33. Mari

33

Mari

Friday, April 27, 1821

M ari bent forward along the shoreline, heaving for air. She could not breathe. She could not think. Her arms trembled violently as she attempted to keep herself from collapsing.

They had ceased their incantations.

The women had sunk the Aquila .

Holmes was dead.

***

She glanced at the water, tempted to swim toward the place the brig had gone down. Already, the curse would be lifting, softening. Perhaps she could shout for him, call Holmes’s name in case he had somehow escaped the floundering vessel. But she knew this was mere fantasy: she’d watched the ropes snap, the hull buckle. She’d heard the screams, men begging for their mothers before being sucked under. She’d smelled the salt on the air, watched as the sea mist was expelled upward from the revolving whirlpool.

Mari felt a hand on her back. She turned to find Ami standing behind her, sympathy in her eyes. “Come,” Ami said. “Let’s go home.”

“It sank so fast,” Mari replied, dazed, still kneeling next to the water. “Faster than I could have imagined…”

Ami used both arms to heave Mari up and off the ground. “I agree,” she said sadly. “It was quicker, and more powerful, than any of us expected.” She pointed to the hillside behind them; the other women had already retreated, making their way back to the village.

“And gunshots…” Mari frowned, thinking of the loud pops she’d heard just moments before the Aquila had entered the cursed tract of water. “Did I imagine it?”

Ami shook her head. “I heard gunshots, too.” She gently tugged Mari by the hand, leading her away from the water. “Perhaps there was an altercation of some kind.”

They shared a glance. Not that it matters now.

Mari couldn’t resist. She turned back to the sea once more, searching for any sign of life: an arm protruding from the waves or flotsam bearing a still-moving body.

There was nothing.

She let Ami lead her away from the shore and up the hill. Mari was grateful to have a friend as her guide, helping her navigate the rocky footpath home.

She was crying too hard to see any sort of path at all.

***

Not two hours after watching the Aquila perish, Mari quietly opened the door to her family’s villa and slipped inside.

It was no longer dangerous to be here: Matteo was dead. No one would be coming after her. Now, she merely wanted to go to her bedroom, bury herself under her covers, and cry. Perhaps for a lifetime.

As she made her way there, she passed her father’s office. The door was closed, which was unusual. Even when he was inside working, typically he left the door open.

She paused, hearing low voices inside. She leaned in closer, pressing her ear to the door.

“…the four captives,” her father was saying. “This all got terribly out of hand.”

The four captives . She knew exactly who he was referring to.

“I didn’t intend for this,” came the reply.

Mari frowned, recognizing the voice at once. Corso.

“I only wanted to scare the women,” Corso continued. “If the Mazza brothers began meddling in whatever it is the women are doing, I thought it might dissuade Mari from wanting to stay here. Rome, perhaps, wouldn’t seem so distasteful to her then. And of course, I hoped to make some money in exchange for the information.”

“You are a businessman, after all. I hope Matteo paid you as well as you hoped, given all that has unfolded?” Father asked, a hint of eagerness in his voice.

Corso made a sound of disgust. “After I sent my initial letter, he promised he would compensate me for any information I could give him. I wrote him back as soon as I could, telling him what I’d seen that Wednesday night by the water, the way the women went into the sea, shifted the currents. I told him about their strange comings and goings. Their red hair. The little objects they insist on carrying around. I was hoping to have something tangible for him—I’ve gone through the garbage piles of a few of Mari’s friends—but I couldn’t manage anything.”

Mari’s mouth dropped open. The day she and the women had cursed the water against the incoming pirates had been a Wednesday. She thought of the shadow against the dock that night. And then, when she’d returned to the villa, Corso and her father had been awake—despite the very early hour. But she hadn’t dreamed it had been Corso down by the water.

And it had been him sneaking around Vivi’s and Emilia’s houses. Mari could understand how, from a distance and in the dark, Corso’s lithe stature might be mistaken for that of a woman.

Everything began to make sense. This was why the Mazza brothers had been in the village that day she went out with Lia and Pippa. They’d been scouting, looking for what Corso clued them in on.

Corso exhaled hard and went on, “The worst part is that I’ve yet to receive any money from Matteo. I feel a fool, especially having promised you a cut of it.”

Mari steadied herself against the wall, dazed by this additional detail: her father had hoped to profit from this plan all along, too.

“Stay on him,” her father urged Corso. “Make yourself a nuisance, and I’m sure he’ll pay you what you’re due.”

No , Mari thought, Corso will never get paid because Matteo is dead.

“I’m not so sure he will pay me,” Corso replied. “I spoke with him just last night, in Naples.”

Mari frowned. She must have misheard.

“Pardon?” her father exclaimed. “How on earth did you manage to find him? None of the village men have been able to.”

“I caught him leaving via the rear entrance of the Fratelli Mazza headquarters, at the Castellammare di Stabia shipyard. I’d waited there for some time, wondering if he might be coming and going from another door.” Corso cleared his throat. “The moment I introduced myself, he waved me off. The money would come, he said, but now was not a good time. He was headed to the docks on an urgent errand. He asked me to return another time, then he rushed off.

