Decades later, luxury liners would dominate the seas—outfitted with swimming pools and opulent Turkish baths for the elite. But aboard this modest vessel, passengers killed time in smoky bars or at gaming tables.

  Yvette neither drank nor gambled. Two weeks of oceanic emptiness yawned ahead. Remembering books in Ulysses’ luggage, she trudged to the stern deck.

  True to habit, he was fishing.

  Fishing.

  In an era of telegraphs and steam engines, the pastime seemed quaint. Yet Ulysses embraced it with monastic focus, ignoring chitchat. Ladies who’d approached him left scowling—a shock, given Frenchmen’s reputation for flirtatious politesse.

  Salon-bred gallants knew: Even disinterested, one must flatter. Ulysses broke every rule.

  The crowd around him buzzed. A sailor spotted Yvette: “Mr. Fisher landed a 360-pound tuna! Bloody marvel!”

  Memories flashed—documentaries of Tokyo’s predawn fish auctions, million-dollar bids for such leviathans. Her hospital meals suddenly haunted her.

  “Mount it in your hall!” urged a gentleman. “Proof you bested nature!”

  Yvette’s hope deflated. Stuffed fish couldn’t be eaten.

  Catching her crestfallen look, Ulysses intervened: “We’ll feast. My share’s the belly cut—ventresca.”

  Sailors grinned. That fatty pink strip, seared crisp with lemon—Roman emperors’ fare.

  At lunch, Yvette cut into her portion. Outer crust gleamed ivory; the center blushed like spring orchards.

  “Divine,” she sighed.

  Ulysses nodded. “English avoid fish—except clergy. Fridays forbid meat, but fish ‘dies naturally.’”

  “Semantic loopholes?”

  “Holy ones.”

  Later, she asked for books. He reluctantly produced The Decameron from a plague-ridden stack.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “Scholarly works…” He cleared his throat. “This… has stories.”

  "The Decameron?" Yvette mused, turning the volume in her hands. Though unread by her, its title carried less morbidity than The Black Death of Constantinople or A Journal of the Plague Year. Accepting Ulysses' loan with thanks, she sought the ship's brightest lounge to begin.

  ["In the year of Our Lord 1348, the fairest of Italian cities—noble Florence—was visited by a deadly pestilence."]

  The opening lines confirmed her suspicion. Of course the physician would choose plague literature—even for fiction.

  ["Men and women alike abandoned homes, fortunes, even kinfolk to flee infected cities. As if God's wrath halted at city gates..."]

  ["...some formed ascetic brotherhoods in sanitized estates, supping on delicate meats and vintage wines. Others embraced debauchery, carousing through emptied taverns..."]

  The ink-stamped words blurred into memory. During her Kabbalistic ascents through the Sephirotic paths, elemental visions came: Oceanic nightmares during Water's trial; London's Great Fire blazing through Fire's initiation. But before flames, she'd wandered plague-rotted streets—1666's prelude to purification.

  Historical records mirrored her visions. Contemporary accounts told of egg-sized buboes flowering in armpits and groins, subcutaneous hemorrhages blackening corpses—hence "Black Death." She'd stood where London's purifying inferno began at Pudding Lane, now commemorated by a gilded flame sculpture. How ironic that apocalyptic fire proved gentler than pestilence.

  Boccaccio's Florentine horrors merged seamlessly with her London nightmares through his bureaucrat's crisp prose. Through his words, she revisited self-flagellants lashing raw backs for divine mercy, plague-swollen dancers jerking to a city's death rattle—civilization unraveling as Florence became asylum and charnel house.

  Like Poe's Masque of the Red Death, where revelers perished behind walls meant to shield them, Boccaccio's villa-bound nobles now struck her as deluded as sandcastle kings. Their merry tales curdled when juxtaposed with Yvette's memories of bricked-up homes where families screamed forgotten behind quarantined doors.

  Plague, the great equalizer: wealth couldn't buy caregivers when Death came knocking. Millionaires died alone, their funeral procesions empty of former sycophants. The harder Boccaccio's characters laughed, the more macabre their mirth—like grapeshot tearing through carnival silks.

  Yvette slammed the book shut, nausea rising.

  "Pardon, sir..."

  A tremulous voice broke her trance. A young woman hovered nearby—Miss Hettie West, companion to the ship's pearl-drenched dowager.

  "...we're short a whist player."

  Normally Yvette despised cards, but tonight human chatter seemed vital antidote.

  Mrs. Palmer's oyster-parlor court proved insufferable. The merchant's widow held sway over fawning attendants, while Hettie's fiancé lingered conspicuously absent from the card table.

  "Your uncle lacks decorum," Mrs. Palmer sniffed, still nettled by Ulysses' earlier rebuff.

  "Overcome by London's Season," Yvette deflected smoothly, earning a seat. Yet as cards snapped like bones, she wondered—why seek outsiders when family idled nearby? The unspoken question lingered like funeral lilies.