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The storm hit them a day out of Syracuse, and Nicolò couldn’t say much of what had happened after that. They’d been blown south, of course, but it had been the sort of howling darkness that stole the breath from your lungs, waves breaking over the deck of the shop like grasping hands. Nicolò had spent a lot of time on the ocean, the wide blue sea at the centre of the world he knew. This had been beyond his experience. He had been fiercely glad, at least, that they had been returning home, his sister Camilla safely married. He wouldn’t have wanted her to die this way.
He didn’t think he had been truly unconscious at any point after that – he would have drowned if he had, surely. But it was a blur of waves and wind and the deep horrifying sounds of the ship breaking apart around them. Dawn came not with the sun cresting the horizon, but as the clouds rolled away. Nicolò was clinging desperately to a broken spar, his head was pounding like someone was beating on it with a mallet, and there was no one and nothing else in sight – not even land on the horizon.
He was going to die out here, and slowly. He licked his lips, and spat out the crusted salt.
The ship, when he saw it, seemed like a hallucination and then a torment and then, when it became evident they had seen him, a blessing straight from God himself. He was so lost in relief that it wasn’t until he was hauled aboard, even though it had been evident long before from the sails and the shape of the vessel, that he realised this was a Muslim ship; perhaps even out of Tunis itself. Oh. He was in, probably, a very great deal of trouble.
*
Up until the storm, Nicolò had been reluctantly willing to concede that this voyage had been blessed with good fortune. Reluctantly, because he had not really wanted to be there at all. He had entered the monastery nearly two years ago, after the final argument with his father about what he could and could not be expected to do while carrying arms. The first six months had been one great relief; to be able to lose himself in prayer, and simple daily work, and helping others. He had been aware, more and more, that perhaps the religious life was not what he might want for all his days – but if it was that or doing what his father wished, it was no contest. And he had not yet found any purpose that would take him away from Genoa and leave him knowing he was doing the right thing.
Then his brother Marco had come to tell him that their sister Camilla was going to Sicily to be married, again, her first husband having run inconveniently afoul of a boar, and that none of Nicolò’s other brothers, all six of them, was available as escort.
“Yet here you are,” Nicolò had pointed out.
“I have my own duties,” Marco had retorted. “Nico, it is this one thing, and then you can take vows for all I care.”
“It is not whether you care, but whether our father cares.”
“For all he cares too.” Marco had folded his arms. “I will stay here until you agree to come; see if I will not.”
Nicolò would concede readily if asked that there was a certain stubborn streak in their family which Marco had his fair share of, in the right circumstances. So he had sought permission from the Abbot, and belted on a sword, which he had never expected to do again, and ridden out with Marco. For just this one thing; a reminder of the world he was renouncing before he renounced it.
On a happy note, Camilla had been pleased to see him, and he to see her. The voyage had been swift and calm, and there had been no terribly unpleasant surprises in Sicily. It would not be past their father to arrange a marriage for Camilla to someone twice her age and not think to mention it.
So Nicolò had set sail to return to Genoa in good heart, troubled only by the niggling thought that it had made him glad to be on the sea again, and practice with arms, and did he really want to give those things up forever? They were as much a part of him as any of the cooking or healing or scribing he did in the religious life. His prayers had not brought him certainty, and there was no confessor on the ship. He hoped that by the time they reached Genoa, he would have new surety.
Instead he was sitting on the deck of a vessel out of Valencia or Tripoli or perhaps even Alexandria if he was lucky, Tunis if he was not, forcing himself to sip at the tin cup of water he had been given lest he puke his guts out. He was alive; he was going to live. It was a better fate than – as far as he knew – anybody else on his ship. That was a wide pit of grief he was not ready yet to look into. He had not known any of them before the voyage, but they had been living men, and now they were – almost without question – gone, without rites or mercy.
His fingers clenched on the tin cup, and he made himself continue to sip. One of the sailors sat down next to him and tried questioning him in Arabic, of which Nicolò spoke only a very little, and then mercifully in the trade tongue.
“Where were you bound, and where had you sailed from?”
“Genoa, from Syracuse,” Nicolò said truthfully. The man’s eyes narrowed. “And this ship?”
“We sail from Tunis, for Malta. What –”
“I am very grateful for your aid,” Nicolò said, also truthfully, but knowingly cutting him off. “I would have died out here.”
“Well, the princess would not let us pass you by.” Nicolò’s interlocutor glanced towards the bow of the vessel, where Nicolò could see more than one figure in dress that was clearly finer than the sailors’, and female. “I suppose more questions can wait.”
Nicolò was left to recover slowly, while everybody moved about the business of the ship. After a little while, he was well enough to take stock of his situation. Genoa and Tunis had clashed more than once during his father’s reign, over control of trade routes, at sea mostly but not without attempts to take the conflict to land. They were not at open war, but neither were they at peace. It made him wary of giving them his true name, as the Count of Genoa’s youngest son. They did not seem likely to kill him out of hand, having rescued him from the sea, but if Nicolò hauled the Queen of Tunis’s son (he believed she had one) from the ocean it would be foolish not to take him as a hostage. At least, that was what his father or his oldest brother would say.
Very well; if he was not Nicolò of Genoa, who was he? Some man-at-arms, perhaps. They might not even believe a claim of nobility, come to that. He had on him his sword and belt, by a miracle, a circlet of prayer beads that Camilla had given him before he set sail for home, and besides those only the clothes on his back, and the storm had not left them in very good condition. The worst case, very likely, was that he was sold, and had to escape however he could. And that would have been something to fear no matter who had pulled him from the ocean. The best – that he was set free in Malta to, to…well, there were Christians there still, he could ask for aid, and ships that would go on to Sicily. He could return to Camilla and thence home.
Something about that thought nagged at him, but he refused to look at it directly. Nobody was coming with further questions for him. While they let him be, he was going to pray. Perhaps it would offer answers.
*
Some time later, the sun having passed its peak, someone else came to speak with him. She was very dark, better-dressed than most of the sailors, and wore a blade. Nicolò supposed she must be in the princess’ party. He was so surprised when she spoke to him in Latin – not quite the language of the church, and certainly not his own Genoese dialect, but Latin nonetheless – that when she asked him what his name was, he said ‘Nicolò’ without thinking. Then he cursed himself inwardly; he would have to do better at this, if he meant to hide himself.