“I followed him to the docks,” Corso went on, “wondering about this urgent errand. He boarded a ship— La Dea . A dockhand told me it was headed for Positano and should be arriving late this morning. He was supposed to be aboard another vessel arriving today—the Aquila —but she has no artillery, and La Dea has forty-four guns.”

“Does he intend to blow us all up?”

“The cannons are not loaded. It is all for show.”

“Unsurprising.”

“Indeed,” Corso said.

Mari fought the urge to sink to her knees. Matteo had not been on the Aquila ?

“Tell Cleila and Paola to stay home today,” Corso told Father. “I will go to Ami’s to ensure Mari does not leave the house, either. I don’t know what else Matteo is planning once they drop anchor,” he said, “but I cannot fathom it is anything good. I only hope that this is the last straw for Mari. That after today, she’ll agree to join me in Rome.”

Sure she was about to be sick, Mari slowly backed away from the door. After the sinking of Holmes’s brig only hours ago, she couldn’t have imagined this day getting any worse. And yet it had.

Matteo was alive and well. It was a living nightmare, the worst possible news: she had sunk the Aquila and killed Holmes, thinking she was protecting the village.

She rushed through the house and out onto the terrace. She looked out at the horizon and let out a cry.

In the distance, approaching from the west, near the cape, was another ship. Its heading, so close to the perilous coastline, meant this could only be the Mazza-owned La Dea.

There was no time for Mari to gather the other streghe for a second attempt at the incantation: by the time she managed to do so, La Dea would be here. But if Mari alone recited the incantesimo vortice , it would not be powerful enough to take under an entire ship.

There was only one other way for Mari to fix this. The vortice centuriaria . The most powerful incantation, requiring the greatest of sacrifices…

She needed to leave at once. She estimated she could row her way to Li Galli more quickly than La Dea , which was still a long distance off.

She rushed to her room. She went to her desk first, penning a short note to Ami. Mari trusted that, in the days to come, Ami and Dante would pursue the captives’ recovery from Ischia as vehemently as anyone.

We sunk the wrong ship , Mari scribbled in her note, and I must make it right. After this, you will all be safe. Do not go near Li Galli again.

Ami would read this and understand, in an instant, what Mari had done.

She then went to her dresser, reaching for the bottom drawer. Here, she pulled out the things she’d hidden away: the bundle of letters from Holmes. Sofia’s bracelet. The little pouch of dried olive pits.

She would take them with her to the sea.

Noiselessly, she slipped out the front door. Instead of taking the road that led away from the villa, she made her way through the olive grove, pausing a moment to take a final, long look at the tree under which she and Holmes had passed many an hour. The olive pits in her pocket had come from the fruit of that very tree.

She pulled out the tiny pouch, turning it over in her hand. These pits, at least, held something inside of them, some promise of hope or a future. As she walked away from the grove, she skirted the edge of the woods and tossed them underneath a shrub. Perhaps they would embed in the dirt and sprout. Perhaps something about her and Holmes would not be lost entirely.

After dropping her letter on Ami’s doorstep, Mari went to the water and untied a gozzo . Into the boat she tossed a pair of oars and a long length of rope. Lastly, among a mess of nets and corks and chisels, she found a heavy anchor. She heaved this into the boat, too.

With these things, she began to row. She touched her cimaruta every few minutes, sure it was helping her row faster. She wondered if she would spot flotsam from the Aquila the farther out she went. She only prayed she wouldn’t see bodies. She could not withstand it, not after everything else.

Strange how this was the deception she’d planned all along: drowning, a victim to the sea. And yet, how very different her intentions were now. This was not about escape or running away with Holmes. This was about saving the village. Ending the Fratelli Mazza, once and for all.

There were no dolphins alongside her, no seabirds to escort her out. It was only Mari and the black waves below her, luring her, like the sirens had done centuries ago to unsuspecting sailors. She felt betrayed by her lineage, by every circumstance leading her to this moment.

She’d begun to sweat. She dipped her hand into the sea, then ran it along the back of her neck to cool herself. But after doing this several times, she paused, looking at the water either side of her boat. Despite her utter despondence, her heartsickness, the sea remained unchanged. It had not turned black, nor had it begun to churn. It did not throb in time with her pulse, nor did it ebb away from her fingers. The surface of the water was perfectly serene.

This, Mari believed, was the sea’s final abandonment of her. No longer did she and the ocean share any connection at all.

North of the islets, she crossed through the tract of water the women had cursed. The incantation had lifted, and the swells around her were low, steady. Momentarily, she would row her small gozzo into the eye of Li Galli.

But first, she readied herself. She tied the anchor to the rope, pulling it as taut as her weak hands would permit. Into the knot, she tucked the bundle of Holmes’s letters. She clasped Sofia’s bracelet in her hand.

She removed her cimaruta.

Then she began to wrap the rope once, twice, thrice around her waist.

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