Chapter 195: A Republic on Borrowed Money

On Epiphany the barge brought Vito to the landing between the granite pillars.

Frost covered the water-stairs, and the old stick still rested across his forearm. That week, the leaf for 1213 went around the Rialto, carrying the same old terms.

The Republic had grown faster than its habits, which was much like launching a galley before the oars had been cut. It now held an island with a Duke, the two harbors at Modon and Coron, and colonies at Constantinople and Phasis.

Yet it still paid for ships by ordering the rich to lend it money and then forgetting to pay them back, when the sea opened, it went looking for oarsmen in taverns, and it maintained a hall whose door could be locked.

For a republic with such ambitions, these were rather serious inconveniences.

Ziani had spent five years making the Republic’s affairs readable, and for those five years he had laid two fingers on every leaf. This one named three edicts in plain words, so he laid three.

By the third reading the Ducal Council had given them names.

The purse would be the economical reform, the oars the military reform, and the hall the administrative reform. Each would need explaining, which was only fair, since none of them was about to explain itself.

During Lent, on a Sunday, Lucia counted one grosso into Leo’s open palm at the oak table. Then she held out her own hand, flat and waiting, like a customs officer who had every intention of collecting what was owed.

<anno data-annotation-id="0b8dd021-61c5-f1b4-de88-eb11c01d7e70" data-title=""Tò, Leo, un grosso. E scolta ben, ciò, mì lo voio indrio de Domenega! De Domenega, eh, no de Luni, no ’doman’, no ’me son desmentegà’, o mì no te presto più gnente, gnanca un fìgo seco! Mì son el capitan, e el capitan no regala. Mai! Gnanca ai fradei!"">"Tò, Leo, un grosso. E scolta ben, ciò, mì lo voio indrio de Domenega! De Domenega, eh, no de Luni, no ’doman’, no ’me son desmentegà’, o mì no te presto più gnente, gnanca un fìgo seco! Mì son el capitan, e el capitan no regala. Mai! Gnanca ai fradei!"1</anno>

Leo licked the chalk and wrote ’DOMENEGA’ across his slate in letters twice the size of the rest.

Caterina watched with her chin resting on her hand, then spoke to Vito without turning her head.

"Ah, there you have it, caro mio. A promise is worth exactly what it costs to break, not a bezzo more, not a bezzo less. So make the Republic pay, and pay dear, every blessed time it slips, and you’ll see every widow in Venezia come trotting to the Rialto with her last grosso knotted in her kerchief, and thank the Doge for the honor of lending it."

The old arrangement was simple enough.

The Republic ordered the rich houses to lend it money, then paid them back whenever it remembered to do so. The houses had responded by hiding their silver, which was hardly an unreasonable reaction.

In Vito’s books, patricians broke their promises to their lenders and soon discovered that no one was willing to lend them anything again.

The Serene Bank would put an end to that.

Every loan owed by the Republic would be gathered into a single pile, and Venezia, which owned no debts worth mentioning, would be delighted to own one.

The Lido dues and the salt scales would be pledged to it.

The bank would pay every holder five in every hundred each year as interest, half at Easter and half at San Michele, always on the appointed day, whether the Republic was at war or at peace. A share could change hands at the Rialto.

The roll of holders would be kept in two copies. No money could be taken from the bank for any purpose but paying its holders, and the Doge himself could own no share in it.

Widows and monasteries would put their silver into it, and its promise would become the one currency in the Latin world that never went bad.

San Polo, who had already counted the legs of his stool, spoke last. "Messeri, a Republic that always pays, Dio me varda, is a wretched business for a lender. Where is the pleasure in it? Where is the sighing over supper, the long face at the Rialto, the little tale of woe to tell the wife? Gone! Tutto gone! I have weighed it, Messeri, twice, mind you, once with the purse and once with the conscience, and I regret to report that the pair of them vote aye."

The Great Council passed the economical reform before Easter, by such a wide count that Dorsoduro never needed a second line in which to record the result.

Vito bound the seventh thread, running from the Rialto to the old chart, and knotted it.

The thread was still new against the plaster when the fleets sailed, in the week after Easter, along their two trade routes. Fantin went north again, carrying the year’s mirror and a longer letter.

In May a letter sealed in lead arrived from the Lateran.

The Pope was writing to every Christian realm, how in two years he would hold a great council, then call nobility to take the cross, and he would need ships.

The Six read the letter with the Doge and sealed the answer he couldn’t seal himself. No one at the table could say how many galleys the Republic could lend, how soon it could provide them, or what a ban on the Alexandria route would cost.

Dorsoduro, who wrote down everything, held his pen above the line headed galleys for the length of a Mass. Then he put nothing down. It was an honest answer, at least as far as the ink was concerned.

The reply said only that the Republic would listen and answer when it knew what it could offer.

At Pentecost the Old put Gradenigo forward against Cannaregio for the seat. The vote was a hundred and nine to a hundred and one, and the stick remained on Vito’s arm.

At dawn in the second week of June, Castello led the other five down the Arsenal harbor. They approved a Serene Fleet, all with their oars racked in the sheds, gray as old bone.

"Cento galie, siori! A hundred! Every keel sound, every plank sweet, every seam tight, and not one man alive to pull a stroke. Ostrega! Cossa femo, we row ’em with prayers? A galley that sails a month late, siori, sails to her own funeral, and the Republic walks behind her with the candles!"

