Chapter 127: A Duke for Crete

Vito took the forty-one steps two at a time and reached the hall between the first bell and the second, where Fantin caught his arm like a customs hook on a bale.

The rest of him arrived a heartbeat later, scandalized and delighted. "Cugino mio! Five cushions! Ostrega, the geese of Venezia will mourn, they have put on black, every last one! The whole city is saying it, one Barozzi has sat himself down on the entire flock!"

Into the hall, steam rose from hundred shoulders into gray light. The room tasted of wet wool, tallow, and ink, while boys threaded the aisles with cushions piled on their arms like laundry meant for an army.

Vito’s fifth cushion was right on its way. It arrived at the Feathers on a boy’s forearms.

"Donata Morosini’s grandson, tell me, where does he sit?"

Gossip was the one cargo Fantin never lost at sea, and he unloaded it now with both hands, rocking on his heels, his long nose swinging from landmark to landmark like a compass needle.

"Second bench from the front, cugino! His mother, ah, his mother! Her dowry was two vineyards and a lawsuit, and the lawsuit, I tell you, was the better vineyard! And he keeps a spaniel, cugino, with a pedigree finer than mine! And I have a crest on a spoon!"

Vito added quietly, and kept his eyes on the benches. "Go, ask him for his voice. His voice, Fantin, capisci? And do it kindly, soft, like asking for the salt, before the bell."

Fantin clapped a hand to his heart and staggered back half a step. "Kindly! Cugino, cugino, I know how to beg only for myself, only! For other men I have no talent, no practice. Ask any moneylender in Venezia, they will swear to it on the Gospels, and weep!"

Vito took him by the shoulders, directed him at the bench like a boat at the channel entrance, and gave him a shove.

"Ma va’, va’ là! You would haggle with the tide. Go!"

Fantin crossed the floor at a trot, long nose first, like a heron late for supper.

Vito dropped onto the Feathers’ bench among his five cushions, and the hall came clear before him like a market at dawn. The Feathers sat on goose down while Marco’s following sat in a stiff block on bare oak, with the pudding hat riding the front bench above them like a lantern on a pole.

At the foot of the dais, the old men in black, the electors of San Michele, kept their faces shut like accounts books. The copyist cousin bent over a fresh leaf beside the three Avogadori without distraction.

Three names spread across the benches, and each had its knot of men.

Giacomo Tiepolo sat among them, a man in his thirties with a cropped dark beard and a back like a mast step. His gown cost a fortune and did a good job of hiding it. His was an old house with clean hands and no debts, which in that hall was a miracle with a pedigree. The books Vito had read for pleasure, in another life, gave this man the island.

Near the dais sat Ranieri Dandolo, the Doge’s son, with an admiral’s shoulders beneath a gray beard and his father’s long chin without the blindness. He had minded the city through the months his father spent across the sea, and the patrician around him sat like creditors who had been paid on time.

The third knot smelled of tar. Ruggiero Premarino held its middle, a galley captain with a face like salted rope and a coat that had been good once and loyal ever since. The oarsmen’s families shouted his name in taverns and the bear in the legend had a regiment now.

Fantin came back across the floor, his face arranged and hands clamped to his sides, which, for him, was a vow of silence.

"He heard me, cugino. Every word, I swear it on my mother, ecco. That is all I have, that is all there is."

His face, which could turn a funeral into a feast, made nothing of it.

The second bell struck from the roof. Its bronze stroke went through the whole palace, and several hundred men stood at once.

The hall went stiff, the way the tide stands for one breath at the top.

Six silver trumpets came through the stone before the doors opened. They were the gift of a Pope, if Venezia was to be believed, and their tune went through their chests and down into the pilings.

The doors swung wide on the Republic dressed for itself.

Eight banners came in by pairs, white and red and blue and purple.

A boy carried a white candle taller than himself and a gold umbrella opened indoors beneath a roof not a soul had ever found leaking. A cushion and a faldstool went before the chair, and a naked sword was carried high in two fists.

