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Montenegro
A Novel
By Starling Lawrence HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2006 Starling Lawrence
All right reserved. ISBN: 0060828420
Chapter One
Cattaro, February 1908
Harwell had always prided himself on being a good sailor and a perfectly rational man, but he had been so miserably and unaccountably seasick since the steamer left Trieste two days earlier that it was difficult to accept this affliction as anything other than an omen. Much of his boyhood was spent racing small boats on the Norfolk Broads, and the Channel crossing, with its chops and cross seas, was familiar, even welcome to him. He once read three chapters of a Russian novel in the course of a Channel storm so violent that even the steward in the first-class lounge had to excuse himself.
For these two wretched days, however, he had scarcely left the deck, hoping that the vicious wind, the bora, howling the length of the Adriatic, might clear his head and settle his stomach. The wind set the old Ungaro-Croatian steamer into a continuous shuddering roll as soon as she cast off it drove the smoke straight over the bows like a pennant pointing south, covering the deck and his clothes with a fine grit; and when he was sick, which had happened more times than he could remember, eddies of this same wind flung his vomit back on him, spattering his trousers and shoes. He remembered withdisgust a plate of macaroni he had eaten just before boarding the ship. He had no notion of what the sauce had been, and he had never liked that sort of food anyway. He determined never to eat it again.
It was dawn now, or nearly so, for the light was trapped behind that great mountain, which he could see only in outline. He had spent the night in a deck chair, muffled in two blankets. The steward had been alarmed at the idea of providing either the chair or the blankets at such a late hour, and had demanded security of two sovereigns and all the Italian coins in his pocket. Harwell, already in low spirits, was first annoyed, then offended, for the steward clearly doubted his sanity. Why would a man about to jump overboard need a deck chair? And would he conceivably take it with him over the side? Well, he had been warm enough, or nearly so, and he had even managed to sleep for a while. He had woken once and glimpsed, across the broken sea, the lights of Ragusa, that ancient city which he had hoped to see in the daylight, her ramparts set against the unforgiving mountains of Illyria.
He leaned now on the rail, for he was exhausted still, and felt the vibrations of the steamer altering as she steered a majestic curve out of the violent waters of the Adriatic, through the narrows, and into that vast, sheltered bay, the Bocche di Cattaro. The dark mountain, his destination, now limned with light, lay dead ahead, and ghostly white villages defined the shoreline. The wind had dropped, and he was surrounded by clouds of clamoring gulls. He breathed deeply and contemplated the possibility of breakfast.
The steward seemed surprised to see Harwell still alive, but made a swift recovery, hoping to preserve last night's deposit as this morning's gratuity. At last the man surrendered the two gold coins, holding back the Italian ones, which Harwell let him keep.
The cabin stank so that the sickness nearly came back over him, but he managed to change out of those filthy trousers and scrape the worst off his shoes. He packed quickly, cursing himself for having too much luggage, and found a place for his shoes in the side of one valise where they would not do too much damage. The trousers were impossible. He thrust them under the pillow, muttering that the steward could jolly well earn his tip.
Dressed in breeches and the beautifully burnished Maxwell boots his mother had given him as a going-away present, assured by the steward that his luggage would meet him on the quay, he set off in search of breakfast. But the door of the dining room was still locked: perhaps he was the only passenger disembarking at Cattaro? Sustained raffling of the brass handles eventually provoked a response. A sleepy waiter opened the door and set a place on the table that had only recently been his bed.
Harwell perceived a cruel irony in the fact that whereas he had been offered all sorts of food when he wasn't able to eat it, he now found only two brittle rolls and a pot of last night's coffee, partly warmed. There would be worse before long, he supposed, surprising himself with this gloomy reflection. He was a young man neither of great family nor of great intellectual achievements, but of energetic enthusiasm for whatever tomorrow might bring. And this trip -- he hardly presumed to call it a mission -- which was starting so unpromisingly, had seemed the perfect thing, seemed to suit him exactly. Harwell, little given to analysis or examination of motive, knew this in his bones, and it had been confirmed for him by Raymond the last time they met.
"You are extraordinarily lucky, Bron," Raymond said, as if he were about to complete his thought. Instead, there ensued a silence that lasted until Harwell looked over to catch that long, fine face, now half in shadow, closed in upon some reflection that would not be shared. Raymond was shifting his glass back and forth on the arm of his chair, an almost imperceptible motion that set the firelight to playing in the tiny amber lake of his brandy.
"Lucky," he went on at last, "because whether you know it or not, you have found something to do that will engage you completely, and a part of the world you will never tire of."
Continues...
Excerpted from Montenegro by Starling Lawrence Copyright © 2006 by Starling Lawrence. Excerpted by permission.
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