The Republic had always gone looking for its oarsmen in taverns after the sea opened.

Four summers earlier, it had taken two months to find enough sailors to crew twenty galleys for Crete. Generally, kings hired strangers, those who sold their swords to whoever paid them, and those strangers knew perfectly well when a king had run out of alternatives.

That was generally when their prices became interesting.

The military reform would put an end to the business. A hundred galleys would remain armed through the winter, with ten thousand free oarsmen kept on a roll for ten years.

Each of the thirty-five districts would maintain its share of the names, so every district would have sons serving in the fleet. The professional sailors would receive winter pay and a month of drill each spring, and a veteran who completed ten years would earn a berth in the Arsenal for his old age.

Captains would be chosen by a race from the Lido to the Molo, and the ten fastest would appear before the Doge, who would choose among them.

The fleet would remain under the leash of a Great Council vote, since it couldn’t sail to war without one unless an enemy was already in Venetian waters. The Serene Bank would pay for the whole arrangement through new shares, sold whenever the hall voted for the winter pay.

After San Giovanni, Premarino rose in the Great Council. He wore his soft sea leather and smelled of tar and old rope, as a man in his profession had every right to do.

"Messeri! We have stood on a deck at the Lido when the wind came round, ciò, and in that hour the sea, ostrega, the sea has never once asked a captain for his grandfather’s name. Never! She asks one thing only, can you hold her? So let the race choose the man, Messeri, and let the losers curse the wind and not the cradle!"

With the Serene Fleet, the Republic could answer a raid or a Pope within days. It would no longer need to hire strangers, and every district would have a stake in its own fleet.

The Great Council passed the measure by a hundred and twenty-four votes to eighty-six. Vito bound the eighth thread, running from the Arsenal to the chart, and fixed it to its pin.

On the thirtieth of July, the day the twins turned six, a hundred walnut shells floated on the still water inside the arch of the water-gate. The grille was raised, and a kitchen boy crouched on the landing.

Lucrezia had turned two in the middle of the month. Lucia had raised the fleet herself and hired the boy to blow it across the water, at two figs on the first of each month, the appointed day.

She set the shells afloat one at a time while Leo marked each one on his slate.

Caterina stood on the landing with Lucrezia on her hip. Vito came in from the barge, took the toddler from her, and lifted her up so she could see the fleet.

The last shell drifted away from the landing on a puff of air from the kitchen boy’s cheeks.

After the Assumption, the Avogadore unrolled the hall’s register before the dais and turned it toward the Doge, making sure every bench could see the names crossed out in black where a house had died out or gone broke.

Every San Michele the roll was filled again from the same families, and every San Michele more names went under the black line.

In Vito’s books, the hall shut its door within a hundred years. The rich patricians left outside broke into the palace with swords, and the Republic answered with ten men who could kill without a trial.

A war that nearly drowned the lagoon finally forced the door open, and the men who came through paid for the privilege. It was an expensive way to discover that a locked door does not solve a political problem.

The administrative reform would keep the hinges oiled.

Every San Michele the three electors would have to add at least five names to the roll, but no more than ten. These had to be patricians from outside the families already listed, those who had served the Republic for ten years with clean hands, be them galley captains, overseas notaries, Arsenal masters, and merchants who had carried the Republic’s cargo.

The Avogadori would certify their service and maintain the two copies of the roll. The Old named their price, any new man admitted would take his seat in the hall immediately, but he could not be elected to the Six for ten years.

Those outside the hall would see a way in, and so would have less reason to go looking for a battering ram. Meanwhile, the hall would get fresh blood before it had to be dragged into taking any.

Ser Nicolò rose, wheezing, with one finger held in the air.

"Hff! Messeri! Messeri! Per l’anima de mio nono, a door that any man with a keel under him may come knocking at, hff, hff, will sell the Doge’s chair by the pound! By the pound, Messeri! And after that, hff, after that, I tell you, comes the fish! The fish!"

The Great Council passed the reform by a hundred and six votes to a hundred and four. Vito bound the ninth thread, running from the hall to the chart.

That week the jurists appointed to gather the laws entered the reforms into their numbered book. The printing would have to wait until winter.

On the dais, the vellum lay open, with one black line after another and a long, clean margin underneath.

By the feast of the Cross, all thirty-three hulls had returned, and not a single yellow cloth had been raised on any mast. The overseers’ boat inspected the cats and went away.

The Serene Bank had paid its Easter share on the appointed day, and the Serene Fleet lay at the Arsenal with every bench filled.

At the oak table in the office, a letter lay beside the old chart, written in the monk’s round Georgian hand. The monk with the green wrote that the Queen hadn’t come down to the summer feast.

She remained behind a curtain, while her son poured the wine from beneath the canopy.

Leo counted the nine threads, following them with one small finger along the wool.

<anno data-annotation-id="490ce71b-d7bc-c4cf-de7f-e98dbcf73926" data-title=""Nove, Papà. Nove, ciò. Mì li go contài do volte, e anca na tersa, par no sbagliarme. Zinque torna a casa... e quatro va a Roma."">"Nove, Papà. Nove, ciò. Mì li go contài do volte, e anca na tersa, par no sbagliarme. Zinque torna a casa... e quatro va a Roma."1</anno>

San Michele was fifteen days away.

On that feast the three electors would add the first new names to the roll under the reform.