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Haven

Friday

M y strange conversation with Savina had left me unsettled. Walking back to my rental, I pulled out my phone and returned to my camera roll, finding the newspaper article from the archive, the same article Enzo had translated in full for me.

I skimmed it quickly, then spotted it at the bottom—the word streghe , which I’d overheard Savina and Renata discussing earlier. The article also contained a related word, stregheria. I frowned, not remembering how Enzo had translated this, so I plugged the word into my browser, then hit Enter.

The results were not at all what I expected.

Stregheria was the Italian word for witchcraft , and streghe meant witches.

When I’d first read Google’s translation of the article about the sinking, I’d been so stunned by the mention of Holmes Foster that I hadn’t given the end of the article much attention. And even when Enzo translated the article for me, he hadn’t said anything about witchcraft.

Why, I wondered, would he have omitted this piece of information?

Once home, I grabbed my laptop and got to work, painstakingly translating each sentence.

The end of the article discussed rumors of a group of women secretly practicing stregheria in the area. The author called these women streghe del mare —witches of the sea — and reported that while the women had not been identified, they would be pursued by officials to determine any potential involvement in the sinking.

I sat upright on the bed, feeling both intrigued and a bit unhinged. Witchcraft? Seriously?

In spite of this, I spent the next hour reading everything I could find online about stregheria . Its existence was a pervasive legend through Italy, particularly in the Napoli region: the first streghe were believed to have originated in medieval times in Benevento, while the sea witches specifically had originated in the Positano region.

As a whole, the women were known for reciting strange incantations and venerating various amulets, the most important of which was a cimaruta , a sort of talisman necklace meant to protect the wearer. It featured tiny branches, like coral, and charms such as hearts or moons.

These women, I learned, were largely practitioners of benevolent kitchen magic: they worked with babies and herbs and gemstones. Today, many women still practiced forms of stregheria , though they were taken about as seriously as other practitioners of the esoteric, like mediums or Reiki healers.

Which was to say, not very seriously at all.

On an obscure website about the legends of the streghe del mare , I stumbled across a register of sea-spell incantations and their associated tools. I thought the list seemed rather ludicrous—mermaid’s combs and century-long spells?—but interesting, nevertheless, and I found myself googling images of hagstones and shark egg sacks.

Eventually, I could find nothing more on the streghe del mare or any evidence that the historical streghe used their witchcraft in malevolent ways. As I ran out of research threads to pursue, I pushed my laptop aside and went to the kitchen, suddenly starving.

As I stood there at the counter, nibbling the corner off a block of pecorino cheese, I began to laugh at myself. I’d come to lead Project Relic and find my father’s sunken treasure, yet I’d spent only a fraction of my time here in the water. Instead, I’d been bent over my phone reading about witches, the Mazza brothers, and influencers on yachts.

Still, so many of the threads intertwined. Everything came back to Li Galli. Everything came back to the legend of the Amalfi Curse.

I had to keep digging.

***

Last night, I’d stopped reading Holmes’s log at the point of his arrival in Naples. Now I picked up where I left off, determined to read more slowly this time. I’d overlooked the streghe mentions in the newspaper article, and I didn’t want to overlook something important again.

Soon after his arrival in Naples, Holmes mentioned the Mazza brothers.

I met with Matteo this morning to sign my papers , Holmes wrote in one entry. He had a yellowing bruise around his eye, and his arm in a sling as if fresh from a fight. He sucks constantly at his teeth, trying to dislodge food. Still, we’re all a rough sort, those of us who choose life on the sea. And he’s the one responsible for my wages, so I’ll stay in his good graces, teeth-sucking or not.

But as Holmes worked voyage after voyage—most lasting only a week or two—he began to resent the Mazza brothers and the way they ran their business. I’ve never witnessed such abuse from officers , he wrote. Flogging the crew for minor infractions. There are even rumors of tying men to the transom and dragging them. Where do the Mazza brothers find such barbaric men? Our wages are late, too, sometimes by as much as a week, when I’ve already left on my next voyage.

