Chapter 186: The Eyes of the Republic

From the Doge Palace window, the stakes stood across the Bacino, straight at the Arsenal wall.

Below it, the Ducal Council’s table was ready for the day’s business, and Cannaregio’s tally stick lay across the leaves, polished by his thumb until it shone as a saint’s toe.

Four of the Six councillors who had sat when Ziani was named were newly elected, but Cannaregio remained, the oldest and flattest of them all.

The old Councillor for Dorsoduro had gone home to sleep in his own bed, where no one could count his naps, and a younger elector, relatively speaking, who could keep his eyes open had taken his stool by the door. The hall had taken this change rather badly.

A dozen of the Council of Forty were now under the ground or home under blankets, and about thirty new names had appeared on the roll of two hundred and ten. Old men went out in chairs and coffins, while their sons came in wearing their fathers’ gowns, which had clearly been made for different bellies.

Vito attended every funeral and learned the sons’ names before they learned his. A son remembers the man who walked behind his father’s bier, which was a useful thing to know in Venezia.

Then the Ducal Council presented its war edict for Crete to the Great Council, twenty galleys from the Arsenal, with free oarsmen at every bench. The Marinai got their oars, and Premarino received his appointment as captain under the Duke’s seal.

The Old voted against it, all but one, because a stronger Duke meant a stronger Dandolo.

Cannaregio laid the stick across his forearm and addressed the hall.

"Item. Twenty war galleys for Crete. In favor, one hundred and fifty-one..."

His thumb walked the length of the stick.

"Against, fifty-nine. Entered and witnessed."

The notch had dried in the stick, and Premarino’s galleys had disappeared beyond the horizon when the first leaf from Modon arrived under Vito’s arm in early July.

He brought it to the oak table at Ca’ del Leon, beneath the old chart bristling with pins.

At the island of Sapienza in June, out the coast of the Peloponnese, La Serenissima and Prince Geoffrey of Villehardouin had signed their agreement.

Venezia kept Modon and Coron, while the Prince kept the rest of the peninsula. He swore a lasting alliance and acknowledged the Doge as his lord, becoming a vassal of La Serenissima.

The Republic merchants would pay no tolls in his lands, and Venezia could establish a church, a fondaco, and a court in every city of the Principality.

Those two islands stood on the road to Candia and Alexandria, giving the Republic more ports to take on water, buy bread, and hear the news. They were Venezia’s eyes on its own sea.

The next leaves reached the Doge’s table in the third week of July, three in a row, each bearing a different wax seal. Ziani read every one beneath the lamp before the Ducal Council could read it aloud.

The first came from Durazzo, where the canons had chosen an archbishop who wasn’t a Venetian. The Republic held the harbor, and Ziani had no intention of allowing a stranger to take that seat without her permission.

Behind the quarrel stood the Pope, who had the authority to put an entire city under ban, so this was not a matter to settle carelessly.

Ziani proclaimed to the whole hall. "Ebbene. So. The good canons of Durazzo found themselves an archbishop. A stranger! One not born under our lion! And not a man among them could find a pen to ask us first."

His finger tapped the wax, once, twice. "A whole cathedral Chapter, and not one pen. Messeri, tell me, I beg you, is ink so dear in Durazzo this year, or only manners?"

The Doge’s oath forbade him to write abroad on his own authority, so the Ducal Council sealed the answer. Rome would take months to reply, as it generally did.

The second leaf came from Zara.

Hungary had no fleet, but it kept its eye on the town all the same, and the veterans at the city asked for reinforcements, and the Republic sent a few galleys to watch.

The third bore the wax of Otto the Welf, the Pope’s man, who was traveling south over the mountains to claim the Emperor’s crown. His Staufer rival had been murdered the previous summer, which had made the journey considerably easier.

Otto offered to renew the old privileges of Venetian merchants in the Holy Roman Empire, be them safe roads, fixed dues, and their own court.

La Serenissima accepted the privileges and signed nothing that required it to kneel. The Empire’s claim over the lagoon was old paper, and no Emperor had ever managed to enforce it.

German iron traveled those roads, and fixed dues meant that iron arrived when it was supposed to. In the end, a merchant can tolerate many things, but uncertainty about his cargo is not among them.

Vito knew where the Welf’s road ended, but he didn’t know the year it would get there. He said nothing about either matter, in the hall or at home.

The Young nodded, the Old searched for the bait, and the Marinai wanted Zara first.

Ziani laid Otto’s leaf down last.

On San Lorenzo, a satchel arrived at the oak table from Candia by way of Modon. Caterina had already opened her exposures before the oilskin wrapping was off, as there was no reason to waste time when the news might cost money.

The state war fleet had sailed after Pentecost and reached Crete in June.

