Chapter 196: A War Begun With Flowers

San Michele arrived under a cold, bright sky, and the tall earthen jar was waiting on the dais with its tokens rattling inside. The clerk’s boy put in his fist and drew three, and three districts rose to name three electors.

The three new electors added seven names to the roll, three galley captains, two Arsenal masters, a notary, and a salt-boat captain from Chioggia. They took their seats at once, bringing the total to two hundred and seventeen.

At supper Leo told his report with the slate in his hand.

<anno data-annotation-id="a87159af-c313-3a1e-c271-ae792203620b" data-title=""Sète, Papà! Sète nomi novi, no sié, no oto, sète! Mì li go contà tre volte, e sète i xe restà. E un, Papà, un solo, el xe de Ciosa. De Ciosa, ti sa? Là dove i fa el saòn de Mamma. Go fato el segno qua, vedi? Che no se perda."">"Sète, Papà! Sète nomi novi, no sié, no oto, sète! Mì li go contà tre volte, e sète i xe restà. E un, Papà, un solo, el xe de Ciosa. De Ciosa, ti sa? Là dove i fa el saòn de Mamma. Go fato el segno qua, vedi? Che no se perda."1</anno>

He wrote the seven names beneath the date and marked the one from Chioggia.

In Lent a letter arrived from Treviso, and it smelled of violets.

Treviso was inviting its neighbors to an Easter game, including Padua and Venezia, and since there was no clause against flowers, the council saw no reason to keep the Venetian boys at home.

The game was called the Castle of Love.

Treviso had built the castle in a meadow and covered the wooden walls with so much silk and cloth-of-gold that the Venetian boys were pricing the curtains from their boats. Young women occupied the towers, while young men from three cities attacked them by boat and on foot, throwing violets, winter apples, dried figs, and almond cakes.

The ladies threw back sweets and verses, some of which were not meant for polite company to hear, and the prize was a lady’s glove or ribbon, while the boys had been drinking since Easter Mass.

They were therefore well prepared for a peaceful afternoon.

A Venetian boy planted the Lion banner on the highest tower. A Paduan boy pulled it down and lost two teeth for his trouble, then a Trevisan boy threw the apple that started the rest of the fighting, then disappeared under a table.

First came the fists, then the apples, which were hard enough to break a nose, and then the silk began coming down in long strips of gold.

The bill reached home before the boys had quite recovered.

It came from Padua, with Treviso standing behind it, and charged Venezia for one tower and a considerable number of ells of cloth-of-gold.

There was no charge for the damage to Padua’s honor, because they had declared that honor could not be measured. Ziani read the bill three times, and the council agreed to pay for the silk their boys had torn.

By May the quarrel had become a war.

Paduan horsemen had crossed the marsh at Chioggia, with Treviso behind them, burning the soap shed beside Ca’ Zane’s basins, opening the sluices on the salt pans, and taking the boats.

It was a fairly complete attack on the local business.

At the hall, the news rumbled, and Ser Nicolò stood up with one finger raised. "Hff! Messeri, Messeri, ascoltate! The clause says an enemy in the water, I have it by heart! And horses on a marsh, hff, per carità, horses on a marsh are not in water! A marsh is a marsh! A horse is not a galley! I will not, hff, I will not send the Serene Fleet to war on the strength of a horse’s feet!"

Vito answered, the numbered book open in his hands. "Messer Nicolò, you honor me. Once I begged you in this hall for a clause, and today you bring me one, unasked. Grazie! Now, with your permission, I bring you its neighbor. Number nineteen. Ecco. The edge of the lagoon, up to the first channel, every wet inch of it, Messeri, is Venetian water. And the horses of Padua were standing in that water. To the knee, Messer Nicolò! To the knee!"

Ziani read number nineteen three times.

Thirty galleys came off the harbor at dawn, and within three days they had their crews. Every oarsman was paid that day by the bank, while the hall voted the winter pay afterward, which was more convenient than waiting for a vote before paying men who were already at sea.

At Bebbe, on the edge of the salt, the Arsenal cut a palisade according to a plan marked with numbers. The posts were standing within a fortnight, and Chioggian boatmen and the fleet’s oarsmen held the line against the Paduan foot.

Twenty-two oarsmen died behind those timbers.

At San Michele, four months into the war, the bank was still paying on the appointed day, and San Polo, who inspected the legs of his stool, bought more shares.

Twenty-two names were written beneath a black line on their districts’ rolls, and the bank paid their widows on the appointed day.

In Lent of the following year, a letter arrived from the Lateran. The Pope was summoning every bishop, king, and Doge to a Council in Rome that November.

He wanted ships, a crusade, a mended Church, and an end to trade with the Saracens.

The last demand was particularly easy to write down, and could close the trade route to Alexandria for everyone else.

