VSM - Guild Fiction
For the interested; also cross-posted to xan-shelit.
When they said we would pack up our lives, leave our comfortable homes and existences to attend a Duke whose placement as ambassador was little more than dubious exile, it sounded like an adventure. That was the word they repeated to us over and over again, so often that we heard it following us in the streets as we made arrangements, and heard it on the lips of our servants, of our families. We heard it in our dreams, in our private moments. Adventure.
They didn't tell us that from the moment we boarded a ship to sail to England our lives would become profoundly uncomfortable. They didn't tell us about the bad food, the dark, squalid living quarters on the ship. The sailors stare at the women, who huddle together, finding solidarity in our shared discomfort. The men do not understand what it is to be a woman on a ship. They make lascivious commentary when they think we do not hear, accuse us of every unlucky occurrence, every moment of bad weather.
Even the Duchessa, ever a paragon of beauty, virtue and sprezzatura sits with the women. The baronas gather at her skirts like children, surrounding her, each of our ladies making another concentric ring. We are a diagram of the court, a representation of the cosmos, each strata of class revolving around her. The last circle is solidly gray with occasional patches of black, a flash here and there of burgundy. Were it not for the individual faces staring blankly out from wool cloaks, it would be impossible to tell where one woman left off and another began.
-=-=-=-=-=-
It is a miserable voyage. I've given up trying to read, have put all my energy in simply keeping food in my stomach. Others have not been seasick since the beginning - a couple of days in, and they have adjusted to the constant rolling of the ship. I have not been as fortunate. It is cold on the deck, but I would rather be cold than sick below decks. I make the sailors nervous; for the most part, they stay far away from the rail where I sit with Alessandra. She shivers alongside me, running and fetching, offering food that I numbly eat and then wait for it to return. She holds my cloak back while I retch. I lost my veil some time ago, and I hope that she has seen to it.
Hers are the screams I hear. When I raise my head, a sailor, whose accent is so thick with the south I can barely understand his words, holds a knife up to her. Even though I can't understand him, the intent is clear enough. Phrases start filtering through my fuzzy mind, but the only one that makes sense is she is sick. I'm confused as I try to lever myself up off the deck, my focus is firmly on the rail, the feel of the rough wood beneath my fingertips. When the screaming suddenly stops, my eyes flick to her, but she stares at something else. Marcello's blade is covered in blood from hilt to tip, and the sailor has fallen forward, blood pooling underneath him, the heave of the ship causing it to trickle towards me.
It is the way the blood moves, the trailing pattern it makes, that fascinates me. I can't look away from it. I am only peripherally aware of Mario and Marcello picking up the body, tossing it over the side of the ship, of how Mario brushes past me. I hear, as if from a great distance, Mario telling the captain how the sailor had tragically fallen overboard even as others are cleaning up the blood, and Marcello cleans his blade with a bit of cloth from the sailor's shirt.
Alessandra pulls me away and leads me below decks. She fusses a little over me while I look at the wall and contemplate how the wood grain mimics the blood.
I see the pattern everywhere now. It is in the coil of the duchessa's hair, the braid on Alessandra's dress. When I close my eyes, I see the blood, and in my dreams I chart the course of the blood against the stars, making new constellations from it. When I awaken, I wonder if I should go to confession, but what would I confess?
I am not sick for the rest of the voyage.
When they said we would pack up our lives, leave our comfortable homes and existences to attend a Duke whose placement as ambassador was little more than dubious exile, it sounded like an adventure. That was the word they repeated to us over and over again, so often that we heard it following us in the streets as we made arrangements, and heard it on the lips of our servants, of our families. We heard it in our dreams, in our private moments. Adventure.
They didn't tell us that from the moment we boarded a ship to sail to England our lives would become profoundly uncomfortable. They didn't tell us about the bad food, the dark, squalid living quarters on the ship. The sailors stare at the women, who huddle together, finding solidarity in our shared discomfort. The men do not understand what it is to be a woman on a ship. They make lascivious commentary when they think we do not hear, accuse us of every unlucky occurrence, every moment of bad weather.
Even the Duchessa, ever a paragon of beauty, virtue and sprezzatura sits with the women. The baronas gather at her skirts like children, surrounding her, each of our ladies making another concentric ring. We are a diagram of the court, a representation of the cosmos, each strata of class revolving around her. The last circle is solidly gray with occasional patches of black, a flash here and there of burgundy. Were it not for the individual faces staring blankly out from wool cloaks, it would be impossible to tell where one woman left off and another began.
-=-=-=-=-=-
It is a miserable voyage. I've given up trying to read, have put all my energy in simply keeping food in my stomach. Others have not been seasick since the beginning - a couple of days in, and they have adjusted to the constant rolling of the ship. I have not been as fortunate. It is cold on the deck, but I would rather be cold than sick below decks. I make the sailors nervous; for the most part, they stay far away from the rail where I sit with Alessandra. She shivers alongside me, running and fetching, offering food that I numbly eat and then wait for it to return. She holds my cloak back while I retch. I lost my veil some time ago, and I hope that she has seen to it.
Hers are the screams I hear. When I raise my head, a sailor, whose accent is so thick with the south I can barely understand his words, holds a knife up to her. Even though I can't understand him, the intent is clear enough. Phrases start filtering through my fuzzy mind, but the only one that makes sense is she is sick. I'm confused as I try to lever myself up off the deck, my focus is firmly on the rail, the feel of the rough wood beneath my fingertips. When the screaming suddenly stops, my eyes flick to her, but she stares at something else. Marcello's blade is covered in blood from hilt to tip, and the sailor has fallen forward, blood pooling underneath him, the heave of the ship causing it to trickle towards me.
It is the way the blood moves, the trailing pattern it makes, that fascinates me. I can't look away from it. I am only peripherally aware of Mario and Marcello picking up the body, tossing it over the side of the ship, of how Mario brushes past me. I hear, as if from a great distance, Mario telling the captain how the sailor had tragically fallen overboard even as others are cleaning up the blood, and Marcello cleans his blade with a bit of cloth from the sailor's shirt.
Alessandra pulls me away and leads me below decks. She fusses a little over me while I look at the wall and contemplate how the wood grain mimics the blood.
I see the pattern everywhere now. It is in the coil of the duchessa's hair, the braid on Alessandra's dress. When I close my eyes, I see the blood, and in my dreams I chart the course of the blood against the stars, making new constellations from it. When I awaken, I wonder if I should go to confession, but what would I confess?
I am not sick for the rest of the voyage.