“Nicolò,” she repeated. “My name is Nile. I am a companion of Princess Noor’s. She demanded that we bring you aboard, to see if you were alive. We saw some…some other wreckage. You are lucky to have survived.”
“The grace of God,” Nicolò acknowledged. “I was told you are traveling to Malta.”
Nile nodded. “Yes. The princess is visiting her brother, who holds Malta for Tunis. You are…from Genoa?”
“No,” Nicolò said, taking his first chance, and praying – it could not be wrong to mislead, given what was at stake – he sounded convincing. “No, we were sailing to Genoa, but I was hired in Syracuse, to guard the ship if it was attacked at sea. They were worried about pirates. There are stories of some fearsome female ones sailing between Sicily and the Rock. But I could not guard anybody against wind or water.”
A curious smile played at Nile’s mouth when he mentioned pirates, but all she said was “Yes, our blades do not do much good there. What business did your employers have in Genoa, then?”
“The ship had been hired to take the count of Genoa’s daughter to a marriage in Sicily,” Nicolò told her truthfully, because it was best if he was as truthful as possible; less to repent, and less to get wrong. “They were returning with some cargo. I know there was wine, and oil…I cannot say I asked too closely. I only carried what they asked me to carry.”
He had carried only one small barrel on board; he had been farewelling Camilla, and joined the ship as it was almost ready to sail. But it seemed like the kind of thing that would make real the picture of him as an ordinary man-at-arms. He could only hope this Princess Noor’s mercy would extend to letting an ordinary man-at-arms leave freely.
Nile’s eyes narrowed when he mentioned the count of Genoa’s daughter, but she did not ask further. She only told him that they would reach Malta by sundown, and that the Princess would like to speak with him – “but not if you are still recovering,” she said. It was not hard to tell that what she meant was, not if you do not feel easy about speaking to a princess.
Nicolò could not decide whether the character he was playing would say yes or no and ended up agreeing to cover his confusion. “Does she speak any Latin?”
“Only a little, but I will translate,” Nile said cheerfully. In their conversation, Nicolò had inadvertently formed the idea of Princess Noor as the sort of stern middle-aged lady who might rule equally well a nunnery or a castle; well, the latter only in comparison, of course. He was surprised again to find that she was barely as tall as his breastbone, still had a little puppy fat clinging to her cheeks, and regarded him with keen dark eyes as she asked – partly in Latin, partly with Nile’s help – whether he was feeling well, and what had happened to his ship. “We saw some other bodies. But Nile and the captain said they were dead. I am glad they agreed to see if you were alive.”
Nicolò gave her his sincere thanks; it was all he had to give. She nodded courteously, and said something to Nile as Nicolò was released from her presence which sounded halfway between an instruction and a question. He found out what it was when someone came to him an hour later with a change of clothes, and said that Lady Nile had said the Princess thought it was unfitting to rescue someone from the ocean and leave them in rags. Nicolò had truly not thought his clothes were as bad as all that, although the stiffened salt had made them quite uncomfortable. But he could not deny feeling better once he had changed into the cool soft cotton; a royal gift, indeed. He bundled his old clothes up. He could sell them for rags, or perhaps they would even be salvageable as garments, and the beads from Camilla, and if he had to his sword. Malta was a busy port. There would be passage back to Sicily easily enough. Maybe even direct to Genoa if he waited.
As it turned out, it was not a choice he had to make that day. They arrived in Malta before sunset, and Nicolò joined in with the work of unloading the ship. It was the least he could do for his rescuers, and in any case it was obviously assumed that he would. He thought perhaps he would slip away quietly once that was done, but Nile – Lady Nile, Nicolò decided to call her for courtesy’s sake, though he did not know what her proper title would be – came to him and said that they were leaving for the castle now. Nicolò considered what to say, but she read his face.
“You are not a prisoner,” she said. “You are a guest; but if you would rather find lodging elsewhere, the princess will not consider it an insult.” Her mouth quirked. “Or I will explain to her that it is not.”
Nicolò thought about the odds of finding decent lodging as a stranger new-come to the port, knowing nobody, and not having had to find lodging on his own since – well. Ever in his life, if he was being honest about it. He had never travelled alone. Who would, given the choice?
It struck him again that everybody he had taken ship with from Sicily was dead.
“That is very kind,” he said aloud. “Thank you.”
He lurked in the back of the party with the servants, and struck up a conversation with one of them, who was from Aquitaine and served Lady Nile. Her dialect was more similar to Nicolò’s Genoese than anything they spoke in Sicily, which was refreshing. She turned out to have some training as an apothecary, and they passed such a pleasant conversation about everyday things like drying herbs that the walk through the streets to the castle (the Princess was not on foot, of course) passed almost without Nicolò noticing it. Celeste accepted his guise as a man at arms without question, and told him all sorts of things about being in service in Tunis, and what she had been told about how Malta might be different. Of course they were hardly having a private conversation, but Nicolò knew what it looked like when there were things people did not wish to speak of, and she seemed very happy in her work.
When they arrived, Nicolò heard only absently the sounds of Princess Noor greeting someone with what sounded like excitement, because Celeste was telling him about the castle. It was not built at all in same manner as the fortresses he had known; he could not help thinking about how one might take it, as she talked. He was struck by a sudden pang of guilt that he was spying, in a way, when he was a guest. The feeling as so strong and distracting that when Celeste was interrupted by someone saying, in the trading tongue, “So you are the lucky man my sister pulled from the sea,” Nicolò did not put two and two together, and know who the man was. He only saw that he was much of a height with Nicolò, with a fine close-cut curling beard and a smile like sunlight. Nicolò knew instantly that he was the handsomest man he had ever laid eyes on, and perhaps ever might. It was almost a more overwhelming feeling than sailing into the storm.
“Lucky, I do not know,” he said, his mouth somehow still working while his mind was elsewhere. “The ship was lost. Those who are lost with it are in Heaven, I hope, whereas I will have trouble finding passage off the island once word of that spreads.” He hadn’t thought of that until he said it, but it was true. Sailors were very superstitious, and fairly so. Nicolò himself would hesitate to sail on a ship with a crewman who had been the sole survivor of a wreck at sea. It did not speak of good fortune.
