Back in Kapsali town, my brothers had made certain that no church would perform the Sacrament of Marriage for Charles and me. They ensured that my blessed one would never be an heir to Eternal Life. They went from parish to parish exposing my shame, which was also theirs, and that fact increased their hatred for the child within me. Like their father, they were heartless. One night when they had far too much to drink, they came to the front doors of Sióra Gazi’s villa. Slurring their words, they shouted from the street for their “whore of a sister,” exposing again the details of their own shame.

Sióra Gazi and I had finished our supper and were spending the remainder of the evening on the terrace, as was her custom. All of the lamps in the house were extinguished so that the Sióra could better see the stars. She smoked thin cigars, one after the other, and sipped a small glass of fortified wine. It was a moonless night, and her face was barely visible except for the smoke that billowed from her mouth. When she was informed about the commotion at her front doors, she asked her male servant to bring her a pen, ink, paper, and some candlelight. She wrote a brief note—her handwriting tall and slanting with its loops narrow and slim—and handed it to him. I went inside to watch from an upstairs window as my brothers ripped the note from the servant’s hands. Vinegar and the center of bones were rising from my brothers’ bodies as they read it. I felt my evening meal returning to my throat. My brothers looked at each other and without exchanging a word they ran into the night, as if dogs were after them. The Sióra never shared with me what she wrote. “Your brothers,” she said, “are never coming back.” True to her words, the night ate them whole.

By the time that we were on Santa Maura Island, the undeniable state of my condition meant that the Sacrament of Marriage had to be delayed until after the birth of my blessed one. I cried and begged when Charles told this to me, but he calmly repeated himself, as though I had not heard him the first time. Charles said that once we were in Dublin, he would arrange for our child to be baptized. No one will know of our circumstances there, he said. He thought that this promise would ease my mind. It did until I understood that the Church of Ireland was not my religion, and Ireland was not my island.

When Giorgio was six months in the world and my blessed second was five months within me, the promise of Dublin disappeared. Charles received his orders to sail for Dominica, and there was no set date for a return to Santa Maura.

“George will miss his father,” I said to my husband, making sure to use the English name that he had given to my blessed one. “Who will buy George his first toy soldiers?” I asked.