Chapter 184: A Private Lion

The grille stood open over the black water, and Lucietta swung her jib inboard to make room for the gondola. Vito came up from the landing with the case under his arm and found the whole household drawn up in the androne like a fleet awaiting orders.

The washing rule was still in force. Marouda protected the ewer as fiercely as Father Ambrogio protected his alms box, slipper in hand, while Vito scrubbed up to his elbows and she held his felt horses over the steam from the kettle.

Then the floor started shaking, figuratively.

Lucia had been walking since midsummer and had taken the business very seriously. She marched across the wet stone, swinging her fists as a herald with six silver trumpets, her dark eyes on her father, then snatched a felt horse from Marouda and bit its ear clean off.

Leo couldn’t walk yet, but he dragged himself along the floor, managed to stand his felt horse on the rim of the basin, and plunged both arms into the lime-water up to his elbows. His father had come home, and he intended to take part in the welcome.

The little girl stopped at Vito’s shins, raised one hand, and spoke the first word of her life.

"Ba-sta!"

Vito dropped to one knee and raised his hands in surrender. "Ma va’, va’! Ostrega! Thirteen months in this world, and already she closes the sitting on me! Basta, and the doors are barred! Did I not ask for it, moglie? Did I not beg for it, to be insulted in person, to my face, before the whole house? And here it comes, served hot, and paid in full!"

At the head of the stairs Caterina developed a sudden, passionate interest in the roof beams, the children’s book pressed to her side, while the corner of her lips lost a long war with the rest of her face.

Marouda picked up one child in each arm and marched them upstairs.

Upstairs, Caterina gave him five months’ worth of news while he got his boots off. She had kept the house, the strongbox, the leaf, the trades, and two children. The east wing had reached its roof beams, and two doors were already hung for the children’s rooms.

She opened the book on the bed and ran her finger beneath the first line. "Addì, the morning after the fleet’s sailing. Item, the girl stood alone at the cradle at dawn, no hand to help her. Cagione, dispetto. Spite, pure and undiluted. Witness, Marouda, who crossed herself twice. Padre. assente."

She raised her eyes over the page, and let the silence hang.

"Padre... entered as late."

Vito pulled her into his lap, book and all. "Late, am I? Then put the arrears in the book, moglie, and I’ll pay them in kind, with interest, sì, every night the book allows."

Marouda entered without saying a word, picked up both cradles with a sleeping child in each, and carried them out. The lamp burned down to a pinched wick, the bed took care of the rest of the night, and the case waited on the peg-stand for the palace.

In the morning Vito climbed the Doge Palace stairs in his formal costume, the case under his arm and Venezia roaring behind him.

The Great Council hall hummed like a hive. The Young occupied their goose-down cushions, the Old sat on bare oak, and Marco’s pudding hat lay on the front bench. Between them, the three middle benches were packed tight, checking everything.

Vito bowed. "Messer Doge, I bring Messer Marino Zeno’s answer, word for word. He laid his silver seal on the table, and it rang like a little bell. He asked me to say that he set it down as a gentleman sets down his sword."

Ziani read the case clause by clause. At last, the Venetian Quarter entered the Republic’s books, with a podestà sworn to the Doge’s seal for two years. His name was Ottaviano Querini, of an old house with clean books, and the Rialto paid every bet it had placed on the Netti losing the post.

The Old struck back within the week.

Ser Piero rose one slow step at a time, his left foot always half a beat behind the right, crossing himself every second stride.

"Sancte Marce, defende nos! A second lion! A second lion prowls the shore of the Greeks, Messeri, with a charter in its jaws and soldiers at its heels, and this hall never gave its leave! Never! Not by a syllable, nor by a nod! San Marco gave Venezia one lion, and now the cadet comes to plant his own in Greek dirt! Strike his name from the roll! Strike it, I say, and let the ink run black upon it!"

The hall thundered until the benches shook.

It wasn’t Vito who replied, but the Avogadore, who laid his palm flat on the leaf.

"Hear the record, Messeri."

He let the word sit. "Soldaia belongs to the private household. The archon’s steward issued that charter under three seals of that town, and not one, Ser Piero, I have inspected them, not one seal of the Republic stands upon it. The soldiers belong to the household company, the ships are the house’s private ships, as for your lion..."

