Chapter 173: Family, At Last

The tightening beneath Vito’s palm eased before dawn and came to nothing.

So did every one of the pains San Pantalon sent after it, while Marouda polished the bronze bell every morning and evening until it shone like a church relic.

The house kept watch, ready for an attack no one could say when to expect. Gasparo held the chain, the midwife slept in her shoes in the office, the physician left Tonin’s books alone, the apothecary waited beside the fig tree with his flask, and the surgeon sat under the yard wall beyond the bridge with his silk threaded and ready.

Only three women and Vito were allowed inside the master chamber, and each had to wash to the elbows in lime-water first.

Santa Marta’s day came and went without a child.

Then, at dusk, Caterina’s waters broke on the fresh straw. Vito rang the bell, this time for good reason, and Marouda came running with linen under one arm and her slipper in her fist. For once, she had nothing to hit with it.

The midwife appeared in the doorway carrying the basin of lime-water against her chest. "Ah, no! No, no, no, Messer! Since I took up this trade, not one husband has crossed this threshold, not one! All of Castello came into the world without a man in the room, and look at them, tough as tarred rope, every last one!"

Vito plunged both arms into the basin up to his elbows. "Comare, I promised my wife a very patient basin, and here it is, guarding the door like a saint. Until you tell me otherwise, I’m furniture."

"Furniture doesn’t talk, Messer. Hold her up and hold your tongue."

"Piano, piano, comare. I can promise you one of those. You’ll have to decide which."

She stepped aside, and the night’s work began.

The pains came one after another, each demanding its due.

Caterina gripped Vito’s arms hard enough to leave marks from her nails and swore in two languages. He held her up at the head of the bed, making jokes at first, then fewer as the hours passed, until he stopped altogether.

Outside the door, the household waited at its posts, with no one willing to be the first to ask how things were going.

Past midnight, the daughter arrived, red-faced, furious and bawling. T

The midwife cut the cord with a boiled blade, Cristina wrapped the girl in clean linen, and Caterina’s belly still hadn’t gone down.

The linen beneath Caterina began to turn black. The midwife reached for her pouch of ground ergot, the black spurs that grew on diseased rye, but Vito closed his hand over hers.

She snapped at him. "The ergot, Messer! The ergot, now, give it here! Madonna santa, she’s bleeding like a stuck pig, and you stand there like a... Let go my hand!"

"Wait. Not yet, comare. Wait."

He said it calmly, without a trace of his usual grin. The midwife swore and pressed both hands against Caterina’s belly.

Then her hands stopped. "Madonna santa... Cristo in croce. There’s a shoulder here, Dio bono, there’s another child in there!"

"Another? Panagia mou, another?! I said one! Who signed for two?"

Vito tried to make a joke of it, but his voice shook. "Entered as two, mia cara."

The midwife hands crept lower along the belly, reading it. "Two, then. And the second lies crosswise and I can’t turn it from the outside, not with these hands. Move, Messer! Fetch the physician, and bring whatever it was you bought for this. Now, now, NOW!"

The ergot would force the womb to contract around whatever remained inside, which was the last thing they needed. The physician washed and took his place at the foot of the bed.

The apothecary passed in his flask. Vito held the linen cone to Caterina’s face and tallied her breaths. Her cries grew more calm, and her body began to relax with them.

The midwife put her hand inside the womb, turned the child, and brought it down by the feet. The head caught and the physician took the curved forceps from their boiled cloth, placed one on either side, and eased the child free.

The boy came out blue and silent. The midwife rubbed him hard with linen and breathed into his mouth.

On the third breath, he gave a thin little cry.

The afterbirth came away whole, and the midwife turned it over twice to make certain. The bleeding didn’t stop, more linen went dark beneath Caterina, and by the fifth piece the midwife had stopped checking them.

Once she could swallow again, they put the ergot into a cup of wine.

Caterina cried out when the cramp took hold, but the bleeding slowed and stopped. The two women who had been pricked and tested against her blood were sent back to the pot, their services no longer needed.

Vito said nothing during that quarter hour, and his hands never left their place holding Caterina up.

The surgeon came in from the yard and sewed a tear. Caterina told him in Greek what she thought of his father, his profession, and his needle, while the physician washed the stitches with a preparation made from the green mold growing on the cellar bread.

Lauds rang across the water, and they made the bed again with boiled linen. Vito rebuilt the nest around Caterina, using himself for a bolster, while the two infants lay swaddled in her arms.

Cristina cried into the pot, the midwife took off her shoes and ate her dry bread, the apothecary corked his flask, and Gasparo heard the news at the chain. The daughter cried at everyone in the room, while the son slept soundly.

Caterina surfaced slowly, as if swimming up through a well, her lashes dragging and her voice scraped to a rasp.

