Chapter 132: Vitale Barozzi’s Turnaround

Damp wool steamed from hundreds of shoulders, dust turned in the shafts of light, the flame sat a hand or two above the candle, and the boy held his cough in with both hands.

On the dais, a throat cleared itself.

"Item!"

It washed over the benches with the whole weight of the Republic’s paper behind it.

The eldest of the six lifted his long, flat face. "Let the Council weigh that. The custom of this hall, which was old when our grandfathers were still in the cradle bawling for milk, is clear, the newest voice hears before it speaks."

On the bare oak, chins came up like gulls at a fishwife’s stall. Down the Feathers, electors bristled on their cushions like cats.

Vito bowed to the Ducal Council, low and slow.

The thin voice came down from the dais, dry as old bread. "The six read the charge, eh, and the six wrote the cadet’s name in it. If they wanted him dumb as a fish on a slab, they should have kept him out of the hall."

A laugh spread down the front benches like a spark along a fuse and drowned itself in the eldest’s strained expression, which had gone the gray of wet Istrian stone.

As for the Doge, he continued without a care. "The floor was open to any member with the stomach to spend what is left of the wax. Did I say ’unless he is new’? Did I say ’unless he is young’? I did not. The new have lungs match the old, better, God help us, and the wax is not spent. Speak, Lion’s blood."

Hundreds of patricians heard the name go by, and each slipped it into his pocket like silver of doubtful weight, to be bitten at supper.

Vito turned his whole body toward the dais and bowed again. He had put the formal pleasantries on like a borrowed doublet, and it fit better than months before.

"Messer Doge, the chair has my thanks."

He let one heartbeat pass. "Messeri! I came into this hall with three speeches, and I buried all three between the door and the stone, with honors, mind. One of them had a bear in it, and the beast sends his regrets."

Every bench in the hall had met that bear at some table, and the laugh went around the walls and came back bigger. At the foot of the dais, the eldest Avogadore’s pen, which had starved through four speeches, been handed forty I’s in a breath, and found a building the third time, lifted at the first I out of Vito’s mouth and hung over the leaf like a dog that doubted its bowl.

Without so much care, the Doge snickered. "Lawful, Avogadore. A cadet’s I, eh, no bigger than a thumb, and it hasn’t yet stolen a Duke’s hat. Feed the pen, for a hungry one writes nonsense, and this hall has all the nonsense it can carry."

The pen drank like a pilgrim at a roadside well.

Vito let his gaze travel once around the rows of benches, slowly. "Messeri, the charge puts the garrisons into the Duke’s hand, who, mark me, must first have closed on a sword. The island is three walled cities and a great, a wicked great deal of hill, while the south and the east, messeri, the south and the east have yet to hear that the island changed hands." 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

On the side benches, the old soldiers, those who had stood within the crusaders, nodded. The tar bench grunted, while Premarino sat with his arms across his chest.

Vito turned from the dais to the benches and let his hands rise open and empty. "The island has poor roads, messeri, and those roads are the culprit. Last winter a priest stood before his flock and swore that Latin soldiers snatch children for the slave markets, and that rumor crossed the hills faster than my riders could curse it!"

His voice rose further. "Hear me. The Duke who holds the Greek priests’ ear holds the island. The Duke who loses it runs after every rumor on foot, and rumors, messeri, have very long legs."

More whispers run down the side benches.

Without a care for them, Vito kept on. "Messer Giacomo has told you the island lies calm. And so it does, messeri, in the cities, and I kiss his hand for it. But the hills! The hills keep goats and grievances, and no books in Venezia ever kept account of either!"

He let the hills hang there for a heartbeat, then said it softly.

<anno data-annotation-id="2ca63bf5-f976-319c-6a91-7db5164b7101" data-title=""Ειρήνη υμίν."">"Ειρήνη υμίν."¹</anno>

Down the tar bench, a gray-bearded oarsman who had stood in Constantinople answered under his breath in the same tongue, and his neighbor elbowed him silent.

Then Vito explained. "These words made a whole village stare at me as if I had blessed its goat! Which, I confess, was not my intention. The Duke of that island must say them as if he were born in that very doorway, with the smoke of that hearth still in his hair."

He turned to the electors, hands still open between them and the hall, and the crooked grin went away for the next part and left sober seriousness behind it.

