Chapter 131: Marco Barozzi’s Gambit

Marco Barozzi crossed to the open stone with hands over his belt, eyes locked onto accounts above the benches only he could see, adding as they went.

He let the silence run until it earned interest.

"Messer Doge. Messeri of the Great Council."

His voice was low and heavy, a strongbox dragged across the floor, and hundreds of men leaned forward to hear the lid scrape.

"The house of Barozzi has not smiled since Torcello."

He lowered his voice, so the hall had to come to him.

"And there is no reason to begin today."

Then a sliver of a pause, laid flat on slate. "The island at the far end of the sea wants a hand at this end of it. Very well, the house of Barozzi has held the hawser behind a great many hulls, messeri, and in all that tonnage it was never the rope that parted. The house will hold it behind Giacomo Tiepolo."

At the foot of the dais, the eldest Avogadore lifted his pen to set down an I, discovered that the speaker was a building, and laid the pen back in its groove. The bare oak sat with its chins on its chests like penitents, while the Feathers rustled once, looked at the grin on their own bench, and kept silence.

"What stands on that island, stands because the house of Barozzi stood under it first."

Behind the stone, the flame slid over the second ring of the candle, and the boy coughed with guilty timing. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"The creditor."

The thin voice came down from the dais like a thread, and under the blind fingers the beads clicked, once, twice, the way a clock thinks.

"A strongbox shutting, eh? One hears the lid."

Click.

"And the boy coughs, so the ring is crossed. One band on the candle remains."

Marco went back to the front bench as he had come, and the next groan from the oak arrived.

Ser Piero hauled himself up with a left foot that reached the stone half a beat after the rest of him. He glanced at the hat, which didn’t glance back, and began to chant as he came, crossing himself on every second stride so that the cross kept the limp and the limp kept time.

"Sancte Tite! Disciple of Paul! First shepherd of that very island, Amen!"

He spread his arms to the vaults, the sleeves flapping like surplices in a gale. "Hear me, messeri, as the faithful hear the bell! The Duke of Candia answers for the Greeks! The Greeks answer to their priests! And the priests, Kyrie eleison, answer to some burned city, and a harbor is shut before the bells ring vespers! Amen!"

His voice cracked on the vespers and he rode the crack like a sailor riding a swell. "And the island’s bishop bends his knee on one condition! One! And the condition is his altar! His altar, messeri! Amen, amen, and thrice amen!"

The tar bench rumbled its approval.

"And Giacomo Tiepolo!"

He spun on the good foot, which was a mistake and a triumph at once. "At twenty years of age, on the Horn, Giacomo Tiepolo sat himself down at a Greek abbot’s table and broke bread! Broke it! Ate it! And he lived! The abbot lived! And the two of them went to mass together after! Deo gratias, Amen!"

A side bench muttered that Piero’s wife’s mother prayed every night for the foot to spread, while one of the old men crossed himself back.

"Piero prays loud enough for two churches, eh."

The beads ticked, unhurried, as if the hall belonged to him and he were merely letting it stand.

"Sit. The saints hear a sitting man just as well, and the foot has earned its rest."

Ser Orio was on his feet after, round as a loaf and dusted like one, with an actual loaf tucked under his arm.

"Bread, messeri! Pan! Pan, I say!"

He shook the loaf at the vaults. "The lagoon grows no stalk of grain, not a seed, we are mud and mouths, mud and mouths! We eat from other men’s fields! And Crete, messeri, Crete is a field with a Lion planted on it, and the Duke of Candia fills the granaries or the ovens go cold! And cold ovens make a hungry city! And a hungry city, Madonna santa, a hungry city eats its government! And Giacomo Tiepolo has never, never, in his life let a loaf go stale! Every month of the year he sits down with the granary keepers, elbow to elbow, and the keepers, mark me, the keepers..."

"Orio."

The thin voice went through him as neatly as a knife through crust.

"The hall broke its fast at dawn. It will survive until noon, eh. Sit."

The Feathers howled at the loaf and the tar bench sniffed like sailors who had spent three weeks on biscuit, while on the dais, the Councillor for Dorsoduro kept his eyes shut through all of it.

The last of them came up from the oak like a barrel rolled uphill, all rattle and no brakes. Ser Nicolò wheezed to a halt, and glanced at the hat only after he had already begun.

"Uno! One lion, messeri!"

He held up a single finger and counted it twice. "Venezia has one lion! One! And a second lion is a cat, messeri, a cat that has been feeding! A black lion! A banner of its own! Over three cities! Three! Six hundred swords, no. Eight hundred. Eight, Madonna, a thousand! A thousand hired swords, and a hired sword answers to its purse, and the purse, mark it, mark it, the purse answers to the cadet!"

The company had mustered a hundred and eighty mercenaries. The Feathers groaned, Fantin’s hand clamped down, and the tar bench shifted. Down the side benches, the pieces passed from mouth to mouth. A second lion. A fed cat. A cadet with a thousand swords.

Then the speech continued. "And the charge! The charge puts the garrisons in the Duke’s hand, that cannot hold what a cadet’s purse is feeding! ’Leave a lion at the gates,’ says the Doge’s son! And I say, messeri, and every gate in Candia will say it after me, leave a lion at the gates, and the gates belong to the lion!"

Then the wheeze went out of him. The finger came down, the hand came off the chest, and the voice dropped low, a strongbox dragged across a floor, borrowed whole.

"The senior of the house has told me the house will answer for that company."

A beat, with nothing in it.

"The house will, messeri."

Then one more.

"The house will."

No one laughed.

At the dais, the beads stopped. The cough came up out of the old chest, the cloth came away dark, and the groan on the Feathers’ bench died halfway up its throat.

The beads ticked once.

That was the whole answer the chair gave.

Vito’s eyes went around the hall one bench at a time, his hands lying flat on his knees.

He had climbed forty-one steps that dawn with his palms open and given the Doge three names, calling each one a risk. The one thing he hadn’t known was whom the hat would back.

Now he knew.

The house of Barozzi had been in every sentence, while the cadet branch had been in none. The senior of the house would answer for a company he had never raised, and his knot had come up from the oak as though the hat had a leash bound to each of them.

The Duke lifted by that hat held the garrisons in his own hand, and the hat held the Duke. The fondaco, the tolls, the quarters, the company, everything Vito had staked on that island would now lie in this hall under the name Barozzi, and the name would belong to the hat.

He needed one man the hat couldn’t reach.

Premarino had bound a bowline without looking down, banned the whistle from the hall, and told it that the oar obeys the captain and the captain obeys the chair.

Ranieri had sold the fear of his father back to the hall as a berth on a far ship, kept the company at the gates, and left wax on the table.

Which of the two?

The history books had stopped being reliable the day a blind man stayed home.

This time no creak came from the front bench to stop him.

Vito walked down the aisle with empty hands, wearing the same dye as the gown on the front bench. The steps went out of the hall bench by bench as he passed.

The hat didn’t turn.

The grin left his face halfway down the aisle, and every bench that had learned it by heart watched it go. The blind face on the dais lifted toward his step and the flame stood in the lower half of the candle. When it ended, the chair would belong to the six.

Vito stopped on the open stone, and drew the breath he had been saving since the start.