Chapter 8 Bad Water #2
Orsino shouted back, “I know it is not pretty. Pretty is for hinges in dry houses.”
The crate was secured.
The sea worsened.
Lucetta had imagined storms from chronicles: black clouds, towering waves, sailors invoking saints, ships cast onto rocks.
Reality was more humiliating. There was no grand terror at first, only relentless imbalance.
Every ordinary action became difficult. Standing required thought.
Breathing came with salt spray. Water invaded sleeves, shoes, hair, mouth.
The vessel’s motion reduced the world to the next handhold and the next order.
Adelasia vomited once over the side, wiped her mouth, and threatened to kill Naldo when he asked whether she needed help.
“That means she is well,” Naldo told Lucetta.
Adelasia heard him. “I will become better enough to prove it.”
Bertran moved only when necessary. His injured hand had been wrapped again before dawn, but the wet linen was already loosening. Lucetta saw him grip a line with the other and wished she could order him tied to something as he had ordered her.
Then a sailor screamed.
The sound came from forward.
A line had snapped or slipped; Lucetta never learned which. A length of rigging whipped across the deck. One man fell. Another dropped flat. Naldo, moving toward them, was struck at the shoulder and spun against the rail.
For a heartbeat he disappeared from Lucetta’s view.
Bertran tore free of his position.
“Naldo!”
The young man was still aboard, half hanging over the rail with one leg caught between two uprights. He tried to pull himself back and failed as the ship rolled.
Bertran reached him first, but his wounded hand gave when he caught Naldo’s coat.
A sailor seized Bertran around the waist.
Naldo shouted, “My foot!”
The trapped leg was twisted under him.
Ysoria crawled forward from the mast, ignoring someone’s command to stay back. “Do not pull him. His ankle is caught.”
She braced herself, reached between the uprights, and freed the boot by turning the foot inward rather than dragging.
Another wave struck.
The three of them collapsed together onto the deck.
Naldo began laughing.
Bertran hit him once on the shoulder—the uninjured one.
“Do that again and I will throw you overboard myself.”
Naldo coughed seawater. “Then I will have practiced.”
Ysoria sat back against the mast. Her face was white with fury. “You moved before the line was secured.”
“It moved before I expected.”
“That is what unsecured things do.”
He looked at her. “You sound like Orsino.”
“Then fear me.”
The fallen sailor had cut his scalp but remained conscious. Odelin tended him with a cloth while the crew worked around them.
Ziani shouted for Naldo.
Bertran caught his arm. “He is injured.”
“I need his eyes, not his ankle.”
Naldo pulled himself upright using the rail. “What?”
Ziani pointed toward the coast.
Through rain and gray water, almost invisible, lay a line darker than sky. Shore.
“There is a channel entrance ahead. I cannot see the marker post. You have worked these shallows?”
“Not this one.”
“Have you worked reed inlets?”
“Yes.”
“Then stand where I tell you and watch for breaking water.”
Bertran said, “He cannot stand.”
Naldo said, “I can kneel.”
Ziani looked between them. “Then kneel.”
For the next twenty minutes Naldo became more important than any armed man aboard.
He crouched near the bow with one arm hooked through a line, eyes fixed on the water ahead.
The inlet was not a harbor in the grand sense, merely a break in the low coast where deeper water approached close enough for small vessels and a bar of shifting sand guarded the entrance.
Ziani knew the general place. His crew knew how their ship answered.
Naldo knew how shallow water changed color and shape under wind.
“White ahead!” he shouted.
The helm shifted.
“More left—no, hold! Dark patch beyond!”
A sailor beside him repeated the call.
The Stella Maris turned.
A wave struck broadside and sent Lucetta hard against the line securing her. Pain flashed through her ribs. The document bundle beneath her tunic dug into skin.
The vessel rose, dropped, and for one terrible moment the keel or lower hull grated against something below.
Every person aboard heard it.
Ziani swore.
Orsino said, “What was that?”
“No one answer him,” Bertran shouted.
They did not stop.
The next wave carried them deeper.
Then the character of the water changed. Not calm, but less violent. The shore curved around them. Wind still tore spray from the surface, yet the long offshore swell weakened.
Ziani reduced what little sail remained and ordered anchors prepared.
The first anchor dragged.
They knew because the shore continued moving past at the wrong angle.
The second held for several breaths, then the line jerked.
Enrico shouted from the bow.
Ziani ordered more scope, then another anchor.
Bertran asked, “Can we reach land?”
“Not in this boat while the wind does that unless you want to arrive without the boat.”
“There are buildings.”