“Well, perhaps we will be graced with your company, then,” said the man. He still had not introduced himself, but he was looking at Nicolò like – like he had experienced that same thing Nicolò had, just now. “For tonight, you are our guest here.”
He said it with careless confidence and Nicolò realised, as he should have several sentences back –
“You are the Prince of Tunis.”
The prince laughed. “Were you expecting someone else?” He cocked his head. “And who are you, maybe-lucky stranger from the sea?”
“Nicolò,” Nicolò said, all in a rush. “My name is Nicolò, and I am a man at arms, lately of Genoa.”
The prince raised his eyebrows. “We have not had so many friendly visits from Genoa of late, but perhaps this marks a new beginning.”
“I hope so,” Nicolò could not help saying, which got him another smile. Nicolò’s pulse was beating in his ears, for more than one reason.
*
The next morning, Nicolò got up at Lauds and found a church by the bells, which competed here on Malta with the Muslim call to prayer; they prayed at dawn as well. He prayed for Camilla, and for his brothers back at the monastery, but mostly for all those who had gone down with the ship, when he had been spared. That was why he had a duty to return to Genoa, above all; he had to take word of what had happened to them.
To do that he needed to find where he could sell the things he had to sell, and buy passage, but he had not brought any of them with him. He had noted on the way to the castle the day before that this was not a town where men walked about armed with more than everyday knives, so even his sword had been left behind. He was surprised how quickly he had learned to feel naked without it again, even after his time at the monastery. So he made his way back to the castle. On his way back, he saw Lady Nile riding in the other direction, to the docks. She looked like someone with a task.
He did not expect to be greeted by the prince after he made his way back through the maze of narrow streets – or for the prince to guess where he had been.
“Did you find your church?”
“Yes,” Nicolò said. “I had to pray for the dead. I will have to take word back, so their families know what happened. Sailing is not always safe, but…”
The prince nodded, sympathy gently creasing his brow. “No, it is not.” Of course he would know; he ruled an island, right now, and Tunis was a seafaring city as much as Genoa.
“I saw Lady Nile on her way somewhere,” Nicolò said, to change the subject. “It seemed early for her to have a task.”
“I asked her to go and find out which ships are in harbour now, or expected,” the prince said, unexpectedly. “She said you seemed eager to resume your journey, if you could. And she knows the port well, having sailed with – some other friends of ours.”
“Malta is very lovely,” Nicolò said, diplomatically. “But I never intended to come here.”
“We do have more Genoese traders than you might think.” The prince’s mouth quirked. “But I understand.”
Nicolò wondered again if anybody had any idea – but surely not; his father had ten living children, and Nicolò was a very common name.
“Thank you, your highness,” he said. “I hope Lady Nile will not be put to too much trouble.”
He did not have anything to do with himself, and hated to be at a loose end, so he went hunting for the stillroom; surely the castle had one. As luck would have it, he found Celeste there, and was enlisted to help her make rosewater.
“You didn’t learn this skill with a sword,” she said. “No, you don’t have to tell me how you did; it’s not my business.”
“I was in a monastery, for a while,” Nicolò said.
She looked at him curiously. “It is still not my business, but did you mean to take vows?”
“I was considering it.” Nicolò shook his head. “Never mind that – may I ask a question?”
“I am asking them of you, so of course.”
“What is the prince’s name? I should know, and I do not.”
“Yusuf,” she said. An impish light came to her eye. “Speaking of reasons not to take vows, are we?”
“Well, I have eyes,” Nicolò said, grinning, and so they passed a pleasant (and pleasant-smelling) morning.
The afternoon brought less pleasant news; Nicolò was summoned to hear that Lady Nile had not found a ship that would carry him north.
“The crew talked,” she said. “Everybody has heard the story, and nobody will want to have you on board. I am sorry.”
Nicolò swallowed against disappointment. It smelled like roses. “Do you think that will change, as new ships come in?”
“Most likely,” said the prince – Yusuf. “Or –“ He asked Lady Nile something in Arabic.
“Yes, I would expect them by the end of the month,” she said, in the trading tongue. “And they will not be put off by a little danger.”
“Well, then.” Prince Yusuf turned to Nicolò. “I have two friends who sail a ship, and – as Nile says, they are not put off by danger of any sort. And until then, if you are willing, there is a task in my service I think you could well do.”
“Your sister rescued me,” Nicolò said. “I owe her, and you. Only tell me.” It was a reckless thing to say; he knew very well why Prince Yusuf made him feel a little reckless. It would pass, probably.
Prince Yusuf smiled broadly, and then again, maybe it wouldn’t. “It is my sister, actually. She is here because in the not very distant future it will be her task to hold Malta, being the next oldest, and so we are going to tour the island. And there is, as Nile has reminded me after speaking to all the captains in port, a chance of raids by the Normans in Sicily. Noor is the kind of person who – do you have any younger siblings, Nicolò of Genoa?”
Nicolò tried not to react to that address; he did not know if he succeeded. “No, I am the youngest, of – of several.”
“Well, being a younger brother, perhaps you will know how it is that younger siblings sometimes feel a need to…prove themselves. Respecting one’s parents is one things, but older brothers are another.”
Nicolò laughed. “Oh, no, that I understand.”
Lady Nile was shaking her head. “Yusuf, don’t talk to me about younger brothers.”
“Yours is so polite, though,” Yusuf said to her, and she shook her head again, but she was smiling. “In any case, if I asked you to guard her, she would take it more seriously than if I asked anybody else – because she rescued you, and so feels responsible for your wellbeing. Could you do that?”
Nicolò thought about it. His sister was newly married to a Norman in Sicily; it would be very awkward if he ended up having to fight them, on Malta…but really, what were the odds?
“I could,” he said.
“Thank you,” Prince Yusuf said, very earnestly. “You are really doing me a very great favour.”
“It can only be to my benefit to do a prince a very great favour, surely.”
They smiled at each other. Lady Nile shook her head again. Nicolò could not quite figure out why.
*
So Nicolò entered the service of Tunis, which would have seemed entirely incredible if some fortune-teller had prophesied it to him a month previously. Being naturally a little suspicious, he did go down to the port himself, but it was as Lady Nile had said; every sailor he talked to had heard the tale of the man Princess Noor’s ship had rescued, and swore, Muslim and Christian and Jew and even one pagan from the far North alike, that they would not want someone that unlucky on their vessel.
