My Brave Girl

 

Salerno, Italy
June 8^th, 1701

            Thurio DiCesare, the famous fencing maestro, felt his heart beat a staccato rhythm as he hurried toward his mother’s house. Chaos filled the narrow, cobbled streets packed with horse-drawn carts. He dodged between men and women running in and out of houses, piling wagons with belongings. Children wailed. Carriage drivers cursed as they tried to squeeze their neatly appointed carriages between laden carts and wagons and became wedged, bringing traffic to a standstill. Voices rose. Fist fights broke out.

            Fools, thought Thurio. If they left their belongings and fled, they might stand a chance.

            He turned a corner and entered the slate-blue door of a gray stone house. He called out as he rushed up a staircase two steps at a time. “Mary! Mother! Where are you two?”

            Two women appeared at the top of the stairs, their faces pale. Mother wore a navy-blue dress, along with gray hair so tidy as to be almost severe. Her tiny frame leaned on a carved-wood cane. “What has gotten into them?” she asked. “The entire town is in the streets!”

            Thurio reached his wife Mary and took her in his arms, relieved that she and their unborn child were safe for the moment. He buried his dark face in her deep copper-colored hair and breathed in her floral scent. He felt her heart race, until she pressed away and looked up at him with spring green eyes. Her dusty green dress and silver stomacher made her eyes even deeper green.

            “What is it this time, my love,” she said with a smile. “Is the world ending yet again?”

            He heard bravado in her light tone, but the narrowing of her eyes told him she was frightened. Something about the English accent to her Italian words reassured him as nothing else could.

            “Barbary corsairs,” said Thurio, moving past them into the bedroom. “They’ve raided Amalfi and are headed this way.”

            “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” mumbled Mother.

            “Slavers,” hissed Mary, putting protective hands around her swollen belly.

            The corsairs were pirates out of Algiers and Tunis. They raided in fleets of ships, ravaging the coast, attacking villages, and rounding up townsfolk to sell into slavery across the Ottoman Empire. Towns, villages, whole cities had been emptied of citizens to feed the slave trade over the last centuries. Few victims ever returned.

            Thurio knew without looking that his mother made hurried signs of the cross. He glanced up from the drawer that he ransacked for valuables.

            Mary leaned against the door frame, a hand supporting her eight-month pregnant belly. “What do we do?” she asked. “Should we head into the hills?”

            Salerno nestled between steep hills and the harbor. Few roads led out of town, and Thurio knew from experience that the fleeing citizens and their carts and wagons would clog and block the roads in their panic. The three of them might have headed overland and climbed into the hills to hide, but Mother’s fall four months ago had broken her hip. She was healing, but slowly. There was no way she could make the climb.

            The Maestro ripped open another drawer, piling jewelry on top of the bureau.

            “I’ve arranged passage aboard a ship.” He hated sea travel but had no choice. “I pray God we’re in time. Captain Sabatini promised to wait for us.” He has his own family to worry about, he added to himself. He may still leave without us.

            “I’ll pack my things,” said Mary.

            “No,” said Thurio. “There’s no time. Take this jewelry, I’ll get my sword and pistols. Then we must go.”

            They picked their way through the panicking townsfolk and their horses and carts. Mother moved slowly, and groaned in pain when someone bumped into her, so Thurio lifted her in his arms, carrying her. She felt like nothing, so frail and delicate. She’d always been a small woman, but the last few years she had shrunk to nearly nothing. Though Thurio smiled, thinking her spirit had not shrunk in the least.

            Mary hurried along with a hand tucked inside Thurio’s elbow. He glanced at her, and she gave him an encouraging smile. My brave girl.

            He remembered the day they met.

            In those days he traveled across Europe offering his sword arm to whatever cause paid the best. He had been fighting with the Williamites in the battle near the village of Aughrim. He’d taken a musket ball to the thigh and a slash to his side and sat panting and bleeding in a rutted road with his back to the hedgerow. She had appeared in the evening light with battle still raging. She wore a knife at her side and a healer’s bag over her shoulder.