Premarino’s oars closed the entrance of the cove, while the Duke’s garrisons and the archons’ levies came down the hill roads.

Pescatore found the sea in front of him and an island behind him that refused to rise in his defense. His beached ships burned on the sand, while the Count of Malta escaped in a single small galley, with fewer soldiers aboard than a wedding barge, and made for his island.

The Genoese in Crete’s harbors were put aboard their own ships and sent home with their books. The island was secure by the end of that summer, and it remained so afterward.

Genoa never declared war, but she never forgot what had happened. There are injuries that require no official announcement.

Caterina drew a line through Pescatore’s name.

"Struck." She savored it. "One cove, one corsair, and the whole debt discharged by fire. Paid in smoke, marito. Paid in smoke, and I never had to send a single reminder."

Vito dropped into the chair beside her.

"Two years! Two years, I told Ranieri, if the saints were kind!"

He smacked the table with his palm.

"And the saints, moglie, the saints showed off! Cazzo! Two and a half, with a bonfire thrown in for the feast!"

The box appeared as the ink dried.

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

Beneath the struck name, she began the next line, recording the risks that came with a house’s victories, and this one pointed toward Murano. Her pen stopped above the paper.

On the Assumption, the island she had marked stood in the lagoon. The glass guild grumbled and paid its rent on the appointed day, which was a satisfactory arrangement for everyone who collected it, while the Barozzini’s glasshouse was chucking out clear glass and mirrors by the crate.

At the end of the pier, Tiepolo entered the last master’s name in the warden’s roll, resting on its trestle, and put down his pen. His oak heels rang across the planks.

"Masters of the furnace! Siori, siori! Ostrega, put down your pipes and count with me!"

Heel.

"One! The roll is closed! Closed, I say, nailed shut like a coffin lid on a bad bishop!"

Heel.

"Two! Every pot in Venezia burns on this island, and God help the fool who lights one anywhere else!"

Heel.

"Three! The ground wants its rent, and the ground wants it on the appointed day! Not the day after, ostrega, not the day after!"

Heel.

"And four! Four, my masters! The cat sends his compliments to every last one of you!"

Across the water, the distillery islet had ceased to be much of an islet. Stills covered it from shore to shore, and the last garden and grange wall had disappeared beneath sheds, a cooperage, and a long pier.

Distilled spirits went out from there to every port on the lagoon and down the Adriatic, while the Rialto’s changers sold it onward to Lombard and German buyers.

Father Ambrogio had blessed the last still by the pot, the head, and the worm, and sent a bill for all three. The Church had always understood the importance of proper accounts.

Caterina kept the rents and the casks, while Vito kept the Great Council. Neither crossed the water to inspect the other’s work, and the smoke from the islet drifted north, conveniently away from every nose in Venezia.

At Ca’ del Leon, a felt horse lay on the east wing’s stairs, and since May the house had been thinking its months in firsts.

Leo began running within a fortnight of taking his first three steps. He fell over his own feet, while Lucia ran ahead of him and issued orders in two tongues.

Caterina entered every first in the book, with a witness. A family might forget a great many things, but her book would not.

On the thirtieth of July, the twins turned two. The house kept the occasion plain, with one feast and no speech. Three days later, on the old Doge’s anniversary, Vito brought both children to the tomb at San Marco, where he lit one candle from the year’s candles and held a child on each arm while it burned.

The Godfather line in Caterina’s book still had no sum beside it, and she wrote none.

On the stairs, Lucia took the horse from Leo’s hand with an oarsman’s grip and held it above her head.

"Mia! Mia, mia! Dikó mou!"

Leo looked at his empty hand, drew a breath, and spent his first word pointing at her with his whole arm.

"Lu-CHI-a!"

Cristina’s spoon remained in her apron, and Marouda’s slipper remained on her foot. Both women were too busy listening to remember what they had been doing.

The twins slept in separate rooms in the east wing, and the master chamber belonged to Vito and Caterina again.

It was their last front in a long war.

The married couple went at each other every night with an appetite that alarmed the servants. Cristina maintained that a man with a full belly had no time to sin, and she fed Vito liver, bream, and a third helping to establish the matter.

He disproved her every night, and the bed frame complained until dawn while the household did its best to hear nothing. Cristina’s theory hadn’t been defeated for lack of food.

Some nights, when even the two of them had run out of strength, they brought a wine jug down to the water-gate landing and sat with their feet over the black water, passing the jug back and forth between them.

On the feast of the Cross, the bell at San Nicolò on the Lido began ringing for sails.

Vito and Caterina stood between the granite pillars when it started.

The Phasis stone ought to have stood by now, and the sea would close at San Martino whether it had or not.