It was the only blade in the hall, and it belonged to the one man in the room who couldn’t see it.

Four sailors brought the Doge in on his chair.

His mantle was rigid with gold thread, his head bare and white above it, the blind face lifted toward a light it couldn’t find. The beads moved through his fingers at his own pace, showing thin wrists.

The hall bowed as the chair passed, lagoon reeds under a squall.

The six councillors walked in behind, three sunburned and grim and three who had kept the chair warm.

Ranieri Dandolo rose as his father went by, without expression..

A cushion went under the Doge’s feet, the one cushion in the hall not one dared compare with his own. The eldest Avogadore rose, inked to the wrist, and his voice crossed the floor like a door dragging on a dry hinge.

"Lawful is the question. Let the Six put it, messeri. And let them put it clear."

The eldest of the six stood in answer, a tall, flat man who looked like a plank leaned against the dais and forgotten.

"Item. The Ducal Council lay before this Great Council, messeri, the island of Crete."

The boy set the white candle before the chair and lit it.

Three red bands ringed its length, and the flame stood a long way above the first. Every man in the hall looked at it the way a sailor looks at a lee shore.

From the chair the voice came thin as a thread of silk and still climbed to the back benches without being raised, as though the hall had been trained long ago to carry it.

"The charge first, eh, the charge first, always the charge first. And then the..."

The cough took the rest of the sentence and shook it like a dog with a rag. Hundreds of men developed an urgent scholarly interest in the candle and kept it until the old chest let go.

"...man."

The eldest of the six broke the seal with one flat thumb and read the charge.

"Item. The island of Crete, bought by this Republic of the Marquess of Montferrat. One thousand marks of silver at the sealing, and ten thousand hyperpyra of gold, yearly, without abatement."

A bench near the aisle counted on its fingers, found the second figure, and kept counting.

"The Republic holds the right in good order. The Republic holds no Duke."

From the middle benches came the snort of those who held the deed to a house they never had stepped inside.

"Vitale Barozzi, of this house and of this Council, holds the cities of the island by a company raised at his own cost, under commission of this Republic."

The hall turned and benches swung toward the Feathers like a shoal, and for one breath the only sound was the candle’s small hiss.

Vito stayed seated with his hands flat on his knees and the grin held, his eyes on the dais.

The leaf turned like a dry sigh, and the voice washed on over the hall’s hunger. "The Ducal Council ask this Great Council to make of the island a duchy of the Republic. Candia it shall be called, messeri. Candia, under a Duke."

The benches leaned in forward, and a few of them even began to divide an island none of them had seen.

The Doge tipped his head toward no one and muttered, pitched with precision of a lifetime of being overheard to carry exactly six benches and not one bench further.

"One more Doge! In a Republic that already has one, and the one it has, God help him, is rather fond of his chair."

The beads ticked once.

"Well. I shall try to share the chair. It is a narrow chair, but I am, God knows, a narrow man."

The laugh that came back to him was warm and a little too grateful, the laughter of those who had been holding their breath and were glad of the excuse.

The eldest of the six waited out the laughter, and not one muscle of that plank face joined in the revelry.

Then, he continued. "The Duke of Candia shall answer to this Republic for the Greeks of the island. The Duke shall hold its garrisons. The garrisons, mark it, in his own hand."

He squared the leaf against his knee, and delivered the last of it in the same even voice.

"The Duke shall be named from this floor, by the rule of this Great Council."

The eldest of the six rolled the leaf and sat down.

The Doge lifted his hand from the beads, and the whole hall heard the silence of them.

"The floor is given to any member who will use it."

The old voice had the sentence to its end, and the cough, as if reprimanded, stayed out in the corridor.

"I cannot see him, but I will know him by his boots."

The hall held its breath.

Vito turned toward the dais and gathered to stand, though no one had called him.

His eyes crossed the room once.

Giacomo Tiepolo rose, and the flame began its walk down to the first red band.