            Despite the spattered blood, she was beautiful. Her hair shone in the setting sun and swirled about her, torn loose from its binding. “My little Paprika” he would come to call her, teasing her about the color of her hair. Her green eyes had blazed with intelligence and concern as she looked at his wounds. And when she smiled to reassure him he would live, he knew he would spend his life with her. She’d sewn up his injured side and bandaged his leg with artillery firing not fifty yards away.

            Ten years had passed, but there was still no one he’d rather have at his side in a crisis. He could count on Mary to keep her head no matter what befell them.

            “I’m glad we left the boys at home,” shouted Mary over the noise.

            Thurio nodded, saving his breath, relieved that the boys were two hundred miles north in Tuscany. He and Mary had missed them horribly, but now he was glad they had left them with his sister before coming to help Mother convalesce. Antonio and Sebastian were four and two. With Mother injured and Mary soon to have another child, they had decided the boys would only add to the difficulty. Thank God for small blessings.

            “How much time do we have?” asked Mary as they ducked between carriages. He barely heard her over the street noise.

            The maestro shook his head. “I’ve no way to know. The wind is against them. That, at least, is in our favor.”

            Mary gasped and her steps faltered. A dart of fear lodged in Thurio’s chest. “What is it, my dear!”

            She regained her pace and smiled, wrapping her hands around her stomach. “Our little one is complaining about all the commotion.”

            Thurio returned her smile but hurried his pace with his heart racing. Everything depended on reaching the ship before it departed.

            He jogged the last few blocks with Mary panting as she struggled to keep pace beside him and his mother groaning as she bounced in his arms.

            They turned a corner into the harbor. It was nearly deserted of ships, though groups of men fought over a few remaining rowboats. Three ships floated in the bay, their crews working feverishly. Only their ship, the Anglia, remained at the wharf. Her sails billowed, and she pulled at the ropes a crewman on the pier was trying to cast off. A handful of townsfolk grabbed at the crewman, begging for passage.

            Thurio’s heart froze.

            “Oh, dear Lord, they’re leaving,” gasped Mary. She broke into a labored run with Thurio at her side.

            The last crewman kicked one of the townsfolk into the water as he climbed up the ship’s side. The ship began to move as their footsteps echoed hollowly on the dock.

            “Wait,” yelled Thurio.

            “Come on then!” yelled the captain, waving them on. A dozen weathered, crewmen’s faces crowded at the side and tar-stained hands extended over the rail.

            The Anglia slid forward along the pier. Thurio reached the side, passing desperate townsfolk, and thrust Mother’s slight form upward. Sturdy hands caught hold and hoisted her up. She cried in pain as she disappeared over the side. Thurio and Mary hurried along the dock as the ship gained speed.

            “Up you go,” he said to Mary as he grabbed her hips and lifted her up toward the waiting hands. She raised her arms and curled her legs to protect her stomach. In a moment, she too disappeared aboard.

            Thurio reached the end of the planking and leapt for the outstretched palms.

            Thurio stooped as he carried Mother into a low, dark cabin and placed her gently on the cot. She stifled a cry of pain. Mary, followed, carrying a glowing lantern, and trailed by three other women. The other women bunched in the doorway, not fitting in the tight space. Mary hung the lantern from a hook and shadows swung across the bare wood walls. The occupants swayed with the ship, and already Thurio felt sick to his stomach. Mary exuded calm among the flustered ladies with pinched faces and wringing hands.

            “You should lie down as well,” said one of the women to Mary. “It must be well past time for your confinement. The baby could come any moment.”

            The others nodded their heads and murmured agreement.

            “Now don’t fuss, ladies,” said Mary, wiping her forehead with the heel of her hand and leaning against the wall to brace against the rocking. “I found the whole escapade rather invigorating. And the child will let me know when it’s time.”

            She said to Mother, “I’ll get you some water and see if they have a doctor. He might have something for the pain.”

            “Thank you, dear,” she replied.

            Mary turned to go but Thurio took her hand and brought it to his lips. She smiled and stroked his cheek before hurrying out with the other ladies following.

            Thurio fought down a wave of seasickness. He sat beside Mother and smoothed back her disheveled grey hair. The last half hour had etched the lines in her face deeper.

            “Are we safe now?” she asked wearily.

