”
I hesitated. Lie yet again, or try him with the truth? I imagined my old life: the cool blue of the operating room, the warm hideaway of Nathaniel’s bookstore, the feel of Donata’s daughter’s hand in mine.
“Gabriele, I’m not from Lucca.”
“You did tell me that.”
“I’m from somewhere so far away, it’s unimaginable.”
“I will do my best to comprehend.”
“It’s worse than not being from Lucca.” The truth couldn’t be restrained any longer. “I’m not even from your time.” I heard my own words in a vortex, the truth spinning out into darkness, incomprehensible and dangerous.
“What time are you from then, Beatrice?” Gabriele looked perfectly normal despite what I’d just said.
“From the twenty-first century. About six hundred and fifty years from now, two thousand years after the birth of Christ . . . our Lord,” I added, for clarity.
I waited for the worst. I had to wait quite a long time—Gabriele stood up and began to pace, alternately looking at me and looking at his feet. When he finally responded I was cursing the idiotic impulse that had led me to confide in him.
“I admit that many thoughts moved through my mind at your revelation, Beatrice. I wondered—had you perhaps injured your head in the storm, and were you suffering from the effects of an injury? Had you been given some draught unbeknownst to you, perhaps even by Ser Lugani, in preparation for the seduction that fortunately did not transpire? But then . . .”
I realized I was holding my breath, and my hands and face had started to tingle. I reminded myself to continue breathing.
“But then I reflected upon the oddness of your language and bearing, peculiarities that ought not to arise simply because you come from Lucca.” He stopped in front of me and paused to collect his thoughts before he finally spoke again. “How lonely you must be . . . how terribly lonely.” The poignant accuracy of this response, the only right response he could have made, struck me at the core.
“It’s been an awful burden, having this secret that I can’t possibly tell, one that has kept me separate from everyone around me. I don’t know what I thought might happen when I finally told the truth—the last thing I’d imagined in return was sympathy.”
“Empathy, Beatrice,” Gabriele said, wiping the tears from my cheeks with the sleeve of his shirt.
* * *
Without the sound of church bells I had no way of marking the time, but I know the truth poured out of me like a river through a breaking dam. Gabriele weathered it all without flinching, sitting across from me in our woolen chamber below the ship’s deck.
His first question surprised me. “Why did you come to this time and place?”
“Why? I have no idea.” I’d never even stopped to ask why—the question of how had occupied most of my thoughts and I hadn’t made much progress on that.
“Perhaps as you talk we will be able to make sense of it?”