Chapter 190: A Stool at the Doge’s Elbow

Cristina’s pot lid had been clanging without a rest since Santa Lucia, and by Epiphany the liver on the Barozzini table had doubled and been promptly ignored. Marouda had also rehung her bronze bell beside the master chamber door.

The Doge Palace opened for the new year, and the new colleganza made its rounds of the Rialto, reaching farther than the last one. Caterina signed with the books resting against the first small curve of her belly, and every house signed after her, accepted the old terms, and took its share.

The twins were told the news over that same time. They were three and a half, which was quite old enough to have complaints and quite young enough to expect them obeyed.

Lucia made the decree, Leo did the tallying, and Caterina had scarcely finished saying that the third child was due in the heat of summer when the little daughter slapped the oak table with her verdict.

She cried out. "Una fiola! Mì lo digo, so a girl it will be, and basta! She stands the door with me, and the dirty ones, back to the wash, tutti, ciò! You, Leo, when she comes, you count her, but good, no little mistakes!"

Leo put both hands on the belly and studied the curve beneath it carefully, no one could accuse him of taking either subject lightly.

"Un... Papà. Do... Mamma. Tre... Lucia. Quatro..."

He tapped his own chest, as though the name still belonged to someone else.

"...mì. Zinque."

The week after Easter the sea opened again, and thirty-three hulls went out along the same two roads, though more ships took the northern one.

Twenty sailed for the Golden Horn, Soldaia, and Phasis under Zorzi and La Verde, with eighteen naves following them, while thirteen went south under La Contessa, Zustignana, and La Bestemmia, with ten naves.

The Rus markets were paying, Phasis was rising, and the southern truce held by custom. A custom, after all, is a lease that requires no notary.

Vito wanted to be home for the birth, so Fantin went north in his place, carrying his voice to the Queen’s table. Marin took the southern fleet with Zaccaria and Domenego, while Orso went north with Bepi at Zorzi’s oars.

At the water-stairs Vito slipped a sealed Georgian letter and a flat boxwood case into Fantin’s coat. Inside lay a Murano mirror for the year’s rent, and Fantin’s rings clicked against the wood.

"Tell the Queen, Fantin, listen, the vine is planted at home, and the harvest comes with the summer heat."

He laughed once, short, and patted the coat twice.

"That woman, she judges everything by the harvest, everything. And ma va’, ostrega, I begin to see her point."

Fantin could turn a funeral into a feast, and in all the years Vito had known him, he had never managed to go three breaths without talking. This time he opened his mouth, looked down at the case in his coat, then closed it again.

The Queen’s table was waiting at the other end of the sea, and for once Fantin had no words to offer it.

The last hull left the porto, and the Lido closed behind her.

The fleets disappeared beyond the reach of any letter, leaving the sea to carry their business and the hall to carry its own.

As normal for the Republic politics, the Doge’s oath left him with no friend at his table, which was why the Great Council had given him six Ducal Councillors instead of one.

The districts of San Marco, Castello, Cannaregio, Dorsoduro, San Polo, and Santa Croce each sent a man, who sat for a year and could be elected again.

The Six watched the Doge’s comings and goings, read the letters he sent abroad, and sealed the things he was forbidden to seal himself, while the hall called each Councillor by his sestiere, which saved everyone the trouble of remembering six names.

The Councillor for Cannaregio was the oldest and the plainest of the Six. He had been named so many times that the Rialto had stopped taking bets on whether he would return.

In the week after Low Sunday he came to the Ducal Council’s table, below the dais, and laid the stick flat before him, there was not a single notch cut into it.

For years he had carried it across his forearm, and now, for the first time, he left it on the table.

"Item. The Councillor for Cannaregio has counted the Republic’s affairs for more years than this hall has had the patience to hear them. Now, with God’s leave, he will count his own. He does not stand again. Entered. And witnessed."

The hall went silent.

By noon the Rialto was taking wagers, and everyone knew the seat would be filled at the sitting after Ascension.

At the next sitting the Avogadore dipped his pen and wrote Benedetto Gradenigo in the margin of the leaf. The Old had put Gradenigo forward, a man gray as a church step who had spent his life tightening the Doge’s oath one clause at a time, always calling it kindness.

Then Donata Morosini’s grandson rose from the Young and offered a second name.

