Chapter 1

 

We thought the Mare Nostrum was our sea. Every country and city-state with ports and harbours and shores which bordered it claimed a part as its own, as if that great expanse could be owned or tamed. Those who relied on it for trade took it for granted while their counting houses overflowed with coins and goods. Those who claimed to really understand it - from fisherfolk and deckhands to lighthouse keepers and waterwatchers - knew it could never truly be understood and never truly be ours. They knew it exacted a price and watched from the decks and the harbour walls for the day that price would be paid. That day, it turns out, was fast approaching. The startling news washed ashore on every beach where there were ears to hear it and captains from Catapala, the City in the Cliff, last bastion of the old country, to Tepeyac the Gateway in the far west near the Mare Lontana. We were not alone.

Over a period of time several ships had encountered the same alarming spectacle - a great island in the Mare Nostrum, previously uncharted and unheard of even by diviners and scholars as well as those shadowy individuals who make secret knowledge their business. That the island was reportedly spotted in a number of distinct locations caused questions to be raised at the tables of merchants and speculators as to the sobriety of ship captains and caused a flurry of rapid investigation into the reliability of their instruments.

Striking an average of observations taken at separate times - and rejecting the outliers as modern statistical mathematics demanded - you could still assert that this phenomenal island greatly exceeded the dimensions of any uncharted island then known to cartographers of the age, if it existed at all.

Now, it did exist, and since the human mind dotes on objects of wonder, you can understand the tremendous excitement caused by this unearthly apparition. As for relegating it to the realms of fiction, that charge had to be dropped.

It began over the spring equinox, that fortuitous time of the year when the party season begins in earnest for those of us on land, and the winds begin to turn for those at sea.  The ship Maliamelita of the Radiant Crown fleet encountered a fog-shrouded island where none had been before, many nautical miles to the southwest out of Lateen harbour. Captain Giaconda Moreno at first thought she was in the presence of an unknown reef and was eager to chart its dimensions so that reports could be filed, and figures updated in the guild ledgers. When the mist momentarily parted to reveal a mountainous island terrain with buildings visible between its three peaks, she called for extra rations of rum and fresh water amongst the crew with the understanding that the root of the hallucination was some seaborne malaise brought on by lack of decent fresh drinking water; a not uncommon occurrence in those times. Further progress toward the island was impeded by a sudden storm and she turned the ship around.

When she reported back and those reports were corroborated by other seafarers along the coast, talk of the island was all the rage throughout every port on the Mare Nostrum. It was sung of in taverns, whispered of in the great churches, and hotly debated in every coffee house. It dominated the front pages of news sheets and made the career of several journalists even as the careers of several skippers were close to ruin as their sanity, sobriety and suitability for duty were brought into question. Mountebanks found in it an opportunity for hatching all sorts of elaborate hoaxes and the cries of their marks echoed across the harbours of Ilforza and Aretina. In those periodicals short of material, there appeared printed speculations of regurgitated mythologies linking the island to some heretofore unmentioned lost civilization and political sabre-rattling suggesting it was clearly some formerly unknown hidden pirate outpost in the midst of the bay.

Neither were our scholarly societies content to sit quietly and watch the show. Endless debates were held, often derailing the rest of the curriculum and always continuing late into the evening. Meanwhile, diviners practised their craft with stars, rivers, entrails, tea leaves and anything else they could contemplate. The ‘island question’ inflamed all minds. During this memorable campaign, those making a profession of geography and history clashed with those making a profession of wit and satire, spilling waves of abuse, credulity and even drops of blood as the battleground went from the most fanciful of fantasies to the most offensive of personal remarks.

These back-and-forths continued until the end of summer. With inexhaustible zeal, tavern patrons cracked heads over the veracity of the discovery and what it would mean, the most ill-equipped expeditions set forth from Lateen, Perigee, Severa and Faravo into the Mare Nostrum; ships populated only by chancers and sightseers, eager to catch a glimpse of the mysterious mist and its hidden wonders. Sales of spyglasses, sextants and more obscure maritime technology soared to the point where the shop shelves of Lateen were scoured clean. Supposed maps to its location were passed off to unsuspecting shills gathered on the waterfront in an ambitious but unwise race to reach the island and plant their colours upon its fabled shores.

As with other summer sensations, the waves of the phenomenon soon began to break against rockier shores until such time arrived when the storm seemed spent and minds across the known world began to turn back to less fanciful notions. With no further reported sightings, the story of Farozaina might have been short-lived if it were not for the continuing investigations of a number of dedicated individuals and the events that unfolded one autumn morning in Lateen, the City of Sails.

 

Chapter 2

 

I was perfectly placed to witness and recall the tales that were told in quayside tavern and hillside villa alike, and how could I not have been? I had been writing and performing variations on the tale since the news first washed across our southern shores. I had sought out every report and account I could conceive and confabulated them into stirring scripts of comedy, tragedy, morality and horror alike. That summer our performances were praised in every parlour and toasted in every tavern. No one had a greater collection of island tales than I - my racconti dell’isola was a singular work - but I never considered for one moment that there was truth in the smallest one of them. We simply sailed in the wake of the rumours and for a while were the second sensation of that summer. After our theatrics we dined in the most elegant of eateries and were received at the foremost fashionable parties of the season. After several years languishing at the bottom of every playbill, it seemed we had finally found our fortune. Even when innumerable encores tested us to the point of exhaustion, we managed to shine throughout the night as bright as the stars themselves.

