The Invitation(61)

When he wakes the next morning he is convinced that he is still upon the ship, and is thrown into confusion by the unfamiliarity of his new surroundings. Then it comes to him. He has left the ship, his ship. Is he mad? What can he have been thinking? But then he remembers her, and everything falls into place.

Before, there had not been time to think. He had lost his head over her entirely. Now, though, he begins to plan. When he left the ship the night before he felt prepared to give up everything, if only he could find her. Now, he realizes that this may not be necessary. He may return to Genoa without recrimination. His lieutenants will not defame him, or give him away: his uncle is one of the most powerful men in the city. He will simply say that he was needfully detained by business. Before, he might have been prepared to marry her. But now he realizes that he would be a fool to throw away the opportunity afforded him by his engagement to tie his lot in with one of Genoa’s richest families. He will marry Beatrix, but he will not need to give up— He stops. He still has not found out her name. Well. No matter, there will be time for all that. He will not need to give her up, that is the important thing. Many great and revered men have acted as he will do.

Gently, he explains his plan to her. They will go first to his house near Portofino, and rest there for a couple of days. There she will become his mistress. He will send out for fine clothes and jewellery – the things that are due to the mistress of one of such high standing as himself. Then they will return to Genoa, where he will set her up with a fine house. There is a long silence, and he wonders if she has not understood him.

‘Well,’ he asks finally, softly, ‘what do you think of that?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘I would prefer not.’ There is another long silence. He asks her what she means.

‘I would prefer to leave, and be on my way. Thank you, though, for your kind offer.’

He is absolutely perplexed. He thinks of how they had found her: half-dead, with those bruises about her ankles. ‘But you would want for nothing. You would live like an empress. Do you understand? Do you understand who I am?’

Slowly, she nods. ‘I understand,’ she says, ‘that you are a kind man. That you helped me when I was in need.’

‘But where would you go?’

A silence.

‘Do you have family?’ He is already certain that she does not. She shakes her head.

‘Do you realize how vulnerable that makes you? Do you wish to find yourself back in the whorehouse?’

He sees her considering, turning it over in her mind. Struck by inspiration, he says, ‘I was hasty. You don’t have to make any … commitment to me in that regard yet. I won’t touch you, if you do not wish it. But let me ensure that you are safe, at least for the next few weeks.’

Finally, she seems to agree. They sail to Portofino, and there he outfits her, as promised, in gowns of the finest cloth. Still, she will not tell him her name. In frustration, he chooses one for her, one that he feels suits her. ‘I shall call you Luna,’ he says, ‘for your beauty.’ The captain is a learned man, proud of his grasp of the classics. He takes her silence as her acceptance of this new moniker. It suits her, and her beauty, far better than any other name would, he decides.

They spend two weeks in his villa in Portofino, just the two of them – and the small army of servants he keeps there. Gradually she begins to unfurl. He draws her story from her. She tells him that her parents are dead, and that from infancy she was brought up by an elderly woman who was not her relative. This woman was a healer, she explains, who taught her everything she knew. But she, too, is no longer alive.

What he really wants to know is how she ended up half-drowned, so far from land. But on this point she is reticent. Every time he alludes to it, she steers the conversation from the subject. Which only intrigues him further. Intrigues and – if he were to be absolutely honest – slightly unnerves him. For she is strange. Her manner, her way of speaking. Her beauty: hair so dark it looks hardly natural, and her pallor. Paleness in a woman is highly desirable, of course, and yet sometimes he finds it hard to believe that blood really beats somewhere beneath the surface.

Twice now, he has found her roaming the corridors in a sleep-state, moving with her eyes closed but her feet carrying her as surely as if they were open. He has not dared to wake her – has watched instead in dumb horror as she makes her slow but purposeful circuit of the palazzo.

There are further terrible storms, too, battering their way along the coast, howling through the bay. One evening, having gone to check if she is frightened by the racket, he finds her watching the spectacle through the great window, her face lit by excitement. He cannot help but remember the suspicions of some of the men when the first storm had arrived from nowhere. He remembers, too, the word his lieutenant had used. He forces it from his mind.





23


At some point, Hal must have fallen asleep. He wakes to find himself slumped over the desk, his cheek stuck to the open page of the journal. The air is oppressively warm and close, as thick as honey. He has no idea of the time – but it feels late. He reaches for his watch and finds instead that the thing he has picked up is the compass. He squints at the face. Is it his imagination, or is the needle tracking faster than before? Not for the first time he has the unnerving conviction that its motion is transmitting some code for which he lacks the correct cipher.