The Enchantress of Florence Read Online Free

sawbones of limited medical knowledge who was more accustomed to removing Spanish bullets from his shipmates’ bodies, and sewing up cutlass gashes after hand-to-hand combat with the Spaniard, than to curing mysterious sleeping sicknesses that arrived out of nowhere, like a stowaway or a judgment from God. Hawkins had left an eye at Valparaiso and half a leg at Nombre de Dios, and he sang, every night, mournful Portuguese
fados
in honor of a maiden on a balcony in the Ribeira neighborhood of Oporto, accompanying himself on some sort of gypsy fiddle. Praise-God wept copiously while he sang, and “Uccello” understood that the good doctor was imagining his own cuckolding, conjuring up, to torture himself, images of his port-wine-drinking beloved in bed with men who were still whole, fishermen stinking of their finny prey, lecherous Franciscan monks, the ghosts of the early navigators, and living men of every variety and hue, Dagos and Englishmen, Chinamen and Jews. “A man under the enchantment of love,” the stowaway thought, “is a man easily distracted and led.”
    As the
Scáthach
made her way past the Horn of Africa and the isle of Socotra, and while she took on supplies at Maskat and then left the Persian coast to port and, blown along by the monsoon wind, headed southeast toward the Portuguese haven of Diu on the southern shore of the place Dr. Hawkins called “Guzerat,” so Lord Hauksbank of That Ilk slumbered peacefully on, “a sleep so calm, praise God,” according to the helpless Hawkins, “that it proves his conscience is clear and so his soul, at least, is in good health, ready to meet its Maker at any time.” “God forbid,” said the stowaway. “Praise God, let him not be taken yet,” the other readily agreed. During their long bedside vigil “Uccello” often asked the doctor about his Portugee lady love. Hawkins needed little encouragement to discuss the subject. The stowaway listened patiently to adoring paeans to the lady’s eyes, her lips, her bosoms, her hips, her belly, her rump, her feet. He learned the secret terms of endearment she used in the act of love, terms no longer so secret now, and he heard her promises of fidelity and her murmured oath of eternal union. “Ah, but she is false, false,” the doctor wept. “Do you know this for a fact?” the traveler inquired, and when the lachrymose Praise-God shook his head, saying, “It has been so long, and I am now but half a man, so I must assume the worst,” then “Uccello” coaxed him back to gaiety. “Well, let us now praise God, Praise-God, for you weep without cause! She is true, I’m certain of it; and waits for you, I doubt it not; and if you have a leg less, well then, she will have love to spare, the love allocated to that leg can be reassigned to other parts; and if you lack an eye, the other will feast twice as well upon her who has kept faith, and loves you as you love her! Enough! Praise God! Sing joyfully and weep no more.”
    In this fashion he dismissed Praise-God Hawkins nightly, assuring him that the crew would be desolate if they did not hear his songs, and nightly, when he was alone with the unconscious milord, and had waited a few moments, he made a thorough search of the captain’s quarters, seeking out all their secrets. “A man who builds a cabin with one hidden cavity has built a cabin with at least two or three,” he reasoned, and by the time the port of Diu was sighted he had plucked Lord Hauksbank as clean as any chicken, he had found the seven secret chambers in the paneled walls, and all the jewels in all the wooden boxes therein were safely in their new homes in the coat of Shalakh Cormorano, and the seven gold ingots, too, and yet the coat felt light as a feather, for the green-eyed Moor of Venice knew the secret of rendering weightless whatever goods were secreted within that magic garment. As for the other “objects of virtue,” they did not interest the thief. He let them nest where they lay,