A third career sprang up unbidden. In addition to our drama and my divinations, I became sought out as the foremost expert of Farozaina (as I later knew the island to be called by its inhabitants). I confess, I let my newfound fame go to my head. Since so many were keen to have me not hold my tongue, I let it wag. Tall tales fell from my lips as once they had trickled from my quill. After some time though, the subject began to grow wearisome for me and there were several days in high summer when I longed for the peace, if not the poverty, of my former existence as a struggling playwright. My eyes reddened from the many late nights, my senses reeled from the flow of wines and spirituous liquors I was bidden to consume. Finally, my voice itself gave under pressure from all the activity forced upon it and I was made to consign myself to a week away from it all, imbibing such herbal preparations as the finest physics my patrons could afford recommended, until reality became such a blur that I was no more convinced of the existence of Perigee, City of Moons than I was of the mythical Farozaina.

During this period of recuperation, I had a number of well-wishers from within the troupe, but no others. I began to grow anxious that our time in the limelight was done, that our moment had passed. Even though I had hoped in the spring that this time of opportunity and reverie would last forever, I had now resigned myself that our glorious one summer was all that virtue would permit us, and that one singular adventure would suit me just fine. Let the memory of Farozaina fade and with it the memory of the Dusk Till Dawn Theatre.

Then late one night, just as my voice had begun a slow journey to recovery, I was roused from my slumber to find at the door to my lodgings the most unlikely trio of heroes bearing in their arms a singularly unremarkable but large package wrapped up in a plain hessian sack. A fisherman, a soldier and a weather witch - a more comedic threesome has never before walked into a scene. On any other occasion I would have entertained fleeting notions of what events might have brought them into such close keeping with one another. However, since it was my door they were knocking at, and at such an unwholesome hour, it could only mean one thing. They had come seeking my advice about the mysterious island.

My housekeeper let this unlikely company enter and then retired less than tactfully, muttering something about how he didn’t get paid to open the door to all-and-sundry in the middle of the night. I made a mental note to remonstrate with him in the morning, though whether for his willingness to leave me alone with three perfect strangers or for his rudeness I did not later recall. As I rekindled the dying hearth for a large pot of coffee, I studied the faces of each of my guests for clues as to who they might be. It was a tactic I had often previously used in crowded taverns to prepare myself for a role; to watch their mannerisms in preparation to mimic them and recreate them later on the stage to the delight of an audience. I could read a history of someone within their eyes, at the corners of their mouth and the way they held their head. It was as sure a technique to me as much as being able to tell their tailor by the cut of their clothes.

The elder man was certainly a seafarer, plain and simple. He wore plain weave breeches and a creased off-white cotton shirt over which was fastened a plain woollen cloak of tan and olive, stained with silt and salt alike. His long hands were tanned and leathery, as was his face. His eyebrows were grey and bushy tapering out to an impressive spread of crow’s feet. His eyes spoke of a great tragedy in his distant past brought back to the surface by a recent event, possibly even the one that had brought him here. He shivered occasionally despite the warmth of the room. A single silver ring glinted from a cord around his scrawny neck.

The younger was a more turbulent soul, a soldier for sure, yet one who had not yet quite found his way in life. His eyes darted continuously around the room, taking in his surroundings - impromptu weapons, means of escape. Someone used to continuous alert, he gave the impression that relaxation was something that did not come naturally to him, something he had to force himself to do as a reminder that there were good things in life to be enjoyed if only he took the time for them. He was sturdy and square-footed with a fine set of moustaches and a ring on every finger. His fine clothes had been repatched with loving care several times; sword-cuts, perhaps, or worse. He no doubt had many stories to tell but was only interested in the problem that was immediately occupying him. Not someone you’d want in command, I thought, though he’d made a remarkably effective follower and redoubtable travelling companion.

The young woman stood slightly apart from the men and seemed more aloof - less agitated than the mariner, certainly, who was growing impatient to ask whatever question had delivered them to my abode. She stood with folded arms and refused the offer of coffee, though happily accepted a glass of wine when one was suggested. I surmised she was a latecomer to this party, that the two gentlemen alone had encountered something foreign to them which had led them to seek out her advice before mine. She was more difficult to read than the others, there was a stillness to her eyes and a constant low grin which was a little disquieting. It was only when she stepped forward out of the shadows to accept the wine that I realised there was an unnatural but not unpleasant sheen to her face. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth closed in a wry smile, whereas the men engaged each other constantly in low-level familiar chatter. She wore a ring of gold and pearl on each hand and several bracelets of delicately woven coral and painted shells. I realised then that I recognised the trappings and had in fact spoken to her before - once and very briefly - whilst I was gathering information from sailors and dockworkers about ships that had seen the island: one of the street-magicians who performed weather divinations at the harbour in exchange for a few coins or a swig of wine. Your basic dockside weather watcher? Perhaps, though there were hidden depths there I thought, lurking beneath that unassuming surface. She was dressed much finer now, finer even than the soldier was, but her dress was considerably worn and faded. It looked like she was wearing her one good outfit and, even though it was well taken care of, it had clearly seen better days.

Once the coffee was piping hot and the cream added, I bade the three of them to join me by the fire. By the time the first sip of the dark bitter herbs of my medicine had done their work, I was as keen to hear their tale as they were to tell it. The fisherman spoke first, with frequent enough interjections from the soldier that I discerned a companionship, if not an outright friendship, which had lasted a number of years. Whilst the young woman initially stood, stately and shapely in the shadows, her eyes were continually drawn to the large irregular shaped sack the soldier had carried in over his broad shoulders and deposited gently on the rich red carpet I had recently bought to cover and warm the marble floor. As she stooped over it, I noticed that the dark shapes on the hessian were not caused by some trick of the light or play of the shadows, but by virtue of it being damp. I was perplexed, but did not have to wait long until their story began to play out and I sat on the edge of my chair in wonder, wishing I had deigned to take up the quill the moment they had first entered to record their tale exactly as it was related to me. It will be wise to recount it to you now, as best my memory serves, as within it lie the seeds of our later adventures.