Chapter 12
Almost eight summers swept by in a beautiful blur of meals, bedtime stories, growing, and learning.
The past few months, though, something had been niggling at Allegra, but she couldn’t put the feeling into words.
Her family was healthy and strong, the older girls had joined her as weavers, the boys worked with their father on the boat, and her youngest child would soon turn thirteen and was almost ready to take the water oath.
She and Johann were aging, and her parents, too, but that wasn’t it.
Despite the reliable sunrise, the regular tides, and the lazy way the shepherds and merchants went about their days, she couldn’t shake the uneasy urgency she felt.
Just the other day, Johann had let the door slam shut on his way out, and she’d nearly jumped out of her skin.
It wasn’t like her, and neither evening walks to visit with her family nor morning swims to release the tension in her shoulders seemed to assuage her anxiety.
Maybe it was the change she was likely facing?
It came sooner or later for every woman, but she didn’t dread it like some of her friends.
She’d raised her children and loved that stage of life, but she had plenty more ahead to do and was ready to get to it.
She’d had a disturbing encounter in town recently.
She’d been shopping for a few items in the dry goods store and accidentally brushed up against someone in the shop.
Although she’d whispered a quick “scusi,” the woman had given her a brusque look and hurried away without speaking.
She wondered later if she’d simply imagined it, but she knew she hadn’t.
Ari had also admitted to her that they weren’t selling as much of their catch lately.
People preferred to buy from others. When she’d asked who, what others, he’d said they’d sooner buy if you weren’t Jewish.
These sorts of sentiments didn’t come from everyone, but enough to make Allegra wary, enough to make her want to gather her children beneath her roof, like a mother hen.
Whatever had her keyed up, Allegra found herself making odd decisions: writing her favorite recipes in a notebook and giving them to her Catholic friend, Donna; sketching crude drawings of the plants she gathered, cataloging them by the colors they’d produce when used as dyes; carding extra wool although they had plenty.
She asked Johann to make her a new box from oleander, one that could be sealed tightly against moisture.
“Just a simple box, love,” she said. “Not too large or heavy, but big enough to keep a spindle, a comb. Someplace to keep the byssus.”
He’d gestured to the studio walls, hung with all these same sorts of items. “Looks like you have plenty of space for these things out in the open, where they’re handy to use.”
Allegra shrugged. “Yes, I know. I’d just like a different spot for some of my best things, just in case.”
Johann frowned. “In case? Are you expecting Etna’s next eruption will spill over onto Sant’Antioco? Sicily’s arms don’t reach that far.”
“Can you make it or no?”
“You know I can, Allegra. I just wonder why you seem worried.”
“Do I?” She sighed. “Honestly, I can’t say. I’m just antsy.”
“Consider it done, then. I’ll trade you an oleander box for three kisses.”
She softened and smirked at him. “Only three? You know where three kisses usually lead.”
“I do, indeed.” He pulled her close and nuzzled her neck, and for the rest of the evening, her box project was forgotten.
It was scarcely two weeks later when Johann took Allegra’s hand and led her to the rear of their house.
He’d burned extra kerosene to lengthen the end of his long days at sea, but he was a fine hand at woodworking, and the box he’d completed was finished.
She’d watched him out their back window, his mouth and nose wrapped in a thick scarf and his hands covered by a pair of goatskin gloves.
Oleander wood was strong and moisture resistant but also toxic if it wasn’t handled properly.
The air still smelled of the thick resin he’d used to coat its surfaces inside and out.
Allegra smiled when she saw it, and something in her relaxed, finally. The box was a lovely nutty brown, with a brass latch that fastened with the turn of a knob.
“Plenty of room inside for anything you want to ferret away,” he pointed out. “The resin is still a bit sticky, but dry it in the sun for the next day or so, and it’s good to last. It’s the same stuff I use on the boat’s hull, so no water’s breaching that. Guaranteed.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “A treasure to pass on someday.”
Johann turned it upside down. “Here on the bottom, I added something extra.”
Allegra leaned in to look. It was an etched drawing of Sardegna he must have copied from a map. In the lower left, he’d burned an outline of a house where their small village lay, and a distance from shore, there was a small sea turtle, near where the byssus cove would be.
“If I’d had more time, I could’ve added other things,” he said.
“This is perfect, Johann. I had no idea you had an artist’s hand.”
“Maybe I’ve learned something watching you and the girls all these years, creating your stories and pictures on fabric. Wood can hold stories, too.”
“It’ll hold all our stories,” Allegra said. “I’ll make sure of it.”