Worlds That Weren't

Bressac came and leaned on the ship’s rail beside him. He had lost a lot of weight. The other Frenchman made pretense of looking out across the milky blue sea toward Salerno. He sniggered very quietly. “Got left holding the baby again?”

Guillaume looked down at his burden-the child in its tight swaddling bands, resting against his chest.

The lengths of linen bands bound it to a flat board. He had had the carpenter drill a couple of holes in the wood, and now he had loops of rope over his shoulders to hold the swaddling board against his body. It left the child facing him. All that could be seen of her were her bright eyes that followed his movements everywhere.

“I don’t mind. She’s all right, for a Visigoth.” Guillaume spoke carelessly, edging one linen band down and giving her a finger to suck. “Have to find the wet nurse soon. Right hungry little piglet, she is. Ain’t you, Mucky-pup?”

“Daah,” the baby said.

Bressac snickered again.

The red tile roofs of Salerno became distinct, floating above the fine blue haze. Birds screamed.

Bressac said, not laughing now, “She ought at least to come and look at the damn brat, after we went to so much trouble to get it.”

Guillaume took his finger back from the hard gums, and the baby gave him a focused look of dislike. He said, “First time in the entire bloody voyage this little cow hasn’t been crying, or puking up all over me. Looks cute enough to get her interested in it again.”

At Bressac’s look, Guillaume admitted, “Well, maybe not that…”

“She’s drinking too much to have the infant. Drop it overboard, probably.” Bressac glanced over his shoulder and then, sentimental as soldiers anywhere, said, “Give it here.”

Guillaume slid the ropes of the swaddling board off his shoulders and handed the baby over to rest her nose against Bressac’s old and smelly arming-doublet. To his surprise, she neither cried nor puked. Can’t win, can I?

“Yolande’s drinking too much,” he said. “And angry too much.”

Bressac joggled the baby. “She keeps going on about that pig-boy-‘Oh, the abbot killed him; oh, it was murder.’ I mean, it’s been half a year, we’ve had an entire damned campaign with the Carthaginian legions; you’d think she’d get o-” His voice cut off abruptly. “Damn! Kid just threw up all over me!”

“Must be your tasteful conversation.” Guillaume took the baby back as she began to wail, and wiped her face roughly clean with his kerchief. The wail changed from one of discomfort to one of anger.

Bressac, swiping at himself, muttered, “Green Christ! It’s just some slave’s brat!”, and wiped his hands on the ship’s rail.

Above him, the company silk pennant cracked, unrolling on the wind: azure field merging with azure sky, so it seemed the gold griffin veritably flew.

Bressac said, “’Lande was drunk, remember? Kept saying she wanted a baby and she was too old to have one. She insisted we haul this one out of goddamn Carthage harbor. Now she’s bored with it. Green Christ, can’t a bloody slave commit infanticide in peace?”

“You think it was a slave?”

“Hell, yes. If the mother had been freeborn, she could have sold it.”

“Maybe we should find a dealer in Salerno, for the Turkish harems.” Guillaume was aware he was only half joking.

If she’s got bored with the kid…so have I.

Merely being honest about moral failings is not an excuse.

It’s not boredom. Not for Yolande. It’s just that the kid isn’t Ric-or Jean-Philippe. Saving this kid…isn’t the same. And that’s not the baby’s fault.

“This isn’t a place for a baby.” Guillaume looked guiltily around at the company. “Kid deserves better than old sins hanging round her neck as a start in life. What can she ever hope for? Like ’Lande keeps on saying, to change anything-”

The words are in his mind, Yolande repeating the words with the care of the terrifyingly drunk:

“To change anything…we’d have to change everything. And I don’t have the time left that that would take.”

Blue sea and white foam streaked away in a curve from this side of the galley’s prow. He went as far as unknotting the ropes from the swaddling board and sliding them free.

Splash and gone. So easy. A lifetime of slogging uphill gone. When we meet under the Tree, she’ll probably thank me.

Bressac’s voice broke the hypnotic drag of the prow wave. “So. You going to talk it over with the master gunner? Ortega will have you for one of the gun crews; they’re shorthanded now. Not much running about, there…”

There was a look in Bressac’s eyes that made Guillaume certain his mind and proposed action had been read. Not necessarily disapproved of.

A seabird wheeled away, screaming, searching their wake for food. The perpetual noise of sliding chains from the belly of the ship, where the rowers stood and stretched to the oars, quickly drowned out the bird’s noise.

“Sure,” Guillaume said. “A gunner: sure. That’d suit a crip, wouldn’t it?”