Chapter 98: Kingdom of Cyprus

The coast sank behind the stern, first a green smear, then a thinner one, and then nothing at all.

There was no shore left to follow. Cyprus sat ahead in the blue, water all around it and no coastline to keep a man company. Not since Alexandria had the fleet to open water, with only compass and canvas between the ships and a very large amount of empty sea.

"We sail for Limassol."

Bepi had informed, tapping the little needle in its box.

"Two days, if the wind keeps her courtesy. Three, if she decides to argue."

So far, the wind had chosen neither.

Vito left the matter to the sea and found more to keep his hands busy.

The rambade stood empty at the bow, that raised fighting platform he had crossed a dozen times without ever finding a reason to sit down on it.

Today, for once, there was no reason not to.

He lay against the rail with an oilcloth, a whetstone, and [Artiglio del Leone] lying bare across his knees.

The wootz steel caught the light, dark bands running through it like water beneath ice. They seemed to shift if a man stared long enough. The winged lion worked into the crossguard caught the sun as well, a smaller cousin of the one stitched across his own mantle.

Cretans had died on that blade, and it still looked like a poet ought to feel guilty about it being used for murder.

Vito ran the stone across the blade. Whatever else could be said about the sword, sharpening it was pleasant work.

Footsteps came up the corsia behind him, unhurried, then stopped the instant their owner saw the light across the steel.

Momolo froze in surprise.

"Ser Barozzi."

He said it like he had just discovered a relic, a miracle, or both. "That blade deserves an epic, six cantos at least. Momolo would compose the first three himself, free of charge, for love of the subject alone. Perhaps a fourth, if the muse is feeling charitable."

He reached for the hilt.

Vito moved the blade an inch farther from his hand. "Ma va’. Write the epic first. Then we’ll discuss whether you’ve earned the right to hold the thing you’re writing about."

Momolo accepted the refusal with easy grace and turned his attention to the water ahead. "Speaking of subjects worthy of an epic, Ser Barozzi, what exactly are we sailing toward this time? Another archon planning murder in a cellar? Another emperor who arrived too late to know what was happening?"

"An island, Momolo. Just an island, for once."

"There is no such thing as just an island. Certainly not when you are standing on its deck."

Cyprus, as it happened, had a history considerably less romantic than an island ought to have.

An English king had taken it in less than a month, fourteen years earlier, while on his way to a war that hadn’t even started yet. His excuse, if a king ever needs one, was that the local strongman had mistreated both his sister and his betrothed on the same afternoon.

Richard Lionheart still found time to marry the girl in Limassol itself, in the middle of the campaign, as if war and a wedding were simply two errands a busy man could finish before lunch.

"Momolo has heard the story from every singer between Venezia and Constantinople."

"Cazzo, at least he enjoyed himself on this crusade."

Vito said, running the stone across the edge. "Then he sold the whole island to the Templars to pay for the war he was actually supposed to be fighting. They taxed it hard enough that the Greeks rose against them within a year, and when the island proved more trouble than it was worth, they handed it to the first ruined king who came asking."

Guy de Lusignan had been that man.

A king already ruined by Saladin at Hattin was hardly in a position to bargain over his consolation prize. He died without a son, and his brother Aimery, the very man this whole sea was mourning, had himself crowned outright in ninety-seven with an emperor’s blessing behind him.

"Bought, revolted against, sold again, and finally handed to a man too broken to say no."

Vito grinned at the sword.

"This island has changed hands more often than I’ve changed my boots."

Momolo, being Momolo, had found exactly one part of the story worth mention. "A wedding, Ser Barozzi. In the middle of a war. Momolo has performed for kings who could not arrange a wedding in peacetime, much less while conquering an island."

He gave a satisfied little shake of the head.

"There is romance left in this world yet, if a man knows where to dig for it."

That crown had already changed hands twice more since then.

Aimery’s son by his first wife, a boy named Hugh and not yet ten, sat on it now, while a brother-in-law named Walter of Montbéliard held power until the boy was old enough to rule for himself.

Isabella kept Jerusalem alone, and the two crowns Aimery had spent his reign joining together had begun pulling apart the moment he stopped breathing.

All the grandeur went out of Momolo’s voice. "Now the king is not even old enough to carry his own sword, and already the burden sitting on his shoulders."

"Regencies rarely end kindly for the boy whose crown someone else is minding, amico."

Vito set down the whetstone. "And not a soul on this ship, Acre, or this whole sea knows yet whether a nine-year-old’s regent means to keep his father’s truce with Egypt or tear it up the moment the ink dries."

Momolo let the subject fall away with a shrug and a quick search for lighter topics. "They say a goddess was born from sea foam off this coast, Ser Barozzi, near a place called Paphos. The goddess of love herself, if sailors are to be believed, which is a dangerous thing to ask of sailors."

Vito grinned. "That one happens to be true, or as true as anything a poet wrote down some dozen hundred years before either of us was born. Hesiod put it into verse himself, sea foam, a rock, and Aphrodite stepping straight out of the water fully grown. Older than the Church, older than every king who has ever sold this island to someone else."

Momolo considered this with genuine satisfaction.

"And you believe it?"

"One doesn’t have to believe every word of a good story to want it to be true, Momolo. That’s the whole secret of the trade. Now, enough myth for one voyage."

Vito wiped the blade clean and slid it home.

"There is trade goods waiting on that island."

Cyprus poured a wine said to be older than the crown itself, and men had called it the finest in the world. Some already called it Commandaria, and the story had Richard toasting his own wedding with it as wine fit for kings.

Cane sugar was newer, a trade still finding its place. The island’s name had probably given the world its word for copper, though its old mines had been silent for generations.

Salt came out of a lake near Larnaca thick enough to shovel. Cotton grew across the coast, and carob grew wherever nobody had thought to plant more useful crops.

Momolo considered carob as if it had insulted his ancestors. "Goat food, Ser Barozzi. I refuse to sail a Venetian hold home stuffed with goat food."

"Then argue with the goats. I’m more interested in whether the islands goods sell well enough."

Momolo drew himself up as if he had just questioned his mother’s honor.

"Crete’s wine could shame a king’s cellar, and every man on this ship knows it."

"Bold words from a man who has not tasted a drop of Cyprus’s wine yet."

"Momolo requires no tasting to know loyalty."

He sniffed, perfectly satisfied with himself.

"Only conviction."

Momolo’s laugh stopped halfway out of him.

His eyes had caught some shadow past Vito’s shoulder.

Bepi stood closer to the rambade, his hands busy with a coil he had already coiled twice, listening to every word without turning his head enough to admit it.

Momolo asked, grinning. "Since when does our comito take such a personal interest in cordage he could tie blindfolded?"

Bepi’s hands stopped for one guilty heartbeat.

Then they returned, with great dignity, to the rope.

Vito laughed. "Ever since a dead king turned out to be exactly as dead as I promised he would be. Bepi thinks I’m some kind of oracle, so now he follows me around at sea hoping to overhear another prophecy. Half of him thinks it’s a miracle. The other half is furious about it."

Bepi grumbled about oracles and idle Venetians and went back to tying a knot that hadn’t needed tying before he started.

Both men laughed, and after a moment Bepi did too, though he made it clear that the matter was beneath his dignity.

Then the coastline eventually found them in the horizon.

It appeared pale and low against the haze, a smudge of land where, for two days, there had been nothing but water.

Momolo straightened as all the theater rushed back into his voice at once.

"And that would be?"

"Limassol." Vito nodded. He intended to enjoy every step of getting there.

The coast kept taking form, slowly and patiently, as the haze gave it back piece by piece.