Chapter 47: A Tragic Outbreak of Rats

The walk from the fondaco to St. Titus took hardly any time, which was fortunate, because Vito got plenty of entertainment out of it before he reached the cathedral.

Some quarrel, for example.

By the time he came within sight of the gate, one of the company men was standing flat against it, defending the doors from an elderly woman half his size and an elderly man who appeared to have twice the patience of the entire city watch.

The woman kept driving her cane into the soldier’s shin, always the same spot, with the sort of accuracy usually reserved for crossbowmen.

She punctuated every Greek sentence with another tap.

Although Vito understood only enough Greek to catch the general idea of the argument, the cane supplied the missing translation.

The old man had his hands raised, counted on his fingers, lost track somewhere after two, started again, and apparently intended to inventory every disaster he had survived that rats now had the bad manners to frighten him with.

Two plagues. Enough wars for a lifetime.

A fire that had taken the roofs of three neighbors and very nearly taken his own.

And whatever else a man could survive if he was sufficiently stubborn about it.

<anno data-annotation-id="31812edc-ac46-712e-6202-2e26b05cb44f" data-title=""Ζωντανός είμαι ακόμα!"">"Ζωντανός είμαι ακόμα!"¹</anno> he bellowed, jabbing himself in the chest.

Still alive.

Plainly determined to remain that way, if only to spite whatever had the misfortune of trying to kill him next.

The soldier replied in Greek, or tried to.

What came out was some unhappy mixture of Greek and Italian in which neither language survived with much dignity.

<anno data-annotation-id="66cbbccd-af13-ede5-f8fd-2d95c2df9cfb" data-title=""Signora, per favore, molti ratti, pericoloso, molto pericoloso, μεγάλα ποντίκια, molto..."">"Signora, per favore, molti ratti, pericoloso, molto pericoloso, μεγάλα ποντίκια, molto..."¹</anno>

He ran out of words.

So he abandoned language altogether and spread both hands apart to demonstrate something enormous. It was impossible to tell whether he meant the rats or the mistake he had made by accepting this posting.

The gesture helped with nothing.

The cane struck his shin for the fourth time.

Vito watched a little longer, there was no sense in wasting a perfectly good argument when someone else was losing it so thoroughly.

Then he clapped the soldier on the shoulder as he passed through the gate.

"I’d surrender now, amico, grandmothers don’t usually lose."

"Ser Barozzi, if you could..."

"Busy, terribly busy. God’s business waits for no man."

Vito was through the gate while behind him the cane found its fifth mark.

The gate swung shut.

Inside, the incense had lost its battle.

Sweat, too many men, and too many hours spent packed into one place had beaten it cleanly. The cathedral smelled like several different populations had been forced to share the same roof, and none of them were pleased about it.

The situation was plain enough.

Knossos’s bishop and the handful of countryside priests who had been swept in with him occupied one side of the nave, close together as though somebody had stolen their church and expected them to be grateful for the privilege of standing in another.

The native staff of St. Titus, deacons and altar boys who had committed no crime beyond already working there, kept to the other side.

They looked no happier about sharing their cathedral with men they had never even met before.

Between them stood the soldiers, occupying the gap with dull patience.

Vlastos rushed over at a pace just short of running, one fist gathering up his robe so he would not trip over it in his hurry. "Ser Barozzi. Ser Barozzi, a moment, only a moment, I beg you. My estate, the olive rows, my wife writes that the harvest wants tending, and I..."

Vito continued walking. "Soon, Theodoro. I promise you, the moment I remember you exist properly, you’ll be the very first thing on my list."

"S-Ser Barozzi..."

"And look how much closer we are to it happening."

By the time the old archon had found another argument, Vito was already ten strides away and heading toward a quarrel at the far end of the nave that had plainly been going on longer than his own.

Leon stood in the middle of it.

He wore his dark robes and his unhurried patience like armor, though judging by the state of the argument, that patience had been worked over for some time.