            “I hope so,” he said, taking her hand.

            Tears welled in the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them away. “I couldn’t bear to lose you or Mary to those dirty pirates as well.”

            “You won’t. Not if I can help it.”

            The last time the corsairs attacked he’d been fifteen. He and his family had lived in a small village to the north of Salerno. He had wanted to fight, but his father ordered him to lead his mother and two sisters to safety in the hills. His father and two older brothers had gone to the battle. Only one brother returned.

            Thurio had watched from their hiding place above town as the corsairs cut down anyone who opposed them. Then they rounded up everyone they could catch. The pirates weren’t after treasure, though they took what they could find. They wanted able bodies—men, women, and children that they could sell. Friends and neighbors were snatched, chained, and carted off—over a thousand of them. Those too old or infirm to sell, the pirates herded into the church. Then they set it on fire.

            Thurio shivered remembering the screams, even from a half mile away. That day he took up the sword. Never again would he feel helpless to defend the people he cared about. That day he set upon the road that eventually made him a maestro.

            Mary returned, breaking his reverie. “The doctor will be here soon.”

            He rose, taking a water pitcher and goblet from her. Together they propped Mother up so she could have a drink. She lay back, sighing, and fingering a rosary.

            Mary and Thurio sat side by side on the edge of the cot. Mary leaned into him, resting her forehead against his neck. He wrapped his arm around her. She felt warm and soft against him. Mary took his free hand and laid it on the bulk of her belly. He looked at her sharply as he felt the writhe and thump under his hand.

            “Good gracious, he’s trying to kick his way out,” said Thurio.

            Mary smiled. “She. I hope it’s a girl. There are enough men about the house already.”

            Thurio chuckled. “With kicks like these? It must be a boy, and a sturdy one at that.” He kissed her on the forehead as she laughed with him.

            “What shall we call him?” she said, snuggling into his side.

            “Well,” said Thurio, “considering how hard he’s fighting to get loose; his name should be free. How about, Francesco.”

            “A good name,” said Mother softly.

            “And to think—”

            A loud rumbling overhead interrupted Mary.

            Thurio’s body tensed, and he felt Mary do the same. Are they rolling out the cannons? He rose quickly. “I’ll see what’s happening.”

            When Thurio climbed awkwardly onto the rolling deck, he squinted into the bright sun. The wind filled the cream-colored sails and thrummed through the rigging. The coast slid past a half mile off their left side. They neared the point just past San Marco, where a flock of gulls circled overhead.

            Two-dozen reeling townsfolk stared anxiously over the right-hand rail, getting in the way of the crewmen working the sails. The landsmen looked like merchants and bankers and their families—friends and business associates of the captain he assumed. A quick glance at their frightened faces and the way they held themselves and he summed up their usefulness in a fight—next to none. He hoped he was wrong.

            Thurio spotted Captain Sabatini at the starboard rail with a spyglass to his eye and headed toward him. Thurio leaned against the rail for balance, one hand shielding his eyes from the sun, the other rubbing the hilt of the sword at his side. A ship crested the horizon two or three miles behind them, headed directly for them. It had three triangular sails and even without the spyglass Thurio could make out the red flag with a crescent moon and skull at the main mast. The flag of the Barbary Corsairs.

            “Pirates,” said Thurio.

            Captain Sabatini closed his spyglass with a snap and turned to the Thurio. The swarthy captain had a jaw too big for his face and eyebrows that bunched into a line. His disheveled clothes suggested he’d been caught napping by news of the corsairs.

            “The pirate fleet’s advance scout most likely,” said the captain. “She’s fast, that’s for sure. Faster than us by a long shot.”

            Thurio turned to gaze ahead. Five distant ships fled, as they did, south along the coast. A few fishing villages dotted the shore, but none had fortifications or defensible positions that he knew of. It looked to be a fight, and while a part of him craved vengeance for his father and brother, a larger part feared for his loved ones in the cabin below. He gripped his sword hilt tighter.

            “I’m glad we have your sword on our side,” said the captain.

            “I’m only sorry that waiting for me put you in a position to need my sword,” said the maestro. “You’re a good friend.”

