Chapter 181: The World Beneath the Lion

The pen that had put a tooth into the children’s book was back at work the next morning.

This time, it wrote accounts.

The colleganza represented a little more than half a million grossi in silver. Every house that had sat out the season had now come in, each taking a smaller share than the one before it, leaving a little piece for everyone so each could love the venture and none could claim to own it.

Vito pressed the Barozzini seal into the wax on a notarial document to give Caterina authority in every trade the household owned, then pushed the seal across the oak table.

"Ecco, ecco, signed, sealed, and witnessed. Your painted saint has climbed down out of his niche, cara mia, and put every candle in the house into the hands of the one woman in Venezia who knows what each of them costs. Count them kindly."

Caterina turned the seal over in her palm. "Tienilo, your gilt, marito. Keep it for the Palace, where it shines and costs none. Anything that costs money comes to me. Va bene? Va benissimo."

She already had the benches, the books, and the key. Now she had the strongbox, the trades, the shipyard, the Murano rents, and the house itself, while Vito was far too busy with the Republic politics, the Doge Palace, the Council, the Young and Old, and the company.

The trades were getting along perfectly well without him.

The distilling on the islet ran every day God sent, keeping the vintners busy supplying it, while the glassworks at Murano paid its rent on the appointed day. Nestor cursed over ten berths of keels at the Castello yard, the silk frame twisted thread for the Morosini looms, the stamps beat rags for Ca’ Memmo, Ca’ Zane’s basins waited for the summer sun, and Candia sent in its tolls.

No one needed anything bought, and the east wing’s walls went up one course at a time, while the children’s room could wait until its turn came.

Vito would have no season accounts to prepare this year, a prospect he took with a grin. The books were the one room in the house where he had never managed to be right, and he was pleased to have been dismissed from it.

At night, once the twins were asleep, the lamp went into the master chamber, where he kept his promise, drinking her dry, as sworn, and begging for the dregs, as threatened, in a bed that had never been designed for silence.

Caterina’s ache finally eased, a pillow was bitten at the proper moment, and the bed had plenty to say about the whole business.

Afterward, with her head on his arm and the lamp turned low, Vito asked about the leaf, wanting to know which houses had pushed for a larger share and which had asked for none.

Somewhere during those nights, the three journeys began to take form.

"Sette notti, Vitale. I counted them on my fingers, seven nights of good lamp oil with your nose in that Queen’s alphabet. So, it is you who goes."

"And who else in all the lagoon, tell me, is fool enough to learn that alphabet for the pure pleasure of it? Only your husband, God help him, who looks at a page of curls and hooks and sees poetry."

Vito would go to Georgia, Nane to Soldaia, and Bepi, Zaccaria, Fantin, and the young kin would take charge of the venture, while Caterina would remain in Venezia with the twins, the household, and the money.

Epiphany opened the palace, and every dawn Vito’s gondola left him between the granite pillars with a Georgian draft tucked into his coat.

He wanted permission from the Great Council to leave, since the old rule still required it and a man who left his seat empty at sea could find it occupied when he returned. He also needed a letter from the Doge to the Queen, whose court had promised to receive friends of Georgia but had made no promise to accept Vito’s word about who he was.

The Old attacked the letter through the Doge’s oath. A Doge answered to the city for every letter sent abroad and was forbidden to conduct private business, so a letter requested by one house, they argued, was that house’s business wearing a ducal cap.

Ser Nicolò wheezed out his objection with one finger raised.

"One lion, hff, messeri! ONE! San Marco gave us one lion, hff, hff, and now the black cat goes prowling for pigeons on the Black Sea, with a ducal ribbon bound round his tail!"

Vito stood in his formal costume. "Messer Nicolò! With all reverence, and I mean every grain of it, hear me out. This letter is the Republic’s business, and no one else’s. Every keel that comes down from that sea pays her customs at the Lido, to the last silver, and what does the Republic keep on those shores to look after them? No consul! Not one!"

Ziani read the letter, then struck out one word. "Ebbene. I answer, Messer, for every word that bears my seal, and I have read these. ’Humbly’ comes out, fuori, out. The Republic does not kneel to a Queen, she writes to her as a friend, and signs as one."

The wax received the Lion, and Cannaregio’s voice came across the hall, dry as a week-old crust.

"Item. The letter is La Serenissima business. The Doge sealed it under the council eyes. Entered. Witnessed. Let it be written, and let nobody plead sleep afterward."

The Great Council approved it, though by a narrow margin, recorded the letter as a gift and the favor as a debt, and the Avogadore entered Vito’s leave in the roll-book so no one could later accuse him of desertion.