By then, his voice reflected the atmosphere. "Genoa buys whispers, messeri. At Chania the Genoese came with crossbowmen and called themselves wine merchants. Wine merchants! At Rethymno the gates swung open from the inside without so much as a squeak of the hinge for Genoese silver. The Count of Malta only needs a cheap lord, and so the Duke of that island must be a man who cannot hide a sneeze, because whose cannot hide a sneeze, messeri, cannot hide a purse."

Laughter broke across the front benches, and a hundred heads turned toward the knot near the dais. Ranieri Dandolo sat with nothing on his face.

The flame had sunk into the last hand of the band.

Vito let his arms fall to his sides and continued. "A Duke must have ambition, messeri! Some man with a warm bed and a fat cat at home wants them back by winter. I do not blame the cat, it is blameless. It has all the sense God gives a cat."

Even the silver bench, which as a rule laughed only after a price had been agreed, laughed, and Vito rode the wave. "But the man with ambition, messeri, learns every gate. Every one! This very dawn my lieutenant named Pellegrino holds three cities with but a saint’s medal he thumbs raw when he is frightened, and he has been so every hour since the fleet sailed. Poor Pellegrino, let us send him a man who wants something, and let the saint have a rest."

The laugh that came back was a gentler one, with sympathy. Every marshal on those benches had a lieutenant somewhere, holding something, with a medal.

"Let what stands on that island go on standing, and let it be with the right man."

He let the silence stretch.

"Ranieri Dandolo."

The flame touched the third ring on the last syllable. The wax rose around the wick and drowned it, leaving a thread of smoke where the light had been.

For the length of one heartbeat, no one in the hall moved.

Ranieri Dandolo’s face broke open and he came up so fast his bench went over backward behind him, split his lips open, and found it without words, then sat down on the toppled bench with his hands hanging.

Then the hall came apart like the Rialto on the day a spice galley is sighted.

Donata Morosini’s grandson was on his feet before he knew he owned legs, hat in one fist, cushion in the other. The cushion flew across the aisle like a cannonball and landed in the lap of a gray-beard in Ranieri’s knot.

"Dan- DOLO! Dandolo! Dandolo, per Dio, DANDOLO!"

Fantin slapped hands over his heart and reeled back across his two cushions. Then he lurched forward again, roaring.

"Dandolo! And I must say it like I never heard the name! Mare de Dio, I will have to act!"

Down the Feathers, the cushions went up in bursts, and goose down drifted over the old electors like early snow. On the tar bench, Premarino’s arms came apart, the bowline cord came out of his belt, and he hauled it between both fists until it parted with a crack like a cut halyard.

"We take back the stout wall, Barozzi! Ha! We take it! By the Evangelist’s keel, we take it back!"

Among the silver, Tiepolo’s oak heel cracked the stone like a snapped mast. His men came up, but he stilled them with one palm, rose, and bowed to Vito from the waist.

"My cat concedes the goats, Messer! Well sold, Messer! Well sold!"

Ser Piero stood up on his bad foot, flung his face at the rafters, and bellowed.

"Ab ira, a peste, a Dandolo, libera nos, Domine!"

Whether it was a prayer or a curse, he couldn’t himself have said.

Ser Nicolò wheezed it out in three separate gasps, then fell on his fingers again, as if the Dandolos might multiply while his back was turned.

"He has, hff, he has sold us, hff, a Dandolo! One! And that makes, hff, how many?"

The pudding hat jumped on its owner’s head as his following surged behind him. Marco reset it with two fingers, and for the first time, his face betrayed him.

Vito walked back down the aisle with the noise breaking against him like surf and sat among his five cushions, the grin there, small and crooked.

On the dais, the eldest of the six had risen.

"Item! The wax has spoken, and the Six enter it in the record. The chair passes to Your Serenity."

The thin voice came down through the uproar. "The Council rests. Let the benches eat what they brought and shout at their bread instead of at each other. When the bell calls again, we decide, and until then, messeri, the chair is mine."

The cough took the end of the sentence. The cloth came away dark, and for a heartbeat the whole hall looked at it and at nothing else.

Then the beads began again.

The benches rose in knots, and the noise came back smaller and meaner, loud with food and fury. The electors filed toward a side door, while across the floor the pudding hat moved to meet them, Ser Nicolò wheezing in its wake.