Page 14

13

Mari

Friday, April 20, 1821

W hen the tender slowed next to the imposing hull of the ship, Mari could hear laughs and shouts from the men aboard, as well as the clatter of metal and rope.

All of this, interspersed with the sound of Vivi’s soft weeping. She had not managed to escape her binds.

Mari sat up, glancing toward the ship, a maze of shrouds and taut lines. The vessel’s name, Lupo , was painted in enormous black letters on the hull. On the upper gun deck, a young man peered out from one of the gun ports. He couldn’t have been but sixteen. He looked lanky and underfed, the whites of his eyes reminding Mari of something dead.

At least, Mari thought briefly, her little sister, Sofia, wasn’t alive to face this.

Someone on the main deck threw down a rope ladder, and one of the men in Mari’s tender scampered his way up, his limbs moving deftly, like an insect. Once aboard, he and another deckhand threw down a pair of ropes with heavy, iron hooks. Mari’s captors quickly secured the hooks to their small boat.

She jolted as the pulley engaged. Upward they moved, out of the water, a sense of unsteady weightlessness seizing her. Soon, the tender was level with the ship’s main deck.

The deckhands pulled Vivi from the boat first, steadying her as she took a long step over the gap from the boat onto the ship. One of the men whistled and groped the front of her, but once she was securely on deck, he cried out: Vivi had just slammed the heel of her shoe onto his toe.

A moment later, limping, he whisked her away.

“Where are you taking her?” Mari cried out, watching as her friend disappeared into a hatch leading belowdecks. In the distance, the village of Positano was dark, silent. Amid the hillside, Mari caught a flicker of light: a lantern, probably, still lit in someone’s window.

No one answered her. Instead, Matteo yanked her upward from her seated position. She slipped, crying out as she fell against his broad, bony shoulder. She’d hit her nose, and it began to bleed profusely.

She glanced over the edge of the tender, now hovering about five meters above the water. Beneath her, the sea rolled, black and menacing. And yet, for the first time in a long time, Mari longed for the water, the relative safety of it.

She heard a muffled scream: Vivi, somewhere inside the ship. Were the Fontana girls there, too? Or Lia? Though she desperately wanted to reunite with them, Mari couldn’t be sure these men would send her down the same hatch as the others. She was not willing to gamble with such unknowns. She had sacrificed herself for Pippa on the beach, and she was glad she’d done it: she’d choose this peril for herself over Pippa any day. But admittedly, Mari had not considered what would come next—what she would do when faced with the predicament of captivity.

I cannot save any of these women if I am locked in a cell in the hold , Mari thought, eyeing the ship. She swallowed, tasting iron as her nose still bled heavily.

She discreetly shuffled her feet a few inches, getting a better look at the water. How deep was it, anyway? Deep enough for this large ship to drop anchor, so at least twenty, thirty meters. At this depth, there would certainly be sharks, jellyfish. The water would be frigid. And her hands—they were still tied tightly behind her back. The temperature, even the threat of sharks, she could tolerate. But the knots binding her? That proved another challenge entirely. She would need to hold her breath a very long time and remain underwater as she attempted to work her way out of the ropes.

Now more than ever, she was grateful for the cimaruta around her neck. She would need all the help she could get.

Mari eyed the chasm. In a single, fleeting moment—after Matteo had let go of her, but before the man on deck had grabbed her—she took a long breath and pitched herself over the side.

She heard the men’s shouts, their belligerent curses, before she even hit the water.

A moment later she felt the shock of frigid water, her body fully immersed. Water this cold triggered an instinctual urge to gasp for air. It would pass, if only she could calm herself and let her body adapt.

Using only her legs, she propelled herself sideways, toward the front of the ship, so she would not float to the surface in sight of the men. Suddenly, she felt the tickle of stones against her neck: her cimaruta had come undone. Mari cursed as it slipped from her neck and began to sink. With her hands bound behind her, she gave a little spin and reached for it with fumbling fingers, grasping the coral fragment at the last moment.

Several gunshots pierced the water very near her. With her cimaruta in her hand, Mari kicked deeper, staying well below the surface for as long as she could manage. A steady, thudding sound in the water surrounded her, like someone beating a drum underwater.

It was the ocean, pulsing in rhythm with Mari’s heartbeat.

***

When the shots and shouts had grown distant, she dared to kick her way up and lift her head above the waves.

She was beneath the long, copper-sheathed bowsprit, hidden from view. The air now felt colder than the water, and her nosebleed had ceased, too. But with her arms still pinned, treading water was difficult. As she struggled to stay afloat, she considered her options, any way to use her magic to save the women she’d just left behind. But the women were now deep in the bowels of the Lupo ; conjuring a whirlpool that endangered the ship would do more harm than good.

Mari coughed, swallowing a mouthful of seawater. She needed to save herself first, then decide on another plan. She eyed the village, took another deep breath, and went under again.

Underwater, she made for the direction of the village. It was difficult, at first, to swim with only her legs, but as the seconds passed, she understood it was like being a fish, and she could pin her legs together, using them as one to effectively propel herself forward. The current, too, was favorable: the tide was going in, and while swimming against it would have been a great effort, swimming with it was not so bad.

All the while, Mari tugged at the rope tied around her hands, encouraged when a few of the wet hemp fibers came loose. After a few more minutes of pulling and twisting, the knots gave way, and Mari’s hands were free. They were numb on account of the cold, although by now Mari had swum so hard, this minor discomfort hardly bothered her. She merely longed for the shore.

She lifted her head above the water every minute or so to check her location and ensure no one had followed her. Had the men assumed her drowned and dead? To her great relief, they had not lowered the tender back into the water, and she didn’t see any shadows moving on the main deck.

Forward she went, growing calmer as she neared the village. If the men had intended to catch up with her, she would know it by now. But it was very silent, just Mari and the dark sea. The ocean’s pulsing, thudding sound had not ceased, but it had grown slower and softer.

Finally, her feet touched bottom. She stood up, exhausted, and began to wade her way to the shore. Had an hour passed? Twice that? Her legs shook, her head throbbed, and still she could not feel her hands. But she was safe. She was alive. She could now get to work on devising a plan to save the women who had been captured.

As she stumbled out of the water, it dawned on Mari that she had not used any magic at all tonight. Much had worked in her favor: the water had been cold enough to stop the blood seeping from her nose. The direction of the tide had lessened the work of swimming. And, most importantly, the ocean—dark and ominous as it was—had kept her well-hidden, cloaking her in darkness. If it had been clear and warm, surely the men on the Lupo would have jumped in after her.

And during all of this, her cimaruta had been clutched in her hand, not tied around her neck. She hadn’t needed its protection at all.

Mari could not deny it: the sea, for all she resented it, had taken great care of her tonight.

Stumbling to the shore, Mari turned to gaze out at the waves. She squinted, searching for the ship she’d just escaped. But it had turned, now headed southwest.

The men sailed off with their three new captives in tow.

Mari collapsed, exhausted and bereft, into the sand.