Then March loosened the sea, and the caulkers began hammering across the Riva.

Caterina walked the harbor with Bepi, Zaccaria, and Fantin, while the young kin followed behind with their slates. She read the division from a leaf, hull by hull, twenty ships, five galleys and fifteen naves, with new keels already being built on the berths that had been emptied.

She divided them into three groups.

Fifteen went to the venture, bound for Alexandria and the Crusader Kingdoms. Bepi would take the steering oars, Zaccaria would oversee the company, Fantin would stay in the stern cabin with every ring he owned, and the young kin would keep the books.

Four went to Nane, the Contarini war galley and three naves. They would take tools, iron, rope, and a pile driver in pieces, so Soldaia’s fondaco could finally become more substantial than the paper it had been all winter.

The last ship was Zorzi, reserved for Vito and the road to Georgia. He had asked for La Bestemmia, the newest galley on the Riva, but Caterina looked at him, then at her figures, and neither required much thought.

"La Bestemmia, into the harbor of a pious Queen? Madonna, Vitale, the first monk to read her name on the stern would have you drowned before you finished kissing the pier. Take Zorzi. Every wall in that country has its own San Zorzi, so you’ll feel at home, and they’ll feel nothing but blessed."

"Ma va’! A saint to carry the sinner, and the lady’s wit is holier than my ship. Va bene, va bene, moglie, I surrender. I will behave."

The soldiers were divided into the same three groups. Ninety new privates from the Piazza brought the total to three platoons of a hundred, three hundred total.

Domenego’s went with the venture, Pellegrino’s with Nane, and Orso’s with Vito.

Orso’s hundred men would be split between Zorzi’s deck and Nane’s naves. A galley could carry only so many men before there was no room left to row, and a hundred soldiers were more useful when they could actually get somewhere.

That evening, the fleet was displayed in its three groups, each assigned to one of those same roads.

?? FLEET OVERVIEW — BAROZZINI’S FLEET

Fleet Strength : 20 Ships

Company Soldiers : 300

The Southern Road | Alexandria and the Crusader Kingdoms

La Contessa | Flagship

Zustignana | Escort

La Bestemmia | Escort

12 Standard Naves | La Greca, La Barozzina, La Contarina, La Leonessa, La Quinta, L’Orsa, La Mela, L’Anguilla, La Capra, La Corda, La Piuma, Il Cappello

Company : 3rd Platoon

The Black Sea Road | Soldaia

La Verde | Escort

3 Standard Naves | La Rosa, Moresina, La Serena

Company: 1st Platoon

The Georgian Road | Phasis

Zorzi | Escort

Company: 2nd Platoon

The sea opened the week after Easter, and on the dawn of the departure the Molo was crowded all the way to the granite pillars.

Caterina stood between them with a child on each arm. Cristina and Marouda waited behind her with the linen and the slipper, while Gasparo stood behind them, looking thoroughly displeased with each of his chains.

Lucia, nearly nine months old and already a little beast, pulled herself upright by her mother’s collar and bellowed at the twenty ships, while Leo watched the oars with a calm expression.

Vito kissed each little head, then kissed Caterina, taking long enough to give the red caps on the barges enough to count.

"Moglie mia, don’t let them walk before I’m home, eh? I want to be insulted by that child in person, to my face, with the whole family watching. Promise me!"

"The very day after you sail, Vitale, you watch. That one will stand up and march to the door out of pure spite, just to prove she can. Spite she gets from me, the rest she gets from you. Come home regardless. Come home and be insulted."

He grinned all the way to the deck.

The twenty hulls passed through the Lido beneath the Lion and the black lion, their oars rising and falling together as they crossed the Adriatic in one fleet.

Off Cape Malea, they separated, the southern venture turned toward Alexandria and the Crusader Kingdoms, while Nane and Vito continued east for the Horn.

By the end of May, the house was operating in four places at once, and there wasn’t a hilltop in the world tall enough to see all four.

Caterina sat at the oak table in the office, the leaf on her left, the seal on her right, and the children’s thick, plain book open beside her elbow.

Nane stood in the mud at Soldaia beside a pile driver he had named Bortola, hoping the name would frighten the ground into cooperation, and the first pile now stood where the pier had been nothing but paper all winter.

At Alexandria, the venture’s masts crowded the water beneath the Pharos.

And Zorzi sailed alone across open water, with Orso’s soldiers asleep on every plank and the compass steady in its box. She gave Trebizond, whose Emperor owed the Lion no favors, such a wide berth that the city could keep its lights to itself.

No road could bring any of them back to another before autumn. San Michele would come on the twenty-ninth of September, and the roll would be made new whether they were ready or not.