Lucetta followed his pointing hand. Through rain she saw pale stone above the low shore, perhaps a wall, perhaps several. A squat bell tower rose behind dark trees.
Odelin crossed himself again. “A religious house.”
Ziani said, “Or ruins. The saint may decide after we stop moving.”
The anchors held.
No one cheered.
The crew simply began the next work.
Damage had to be assessed before darkness.
One sail had torn. A yard had cracked but not failed.
The deck ring Orsino had condemned was useless.
Water had entered below, not catastrophically but enough that men were sent to pump and bail.
The scraping at the inlet had left everyone anxious about the hull.
Naldo’s ankle swelled inside his boot. Odelin cut the leather rather than pull it over the joint.
“That was a good boot,” Naldo mourned.
“You nearly lost the foot.”
“I liked both.”
Ysoria crouched beside them. “Can you move your toes?”
“Yes.”
“Do it.”
He did.
She exhaled. “Then complain about the boot after Brother Odelin binds the ankle.”
Naldo looked up at her. “You were frightened.”
“I was angry.”
“You were frightened first.”
Ysoria’s face closed.
He continued, more gently, “I was too.”
For once she had no answer ready.
Odelin wrapped the ankle.
Lucetta found Bertran near the stern, retightening his hand bandage one-handed. Blood had washed pink through the cloth.
“Give me that.”
“I can do it.”
“You are proving otherwise.”
He surrendered the end of the linen.
She unwound enough to inspect the cut. It had reopened but not badly. Rainwater had cleaned it more thoroughly than wisdom would have chosen.
“You pulled Naldo with this hand.”
“I used both.”
“That is not a defense.”
“You said that last night.”
“Then you had time to improve.”
She wrapped the hand firmly. The ship moved beneath them, gentler now but never still.
Bertran watched her work. “Your side?”
She looked up.
“You struck the line when we crossed the bar.”
“It is bruised.”
“Let Odelin see it.”
“I can breathe.”
“That is a poor standard.”
“It has served you.”
His mouth twitched.
Around them the deck smelled of wet rope, salt, lamp oil, and sickness. The crew worked with the flat concentration of exhausted men who had no leisure for relief.
Lucetta tied the bandage. “You were right.”
Bertran’s expression sharpened. “About what?”
“The road being dangerous for our enemies too.”
“You choose now to admit it?”
“If they sailed before us, they had this weather.”
“Unless they went by land.”
She frowned.
He gave her a tired smile. “I will not let you turn agreement into optimism. We know only that we are alive and not where we intended to be.”
“Sometimes you make realism sound like a vice.”
“It is, when overused.”
Ziani approached, soaked to the skin. “You two may conduct philosophy after we decide whether the ship remains a ship.”
Bertran looked toward the shore. “Can we get people off?”
“Not yet. But when the squall eases, yes. There is a landing beyond the reeds. I have anchored here once before, years ago. The building is a house of canons or monks—I do not remember which, and they will punish me for the distinction if they still live there.”
Odelin, overhearing, said, “They may punish you more for calling either canons or monks by the wrong name.”
Ziani pointed at him. “Then you will speak first.”
The rain weakened near sunset.
Not ended. Weakened enough for a shore boat.
Ziani would allow only those whose presence aboard was unnecessary to leave. Lucetta, Adelasia, Odelin, Orsino, Ysoria, Niccolò, and the injured Naldo were sent ashore first with blankets, the most important documents, and two sailors rowing. Bertran tried to remain aboard.
Lucetta stopped him with one sentence. “Your hand is open, and Ziani has twenty men who understand ships better than you.”
He looked toward the damaged rigging.
Ziani said, “She is correct, which I resent because I wanted to say it.”
Bertran came ashore.
The landing was little more than stone steps descending into dark water among reeds.
Above stood a low wall, a gatehouse, and beyond it several buildings clustered around a chapel whose roof shone with rain.
Olive or perhaps willow trees bent inland under the wind.
A bell began to ring as the boat approached—not alarm, Odelin said, but the evening office delayed by weather.
A lay brother opened the gate and stared at the dripping strangers.
Brother Odelin stepped forward.
“We ask shelter in the name of charity and necessity. Our vessel has taken damage in the storm, we have injured among us, and we will pay for what can properly be paid. I am Brother Odelin of Saint Benedict’s obedience, traveling under letters that I can show once the rain has ceased trying to dissolve them. ”
The man looked at Naldo, who was hopping on one foot between Bertran and Orsino. “How many?”
“Eight ashore. Crew remains with the ship.”
“Women?”
“Two.”
“Three,” Ysoria said.
The lay brother counted again and had the decency to look embarrassed.