Chapter 93: The Crusader Kingdoms

Vito made his way down La Contessa’s corsia, the raised strip of deck running between the rowing benches. Years of officers’ boots had worn it smooth, while the oarsmen stayed below and went on with their work.

Near the bow he passed beneath the shadow of the rambade, the raised fighting platform standing empty beneath a sky that had offered the crew nothing to worry at all. Above him, the lateen yard hung furled tight against the mast, its canvas brought together tightly. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

The coast was doing most of the work today, and the oars had no need to wait for the wind before earning their keep.

He found Bepi planted between the two steering oars at the stern, one on either quarter. He had one broad hand on each, nudging the ship’s heading a finger’s width at a time, and doing it with careless air, as if he had long ago stopped needing to think about it.

Vito leaned against the rail beside him. "Well, is the little needle earning her keep this leg, or has she decided to grow fat and lazy on us?"

Bepi glanced toward the coast, close enough off the beam to make out low dunes and a scattering of palm crowns without squinting.

"Not the way she earned it in the voyage to Egypt."

He tapped the pocket where the compass lay. "The old way, we’d trace every inch of that coast, cove by cove, and call it good sailing, but now she tells me true where we are, so I can cut the corners. Trust the land’s still where she says it is even when it disappears from sight for an hour, and save us a day while we’re at it."

Vito gave a low whistle. He was impressed, though he wouldn’t have thanked anyone for saying so.

"How long, then?"

"Three days, if the sea keeps her manners."

Bepi gave the sky a single look, weighing something in it that Vito could not see.

"Four, if she doesn’t."

Vito let that answer sit.

Then he looked past Bepi’s shoulder at the coastline, low and green and gold in the morning light. There was not much of a kingdom left to sail toward, whatever the old maps might still insist on calling it.

Jerusalem had fallen eighteen years earlier, taken by Saladin’s army in the last months of 1187. The crown that had once sat inside those walls had found nothing nearly so grand to sit on since.

Acre had inherited the title of capital almost by default. It was a port town held up by crusading money and stubbornness, a place governing a kingdom from borrowed ground.

Farther north, the county and the principality both answered to Bohemond of Antioch. He spent more of his days quarreling with his nephew over the succession than watching for enemies beyond his gates.

The southern road through Jerusalem’s old territory and Acre’s harbor remained open and useful, thanks to the truce with Egypt. The northern road through Antioch was a family quarrel put up as a war, and no merchant with more sense than curiosity was eager to send good cargo through it.

"We dock on Acre." Vito informed.

Bepi’s face contorted, half wince and half old, grudging affection.

He made the word sound like both a curse and a compliment. "Harbor’s packed tight enough to walk hull to hull without getting a boot wet, and downwind of the tanning vats it smells like God’s privy on a bad Sunday. Nearly lost my mast to some fool Pisan galley the last time I put in there, had me wedged tighter than a nun at a wedding feast."

Vito laughed outright. The memory alone was enough to amuse him.

"Then we’ll add our own ships to the crowd, and give the Pisans new reasons to curse."

Whatever the kingdom had lost elsewhere, it still kept a beating heart inside that crowded harbor. Every flag that mattered on this sea could be found somewhere across Acre’s piers, Genoa’s cross beside Pisa’s, Venezia’s lion planted in a quarter carved out over decades of crusading favor.

La Serenissima had earned every privilege there one crusade at a time, renewed and defended again and again.

There were real goods moving through the place, too. Sugar came down from cane fields in the plains behind the city. Cotton and glasswork stood stacked beside whatever the caravan roads brought in from Damascus and the interior, waiting for any hold with room to carry it home.

The local gold coin was the bezant, close enough in weight and purity to an Ayyubid dirham that a merchant used to Alexandria’s markets would already know its worth.

It was exactly the place Athanasia had promised him, where the merchant houses she trusted were supposed to deal honestly with anyone carrying her family’s name.

"Brace yourself, amico."

Vito said it as casually as if he were talking about the weather.

"The landing’s going to be a mess."

Bepi’s hand stopped on one of the steering oars.

"What sort of mess?"

Vito let the question hang there for a moment. He enjoyed the question more than he enjoyed most answers.

"The King of Jerusalem’s dead, or near enough that it won’t matter by the time we reach port."

He shrugged as though this were hardly worth mentioning.

Bepi went stiff from head to boots, both hands frozen against the wood.

"Madonna santa."

His voice dropped. "How in every saint’s name would you know a thing like that? We’ve been shut behind a fondaco’s walls for weeks, Barozzi. No more news has reached us than reaches the fish."

Vito only grinned wider.

"I read a great deal, amico." He spread both hands. "In another life."

Bepi’s face didn’t move an inch. "That line’s older than my beard, and it gets thinner every time you drag it out. You’ve used it on priests, archons, and me twice a season since Candia. I’ve let it pass because I liked you too well to push."

He folded his arms over the steering oars.

"I’m pushing now."

"Ma va’."

Vito’s grin widened until there was no hiding his delight. "Fine. You want the whole of it? The widow he leaves behind has buried more husbands than most women bury cats.

He raised one finger. "The first was put aside when his barons felt he wasn’t man enough to stand beside her with a crown on his head. Humphrey IV of Toron."

One more finger. "The second was murdered in the street days after his coronation, by some hired knife from the mountains. Conrad of Montferrat."

Then one more. "The third went out a window in Acre itself and never got up again. Half the city still argues whether he jumped, fell, or had help finding the ground. Henry II of Champagne."

And at last. "And now the fourth is gone too. If half of what I remember is true, the poor bastard ate himself into his grave on too much fish. Aimery of Lusignan."

Whatever amusement Bepi had found in husbands and windows disappeared from his face.

"And what does a dead king’s wife have to do with the two of us?"

Vito’s voice lost its playfulness. "Everything, amico. That truce keeping Egypt’s harbors friendly to our ship was guaranteed by one dead man. It’s lucky enough we already left Alexandria."

Bepi said nothing for a long while.

He chewed on the matter like a piece of gristle he couldn’t decide whether to swallow or spit out.

Then he took one hand completely off the oar and waved a sailor over to take his place. "Enough. I’ve got an actual ship under me, and no patience left for chasing down how you know the things you know."

He stalked down the corsia toward the mast, muttering about fools, fish, and kings who could not manage their own suppers.

"Go on, then," Vito called after him, grinning. "I’ll be along shortly to bother you some more."

He remained at the rail a while longer, one hand loose against the wood, watching the coast slide past on the ship’s right.

It stayed low and green and entirely indifferent to which king happened to claim it this decade.

One man signs his name to a peace, and the whole thing holds together for exactly as long as he keeps breathing.

The moment he stops, every soul downstream of that signature gets to learn whether the peace was ever real, or merely one man’s good mood wearing a crown.