            The captain waved away his words. “I didn’t do it for you, old friend, but for that pretty little wife of yours. With her being in a delicate condition and all, I hated to think what those beasts might do to her.”

            A shiver twanged up Thurio’s spine and the captain put a hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be two, perhaps three hours before they catch us. Go. Spend some time with your family.”

            When Thurio returned to the cabin, Mother slept, snoring lightly. Mary sat on the bed at Mother’s head, her back against the ship’s timbers and her arms draped over her belly. Lantern light turned her skin to gold and her hair bronze. She reached out to him and Thurio took her hand, perching on the cot in front of her.

            “The doctor gave her a sleep draught,” said Mary, tilting her head toward Mother.

            “And how is Francesco?” said Thurio, putting a hand on her stomach. “Has he settled down?”

            She nodded, circling her palms on the sides of her tummy. “The ship is rocking him to sleep. What did you find out?”

            Thurio ran a hand through his jet-black hair. “There’s a corsair chasing us.”

            “Only one?”

            “One is plenty,” he said.

            “Yes, but better than two, or ten. And they want us alive. They don’t want to kill their merchandise.”

            Thurio’s love for her welled up, filling his chest to bursting. She was the only woman he’d ever met who wouldn’t be reduced to a quaking mass by news of a pirate battle. Only she could find the bright side of a pirate attack.

            He followed her train of thought. “So, they won’t use grapeshot to wipe us out,” he said. “They’ll disable the ship and board. That means close fighting.”

            She nodded. “And there is no one in the world better at hand-to-hand combat than you, my love.”

            He ran his hand down her cheek and rested it against her warm neck. “Still, if they disable the ship, we’ll drift, helpless. The rest of the fleet could seize us when they caught up. And we’ll likely be outnumbered three or four to one considering the way pirates pack their ships with men.”

            “What if they thought we were surrendering?” said Mary.

            “They’d have no cause to disable the ship. They would want to take it as a prize,” he said, musing.

            “Once they came in close…”

            “We could scour their decks with grapeshot,” he finished.

            Grapeshot, a canvas bag of tightly packed musket balls shot from a cannon, was devastatingly effective against a mass of men. He’d seen it used more than once, thankfully, not toward him. The shot fanned out clearing swaths of bodies at a time.

            Mary nodded, as he continued. “We might reduce their numbers by half and double our odds.”

            His spirits spiked and he leaned forward kissing her on the lips. “I’ll talk to the captain. I knew I married you for a reason. You are brilliant, my little Paprika.”

            She grinned at him. “Of course I am. I married you.”

            Three long, tense hours later, when the corsairs pulled nearly parallel with them, close enough to send a cannonball whizzing past their bow as a warning shot, the captain called, “Heave to!”

            The helmsman put the wheel over and the sails fluttered, then fell slack. The Anglia slowed, wallowing on the waves. At a word from the captain, a white flag jerked up the mast and flashed against the blue sky. A cheer from the pirate ship reached the Anglia.

            But behind closed gun ports, the gun crews crouched beside their cannons—cannons primed and loaded with grapeshot. Thurio and the townsmen knelt with muskets ready behind the two inverted longboats stacked between the masts.

            Thurio steadied his nerves. He’d been in battles before, too many, but never one where the ground swayed beneath him, or where he had so much to lose if he failed. He forced the thoughts of Mary, Mother, and his unborn child out of his mind. He concentrated on the sway of the deck, judging how it would affect his aim and footing. The pirates with their sea-legs had a clear advantage over a landsman, but he had the best sword arm in Europe, and he had motivation. The pirates would only get to his wife and child over his corpse.

            He waited for the captain’s signal, fighting the urge to peek at the closing ship. The pirates should pull into the sights of the cannons at any moment. He glanced at the townsmen, sweating, faces taught with fear, knuckles white on the barrels of their muskets, and hoped their nerve held.

            “Open fire!” bellowed the captain.

            The six right gun ports thunked open as Thurio rose. The corsair ship had drawn even with them thirty yards off. Her sails were taut, and foam churned from her bow. At least a hundred corsairs crowded the rail.

Their brightly colored coats and turbans might have looked festive under different circumstances. They waved curved scimitars and muskets, yelling for blood.