Guarding Princess Noor was not very onerous a task. Nicolò was taxed most greatly by trying to understand some of the Arabic that was being spoken around him. Prince Yusuf, somehow, made time to teach him some words, a lesson which was interrupted by a man Nicolò felt like he might have seen before. He addressed Prince Yusuf familiarly and in Arabic, but then switched to Latin when he looked at Nicolò, and Nicolò realised with horror that he looked familiar because Nicolò knew him, and had met him on more than one occasion. He was Sébastien of Marseille, whose nephew was betrothed to Nicolò’s niece Giulia. And worse, the first words out of his mouth in Latin were “Have we met?”
“Not that I recall,” Nicolò lied. “Are you a companion of Prince Yusuf’s?”
“A friend, visiting,” Prince Yusuf said. “Sébastien, this is Nicolò, lately of Genoa, who has agreed to make Noor feel too guilty to run off when she shouldn’t.”
“I thought I had agreed to guard her,” Nicolò protested.
“That’s going to be the best way to guard her,” the prince insisted, “not anything you can do with a sword.”
“Oh, you carry a blade, do you?” said Sébastien with some interest, and they spent an hour talking about the differences between the swords they used in Tunis and the longswords Sébastien and Nicolò were practiced with. Nicolò was aware that perhaps he should have said the blade was someone else’s, because it was a knightly weapon, but – he had claimed outright to be a man at arms; he was not masquerading as an ordinary villager. And Sébastien had accepted it when Nicolò had said they had never met. Nicolò ran a thoughtful hand over his still-new beard; he had not shaved since he had been rescued from the sea, and the clothes he wore were not even his own. Really, there was no reason for Sébastien to think on it further.
That hopeful thought was tested daily when Sébastien accompanied them on their slow progression around the island. Malta’s main island was not large, but the purpose of the tour was for Noor to know the island, and the island to know her. It did not make for speedy going. Every day Nicolò expected Sébastien to turn around and say “No, I do know you, you are the image of your father,” and every day he didn’t.
Aside from wondering how he would handle that, Nicolò trailed along and managed, on one or two occasions, to dissuade Noor from wandering off. She turned out to understand more of the trading tongue than she had appeared to on the ship, but she spoke less of it than her brother, and Nicolò’s Arabic was progressing in ways that were beautiful but not very practical. Yusuf kept finding lines of poetry to quote as examples, with the result that Nicolò now knew a lot of words like “moon” and “song” and “beauty” but still couldn’t say useful phrases like “Excuse me, your highness, but where are you going?”.
Made bolder by the fact that Yusuf was obviously choosing to spend time in his company, Nicolò put that to him in so many words one day.
“Yes, but if I teach you how to say things like that, she will know I asked you to keep watch on her,” Yusuf said immediately.
“What does she think I’m here for, if not that?”
“I told her about your trouble with gaining passage. I suppose she thinks you don’t have anything better to do.” His eyes twinkled.
“Are you truly so worried about the Normans?” Nicolò asked, because he could tell perfectly well when he was being flirted with; he liked it enough to let it go on, but was too aware of the somewhat ridiculous situation he’d found himself in to let it go further. And Yusuf, even though a prince, was too polite to press the point; it was vexatious that this made Nicolò like him even more.
“I am,” Yusuf said soberly, the twinkle vanishing. “They are distracted by the Greeks more often than not, but they make time to look south, and to strengthen their hold in Sicily.” His voice didn’t change, but the corners of his eyes narrowed ever so faintly. “I would think you would know; Nile says you were escorting the Count of Genoa’s daughter to a marriage there.”
“I was,” Nicolò said, his pulse beating in his throat for an entirely different reason than it had been five minutes ago, when Yusuf had been looking him in the eye and teaching him words about the ocean. “But you know as much as I do, knowing that; I was not involved in any negotiations about it.”
That was true; it was perfectly true. It had all been settled before Marco came to the monastery to fetch him, and Camilla, as they had travelled, had been more concerned – fairly so – with speaking of what life in her new husband’s court might be like. Nicolò hadn’t been interested enough in the specifics of why the marriage was being made to ask about them, beyond the general knowledge that his father must consider the match advantageous.
“That’s a pity,” Yusuf said, laughing. But he was drawn up to his full height, not relaxed. Nicolò thought for an impossible second about confessing everything and seeing what he would do about it.
“If you think I’m some sort of spy,” he said instead, “surely you are making a grave mistake, having me here at all.”
“We talked about luck,” Yusuf returned. “I do not think there is any spy so lucky that they could be sure of being rescued, as my sister’s ship rescued you. So no, I do not think so, and I do not think I am making a mistake.” He tilted his head. “But I do think you are carrying some secrets.”
“If you’re lucky,” Nicolò said, still in that strange bold mood, “maybe you’ll find out what they are.”
Yusuf reached out and touched the side of Nicolò’s face, skimmed the edge of his beard. It was a gentle touch, but it wasn’t hesitant. If Sébastien hadn’t interrupted them, Nicolò wasn’t sure what either of them might have done next.
*
“Is Prince Yusuf…” Nicolò was testing out his Arabic, and had to fumble for words. “Will he have a…” He gave up and switched to Latin. “Is he betrothed? Or whatever it is called.”
“No,” said Lady Nile. She did not pretend not to smile. “There have been some negotiations, but nothing has come of it.”
“Why do you ask?” Sébastien wanted to know. His stare was very direct; he knew perfectly well.
“He implied that he would be returning to Tunis soon, and I wondered if it was because he was to be married,” Nicolò said. “That is all.”
Nile’s expression grew thoughtful. “That would not be a surprise, but I have not heard that it is so.”
“The queen wouldn’t do that,” Sébastien objected. “Yusuf will go much better to a marriage if he is allowed to know the person first.”
“It will have to be a wife, of course,” Nile said with only the briefest of sideways glances at Nicolò. Nicolò nodded; of course she was right. Marriages which would not lead to children had their merits, for noble families seeking alliances, but they were not for heirs, or rulers without heirs.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “The prince is being very kind, but I have business in Genoa, when I can find a ship to carry me.”
