Flight From Honour

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The little fishing boat didn’t take shape in the dawn mist until long after the creak of its oars and the irregular slap of water had reached the shore. Then it gradually grew detail and colour as it scraped its way past bigger boats into Muggia’s inner harbour. Any watcher might have wondered why it was back so much later than other boats in the local fleet. However, nobody was bothering to watch, since everyone in the village knew it had paused to take on a Mysterious Stranger from an Italian ship in the Gulf. But the Stranger himself was city-bred and still believed he was on a Secret Mission as he stepped on to the fish-scaled and slippery quayside.

Although he was shivering with cold and damp, he still saw the huddled village as having the charm of a stage set. And indeed, if anybody had written an opera about fishermen of the North Adriatic, he could have taken the whole inner harbour, with its boats and cluttered quays, and fitted it onto the stage of La Scala. Only the tiny castle in the background and the narrow alleys leading off in all directions, and already beflagged with damp washing, would have needed to be painted on the backdrop.

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