He was calmly going through a point that had been repeated often enough to have worn smooth, without anyone any closer to agreement.

The archbishop stood opposite him in plain robes.

The staff was gone, the one that had once struck stone whenever he wanted his words to carry a little more weight. So was the jeweled cross that had once caught what little light the cathedral managed to provide.

Without them, he looked smaller, but not less imponent.

There was an unpleasant feeling about watching a man stripped of the things that made him look powerful and discovering that the dangerous part had never been the jewelry or the staff.

A blade looks smaller once it is out of the sheath, too.

It does not become less sharp.

"I have heard this offer from your own mouth three times now, archon."

The archbishop’s voice still had the old thunder, despite the absence of everything that had once helped give it weight. "It improves with no repetition. I will not sell my holy see to men who stole it, dressed the theft in mercy, and call the bargain generous."

Leon remained composed, mostly.

Vito could see the stress, though the archon was not about to give the archbishop the satisfaction.

"I had hoped the fourth time might prove the charm."

"It will not."

Vito came close enough to catch the last of it and figured the argument was suffering from a shortage of sensible voices. "He’s right, you know, the fourth time rarely does the trick. I’d know, I’ve been told no by more Doges than most men ever get the chance to meet."

The archbishop’s fury found him at once, and judging by the speed of it, had apparently been waiting for something new to be angry at.

"You."

The old man’s voice climbed, though it stopped just short of a shout. "The Almighty has a long memory for men who steal His houses and dress the theft as mercy, heathen. You will answer for every soul you’ve locked inside this building, whether that reckoning comes in this life or the one waiting after it."

Vito leaned against the nearest pillar and looked perfectly comfortable. "I’ll take my chances, He’s been remarkably forgiving of me so far, all things considered. Killed an Emperor, robbed a cathedral, and He hasn’t even sent me a decent storm for my trouble."

"Blasphemy comes easily to a man who has never once feared consequence."

"Perhaps if we returned to the practical..." Leon began.

The archbishop cut in, without even bothering to look at him. "There is nothing practical about theft."

Vito cut straight back. "Nor starving in a cathedral on principle either. But here we all are."

Leon lips parted open, then closed.

Whatever conversation he had been trying to have was dead, and nobody present intended to hold a funeral for it.

Vito let the silence there for half a breath. "Leon. Have we chosen a replacement, or are we still picking candidates the way Caterina chooses wine?"

"We have. A senior clergyman, well regarded, currently serving elsewhere on the island."

There was almost relief in Leon’s voice now that the subject had changed. "He’s already made it clear he’ll accept Latin rule over Candia so long as Orthodox worship remains untouched. I expect he’ll have the see decided within a month, without a single soul needing to bleed over the matter."

The archbishop had nothing left to say.

His own church had just been handed to someone else in the space of two sentences.

Every word had passed over him instead of through him, while his future had been set by two men who had not troubled themselves to ask what he thought about it.

That left him with nothing to strike at.

Vito made his voice solemn and kept his face straight. "Which brings me to the last piece of business, Your Grace. You’ll be retiring on account of poor health, and I’m sorry to say, a fair number of your own clergy besides."

He gestured outwardly, across the building. "The rats in this cathedral carry a genuine sickness, as it turns out. A filthy, wasting sort of plague, and I’m afraid the physicians all agree the only cure is a peaceful retirement, safely removed from the source of the infection."

The end came without theatrics. "A real tragedy for everyone involved."

Leon nodded along without missing a beat, in silent agreement.

A convenient plague, striking only the disloyal. I’ve added it to your file, under ’diagnoses invented on the spot.’ The file is getting long, I’m almost impressed you never repeat yourself.

The archbishop let the words pass through him. There was not much left for him to say, unless he intended to argue with a fictional plague.

Vito left him to his silence.

His mind was already on the next stop.

<annotations style="display: none;">"I’m still alive!""Ma’am, please, lots of rats, dangerous, very dangerous, big mice, very..."</annotations>