Sébastien opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it; Nicolò was not sure, but he thought Nile might have kicked him in the ankle. She had exactly the expression he had seen on his sister Giovanna’s face, when she had done that to one of his older brothers.
*
Nicolò remained convinced that the worst thing that was going to happen on this journey was the moment that Sébastien inevitably recognised him. It was his chief concern right up until the Normans did, in fact, raid Malta.
In stories these sorts of things always happened at night, or in storms. That was all very well on land, but coming from the sea you would need to know your target very well, or be very bold, or lucky. Instead it was just after dawn, when most of their encampment had just finished their prayers. They were at the north of the island of Malta; they were all due to be transported by ship today to the island of Gozo. When the ship rounded the headland, Nicolò assumed it was their transport. He heard Sébastien say something along those lines, and then was distracted by helping take down one of the large tents. It was only when he heard shouts of alarm – which he could not entirely understand, but he recognised the word al-Faranj – that he knew something was wrong.
He had not yet belted on his sword; he had had no reason to draw it since he had set foot on Malta. Finding it lost time when he could have been understanding what was happening, but those shouts had said it would be a worse idea to be unarmed. Next, because he had promised, he went looking for Noor.
Sébastien was getting those who could not fight up the hill, away from the landing point, but Nicolò could not see Noor among them. He saw Nile running towards the beach, carrying an axe. He hadn’t seen her with it before. She held it like someone who was entirely confident with it. He hadn’t seen Yusuf anywhere.
He had one task. The sounds of fighting were getting closer. He darted from one tent to another; half of them were still up. He found Noor, silent and with a white-knuckled grip on her belt-knife, in the folds of the one that had been half-down; right where he’d started, in fact. The fighting was very close now.
“We have to go, we have to go,” he said, and then realised he’d said it in Latin. “Uh - go, go.”
Thankfully, blessedly even, Noor came with him, up the hill. She was running as fast as she could but Nicolò had to slow down to keep pace with her; her legs were simply so much shorter than his.
Two of the invaders caught up with them halfway up. They were armored in chainmail and leather and Nicolò was not. It was the sort of advantage that probably meant he was going to die.
“Go, go,” he told Noor again, urgently, and she kept moving. That was, in a remote way, very pleasing. He had promised, after all. Maybe this was just his death from the sea, delayed.
The advantage Nicolò did have was that they had been fighting and were starting to wear out; he was faster. It let him put his sword into the back of one man’s knee, and then through his eye. He took long cut to the meat of his upper arm and shoulder from the other one’s sword, managed to retreat a step or two, and then froze. Excitement and fear and a helmet had prevented him from seeing, but – he knew this man.
It was his eldest brother Godfrey.
There was no answering recognition in Godfrey’s eyes, and the only thing that saved Nicolò from emulating Abel was Sébastien, of all people, appearing from the right. He blocked Godfrey’s swing, and that was the jolt Nicolò needed to bring his sword up to defend himself. He didn’t have to make any hard decisions, because Godfrey took in the change in numbers and took off. As soon as he was sure that it wasn’t a feint. Nicolò swung back to the direction Noor had been going in. She hadn’t got more than ten yards.
“Go,” he said again, and he and Sébastien escorted her up the hill, glancing behind. Nobody else pursued.
Everybody was regrouping at the top of the hill. Nile was there, still carrying her axe, every movement urgent. Some of the urgency leaked away when she saw Noor. They spoke to each other in frantic Arabic. Nicolò didn’t need to know exactly what was being said to know what they were saying.
Then Nile repeated a sentence in the trading tongue. “But why didn’t you come away with the rest of us?”
“I had to wait,” Noor said, slowly but clearly, chin raised. “Yusuf told him to look for me.” She pointed at Nicolò.
Nicolò let out a breath of – he did not know what emotion. “To look after you. Which is much easier when you are not in the middle of a battle!” That all rattled out in Genoese dialect; he took another breath and conveyed what he meant, in much slower Arabic. Noor nodded, but she didn’t look convinced.
As with all battles, the aftermath was five times as long as the fight itself. They were all heading back to the city, and the castle, as speedily as possible. Gozo would have to wait. Fortunately, there were only two corpses of their own to take back with them. Nicolò helped with the burning of the other bodies, so he could check that they were not Godfrey, or anybody else he knew.
None were Godfrey. One was a man Nicolò recognised; one of Godfrey’s closer companions, older than Nicolò. He couldn’t even remember the man’s name, right now. He knew he’d known it. It just wasn’t coming.
Sébastien found him again as he was staring down at the body.
“Was that your first battle?” he asked quietly. “You froze up.”
“No,” Nicolò said. “But I – I had known some of them. I did not realise, until I did.”
Sébastien nodded, slowly and not unsympathetically. “That is very hard.” He shook his head. “But good fortune that you were there; that was Godfrey the younger of Genoa, and if he had killed the queen of Tunis’ next-oldest child –”
“I know,” Nicolò said, before he could think better of it, and regretted it when Sébastien looked at him again, and then really looked, past the beard and the garb and the drying, tacky spray of blood Nicolò could feel on his cheek.
“Wait,” he said, and grabbed Nicolò’s arm when he went to move away. “Wait! I knew we had met before! You’re the youngest di Genova! Nicolò – I am an idiot!”
“Be quiet!” Nicolò hissed, or maybe begged.
“What are you even doing here?” Sébastien looked around, and Nicolò saw the fatal thought coming into his eyes.
“No, no,” he said, grabbing Sébastien’s arm in turn. “No, everything you have been told is true – I was shipwrecked; Noor’s vessel rescued me; I promised to watch her at Y– at her brother’s request; I knew he was worried about Normans, but I did not expect to see my brother here, or any of my brothers for that matter, until there he was. That was why I froze.”
“As we all should, when faced with fratricide,” Sébastien said, letting go, though the lines were not gone from between his eyes. “But what are you doing? Wait – I remember more. Weren’t you banished to a monastery, or some such?”
“I wasn’t banished,” Nicolò said with what dignity he could. “It was a compromise.” Between killing people his father wanted killed, and exile. “But I was asked to leave the monastery to escort my sister Camilla to Sicily, and then – oh, I don’t know what I am doing either. I was going to return to Genoa, right away, until I found no ship in harbour would carry me.”
“Well,” Sébastien said. “Well.” He didn’t seem to have any other words.
