Hopefully she won’t judge me too harshly.
Geórgios spoke without further hesitation. But then, he’d always loved a good sailor’s yarn. “We found him…how do you say it? Shipwrecked! His ship was wrecked, his men left without him, and we found him all alone. He was very thirsty.”
“What about the pirates?” Jane continued. “Eli mentioned there were some pirates about?”
“But this is me!” Geórgios said, his booming voice full of mirth. “I am the pirate!”
“You’re…a pirate.”
Really?Jane looked him up and down with a critical eye. He would certainly be useful in a fight, with that physique. And he was wearing nearly as much gold as a British dandy, from a tooth that glinted when he smiled to the rings on his fingers. But he didn’t look…well,evilenough. And shouldn’t he be Eli’s enemy, not his friend?
Wasthiswhat Eli had been hiding: that he’d secretly become a pirate sympathizer?
“Yes.” Geórgios laughed. “Do you know, we have the same word in Greek?Peirates!But we are not criminals, beautiful Jane. No, no. We are like the man in the story. Eli, what is the story you told me? About the man who steals but is good?”
“Robin Hood.”
“Yes,” Geórgios shouted. “We are like Robin Hood!”
“Robin Hood gave the moneyaway, though, Geórgios,” Eli said with a glance out the window to the gardens where the others strolled. “You kept it all.”
“Robin Hood gives to the poor,” Geórgios replied. “Butweare poor, so…” He spread his great hands wide as if to say,What choice did I have?
“I see,” said Jane. He wasn’t nearly as fearsome as she would’ve expected, for a pirate. And as he was proving so talkative, she could hardly leave. Perhaps this was how the sympathizing began.
“After theAgonas—” He stopped abruptly and turned to Eli. “Tell me how to say theAgonasin English.”
“The Greek revolution against the Ottomans.”
“Why is this twice as long?” Geórgios frowned. “But you understand. TheAgonasbrought us many years of war and hardship. Peloponnisos and Athína were freed, but those in Konstantinoúpolis, Kríti, and many other places, they had to leave their homes or they died. We had nothing. So.” He shrugged broadly. “We had no choice but to bepeirates.”
Jane wasn’t sure she was following all of this, but they were getting off track. “And so you found Eli,” she prompted. Let them stick to that part.
“Yes.” Geórgios nodded. “We took him to our ship. We wanted to sell him to England. But then our men got sick, many died, so…” Geórgios spread his hands in that same gesture. “We needed more men to sail the ship.”
“You see?” Eli looked indignant. “I told you all that.”
“So you just…kept him on your ship for two years. Without ever seeking a ransom.”
Eli appeared supremely uncomfortable at this turn in the conversation, as though he would have liked to interrupt, but he clenched his jaw shut and let them carry on. “Two years?” Geórgios repeated. “Oh no, we escaped before that and went toGallía.”
“Gallía?” Jane blinked in confusion. “Where’s that?”
“MayItell this story?” Eli offered. “I think I could offer some important nuance that Geórgios is lacking.”
“You had your chance,” Jane protested. “And anyway, I like the way he tells it. We’re covering a lot of ground.”
Happily, Geórgios seemed the type to keep talking once he’d started. “Ah, what do you call it in English? The place where they pray to thepappasGregorios.”
“Do you mean the pope?” Jane squinted at him. “Ireland?”
“No, no,” he amended. “Where they eat many cheeses.”
“France?”
“Yes!” he exclaimed, triumphant. “France.Gallía.”
She turned to Eli. “You’ve been in France for the past…how long, exactly?”