The Doge’s oath forbade him to leave the lagoon without permission.

"Ebbene, Messeri. Ebbene. When you set this cap upon me, I swore I would not cross the lagoon without your leave, and I have kept that oath as I keep all my oaths, to the letter. So here I stand, a Doge with his cap in his hand, begging his masters. I ask your leave, Messeri, to go to Rome."

The Ducal Council gave him permission, and three of them would cross the sea with him while the other three kept their seats.

No one had yet said which men would do which job.

At supper Vito read the letter aloud, because Lucia wanted to know what it contained. When he reached the word ships, she put her hand flat on the table.

<anno data-annotation-id="68099a48-e8d0-028a-6a29-c19122f76414" data-title=""Papà! ’Scolta ben, Papà! Se el Papa vol nave, mì go zento. Zento, ciò, tute de nose, e gnanca una che fa acqua! Do fighi el primo del mese, e no se tratta. E se el vol anca el capitan, e el lo vol, Papà, el lo vol, nissun mena le nave come mì, alora quel costa de più. Tanto de più!"">"Papà! ’Scolta ben, Papà! Se el Papa vol nave, mì go zento. Zento, ciò, tute de nose, e gnanca una che fa acqua! Do fighi el primo del mese, e no se tratta. E se el vol anca el capitan, e el lo vol, Papà, el lo vol, nissun mena le nave come mì, alora quel costa de più. Tanto de più!"1</anno>

Leo wiped his chalk on his sleeve. He wrote Lucia, 100, 2 figs, and beneath it, smaller, captain, extra.

At the sitting after Pentecost, the doors of the hall were barred from the inside for the first time in the Republic’s history. The Gospels were brought in from San Marco, and all two hundred and seventeen men swore upon them, in the form used by the electors, that whatever was said in that room would stay in that room.

Dorsoduro had written down every word since taking his seat. Now he put down his pen and kept his hands away from it.

Vito stood up. "Messeri. With all reverence, and I mean it, with all my heart, the Doge goes to Rome after the Cross. The Serene Fleet carries him, with bells and banners and the whole beautiful procession. Behind him come the state naves, fat with grain, because a fleet that size, Messeri, will need to eat. And beneath the sacks, beneath, two thousand men from the Padua mobilization."

He let the words sit in the room until the lamps seemed to lean away from it. "At the Straits of Messina the naves turn south, for Malta. The Count of Malta is back, back with Genoese silver in his purse. A state that disowns its corsair cannot weep when the corsair loses his island."

The sailors were already paid, sworn, and afloat. Sicily stood in the way, while Malta belonged to its crown, and its king was the Pope’s ward.

The Doge would be sitting at the Pope’s table while his ships took the ward’s island. Whoever lost could call the whole business piracy, and would have a fair case.

Ser Piero rose one slow step at a time, crossing himself at every second step. "Sancte Marce, defende nos! Defende nos, Sancte Marce! Messeri, a Doge, our Doge, on his knees at the Lateran, and under his cloak, under his cloak, a lie! Madonna santa, Madonna santa! There is not a dock in Christendom, from Genoa to Alexandria, that will not have a name for this. And I tell you what the name will be. Piracy! Pirateria, Messeri! PIRACY!"

Ziani was the one to interrupt him. "Ebbene. Ebbene, Messer Piero. Sit, sit, you have crossed yourself enough for both of us. I carry nothing that I have not first read. And this one I have read three times, Messeri, three. So. It is read. It is mine. I will carry it to Rome, under my cloak, under my sacks, and God will see that I carried it with my eyes open."

The Old named their price together, the man who had written the leaf would sail with it.

The hall dropped its balls into the boxes. Dorsoduro picked up his pen and wrote down the vote, a hundred and thirteen to a hundred and four. He added no word beside it.

That evening the lamp burned in the office at Ca’ del Leon, above the old chart with its red threads. Caterina sat at the oak table with the children’s book open to a clean line, while Vito drew a tenth thread from the pin at Venezia to the pin at Rome.

"Moglie. I sail for Rome with the Doge. That much I can give you, that much and not a sack of grain more. The rest I swore on the Gospels not to say, and the Gospels, moglie, are heavier than I am."

"Then I won’t ask, caro mio. I won’t ask tonight, and I won’t ask in a year, and if I should ask in my sleep, and I do talk in my sleep, Vito, numbers, mostly, pay me no attention. Go to Rome. Kiss whatever ring they hold out to you. And come home. Come home and write it yourself, in your own hand. I’ll leave the line empty. Empty, tutta, to the margin. I swear it on the book."

She closed the book.

The tenth thread pulled tight at Rome.

The eleventh remained in his fist, held over the Straits with nowhere to put its pin.