“I am going to say a Christian prayer for them,” Nicolò said. “Someone should, even though they were in the wrong. Will you join me?”
“They were in the wrong, yes,” Sébastien said a little testily, but he agreed.
*
Nicolò did not see Yusuf until they were back at the castle, much later. He had been avoiding him, truthfully; he did not know what Sébastien had told him, and he did not want to know until he had to. He had not asked Sébastien to vow silence. He could have. Maybe he should have. Who knew what Yusuf would do now?
Nile realised when they were almost back that Nicolò had been wounded, even though it was barely a scratch, and made him let Celeste wash and bandage it. Of course that was when Yusuf found him, when he was shrugging his arm back into his tunic. He looked, but his gaze held only concern; somehow that was more disconcerting.
“My sister says,” he said without any preamble, “that you saved her. Thank you.”
“That was my task, wasn’t it?” said Nicolò. “Because she saved me first. So no thanks are needed.”
Yusuf smiled at him, an expression that was gentle on his mouth and stronger around the corner of his eyes. Nicolò treasured it. But then it slipped away. “I have to ask. Whether…”
“No you don’t,” Nicolò objected. “You don’t have to ask me anything. You are a prince and this is your domain. You can have me thrown in the dungeon, if you have one, or order some ship or another to take me away from Malta whether they like it or not – or have me tossed in the harbour. You do not have to ask.” Yusuf’s face was growing grimmer. “But since you do; no. No, and I will swear it on any relic you like.”
He could not stop his voice rising on the last part. Celeste, who had been taking her bandages and departing, caught his eye just before she made a hasty exit out the door. It was probably the sensible thing to do.
There was an agonising moment of silence that drew out, until Yusuf said “I do not know if there are any Christian relics on Malta, though in truth I have never had cause to ask. But…I believe you.”
He made no mention of what Sébastien might or might not have told him.
“I haven’t told you anything that isn’t true,” Nicolò said, which was its own sort of confession, and yet not.
“I don’t think you have.” Yusuf shook his head, like he was letting something go. “In better news…I think my friends’ ship will be here very soon, and you can be on your way.”
“That is good,” Nicolò agreed immediately, and wished he was a better liar; or at least that he knew why that tasted like a lie.
*
It was only two more days. Yusuf’s friends arrived and turned out to be two women. They were both from the East, one probably much further than the other (Nicolò’s geography got very hazy anywhere much past Jerusalem, and he was going by their accents and their faces) and dressed like sailors. Nile introduced them as Andromache the Scythian, and Quỳnh the Red.
“This is Nicolò, who seeks passage to Genoa,” Nile told them. “His ship sank, and nobody else on this island is brave enough.”
Quỳnh, who was the shorter of the two, laughed. “I see why you are asking us. Did you sink the ship yourself, Nicolò who seeks passage to Genoa?”
“No, it was a storm,” Nicolò said. “And misfortune.”
“I don’t believe in misfortune,” said Andromache. She had a very sharp smile. “Misfortune is what happens to other people.”
Nicolò glanced at Nile, who returned a bland look. “Well, can you give him a berth?”
“We’re not going there directly,” Andromache said thoughtfully, looking at Nicolò; apparently she saw something, because her eyes narrowed. “We should talk.”
They asked him all sorts of questions about why how he had ended up on Malta, and what he knew of the sea, and where he had got his training with a sword; it was very difficult not to lie, and Nicolò didn’t quite manage it. He had to ruthlessly dispose of four older brothers, and invent a campaign he had not participated in. Andromache started telling a story in return which he recognised half-way through as one he had heard at Godfrey’s court, from a petitioner, and very much not from Andromache’s point of view. It had been part of a plea to deal with the growing threat of –
“Pirates,” he said out loud, and immediately regretted it.
“Oh, now he understands,” Quỳnh said, raising an eyebrow.
“It’s all a matter of perspective,” Andromache said, perfectly comfortable. “Yusuf doesn’t think we’re pirates, and Yusuf rules Malta, and we are, if you’ll notice, on the isle of Malta. So we’re not.” She tilted her head at him. “It’s important to remember where you stand.”
“But you are offering to return me to Genoa.”
“We’re only pirates in Genoa if someone is silly enough to accuse us of it, and we are silly enough to let them.” Quỳnh rested her chin in her hand.
“I…understand,” Nicolò said, because he did, after all, want to return home. He did. “You said you weren’t going directly, though.”
“No,” Andromache agreed. “We have to stop in Sicily first.”
“For trade?”
“No, for negotiations. The prisoners we brought in.” Quỳnh sat up straight again. “Oh, Nile didn’t tell you? No, I can see she didn’t. We –” She turned and frowned at her – wife? Sister in arms? Nicolò would bet on wife, if asked. “Andromache! There is no need for kicking; he will be aboard tomorrow.”
“It’s really not important,” Andromache said through gritted teeth, staring like she was trying to convey her meaning by thought alone. “But yes, Sicily before we go further north.”
Nicolò closed his eyes, then opened them again. “You met the raiders who attacked us.”
“We did.” Andromache’s voice was careful. Nicolò felt something in his chest hitch. “They surrendered without much fighting. But now there will be negotiations for ransom, for the nobles. Really, though, that is the prince’s business and not yours, and only ours as much as he has asked us to take word for him.”
Nicolò noted that in this Yusuf was the prince.
“Tell me,” he said. “Did they say – do you know –” He took a breath. “I thought I saw Godfrey the Younger among them – the Count of Genoa’s heir. Genoa is no friend to Malta, but this is a long way south for a raid. Do you know why the Genoese were there?”
“We didn’t really care to ask those sorts of questions,” Quỳnh told him. “We didn’t even know they had raided Malta until one of them started going on about how we must be working for Prince Yusuf. They should have kept their mouths shut.”
Andromache shrugged. “We would have brought them here anyway; that didn’t change much.” Her eyes were still sharp on Nicolò.
Nicolò licked his lips. “I have to – if you will excuse me –”
He had already turned his back on them when Andromache said “You should talk to Nile first; you’ll have better luck.”
“Thank you,” Nicolò said, his mind already elsewhere, and went to find her.
*
Nile was with Noor and her other ladies. Nicolò did not ask for private speech, or practice caution with his words, because he was sure there was no point.
