Chapter 17: Property of the Bey

After Lucia’s death, I remain frozen in time for nearly 30 years. While I’m oblivious to the world around me during my long sleep, the Maristela Bracelet observes its surroundings, ready to enlighten me as soon as another person places the bracelet on his or her wrist. To make sense of my tale, I’ll firstly recount what the bracelet observed after Lucia’s death.

Constantinople 1571

Lucia’s rooms are emptied of her personal belongings, her cushions replaced, and her scent washed from the silks. Eventually, only her bracelet remains, tucked into a lacquered box among foreign curiosities. The bracelet’s magic is dormant although its magical power and its memories remain intact. The lacquered box containing the bracelet is placed in the palace treasury among other items of jewellery to be gifted or sold as circumstances require. The bracelet waits patiently during this time.

One night, a score of years later, footsteps break the silence of the palace treasury. A man enters the treasury. He’s a clerk with nervous hands and darting eyes. He glances around before kneeling before the shelves. He opens boxes, pockets coins, slips jewels into his sleeves. He hesitates when he opens the lacquered box containing the Maristela Bracelet. The bracelet glints faintly in the lamplight. He doesn’t know what it is, nor does he care. It’s gold, and therefore worth money. He takes the box with the bracelet inside.

He wraps the box in cloth and carries it through the palace, passing guards who recognise him and don’t look closely. The eunuchs passing along the corridors don’t question a mere clerk’s movements. The Maristela Bracelet is smuggled out through a side gate and delivered to a merchant caravan preparing to leave Constantinople.

The caravan moves south-east through Anatolia. Weaving through mountains that rise like dark teeth. Numerous villages cling to the hillsides, their markets filled with goods made of copper and wool. The merchants trade at each stop. The lacquered box attracts a buyer, but the bracelet is too expensive for local buyers.

The caravan then moves south, through the olive groves of Syria. The scent of spices drift from roadside stalls. A wealthy man seems interested in acquiring the bracelet, but at the last minute he changes his mind. The bracelet had deemed him unworthy of its gifts.

Weeks later, the caravan reaches the Mediterranean coast. Ships bob in the harbour. There are merchant vessels, fishing boats, and sleek corsair ships with black sails. The merchants prepare to cross the water to Egypt, bypassing the Sinai desert ahead. To discourage theft of their valuables, the merchants hide the Maristela Bracelet and other precious items in a wooden box containing indifferent cloth.

The short journey was ill-fated. A sudden storm strikes the ship a day out of port, and huge waves slam against its hull. The cargo shifts violently, and crates crack open. Men shout prayers into the wind as lightning splits the sky. The shifting cargo causes the ship to list. In a desperate attempt to save the ship the crew jettison some of the cargo. Carpets, spices, trinkets, and the box containing the Maristela Bracelet are tossed overboard. That would be the end of my story had the wooden box containing the bracelet not floated. Days later the box is snatched by a grappling hook thrown from a corsair vessel searching the area like a predator for wreckage and jettisoned cargo from the storm.