A dry rustle passed over his face that might once have been a smile. "I am told it is a black cat painted on a plank. A private enterprise is no business of this hall, and the charge is returned unheard, and let this be written beside it, that no man may plead ignorance after, the Republic owes that house no subsidy in that place."

Phasis was different, for the Doge’s letter had opened that door, and the Great Council left the consul’s seat open. The ruling had saved his position, but it had also cost him the Republic’s support overseas.

San Michele came on the twenty-ninth of September. The roll was made new, Vito’s name remained on it, and the Old didn’t move.

A week before San Martino, the last galleys out of Modon brought a satchel wrapped in oilskin. Inside were the Duke’s letter and a third dry note from Leon, who gave the war one line and devoted the rest to his own position.

Pescatore had landed in the spring, in a cove in the far southwest, behind the white mountains, but he had found no countryside willing to rise for him. The Duke’s garrisons came down the coast road, the archons’ levies came down the hill roads, and the Count of Malta found himself pinned inside his cove, with his ships on the sand and no way out.

He was alive, but out of reach. The war never came to Chania, Rethymno, or Candia.

The island held because the old arrangements had held. The plots were broken, the archons kept their places, and the barns were full.

The box arrived that night. It was as empty as a plank.

?? [HISTORICAL DIVERGENCE CONFIRMED — REWARD : 100 FATE]

San Martino came, and the sea closed.

On Epiphany, Vito’s gondola landed between the granite pillars, and the year’s news came pouring in like cargo from a late fleet. Ziani read every leaf in full before the Ducal Council could get around to reading it aloud.

Boniface of Montferrat was dead. The Bulgarians had ambushed him on the road home from Serres, and he beat them off, rode after the men who had fled, and took an arrow for his trouble. They cut off his head and sent it to Kaloyan as a gift.

Kaloyan then marched on Thessalonica and died beneath its walls that October, with the Greeks insisting Saint Demetrius had put a spear through him. His baby son took the throne, and the Lombards submitted to Henry.

Sanudo kept his islands, and Venezia kept Modon and Coron. The Sultan al-Adil’s treaty was read aloud, and Soranzo finally received Alexandria’s Consul title he had been using for years. In Genoa, a podestà swore on every saint he owned that the Count of Malta sailed under no flag but his own, though every tavern on the harbor had a different account.

Then the Doge read two edicts of his own. Charters held abroad would have to be shown at the Great Council and copied, without giving the Republic any claim to them, while colonial podestàs would serve fixed terms and answer to the Avogadori at home.

The Marinai rose next. They wanted the Barozzini’s hull designs shown to the state and declared the property of the Republic.

Ziani turned a leaf and read for a moment. "Ebbene. The Republic may ask, Messeri, but a wish is not a charge, and I do not rule on a wish. Lay a charge before me, a name, a deed, a day, and I will read it."

He folded his hands.

"Until then, there is nothing before me to decide."

No one laid a charge, and the midday bell rang over a hall where nothing had moved.

At home, the oak table had the answers the hall couldn’t provide. The year’s accounts closed with the houses making a little over a third on their silver again.

Their take was a fifth larger than before, while the tolls, stills, rents, salt, paper, and silk had all climbed by a third.

On San Nicolò’s Day, ten naves of the new design went down on the ten berths at Castello, and the shore rang like a bell-founder’s yard.

The Arsenal wanted to know how they had done it. First came letters from the red caps, then polite visitors wearing good shoes, and finally a barge.

The house greeted every one of them with a smile and showed them nothing.

When the barge came alongside the yard wall, Nestor slipped the key to the sheets chest down the front of his shirt. No red cap was likely to put a hand in there.

"The Arsenal owned these hands once, red cap. Bought the days, sold the sweat, and never, not once in all my years, asked what was in the head above them."

He spat neatly into the water, just short of the bow. "And now it comes rowing up to my wall, hat in hand, to ask? Ah, no, no. Go home. Tell your masters I said so. Tell the saints, if they’re listening. If they want to know how it’s done, let them go and ask the oak!"

The months passed with the wind, and the sea was about to open again, as though it had only been waiting behind a door.

On the first morning of the new season, a boy at the yard gate held out a leaf bearing the Doge’s wax, addressed to Nestor.