/lit/ - Literature

Half of the Marquessa’s gold piece, she told herself, willing her mind to shift from the boy’s death. Half of the doubloon to make the Key, half of the remainder to be split with de Alcoçaba. She ran the sums in her mind, concluding that she’d come away with something between one and two fifth’s worth of a doubloon in gold. “The same price the King receives for New World gold,” she said softly, amused at the thought of receiving a monarch’s cut. In a single day, she may double or even triple her life savings. If the prices in Havana were similar to those in Seville – and, she estimated, a drop of about half would not be unfair to reason – she had enough for a modest house, for good furnishings, for sheer clothes, a few months pay for a pair or trio of guardsmen, and perhaps enough money to provide for the girls in lean weeks. She beamed at an idea made real; she’d thought she’d need to extort huge fees from the officers of this ship to finance her own brothel once they reached Cuba, and here she would only need to spread her legs once to see it happen. She would have preferred to do it for Óscar or perhaps Jiménez – though for the soldier, she’d doubtless need to take a dose of mercury afterwards to ward off whatever plague he’d picked up from the whores of Holland and Sicily and Istanbul – but no matter, no mind. She clinked the silver coins in the purse hidden in her breasts, wondering what the sound of silver hitting against gold would sound like. Again and again she ran the sums in her head; each time she decided she would need no more, though she reasoned that with another month and a half left on board the ship, she could pursue even more capital, though at her own discretion. She grinned to the night sky, the spread of stars and constellations and a waxing moon, who were the only informants to her new wealth.