“You should let me speak with the prisoners Andromache and Quỳnh brought. Listen as you like, I do not care. But I want to know why they came here, and I think you must as well.” He paused. “That the Prince must as well.”
“You know them?” Noor asked. There was a faint frown on her brow. This was her problem, of course, since Malta was going to fall to her whenever Yusuf returned to Tunis. That was at least half of what drove Nicolò. It was Noor, at the end of all this, who he owed his life.
“I know them,” he told her. “One of them is my brother.”
Noor’s eyes went very wide for a moment, but she only nodded. Some of her other ladies muttered among themselves. Nile’s face didn’t change at all. Nicolò felt something else turn over in his chest, at that. He had been very foolish, after all.
“That will be Prince Yusuf’s decision,” Nile said.
“But if you think it will help, that may change his decision.” Nicolò shrugged. “Andromache’s advice.”
Nile snorted. “Of course it was.” Then she pursed her lips. “You could beg his mercy for this; you do not owe us an exchange of information.” She frowned. “And if you think Yusuf is the sort to use stronger persuasion –”
“He is not!” Noor interrupted hotly, and Nicolò turned to her. “I know he is not; that is not why I am asking.”
He needed to know for himself. If this was, in any way, his responsibility, because he had lingered.
Nile said something formal to Noor that Nicolò just recognised as a request to leave, and Noor, still frowning, said “Yes, you may.”
Nicolò assumed she would be taking him to Yusuf, and first thought Yusuf must be somewhere unusual, perhaps practicing at arms – she was leading him towards the barracks – and then realised, when he saw the guards, that she did not mean him to speak to Yusuf first at all.
“Will he be angry with you?” he asked her, as they approached.
“No,” she said, and “He would feel obliged to be here, and that would be harder for everybody. But I am going to be right at the door, you understand?”
“I do.”
Nicolò recognised the men guarding the main door; their names were Daoud and Hasim, and they had been part of their progress around Malta. Nile told them that the Prince had sent Nicolò to speak to his countrymen and they didn’t even ask any questions. Nicolò thought absently for a second that if he had wanted to try and break them out –
But he didn’t, and that question had been answered in the heat of battle already, hadn’t it. Somehow.
He went in.
There were only seven people in there, all men; Godfrey did not care overmuch for women who carried weapons. Nicolò thought he recognised one or two of them from Camilla’s wedding in Sicily. This was a group of hostages, clearly. They were clean and their wounds were bandaged; it was all respectable enough.
“Who are you?” Godfrey demanded, and Nicolò nearly missed a step. He had not expected that.
“Godfrey,” he said, his own Genoese rusty on his tongue. “Godfrey, it is me, Nicolò; I –”
“I knew it!” Godfrey interrupted, his eyes widening with recognition and something else. “I knew your ship had been taken, but I had not hoped –” He got up and clapped Nicolò on the shoulder; for him that was a great display of affection. He was twenty years Nicolò’s elder and they had never been close. “It will displease Father that there are two of us captive here, but better captive than drowned.”
“But why are you captive at all?” Nicolò countered. “I know you were brought here by – pirates who are allied with Tunis – but why, for the love of God, were you raiding Malta?”
“Why not?” Godfrey returned. “What did you think the Sicilian alliance was about? And then your ship vanished and we needed no more excuse, if we needed one at all –”
Nicolò saw one of the Sicilian Normans nodding along in a particular way that said they were as much his words as Godfrey’s; he was some relative of Camilla’s new husband from Normandy proper, Stephen of – Nicolò forgot, but he had not forgotten not liking him, at the wedding.
It was all, from Godfrey’s point of view, terribly sensical. They had a longstanding feud with Tunis; the Normans had taken Sicily back in the last thirty years; why not keep pushing south, if they could trust each other? If all you wanted was to count your land and gold, and call it God’s will.
“I was shipwrecked,” Nicolò interrupted. “If it matters to you.”
“What difference does it make, when you ended up captive anyway?” Godfrey surveyed his garb. “You have given them your word in exchange for more freedom, I suppose – that is all very well, under the circumstances. I suppose their ransom demand arrived after I left Genoa.”
“It can scarcely count, under the circumstances,” Stephen of wherever he was from said, contemptuously and confidently and quietly, like a man who had perhaps realised they might be overheard. “The important thing is that you will be free to help us escape.” Everybody else was nodding.
Nicolò took a step back, towards the door. “I have given my word. As a guest.” Godfrey reached for his arm, but he jerked it back. “You nearly killed me, you know, Godfrey, on the beach.”
Godfrey’s expression was blank of anything except confusion. “Nicolò, I do not know what is going on, but you must –”
“I think, really, I mustn’t,” Nicolò said, and knocked on the door. It opened to let him out, and closed on Godfrey’s baffled face.
That was bad enough, but then he was immediately confronted by Yusuf and Nile, arguing in Arabic and under their breaths. They broke off at the noise of the door closing, and both turned to look at Nicolò.
“Don’t take their parole, if it is offered,” he said. “You can’t trust it.”
“And you would know?” Yusuf said, lightly and with deadly seriousness.
“I know my own brother,” Nicolò said. Yusuf’s expression didn’t change. That answered that question, not that it had been a question anymore, not really.
“There aren’t any real secrets here,” he went on, registering nothing, really, outside of Yusuf’s dark, serious eyes. “They made an alliance to try and push you out of Malta. Genoa and Sicily. They will try again, probably, sometime.”
“They did.”
“My father did,” Nicolò said, because what was the point, really. “I didn’t….ask. Or care.”
“You haven’t struck me,” said the Prince of Tunis, “as a man who does not care.”
“Will you please,” said Nile, who Nicolò had quite forgotten was there at all, “have this conversation somewhere else. Not in public, perhaps.” When neither of them said anything, she shook her head and walked away herself.
Yusuf shook his head, like he was waking up, and said “What else do we have to say?” And then he turned and started to follow Nile.
Nicolò decided to blame sunstroke – it was very hot in the courtyard, at midday – for the way he ran after Yusuf, and grabbed him by the elbow. It felt like leaning out over the side of a ship, hanging onto a line, when before they had been on dry land, except that the gulf between them had always been there; Nicolò had spent the last months fretting over it almost every waking moment; why should it be different now?
“Why am I not in there with them?” he demanded.
