Chapter 118: Father Ambrogio’s Tithe

San Pietro di Castello kept its stone dark with a century of lamp smoke, close and low where the Basilica across the water rose high and gold.

Tithes came in here as surely as fish came into the docks, as the men in these benches, along with more than a few of the bishops, were second and third sons from the houses that occupied the Great Council.

Rome could close a harbor to every soul trading with Egypt with one legate’s letter, and it could excommunicate a whole Republic just as easily as one sinner, as it had nearly done so three years ago over Zara.

Now, one year after the sack of Constantinople, the schism the crusaders had only made worse sat in every sacristy, normally in the form of some relic a soldier had brought home across the sea, blessed only after it arrived.

Zaccaria turned slowly in the nave.

"This’s the priest, no?"

Vito snapped his fingers and grinned.

"Proprio lui! Lui, lui, the very man, amico."

"Bah. Lucky guess."

"Educated guess. Is not the same thing, no."

Zaccaria rolled his eyes toward the rafters and left it there.

Then Father Ambrogio came through a side door at a pace that made walking seem unfair.

He was round and full-bellied, his robes straining over a stomach that had plainly never missed a saint’s day. A rosary hung from one hand and a purse swung from the other, while his fingers moved between the two in quick bursts.

He blessed the door as he passed, blessed the light above it, and blessed their boots. Three fingers stayed raised, his eyes looking toward them, as though grace were a toll he meant to collect from everything he passed before the midday bell.

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"Barozzi! Ohhh, Barozzi!"

Both arms flew wide enough for the purse to nearly catch Zaccaria across the jaw. "Vitale! Vitale Barozzi! Here, in my own nave, in carne e ossa, in the flesh! Pax vobiscum, pax vobiscum! Sit... no! Don’t sit! Is not a bench in this whole sorry wreck of a church worth the splinters, but sit, sit in spirit!"

He leaned closer, squinting at Vito as if trying to drag an old memory out of him. "Eh! I held you at the font myself, or almost, almost! Some little Barozzi, some little Barozzi or other. I have held so many, Madonna, I could not swear before the Holy Father which one. God love your whole house, every rafter and every rat in it! Sit, I say! In spirit!"

"Padre. It’s been too long. A crime, really, how long."

It had, as far as anything in Vito’s head could tell him, been no such thing. A compliment cost nothing regardless.

Ambrogio reached out in the middle of all this and brushed at the pale chalk smear still ghosting the front of Vito’s coat.

He swept a hand back toward the nave, taking in the schism, the Franks, and very likely the whole of Christendom with one motion. "Terrible business, of course! Terrible, terrible, ai ai ai! A whole Church split down the middle like a ripe melon, the Greeks calling us heretics and we, we calling them worse!"

He delivered this complaint with cheers. "Though, I will say it. The Lord, He has taken a liking to Venezia through it all. Our own San Marco, he came to us the very same way, smuggled out of Alexandria in a barrel of salt pork, in a barrel, Barozzi! Because the customs men there, they would sooner search a leper than a butcher’s cart!"

He beamed at his own comparison, pleased with it. "A little cunning, a little pork, and ecco! The whole Republic has itself a patron saint! God moves in a great many carts, Barozzi. A great many carts!"

Ambrogio caught himself there, one hand still raised in blessing, and looked at Vito properly for the first time since coming through the door.

"But you did not cross the whole city to hear an old man chatter about barrels, no?"

The rosary flapped around. "So! What is it you want, Barozzi? Confession? Some other little bargain with the conscience? Less formal, more... seasonal?"

"Business, Padre. Only business. The sinning, ah, the sinning always keeps for later."

Ambrogio laughed, a short bark of genuine joy, and waved him toward whatever passed for a private corner of the nave.

Vito followed while he explained. "I have balsam, sitting in a warehouse by the Rialto. From the Jordan valley, by way of Acre."

He let that sit for a moment. "And I thought, your altars, they could put it to better use than some apothecary, ladro, who will water it down and sell it back to you for double."

That finally woke interest in the man that the whole conversation had failed to reach. The rosary and purse both stopped moving at once.

"Balsam... balsamo mio."

He said the word as another man might say a woman’s name. "Do you understand what that is worth, to a church like mine? Chrism without it is nothing! Oil, only oil, however many bishops lay their hands on it, ten, twenty, all of them!"

Then shook his head, scandalized by the thought. "Every child baptized under this roof, every altar we consecrate, every priest we ordain for the next ten years, balsam in the oil, or it is not chrism, no! It is cooking oil, Barozzi, cooking oil putting on airs!"

At last, Ambrogio nodded before the talk even reached the grounds of business.

"Yes! Yes, obviously, yes, Name your sum, figlio, name it."

Vito let him enjoy that moment for what it was.

"Take this batch, Padre, at whatever price feels good to you."

He watched the priest’s eyes narrow with pleasure.

"What I need, Padre, is Rome."

"Roma... "

Vito explained. "The balsam, my whole storage of it, I bought it with Rome in mind. But I don’t know one Roman door worth the knocking. You, though, you must know every door that opens for a brother of the faith."

Ambrogio’s fingers found the rosary again, brushing it more slowly now.

"I have... correspondents."

He put the word as though it tasted good. "A procurator, I trained beside him, sitting on the accounts of a house near the Lateran. And letters, Barozzi, letters travel a very long way when the right hand seals them."

"And for this sealing, Padre, what does the right hand ask?"

Ambrogio spread both hands wide, as though the question had wounded him. "A tithe, only that. What, you think I would ask more? I only need a small portion for my trouble, the cost of good wax, and good wax is not cheap, Barozzi. And every jar that crosses those mountains, it will have a buyer waiting on the other side."

Vito muttered a short cazzo under his breath, more admiration than complaint, and gave the priest a slow nod. "For the good of every pilgrim soul who might otherwise buy oil thin and watered, ah, Padre, how could I deny the house of God its due?"

He kept his voice as pious as the priest’s, matching him note for note.

"Name the portion, and let the commerce of God go forward unhindered. Amen."

Ambrogio’s face broke into the widest smile of the whole exchange. He was joyful to find a patrician who understood exactly how business between good Christians was supposed to be conducted.

From there, the preparations were set on motion easily. When at last the cathedral bell rang, Zaccaria let out a breath he’d apparently been holding since the doorway.

"That is the whole business? Bah, I expected more. Longer, no?"

"Longer than what, amico?"

"Longer than a fat priest, he blesses your boots, he sells you a road to Rome for a tithe."

Vito grinned and started walking, thinking about warehouses, letters, and mountain roads none of his own ships would ever have to sail.

To the captain behind him, he idly remarked. "Ah, Zaccaria, Venezia, she doesn’t run on oars alone. The business of this Republic, it gets done behind a curtain in the shadows."