The Invitation(60)

The Contessa claps her hands, loudly. ‘Aubrey, well done. You have great talent. But let us begin the next round.’

The lowest score is Hal’s, and it is a relief. Here is his chance to distract them all from Aubrey’s unwitting cruelty. Without stopping to think, he leaps up, and launches himself across the deck and into space. He somersaults, twice, and enters the water sharp as a blade. The sea rushes in a cold shock around him, and he surfaces gasping. Blinking up at the yacht, he can see that a row of heads has appeared over the side.

‘You’re a madman!’ Aubrey shouts.

And from Gaspari: ‘Bravo, ragazzo, bravo!’

Even Giulietta, when he climbs aboard, appears less bored than usual, is even looking at him with something like approval.

He doesn’t look at Stella. Probably she thinks him a fool, an exhibitionist. Little does she know that he did it for her. That he hasn’t dived like that since the Navy training pool at Southampton, in 1942, and never thought to do so again.

A couple more rounds follow. Hal sitting wrapped in a towel brought by one of the stewards – though he insisted he could get one himself. Earl Morgan’s chosen talent, opening his gullet and downing a bottle of red wine, is met with a stunned silence. Then Giulietta gets up and performs a folk dance in bare feet, her skirt foaming up over her knees, her black hair lashing about her shoulders. The Contessa recites a sonnet by Dante:

‘Io mi senti’ svegliar dentro a lo core,’ she begins, ‘un spirito amoroso che dormia . . .’

I felt in the deep chamber of my heart, a passionate spirit out of slumber move . . .

Then it is Stella. She looks about herself uneasily for a taut moment, and Hal is certain she is about to decline. He sees Giulietta’s look of contempt, Aubrey’s frown. He wills her not to. But then, a little awkwardly, she pushes back her chair and gets to her feet. She clears her throat. Silence. And then she begins to sing.

There is nothing finessed or tutored about her voice, but this is its power. It is raw, and pure. It is at once a pain in the centre of the chest and a balm. It is yearning and fulfilment. At first Hal is so disabled by the sound of it, and all that it makes him feel, that he doesn’t realize she is singing in Spanish.

When she stops, a profound silence follows. The listeners look at one another across the table, unspeaking. Gaspari fumbles in his pocket and retrieves a handkerchief. Earl Morgan has covered his face with his hands. Giulietta, however, looks absolutely furious. Though there was never any form of competition, she must understand that she has been outdone.

Later, in his cabin he lies awake. The oppressive heat isn’t helping. He goes to the washstand and splashes his face with cold water, and then fills the bowl and submerges half his head in it trying to block out thought.

For some reason he thinks now of the paintings. He can see the captain, the haunted aspect of him, as clearly as if the thing were hanging here in front of him. What drives a man to look that way? He thinks he is beginning to understand.

They have stolen her from me. I must find her.

But it will mean leaving my ship, my men . . .

It would be a disgrace . . . I would be shunned.

So be it.

I would forsake a hundred ships for her. I would forswear my reputation. I would forget my name.

THE CAPTAIN MOORS in the first small town. He is certain that this is where they will have left her – they would not have risked going ashore in Pisan territory, no matter their urgency.

Dusk is falling, and the lanterns are already lit. There are a couple of fishermen tending to their nets, and he goes to them, asks them if they have seen a young woman, oddly dressed. He describes her long black hair, the extraordinary pallor of her skin. They watch him curiously as he talks, and he realizes how strange he must look to them – a frantic, disarrayed nobleman.

‘There was a girl like that,’ one man mumbles. ‘She were dropped off here by a boat. She were taken to the whorehouse, I believe.’

‘The whorehouse?’ The captain stares. ‘But why?’

The other man shrugs. ‘She looked like a whore, is why.’

‘She is not a whore.’ The men react to the sharpness of his tone, their expressions become hostile, wary.

‘All women are whores,’ the first man says, ‘when you get them with the lights off.’ His companion chuckles.

The captain sees that he is beginning to lose their interest. Besides, he knows where the establishment they refer to is. In what seems now like another life, he once visited it himself. He throws them a couple of small coins – it always helps to make a friend in such a place – and is on his way.

She is more beautiful than he remembered. And, though it should appal him, seeing her done up like the other women, it excites him. The rouged lips and cheeks, the flimsy, revealing gown. He would be half-tempted to merely ask her to lead him to one of the rooms … But no. He stops these thoughts before they even begin. He has nobler aims than that.

She seems … not precisely delighted to see him, but no matter. He would not expect her to be in her proper humour. She has had an ordeal. Not, thankfully, the ordeal that he had feared. He has promises from the Madam that she has not yet been visited by any other man. The woman extracts an eye-watering price from him, too, before she allows him to take the girl: two solid gold genovini. It is only fair, she says, taking into account future lost earnings. He has made the novice haggler’s mistake, he knows, in letting her see how much he desires the purchase. But no matter. She is his again.