The Princess and the Captain by Anne-Laure Bondoux Read Free Book Online Page B

only old Berthilde, waiting there transfixed, with a black scarf over her grey hair.
    â€˜Holy Tranquillity!’ she cried. ‘Whatever are you doing?’
    Orpheus quickly put down his poker and mumbled an excuse. The old servant’s face was sad, and he knew at once why she had come.
    â€˜He’s dead, isn’t he?’
    Berthilde nodded. ‘He died in the night,’ she breathed. ‘Only a few hours after you left.’
    Orpheus stood there for a moment in the fresh air with his arms dangling. He shivered, and sneezed twice. Since last night, in spite of the mild summer weather, he couldn’t seem to get warm.
    â€˜What’s to become of us?’ wailed Berthilde, choking back her sobs.
    Orpheus looked gravely at her; he had known her all his life, yet he felt as if he were seeing her for the first time. At thatmoment he realised that there was no one left for him to rely on. He had never made friends, his father was dead, and now the great gulf created by that lie lay between him and Berthilde.
    â€˜I had a word with the Holy Diafron,’ the old woman told him. ‘Nothing’s certain now, what with the incidents in the Citadel – the Coronador’s forbidden all ritual ceremonies. But I managed to arrange for the funeral to be held all the same. It won’t be for a few days, not until things have calmed down.’
    Orpheus nodded. With the precepts of Tranquillity and Harmony suspended, the whole organisation of the country was upside down.
    â€˜What about everything else, though?’ Berthilde persisted. ‘What’s to be done with the house? And the furniture, the books, the mementoes? Of course your father has left you everything.’
    â€˜I don’t want it,’ Orpheus calmly replied.
    â€˜But … but there’s his fortune. It’s a large one. Who’s going to deal with it?’
    â€˜Do what you think best with it,’ said Orpheus. ‘Keep it all if you like.’
    Poor Berthilde had difficulty in keeping back her tears, but she did not reproach him. ‘You’ll come to the graveyard?’ was all she asked.
    â€˜Tell me when it is and I’ll be there,’ said Orpheus. ‘Leave me now.’
    He sneezed again and then closed his door, leaving the old woman to return to the Upper Town in her grief.

7
Old Bulo’s Story
    Even after a few days Philomena couldn’t get used to the pitching and tossing of the ship. She insisted on staying in her cabin, suffering from a bad case of seasickness. Malva, on the other hand, felt perfectly at home on the
Estafador
. She had exchanged her skirts for a pair of sailor’s trousers and a canvas jacket. Thus clad, and with her short hair, she hardly looked like a girl any more, and the crew amused themselves by calling her their cabin boy. Delighted, she spent her time running from the fo’c’s’le to the poop, watching the way the men handled the sails and demanding to be taught all about navigation.
    The education that the Archont gave her had consisted mainly of lessons in mathematics, botany, legends, the geography of the world and the history of the Galnician dynasties. He had never taught her anything about the details of a ship’s rigging. She wrote their new, poetic names down in her notebook with great delight: strops, pendants, shackles, halyards, sheets … sometimes the sailors let her climb into the shrouds,sometimes Vincenzo showed her how to find the ship’s position with the sextant. Malva was in seventh heaven. At the end of the day, when she went below decks to see Philomena, pale and lying on her bunk, she was full of the pleasures of the voyage.
    â€˜Sailing is so intoxicating! One of these days I’m going to write a history of sailors and the sea. If you’d only come out of your burrow I could teach you the names of the sails. You’d have fun!’
    Philomena snuggled further down into her pillows, a