Worlds That Weren't

He watched the wet nurse kneel down, untie the swaddling bands from the board and then from the child, and coil up the soiled wrappings and set them aside. The smell of baby shit and milk was way too familiar for a billman-turning-gunner.

“Joanie will keep it with her,” Yolande announced, over the other woman’s bent head. “I don’t want anything more to do with this.”

“’Lande-”

“It was a mistake. She isn’t…I’m sorry for the child, but…Joan, I’ll bring you money, out of my pay; you’ll continue to feed it, and keep it by you-yes?”

The brown-haired woman nodded without looking up. “As long as I’m paid.”

She fumbled down her bodice for clean linen bands. The baby, laid facedown on the warm wooden deck, hitched with elbows and knees and made a slight wriggling progression. Evidently she had not been used to swaddling bands before she fell into the hands of a Frankish nurse.

Guillaume bent down, picked the baby up from under so many feet, and tucked it under his arm. The infant made vague, froglike motions.

“How long will that last?” he demanded.

Joanie got up, dusting her hands on her skirt. “I have forgotten the new bands. Look after it now, master, while I fetch them.” She walked away toward the head of the gangway.

Yolande shrugged.

She turned and leaned her forearms on the rail, beside Guillaume. She had something in her hands-the Arian rosary, he saw. She trickled it from one hand into the other, while the wind and spray whipped her short hair into her eyes.

“Some people have the grace of God,” she said, just audibly. “Some people can look down the chain of our choices and tell us what might happen in future years.” She held the use-polished Christus Imperator up in front of her face. “I’m not one of them. Never will be. Ric was. And he…”

She opened her hand. The carved holm-oak rosary fell and disappeared, lost in spray and the Gulf of Salerno.

Yolande cast an eye up at Bressac. “Shall we walk?”

It was an invitation, although not as whorish a one as Joanie had been giving earlier in the day, Guillaume noted. The other Frenchman began to smile.

“See you,” Yolande said neutrally, looking down at Guillaume. She was more than mostly drunk, Guillaume could see, if he looked at her without illusion.

Too many months’ practice in hiding it, that’s all. And now she’s brawling with priests, and fucking who she pleases, and out of control. She’ll cause fights, and bad discipline, and she wants to.

Someone has to pay for Ricimer-and if it’s not going to be Muthari, I guess she’s decided it’s going to be her…

Yolande walked away across the deck. Bressac gave Guillaume a look compounded both of apology and of disbelief in his own good luck, and followed her.

The woman wore a pleated velvet doublet against the wind’s chill, and the sunlight illuminated how it nipped in at her waist, and the skirt of it ended just short of her lower hip, so that the curve of her lower buttocks could be seen as she walked away. And all the long length of her shapely legs. A woman in doublet and hose: the cast lead Griffin badge pinned to her upper arm and even the sunlight showing the worn patches in the velvet could not spoil her attraction.

She’d still fuck, if I asked.

I think she knows I won’t ask.

That’s not what I ended up wanting from her.

Guillaume sat back on the oak chest, his spine against the rail, the infant firmly in the crook of his elbow. He felt her warm, solid, squirming. If I put her down now, she’d be across this deck in a heartbeat, no matter how few months she has to her. It’s in her. It’s in all of us, surely.

He looked at the carved black walking stick beside him, and with his free hand eased at the muscles above his knee.

“Well, now.”

With some awkwardness, he shifted the baby out from under his arm, and plumped her astride his other knee. She kicked her heels against his old, patched hose. The sun, even through this fog, would scald her, and he looked up for Joanie’s return-and saw no sign of the wet nurse-and then back at the baby.

Knowing my luck, it’s about to piss down my leg…

The master gunner, Ortega, appeared out of the port gangway, two or three of his officers with him, and stood talking energetically, gesturing.

“Well, why not?” Guillaume said aloud. “The pay’s as good, as a gunner. What do you think?”

The baby, supported under her armpits by his hands, blinked at him with her human eyes. She weighed less than a weaner piglet, although she was weeks older.

“Maybe I’ll put a few shillings in, with Yolande,” he said quietly, his eyes scanning the deck. “A few a month. Joanie’ll probably soak me dry, telling me you’ve got croup, or whatever infants have.” His mouth twisted into a grin he could feel. “At least until I’m killed in a skirmish, or the Italian diseases get me…”

The salt wind blew tangles in his hair. He wiped his wrist across his mouth, rasping at stubble. Joanie, coming back, was accosted by Ortega. Guillaume heard her laugh.