I had all but made up my mind to leave for Marseille or Nice, Holmes wrote, but there is my beloved, Mari…

Here, I paused, thinking of Enzo and how my situation paralleled Holmes’s in some ways. I, too, knew what it meant to grapple with romantic feelings for someone who lived in a place I was better off leaving.

I read on, anxious to learn more about what seemed like a budding love story.

Holmes and Mari met when he was in port at Positano. He described the village as a place of upstanding fishermen and their well-off families, all of them warm and welcoming. The village enjoys cold, fruitful waters and seems impervious to the challenges faced by other nearby fishing villages.

Then, Holmes relayed the moment he first laid eyes on her.

We had anchored offshore and moored our tenders along the rocks, then we walked along the beach. Some of my fellow sailors began to shout, insisting there was a naked woman frolicking in the water ahead. One or two of them broached the idea of going after her.

I had not seen the woman myself, and as we stood there waiting for her to reappear in the water, I wondered if the men—who were drunk—had merely imagined her. They finally gave up the wait, making for the village. I stayed back, walking slowly along the low waves, collecting a few shells and dwelling on how I should spend my evening.

It was then that I caught a flash of skin. Bare shoulders, bare neck, and hair the color of cherries.

I looked away, ashamed. But I am a man, am I not? I had to glance once more. When I did so, she was coming out of the water, and she was not naked at all. She wore a muslin swimming frock, tied just above her breasts. Her hair hung down to her waist, clinging to her wet skin. In her hands was a small turtle, a hook protruding from his mouth. She looked dismayed—I thought she might even be crying—as she worked to remove the object.

I thought her straight out of a book. A painting. A dream. Who, I wondered, was this woman that had just emerged from the sea?

I jumped at a knock on the door. Enzo. He must have finished up his calls. Setting my phone down, I quickly checked myself in the mirror, swiping on a pink lip gloss and brushing back a few stray hairs.

“Hiii—” I said, swinging it open.

I stopped short. It wasn’t Enzo at all.

It was Mal.

“I know you’re not leaving here without finishing what you’ve started,” she said. “I can’t do the dirty work for you, but I can try to make sure you don’t hurt yourself while you’re at it.”

“Well, hello to you, too,” I managed.

“You’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met in my life.” She dropped her bag, and it hit the floor with a thlunk.

“What about your flight?” I asked.

“They actually paid me to give up the seat,” she said. “Cash mon-ay.”

“What about your other job?”

“Like I said, my old boss is a badass. She gave me a bit more time.”

I remained frozen. “You’re seriously here.”

“Yup.” She slipped past me and into the kitchen. She made for the fridge, pulling out the cheese I’d put away a short while ago. “Who eats the corner off the cheese?” she asked, holding up the block. She glanced at me, then snapped her fingers. “And why are you still standing there? We have shit to do.”

I closed the door, smiling. This was the best thing that had happened to me in days. Weeks. Maybe ever.

“First things first,” she said, reaching for a plate. “Let’s find ourselves a boat.”

“No. First things first,” I echoed. “I have a lot to show you.”

***

I spent the afternoon, and well into the evening, telling Mal about all I’d learned in the last two days. I also showed her the article indicating the little-known circumstances surrounding the Aquila ’s demise.

“This,” I said, pointing at the word stregheria in the article. “Ever heard of it?”

Mal frowned. “I can barely say bathroom in Italian. So no.”

“It means witchcraft . There were rumors of it after the sinking, since no one could explain how it went down. And here’s something else. The article talks about a prisoner on board, Holmes Foster. Check this out.” I pulled up the video of his journal, showing Mal the inside cover. “I have his journal. Though, it’s more of a tell-all diary.”

Mal’s eyes widened. “How the hell did you find all this?”

“A little luck, and a whole lot of Google Translate.”

She nodded to my phone. “Have you read his journal?”

“Some of it. Listen to this.” I navigated to where I’d left off. “Who, I wondered, was this woman that had just emerged from the sea?” Then I looked at Mal. “Isn’t that…poetic?”

“Beautiful,” she agreed. “So who was it? Who was the woman?”

I continued to read aloud.

So as not to frighten her, I kept my distance, pretending to pay her little attention as she walked onto the beach and squeezed the water from her hair.

