Chapter 191: A Little Order, a Lot of Trouble

The barge that had brought Vito home brought him back between the granite pillars at dawn.

At the Ducal Council’s table, he laid the old man’s tally stick across his forearm.

The Councillor for San Marco was the eldest, with a fat beard and a precedent ready for every question, including those no one had thought to ask.

Castello had been born in the Arsenal and still wore tar beneath his nails like a family title, and San Polo lent money on the Rialto and checked the legs of every stool before sitting down, though he was rarely satisfied with what he found.

Santa Croce was hard of hearing and cupped his ear toward whoever spoke, and the table had learned that any clause he heard twice was clear enough for the whole Republic. Dorsoduro, the youngest besides Vito, was forty-two, awake, and wrote down everything anyone said.

The Six read the Doge’s letters to foreign rulers before they were sealed, sealed whatever he could not, and kept watch over his movements.

Vito’s first leaf was a short letter to Modon.

Ziani laid two fingers on the oak. "Ebbene, Messeri. Every San Michele, the Great Council is elected again, and by whoever, per Dio, happens to be holding the knife. I put my seal on nothing I have not read, and this election I want made by a rule, a rule that I can read twice. So, bring me a edict in plain words. I read slowly, yes, I read slowly, because I intend to arrive at the end."

By the first week of June, the Six had prepared a edict for him, and he had read its first page thrice.

A clerk placed a pouch of clay tokens beside Vito’s elbow. He emptied them into a tall earthen jar on the Doge’s table, where thirty-five of them made quite a racket, a hailstorm that had developed political ambitions.

At every San Michele, the electors had said yes to their friends and no to everyone else. The new edict divided the city into thirty-five districts, with three selected by lot each year.

Each would name one elector, and those three electors would choose the roll and the magistrates.

Vito added two more provisions. The districts would be drawn by lot, with a nine-year-old boy putting his hand into a jar, and the roll would be written twice, one copy kept by the Avogadori and another at San Marco.

Three men, selected by the same method, would compare the copies every year.

He remembered the boy and the jar from his books, though nothing about the numbers. The Six supplied those in a week of arguing.

The lot closed certain doors, including a few Vito had walked through himself.

The Councillor for San Marco rose and offered the room the benefit of his precedent. "Messeri! Messeri, I implore you, hear the old order! Since the first Doges, the electors who choose for this Republic, they are appointed by hands, Messeri, and they answer to God! To God!"

He flung two fingers at the jar as though it had blasphemed. "And this? This is nothing, nothing! but the dice of the Rialto, rattling in a clerk’s jar. And a boy of nine? A boy of nine is no servant of God. He has scarcely learned his Credo, and we put the Republic in his hand!"

San Polo remained on his stool. "Messer, Messer. All my life I have lived on the Rialto, all my life, and I have thrown dice with every thief in the lagoon. And the dice, never, mai, not once, have they lied to me. The men who count the dice?"

He spread his empty hands.

"Ah. That is another account, and I would not lend against it."

Ziani read the final clause aloud, taking his time over it.

July brought the heat and, as Vito had promised a Queen, the harvest brought the child.

It took one morning, and the midwife had hardly any work to do, the surgeon slept in the yard, the flask remained corked, and the forceps stayed wrapped in their cloth. The first childbed had taken a whole night, while this one required a few hours and a basin of boiled water.

Lucia had guarded the chamber door since dawn, arms crossed, and when the midwife announced that it was a girl, she accepted the news as confirmation of what she had known all along.

Then she stamped once, for the record. <anno data-annotation-id="45f2142d-1c11-bc15-350e-0e0802358090" data-title=""Una fiola! Una fiola, ciò! Mì lo gavevo dito, at the table, in front of everybody, mì lo gavevo dito, e nissun me credeva! Adesso la xe mia. Ela, she comes to the ewer with me, e i sporchi, the dirty ones, ela li manda indrio al lavar! Basta! Qua comando mì!"">"Una fiola! Una fiola, ciò! Mì lo gavevo dito, at the table, in front of everybody, mì lo gavevo dito, e nissun me credeva! Adesso la xe mia. Ela, she comes to the ewer with me, e i sporchi, the dirty ones, ela li manda indrio al lavar! Basta! Qua comando mì!"1</anno>

The baby girl opened her eyes, inspected the room, and found everything in order. The household’s old quarrel over her name was over almost before it began.