            Thurio propped the musket he’d been handed on the longboat in front of him and took aim at a man in a blood-red turban, waiting for the rise of the next wave. As he pulled the trigger, the six cannons erupted. Smoke smothered the deck and Thurio ducked down to reload his musket with sure movements. Screams drifted across the water. The townsmen coughed and fumbled, trying to reload their muskets in a panic.

            “Bring us to the wind!” yelled the captain. The ship turned, sails swelling. She began to move.

            Thurio rose to fire again but could see nothing through the smoke. He couldn’t even tell where the corsair was. Then red flashed through the smoke and pirate cannons roared. He aimed just above a flash of red where the gun crew should be and fired.

            The Anglia jerked and creaked as a barrage of chainshot—two cannonballs with a chain between—ripped through the rigging, some hitting masts and yardarms. The corsairs were trying to disable the ship by taking out their rigging. Wood splinters, severed ropes, and scraps of sail showered the deck. Musket balls from the corsair ship thudded into the wooden boats in front of Thurio. Three crewmen cried out and fell to the deck.

            Through thinning smoke Thurio saw that the faster corsair had passed in front of the Anglia and tacked. She headed toward them on their left side.

            Shouting to the townsmen to follow, Thurio climbed over the longboats to keep them between him and the pirates. He reloaded and awaited their approach. The first barrage of grapeshot had been effective. It looked as though at least a quarter of the pirates had fallen and fans of bright red blood covered what he could see of the pirate deck. But they had only twenty crewmen ready to fight aboard the Anglia as well as twenty frightened townsmen. The odds were still bad.

            “Hard to starboard!” the captain shouted. “Larboard guns! Give her another broadside!”

            The cannons thundered and billowed smoke.

            Musket balls peppered the Anglia, one ricocheting off the longboat inches from Thurio’s face. He flinched away, and then saw her.

            Mary knelt over the spasming body of a crewman tying a tourniquet around his ravaged leg. She waved to another crewman yelling, “Take him to the doctor!”

            As the corsair came abreast, now only ten yards off, Thurio bolted for Mary. He threw himself to the deck next to her, bringing her down with him and shielding her with his body. The corsair’s cannons bellowed. The longboats and ship’s rail exploded in splinters that rained down on them. One of the Anglia’s cannons flew backwards, crushing men beneath it. Grappling hooks snaked out from the pirate ship.

            “We must get you below,” yelled Thurio.

            “Please, Thurio, I can help.”

            He shook his head. “Not today, my love.”

            He helped her rise and wrapped his arm around her, hurrying for the companionway stairs. Once they descended to the landing she turned to him. “The women and children are in the great cabin. I’ll stay here and defend the door.”

            He noticed that she wore a sword at her side. Where she had got it, he had no clue.

            “No!” he said. “No heroics. You’re in no condition.”

            He had taught her to fence, so he knew her skill. At first, teaching her had been just for fun. When they first got together, she had wanted to be included in that part of his life, so he’d agreed. They kept it secret since most people would have found it scandalous. Somehow, that made it even more fun. Their lessons together had been sensual as he corrected her form and her movements. Though, over time, he’d realized that she had talent, she was lightning quick, with amazing point control. But that was different; a game, a diversion, not life and death, and she hadn’t been eight months pregnant. 

            He tried to usher her toward the great cabin, but she held her ground and faced him.

            “I’d rather die fighting than have our child born in slavery,” she said. She sounded calm, determined, not panicked like anyone else would have been, and he loved her even more.

            She held his eyes. “We both know, if the pirates get this far, those are the only choices.”

            Ice spread outward from his belly. He wanted to argue, but what could he say? There was no safe place for her to go, nowhere to hide aboard ship where the pirates couldn’t find her. Why had he brought them here?

            Mary put both hands to his tense jaws, her face hard. “Don’t let them get this far.”

            He nodded once, slowly, with the ice in his stomach turning to steel. He turned and headed up the companionway.

            As he emerged on deck, the ship shuddered. A section of wooden hull and the companionway stairs behind him disintegrated into splinters as a cannonball flew through the ship.

