Chapter 176: A Republic of the Sea

Ziani reached the end, went back to the clause about his purse, and read that one a second time, moving his lips over the words while the forty-nine shifted their feet in the calle and the boy carrying the old Doge’s cushion changed arms.

At last, Ziani rolled up the oath and handed it to Cannaregio, who took it in both hands. He looked ready for a wedding or a funeral, and in Venezia those two occasions could demand much the same expression.

"Pietro Ziani!"

Cannaregio bawled, in the flat.

Then again, so that no one at the back could claim he hadn’t heard:

"Pietro Ziani! Doge of La Serenissima, entered, witnessed, and owing!"

The calle passed the name to the Piazza, and the Piazza passed it to the bells. They rang from San Marco across the lagoon to the Lido.

The crowd outside Ziani’s house went home shouting his name, and by dawn it had returned with everyone else it could find.

The Piazza filled with every trade. The popolani arrived in wool, the fishwives came with their baskets still hanging from their hips, and the Murano glassworkers wore soot on their cuffs. The cittadini took the steps in good cloth, accompanied by their notaries and writing boards, while the bronze horses looked down their noses at the whole business.

Father Ambrogio had left his cathedral for the day and walked the crowd with a basket of blessed candles, selling them at a Doge’s price. He wept as he sold them, which did no harm to business.

The old men stood at the front, the same men who had followed the bier bareheaded. They had been young when the Piazza killed a Doge, and now the Republic was asking those same stones to approve another, though this time the stones seemed more agreeable.

"This Ziani, ciò, what manner of beast is he? Lion, or lamb, or only an old goat in a fine hat?"

"Eh, the old one, God rest his poor blind eyes, he couldn’t see a page!"

"And this one, ciò, this one can’t leave off reading! Forty-nine of the best men in Venezia stood in the calle while he studied an oath by lamplight! A clause at a time, I tell you, a clause at a time!"

"Bòn! A man who reads, ciò, he is a man who counts! And a man who counts pays on the pier, in silver, on the spot! None of your ’next Ascension, bella, my cousin has the money!’ Mi, I’ll take a reader over a saint any market day!"

At Terce, the great door beneath the bronze horses was pushed open, and the Republic emerged in all its separate ranks. The nobility took one side, the clergy the other, while the cittadini and popolani filled the Piazza below.

The old man’s bearers stood at the foot of the steps with nothing in their hands. Cannaregio brought the oath, and the Avogadore, who had crossed the Piazza with the forty-nine and the leaf tucked under his arm, took his place beside him.

Ziani stood between them in plain cloth.

The people had been excluded from the choosing, but now they were being asked to approve the result. No one commented on the arrangement, though the stones remembered what happened in the Piazza when the people turned against their Doge, and they had no reason to forget it.

"Popolo de Venezia!"

The eldest Avogadore raised the leaf so everyone in the Piazza could see it.

"The forty-nine have chosen Pietro Ziani to be your Doge! Se el ve piase, ciò, will you have him?"

The answer rose in ten thousand throats in one throat, hats flung up and caught and flung again, and it hit the front of San Marco and spread back out over the water.

"Sì! Sì, sì, Sì! Ziani! Viva el Doge! Viva Ziani!"

San Marco’s nave was gold, dark, and thick with incense.

The Piazza was shut outside, but its people kept shouting Ziani’s name through the stone.

The new slab over the old Doge’s grave lay pale in the floor. Ziani stopped on it for one breath as the old men behind him uncovered their heads.

Ziani placed his hand on the Gospels and read every clause aloud before swearing to it.

The Doge was answerable to the city for every letter he sent to a foreign ruler.

He could accept no gift worth mentioning, conduct no private business, and leave Venezia only with permission. The Ducal Council would watch his comings and goings, and he must obey the laws and the decisions of the councils while keeping the state’s property from becoming his own.

The office was his for life, but the oath was the leash. The Republic had spent generations building a house of old silver, and now it had a Doge who couldn’t trade it for his own benefit.

Mass was sung. Dorsoduro, who had stayed awake through the entire election, slept through the whole service with his hat in his lap, and no one remarked on that either.

At Sext, the Doge emerged through the great door wearing a new mantle stiff with gold thread, and Cannaregio set the plain cap on his head with both hands.

Banners went ahead in pairs, white and red and blue and purple.

Behind them came a boy carrying a white candle taller than himself, a gold umbrella opened over a sky that had no need of shade, a naked sword held high, and six silver trumpets that Venezia insisted had been given by a Pope.

The Doge walked on his feet, which the Piazza found considerably more reassuring than being carried. The forty-nine followed in their gowns, while the people spotted the Lion on Vito’s mantle and mentioned it out to one another.

At None, the Doge took his seat in the Palace, and the cushion went beneath his feet.

Cannaregio handed over the keys at the door, while another set of galleys departed for Candia, Modon, and Constantinople, carrying the news to men who didn’t yet know that there had been a chair to fill.

From the palace, the Doge went down to the harbor and boarded the state barge between the two granite pillars his father had raised. Once, on the day he became Doge, a man married the sea on behalf of Venice.

After that, the ceremony took place every Ascension, provided the weather and the Republic agreed.

The barge moved across the lagoon.

The forty-nine followed in their own barges, while every trade in the lagoon turned out in its own boats.

At the Lido’s porto, the Doge stood in the bow and spoke the vow in Latin.

"Desponsamus te, mare, in signum veri perpetuique dominii!"

The ring from San Marco’s treasury went over the side and disappeared. Once again, the Republic had given gold to the sea, and the Patriarch raised his hand over the water.

"Benedic, Domine, aquas istas!"

Within the hour, a net came up from one of the Chioggia boats crowding the porto. A fish thrashed silver in the mesh, and someone held it high for the barge to see. The whole porto cheered, as though the sea had sent an official reply.

Vito had read about the ’Marriage of the Sea’ more often than he had read the Gospels, but not one page had mentioned a net. The procession continued to Mass at the Lido, and the Republic had its Doge.

Vespers was ringing when Vito’s gondola reached the water-gate of Ca’ del Leon.

The grille rose on its windlass, and Lucietta swung her jib inboard to make room for him. Gasparo stood by the chain wearing his usual expression, as though the Republic had changed Doges without bothering to inform the man responsible for keeping the gate.

Vito washed his arms to the elbows at the ewer, as everyone entering the house was required to do, and the noise of the Republic fell away behind him.

Caterina lay in the cushions with a sleeping child on each arm, the warehouse key at her belt and ink up to her wrist.

"Xe fato, marito? Dime che xe fato. And quietly, if you love me."

He laughed and nodded. "Fato, fato, mia cara. The Republic has a Doge, and the Doge has a bride with more water than she knows what to do with. She swallowed the ring and sent back one fish, one, and the entire porto cheered as though it were a letter from the Pope."

"Then sit, Vitale, sit."

Caterina tapped the quilt with an ink-black finger. "A Doge is a Doge, amore, God bless him and his fish, but the leaves, ah, the leaves come first. Sit before the lamp gutters and the ink goes dry!"

"Sì, sì, moglie. Comanda ti."

He sat on the edge of the cushions, and Caterina lifted a small heel off the plans for the next season. The accounts and plans spread across the quilt one by one, until Lucia woke and complained about the lamp.