Even half-drowned, she demanded the verdict first. "Was I brave, marito? Tell me true, and don’t you dare lie to a woman who’s just been cut. I remember shouting, and a cone, sweet and stinking like a rotten orchard, and after that... nothing at all."

Vito bent until his forehead rested against hers, his eyes rimmed red, and the grin came creeping back. "Brave is for sailors in harbor, anima mia, you were an army. The Doge’s whole fleet would have struck sail at the sight of you, and you cursed the surgeon in Greek, start to finish, while he sewed you. That poor man will be saying prayers for his father’s soul for a month."

Her eyes moved from the girl to the boy.

"Ohimè... ohimè, don’t make me laugh, marito, every stitch pulls like a fishhook. Lucia. Leonardo. Lucia and Leonardo."

"Then Lucia and Leonardo they are, mia cara. It’s entered, sealed, signed. Now give them here, anima mia, give them here and sleep. I’ll guard them like the Arsenal gate."

"Ohi! No! Do not put them down. Not on the bed, not on the shelf, not in anyone’s arms but mine and yours. Do not put them down, marito!"

"Sì."

Caterina slept, and beyond the Lido a fleet sailed on, unaware that the house behind it had gained two heirs.

At dawn, before the parish bell and long before the fishwives began their rounds, Gasparo sent his fastest man by barge to the Palace.

By noon, the Rialto knew. By Vespers, the table in the sala had its cloth back, and the ewer stood at the head beside Marouda’s slipper.

The six little households and the five houses arrived, and every guest washed beneath the slipper. Members of the Great Council stood in line with their hats in their hands and their gray beards dripping.

Ser Nadal Zane brought a sack of white salt for the font. Ser Zuan Michiel poured a cup onto the floor for the stray at sea and for the cradle. Donata Morosini brought a hand’s breadth of mirror so the children could see who was bothering them.

Zio Marco sent nothing, which saved everyone the trouble of pretending to be surprised.

Anyone who touched the children washed first. Their water was boiled, the stumps of their cords were kept dry, and the first milk was saved rather than thrown away. Honey stayed off their gums, visitors were forbidden to kiss their faces, and the shutter remained propped open.

Caterina announced that she would nurse both children herself, before anyone could suggest hiring a stranger. The midwife, who had never seen bleeding like Caterina’s stop within a quarter hour, asked to be taught more.

The Ducal Council had protested all afternoon, but the Doge came regardless. His barge passed beneath the iron grille, and four servants brought his chair up the stairs with the bowl-boy at his elbow.

At the narrow staircase, where a rope served as a handrail and the chair could go no farther, Vito picked up the Doge and brought him the rest of the way. The old man weighed less than the tray of liver and figs, though each step cost him a cough.

At the ewer, the bowl-boy guided his hands into the lime-water, and Vito tied a clean linen cloth across his mouth. He had made the rule about keeping coughs away from the cradle and saw no reason to exempt himself.

Then he settled the Doge into the chair beside the bed, with a dark cloth spread across his lap.

The old man still had his humor regardless. "Muzzled like a mastiff at the Rialto fair, eh? Per San Marco, I broke the walls of an empire, boy, and you tie a rag across my face and call it medicine."

"It’s the rule, and I wrote it. Curse the author."

The Doge took each child in turn on a clean cloth and watched their faces, brushing his thumb over each one.

"I heard two cries from the stairs. You always give more than you promise, Lion’s blood."

Vito knelt beside the chair so his face was even with the old man’s blind one, and for once he let the silence run long. "Messer Doge, a debt I haven’t named I cannot enter, and I will not leave this one unwritten. So I name it now. Stand godfather to them, Messer. To both of them, Lucia and Leonardo."

For a deep moment the old lion’s face softened beneath the linen.

He turned toward the bed, toward Caterina, and gave a small fatherly nod. "To both, putela, to both! Santa Lucia came home in my hold when we took the city, God’s truth, so I’ll stand for her namesake gladly, and for the boy besides. And the devil take whoever says it’s too much. Tell Ambrogio not to dawdle, I’m old, and I mean to be alive for the water."

Vito rose. the grin breaking wide above the rag, and bowed to the old man, the bed, and the two small bundles in turn. "A saint, a Doge, and Ambrogio, madonna, these two will be the most expensively blessed babes in all of Castello. And the Rialto will quarrel for years over whose silver paid for it."

The Doge held each child for a long time. He asked their names twice, then repeated them under his breath, the beads in his other hand slowing as he spoke. His oath forbade him to give gifts, but a name spoken at the font was not a gift.

Caterina wrote one word on his blank line.

Godfather.

She left the sum empty.

At evening, the bowl-boy stood alone at the water-gate carrying one message. The Doge wanted the font filled on the earliest day the Church allowed.

The boy repeated the words exactly, because the old man had made him say them twice.