            Pain seared along Thurio’s right side, and he staggered. “Mary!” he yelled as he looked down through the gaping hole that had been the stairs. She had been knocked to the deck. He jumped down past the wreckage and ran to her.

            She sat up as Thurio knelt beside her. Small spots of blood appeared on her dusty green dress where slivers of oak had peppered her.

            “Are you hurt badly?” said Thurio, scanning her wounds.

            She reached up toward her neck.

            Then he saw it.

            Thurio’s breath stopped. The world spiraled and warped around him. A five-inch, ragged splinter protruded from the side of Mary’s neck.

            “Oh God,” he whispered.

            Mary’s fingers found the intruder, and before Thurio could think or move to stop her, she pulled it free.

            Blood had spattered everywhere by the time Thurio set Mary down on the cot next to Mother. Mother held her hand to the wound, blood welling between her fingers, as Thurio sprinted to find the doctor.

            He ran blindly, yelling and searching in a surreal daze in which seconds lasted a lifetime and minutes flew by too fast. Finally, he found the doctor in the hold and returned with him in tow.

            Thurio knelt at Mary’s head as the doctor examined her wound. Her breathing was shallow, but her green eyes locked on Thurio’s.

            “The baby,” she whispered.

            She put a weak hand to her stomach and Thurio could see her belly moving through the fabric of her dress.

            “Doctor, please,” said Thurio, his voice like glass in his throat. “Do something.”

            “The damage to the vein is too great,” said the doctor. “I’m sorry. I can’t stop the bleeding.”

            Thurio clutched the man’s bicep and squeezed, willing him to save her. “You must! You have to.”

            The doctor grabbed Thurio’s wrist. He was clearly hurting the doctor, but he didn’t care.

            “We must take the baby now if it is to survive,” the doctor said.

            “Take? Oh, God, no.” He trembled, letting go of the man’s arm.

            “I’m sorry, Maestro, but your wife will be dead in minutes and your child will die three minutes later. We cannot save your wife, but your child needn’t die.”

            “Thurio,” whispered Mary.

            He knelt beside her and took her hand. It felt cold so he tried to knead the warmth back into it.

            “Save Francesco,” she said to the doctor. Her eyelids fluttered closed, then opened again.

            Thurio held her cold hand to his tearstained cheek. “No!”

            “Yes, son,” said Mother putting a hand on his back. “You must let her go.”

            Mary sighed and closed her eyes. Her breathing stopped.

            Thurio stood. Mary lay still, but the writhing in her belly grew more intense. Francesco fought for life. The doctor stood ready with a scalpel in hand to free him.

            Thurio nodded, once.

            The doctor went to work. Thurio turned toward the cabin door, drawing his sword.

            When Thurio climbed the shattered stairs and arrived on deck, it heaved with fighting men. Fury like he had never known propelled him forward. It filled him so completely that he felt himself on fire, like a god of flame. His sword was Wrath, it sang and hissed against other blades and whispered as it found its targets.

            On and on he went for what seemed like forever, slashing and stabbing, watching bodies drop. Once a corsair’s scimitar raked down his face filling one eye with blood. It didn’t matter, and he didn’t feel it. Death does not feel pain.

            Eventually, there were no bastards left to slay. 

       Thurio stood, sides heaving, blood dripping onto the deck. His rage melted, slipping away like a dream upon awakening. In its place flooded despair and pain. My brave girl. Mary.

       Through the groans of injured and dying men, he heard a baby’s wail, high and plaintive. Though his mind felt disconnected, his body moved toward the sound, down the ruined stairs to the closed cabin door.

He couldn’t go in. He leaned his head against the door frame as shudders and sobs wracked him.

       The door opened. Mother stood with a red-pink squalling child wrapped in a cloth in her arms.

       He wiped the blood from his eyes. With a stuttering breath, Thurio took the child, staring at the tiny perfect fingers and the little mewling mouth. He swallowed hard. “Is he going to be all right?”

       Mother wiped her eyes. “Francesca is just fine.”

       He looked up at her. “A girl?”

       She nodded.

              Thurio leaned back against the doorframe and stared up at the beams, letting the tears flow. “My brave little girl,” he said.