Vitale Barozzi.

The Avogadore wrote the second name beneath Gradenigo’s, and a clerk hurried the leaf down the stairs while the ink was still wet.

The Barozzini would move to an estate in Cannaregio, which was all the roll required.

Vito was thirty, and no one in living memory had sat among the Ducal Council before forty-one, to the point the Rialto was quite certain that a man needed a gray beard before he could warm that stool.

Ser Nicolò stood up with one finger raised and enough wheezing to make sure no one missed the occasion.

"Hff! Madona santa! A Council of boys, messeri, hff, hff, of boys! A boy of thirty, he hasn’t even finished being wrong, hff, and you would sit him on a stool the gray beards have warmed since before he was weaned? Ostrega! Next you will give the Doge a wet nurse, and the Six a cradle!"

"The law, Ser Nicolò, I have read. The oath I have read also, twice, by candle. In neither of them is there an age. Show me the clause and I enter it with joy. A custom, messere, is not a clause."

The ruling followed Vito home and into the office, where Caterina sat at the oak table with her belly against its edge, marking out a fresh figure on a clean leaf. The printed calendar hung on the plaster beside the old chart.

She considered the hall on her fingers, house by house, and entered each one in the books as a voice.

Vito offered to grow a beard before the vote. Caterina told him that a beard on him would be a rumor, and that any seat which kept him from her bed would receive her vote against it.

Then she put down her pen.

"Vitale. Caro. Look at me. What is the seat for? The true answer, the other kind I smell from the stairs. Years I have heard you say ’the Republic’ in that hall, and at my table it sounds like a man selling fish on the third day."

"A door, moglie. Every door in this city shuts, sooner or later, every one. And when this one shuts, I want to be inside. Not on the stair with my cap in my hand, knocking like all the others."

Caterina wrote a line in the book and said no more. She had always known that a house outlasts every chair in it, and a seat on the Six lasted only a year.

Her pen lifted from the page.

In Ascension week the strongroom drawer at Ca’ del Leon yielded five leaves under five seals, and Caterina laid them out on the oak table. Each was a gift the Great Council had entered as a debt, and a debt, as anyone in Venezia could tell you, was worth a vote.

Ser Nadal Zane brought the Salinari, with white salt still on their boots. Ser Zuan Michiel brought the Zara veterans, while Ser Orio brought four of the Old, men who voted with their stomachs.

Donata Morosini’s grandson brought the Young, and Tiepolo brought six of the Netti, each man stamping his name into the floor with his oak heels.

The sons, now wearing their fathers’ gowns, had been boys on the church steps when Vito walked behind their fathers’ biers, and they remembered his face.

In the hall the Old made their last stand. They demanded one condition, any Councillor whose house was named on a leaf must leave the room whenever that leaf was discussed.

Vito rose in his formal costume, buttoned to the throat. "Messeri! The condition, I accept it gladly! When a leaf names the house of Barozzini, Cannaregio, he rises. He bows, so. He leaves the room. The strongbox of that house, it has a keeper, messeri, and she answers to no man in this hall. To me, I assure you, least of all!"

The seal remained with the palace and the key remained with his wife, so the condition cost him nothing.

The vote was taken.

Cannaregio read the count with the tally stick across his forearm. "Item. For Vitale Barozzi, a hundred and eight. For Benedetto Gradenigo, a hundred and two. And Cannaregio, he cuts his last notch for the man who fills his stool. God keep him on it. Entered. And witnessed."

His thumb traveled along the length of the stick, and he cut the notch slowly.

At Pentecost the new Ducal Council stood before the Gospels in the Doge’s chapel at San Marco and swore to keep the Doge’s oath, read his letters, watch his comings and goings, and accept no gift worth mention.

Ziani read the clause about gifts aloud twice, keeping his eyes on the new Councillor for Cannaregio, a man whose road to the palace had been paved with gifts.

Vito took his stool at the Doge’s elbow, and from that dawn onward the hall called him Cannaregio.

The old Councillor went home to his own name. At the palace door, as the Six went inside, he had pressed his tally stick into Vito’s hand and walked down the stairs without a word.

The stick was still warm.

At home Caterina sat in her chair at seven months, with Cristina and Marouda keeping her there, while the twins waited at the Molo steps for the barge.