She bent down, still working at the hook caught in the young turtle’s mouth. With her brow furrowed, she studied its angle, its way in, and then very gently, with great tenderness, she eased it out.

At once, she returned the turtle to the water. He floated for a minute as though disoriented.

“Ti ringrazierebbe se potesse,” I said. He would thank you if he could.

Together, we watched as the turtle thrust his tiny flippers into the water, at last making for open sea, for freedom.

I studied the woman more closely. She had a deep dimple on her upper lip, and I was struck, at once, with the urge to run my thumb along it. “You are quite fond of the ocean?” I asked her.

She gave a little shake of her head. “In fact,” she replied, “I hate it.” She nodded toward where she’d just returned the turtle. “But it was a matter of life and death for him.”

I was not quite sure how to reply, so I stayed silent. Then I knelt down, a seashell having caught my eye. I couldn’t place my finger on it, but something about the shell seemed unusual.

I continued reading Holmes’s account out loud, learning that he had stumbled on what Mari called a sinistrale shell. Such shells were, according to her, quite rare.

It was evident that Holmes had been touched by this early encounter.

Knowing the shell was so rare, I asked if she would like to keep it. She insisted she found them often, so she let me have it. I dropped it into my pocket at once, and I have not parted with it since.

Eventually, the woman introduced herself as Mari DeLuca. She pointed to the villa on the hillside. “That is where my family lives,” she said.

I gazed at it, wondering why she told me this. There seemed no reason for it, apart from her having some desire to see me again.

“Hell of a meet-cute,” Mal said. “Almost enough to make me straight. Shame the poor guy dies at the end.”

I glared at her. “Mal. This isn’t a novel. This is some guy’s real life.”

“Sorry,” she said, cringing. “You’re right, that was rude. How did the journal survive the wreck?”

“Flotsam,” I told her. “Lots of the documents at the archive were water-damaged. Recovered from shipwrecks or washed in.”

I flipped to the next entry. We learned, much to our delight, that Holmes had made straight for Mari’s villa the next day.

It was evident from his log that in the weeks and months to follow, Holmes and Mari fell desperately in love. And no different than reading a romance novel, I was both enchanted and tortured by Holmes’s agonizingly short account of the first time they made love, in December of 1820—the smudges of tar he’d left behind on Mari’s thighs, and what she whispered to him after the second time they made love: Already, you are learning me.

I smirked as I thought of Enzo—he was a quick learner, too—then I continued reading the December entries, very glad this journal hadn’t sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

As we gathered up our things to part for the evening, she asked me when I set sail.

“Tomorrow, midday.” Only, I must have mispronounced something, because she smiled and bent forward to kiss my forehead, as she always did when I tripped over my Italian.

“And where are you headed?” she asked.

“To Naples. A short voyage, I hope, even accounting for the tramontana. It will depend on the currents, too, of course. They have been pulling us south.”

Mari gave a slow nod. “Yes,” she said softly.

Here, Holmes had drawn an arrow to a small note in the margin. I turned my phone screen to read it more closely.

As it turned out, the tides were very much in our favor when we set sail for Naples the following day. They had shifted northward, and we made it to Naples in half a day. According to Quinto, it was the fastest this little ship had ever sailed.

Not one of us could explain it.

A chill overtook me. I was about to ask Mal what she thought, but when I looked up, she’d just reached for her phone, her brow furrowed.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Megan just texted.” She flicked through her phone notifications for a second. “What the actual—” She trailed off.

“What?” I said again.

“The influencer who died, Asher Vice. There’s a memorial for him tonight, on the water. Megan texted, said the memorial is on the news right now. Two boats collided en route, right near Li Galli. One lost control, something about an eddy in the water.”

My chest tightened. At the coffee shop, when I’d eavesdropped on Savina and Renata, I’d caught the words Asher and memoriale .

I threw myself off the couch. “I think I’m going to be sick.” I stood, feeling the blood drain from my face.

“Let me get you some wa—”

“No,” I interrupted. I took a few deep breaths. “Get your things. We’re going for a ride.”