Yusuf blinked at him like this was an impossible question. “Why should you be?”
“If you’re holding them as hostages –”
“We don’t make hostages of guests,” Yusuf said, very flatly. “And from everything I can tell you would not be a very valuable one anyway.”
That was true, and it was hurtful, and saying it was so unlike all Nicolò’s experience of Yusuf that he wondered what had made him do it.
“I’m still the Count of Genoa’s son,” Nicolò said. “And you knew. You – knew.”
Yusuf scratched the back of his head. “If you must – I had to pry it out of Sebastien. He kept looking like he had something he wanted to say.”
“Then,” Nicolò said, and Yusuf held up a hand.
“You came here as a guest,” he said. “Leave as one. I can’t send your brother with you; I am sure you understand.”
Nicolò didn’t reply to that but he was certain his face said everything, anyway. The words on his tongue were I don’t want to leave, but that didn’t matter, did it.
“You – take your message home,” Yusuf went on. “Or don’t. Go anywhere you want.”
It was almost as bad to hear what he didn’t say; how painfully obvious it must be that Nicolò did not want to return to Genoa.
“As long as I don’t come back?”
“You can’t.” Yusuf bit his lip. “The person you are right now doesn’t exist. The man-at-arms my sister rescued from the sea. But if it chances in the future that Nicolò the Count of Genoa’s son would care to visit Malta – if it turns out he has survived, and his assumed death is not an excuse for his father to go to war – he would be welcome.”
“If you’re going to keep holding Godfrey hostage, we may well be at war anyway,” Nicolò had to point out.
“Well, don’t come in a warship, then.”
“First I’d have to get them to have me onboard,” Nicolò said, remembering his original predicament, and finally, finally, Yusuf smiled. Then he put his hand on Nicolò’s shoulder. Nicolò could feel its warm weight through the cloth of his tunic, Yusuf’s rings smooth but warm as well with sun and skin when he put his own hand on top of it. Yusuf’s fingers tightened, a very little.
“Go in peace, Nicolò the very lucky or very unlucky, and if God wills it...” He didn’t finish.
“And with you,” said Nicolò.
Andromache and Quỳnh’s ship left the harbour on the morning tide. Nicolò didn’t look back. He was almost sure he didn’t need to.
*
Nicolò sailed back into Malta six months later, again on a morning tide, having taken his sorrowful news back to Genoa and relieved himself of that burden, at least. It had been the right thing to do, and he did not regret it – even though, setting foot in the city, he had been struck by the sudden fear he would never leave it. It had been an immense relief when his father had decided that his punishment for surviving and for leaving his brother on Malta would be to go and negotiate his brother’s release. His father did not think of it as a punishment, but as a lesson, except that his lessons were also punishments, and except that actually it wasn’t. But better to let him think so, perhaps.
The important thing was that Nicolò was sure, for the first time in a long time, where he wanted to be.
He was, though he wished otherwise, not alone. His father’s other men were talking among themselves about the prospect that they might all be set upon, or taken hostage themselves. They had looked very skeptical when Nicolò had said that his stay on Malta had been very pleasant; they all assumed he was making the best of an uncomfortable stint as a prisoner.
They didn’t know about the battle on the beach, and Nicolò was not going to tell them. Let Godfrey reveal that, or not.
Nicolò was the one who greeted the port-master, and he was pleased to find that he hadn’t lost as much of the Arabic he’d gained as he’d feared – in fact, having practiced on Andromache and Quỳnh’s ship and again with some of the sailors on the way back, it might have improved. It was going to need to keep improving. He hoped.
The first person he saw that he recognised, once they disembarked, was in fact Quỳnh. She grinned at Nicolò and said “Back so soon? If we had known you were coming this way, we might have crossed your path.”
“Perhaps better not,” Nicolò said, and she laughed. There was more muttering from his companions, even though they wouldn’t have understood what they were saying, except the translator.
They were brought before, not Yusuf, but Noor, imperious as any abbess or chatelaine that Nicolò had once imagined she might remind him of. Her eyes still brightened when she saw him, though. Nicolò tried to not look disappointed. Then he saw Nile tilting her head very slightly at where Yusuf was lurking inconspicuously behind some other members of the court, and he didn’t have to try at all.
“I have come on behalf of Count Godfrey of Genoa,” Nicolò said, “to negotiate for the return of his heir.” He sighed. “And his daughter’s husband, of Sicily.”
“I hope you want the other ones too,” Noor said. “We certainly don’t.”
“I was not asked to negotiate for them, your highness.”
“A pity. Well, we can discuss your brothers, though the fault was on your side, and it will not be a cheap bargain.”
“I didn’t expect it to be.” More muttering behind him as this was translated.
“For instance,” Noor went on, “We may ask that someone stay behind. As a more permanent gesture of goodwill.”
“Absolutely not,” Nicolò heard from behind him, in Genoese.
He ignored it. “I am sure that can be discussed.”
“Very good,” Noor said, hiding her grin – and her glance at her brother – poorly. Well, she was learning.
Nicolò spent the evening re-acquainting himself with everybody he knew, to his father’s men’s increasing confusion. He didn’t see Yusuf and thought perhaps he might not except at the negotiating table; he thought that was the kind of game they were playing, even if they both knew the outcome; but he was not at all sorry when Yusuf found him in a corridor, late that night, and greeted him by name. “Nicolò. You are returned, after all.”
Nicolò opened his mouth to respond, but was cut short when Yusuf reached out and touched his face, the way he had months ago – a lifetime ago. This time Sébastien did not interrupt them. This time Nicolò reached back, already smiling at the delight in Yusuf’s eyes, and they drew each other into a kiss.
“Not to interfere with negotiations which I am sure my sister will have well in hand,” Yusuf said, when they parted, “but one of the things I’m going to ask for is you. For you to stay. If – if you will.” He hesitated, oddly bashful considering how he had just greeted Nicolò and how Nicolò had responded, and added “You did come back.”
Nicolò almost asked all the questions he rightfully should – about how Yusuf’s parents were going to feel about this, about what Yusuf meant by for you to stay, about how Yusuf was sure Nicolò would want – but he was sure, somehow, that the answers didn’t matter.
“You already have me. You already did,” Nicolò told him, and Yusuf’s smile at that was so beautiful he had to kiss him again.