Cristina had been proposed for a saint, Marouda for Irene, and Lucia, naturally, for Lucia again.

Leo was allowed in after his sister. He placed a finger against her fist and counted her fingers to ten, then her toes to ten, slowly and carefully. "Un... Papà," he said, moving his finger from face to face around the room. "Do... Mamma. Tre... Lucia. Quatro..." He tapped his own chest. "...mì. Zinque." Then he looked into the cradle. "Lucrezia."

Caterina sat propped against the bolsters, the thick plain book resting on her knee, and wrote as she spoke. "Eh, via, basta, tuti. Marouda’s Irene is a fine name. Cristina’s saint is a fine saint. And Lucia’s Lucia, tesoro, we already have, one of her is a gift from God, two would be a judgment."

She let the last word sit, with a line drawn beneath it. "Lucrezia."

The Church and the midwife agreed that the bed must remain empty for forty days, and husband and Church counted every one of them from opposite sides. The works paid on their appointed days, the cradle went beside the ewer, and Lucia took up her post.

In August, Santa Croce dragged a chest onto the table, and the whole table sneezed. Inside were sixty years of laws issued by the Doges, loose, bound in bundles, and arranged in no order that any living man could defend.

Ziani’s second edict was short, the laws were to be collected, the unwritten customs were to be put into writing, and the rules governing civil suits and private law were to be added. The whole collection was to become a single reference within two years, prepared by jurists who had yet to be appointed.

Castello planted a tarred thumb on one of the bundles. "Ostrega, Messeri! A judge in Zara, three days away. A podestà in Candia, a month, a month, with a fair wind and the mercy of God! And a clerk at Modon in between, God help him. And every one of them swears, on his mother’s grave, that his law comes from the Doge! Same law, same day, Messeri, or all we own is a pile of harbors, and the sea may have them."

Ziani nodded slowly. "Ebbene. Dorsoduro, the first clause. Again, slowly, eh? A clause to which I can give a number, that clause I can read twice. And I would like, per Dio, how I would like to give a number to every one."

Dorsoduro read it again, and Santa Croce, having now heard it twice, approved with both hands.

Vito had been waiting for that sentence since the chest came through the door. Every clause would have its own number, so a judge could cite number nine instead of relying on what his grandfather remembered, with headings by subject and an index at the back.

The Avogadore, who had once declared that a custom was not a clause, would get his wish. The master text would be written on vellum, and printed copies for use would be sent to every judge in the lagoon and every podestà overseas.

The edict specified the Barozzini press, and there was only one printer in the whole wide world.

At the sitting after the Assumption, the Great Council passed both edicts.

Vito returned from the corridor and read out the count, then laid the old stick across his forearm, cut his first notch, and said ’Item’ a little louder than the old man ever had.

A hundred and twenty-six had voted in favor, eighty-four against.

By the Cross, the fleets had returned, all thirty-three hulls, without a storm or a corsair worth mention. The colleganza closed with its payments made as before.

At San Michele, the election was to be remade under the new rule and written twice.

The Doge Palace hall held a tall jar, thirty-five tokens, and a nine-year-old boy, the son of a clerk, who had been promised a sweet and told nothing else. He drew three tokens, one after another, and three districts rose in turn to name their electors.

Vito watched from the Six’s bench.

Not one of the three electors was a man whose hand he had shaken. The boy withdrew his hand from the jar for the last time and held it up for everyone to admire.

In October, Caterina prepared the leaf for 1212 a season early, and Vito signed beneath her name. Before the sand had settled on the wax, his hand was already reaching past the leaf for the draft of the statutes.

Caterina kept her eyes on her figures. "Caro mio. Since Pentecost you have read more of the Republic’s clauses than you have of my numbers. I have entered the change."

She ruled a line beneath it, neat as a knife.

"The figures can wait. They are very good at it."

His mornings had shifted from the accounting-room to the palace, and he now read the statutes before the accounts. The household ran perfectly well under his wife’s name, and the Republic had become the larger book.

He carried the draft to the Palace.

Ziani, who had already read it three times, named the Councillor for Cannaregio to the jurists who would spend the next two years gathering the laws.