Chapter 141: Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Accounts

The barge passed beneath the water-gate of Ca’ del Leon, and the household stood waiting on the landing in its best wool. Marouda had forbidden speech, leaving everyone to suffer the indignity of a silent welcome.

Four sailors brought the Doge’s chair onto the stone. The old man turned his blind face toward the silent house, clutching the folded cloth in his fist, and asked whether the bride was ready.

Marouda informed His Serenity that she was not, and the Republic would have to wait. The Doge who had stormed an empire’s sea walls had been brought to a halt at a water-gate by a servant armed with a slipper, which he called the best hour of his week.

Then Caterina came down the exterior stairs, just as the first bell rang and the barge pushed off.

The crossing ended at the Molo, where every window flew a banner and the fishwives had secured the best view. The Rialto had been taking bets on whether the Doge would make it to the altar, as if to show Venezia could turn almost anything into a wager, including an old man’s ability to reach a church.

The chair passed between the granite pillars and reached the great door beneath the bronze horses, where the notary read the act. The dowry, the deed, and the final stroke that closed the account were dealt with in a single breath, and Zaccaria and Fantin signed their names as witnesses.

Inside, Ambrogio was weeping over his candles. They set the chair down at the altar steps, and the Doge lifted Caterina’s hand from his arm and placed it in Vito’s, who had waited since dawn.

The bride and groom gave their consent loudly enough for the church to hear, while Dorsoduro slept through the readings and Cannaregio marked another notch on his stick. The old man coughed once into his cloth before folding it away, and Ambrogio picked up the ring from its dish.

The stone sent cold through the soles of Vito’s boots, while the candles warmed his face. Ambrogio held the ring in a wet palm, a small object with enough people watching to make dropping it an expensive mistake.

Caterina stood to his left in blue, the samite catching the candlelight from shoulder to hem. Her braid was gone, and her hair fell loose to her waist beneath the cendal, held by a thin gilded circlet.

"Benedic, Domine, anulum hunc..."

Ambrogio sobbed, flicking holy water. "Madonna santa, so beautiful, so beautiful, I cannot see the page! May San Marco... ohh, San Marco!... keep the count, because I cannot, I am too happy, I am ruined with happiness!"

Caterina, at least, was keeping it.

Vito took the ring, and for once, his thumbs were warm.

Her lips barely moved behind the cendal, and the whisper came out clipped and sharp.

"Properly, this time, Vitale, properly."

The cendal trembled with each hissed consonant. "Look about you, witnesses, a notary, a priest who bills by the drop. If that ring touches the floor, I swear on my grandfather’s bones, I will not enter it in the books as a wedding."

He put it on in one move.

"Eh."

The Doge let the sound out slow, and his clouded eyes drifted far behind the vault, back across sixty years.

"The debt I owe to the grandfather of this girl, I refuse to bring to my grave."

Then it came some rattling laugh. "So here I am, paying it in a chair carried by four sailors, with a chest full of the Adriatic. Ah, but he was my friend, that one, when the Rialto was only mud, when we had nothing between us but insults and one borrowed boat! He would have loved this, the old fox, he would have laughed till he wet his hose..."

The hand shot out, found Vito’s sleeve by luck or by will, and clamped on. "You look after her, Lion’s blood. You hear me, fio? Worth more than the island, this putela, worth more than the whole..."

The rest broke into a cough that folded him over in the chair.

Ambrogio gave the kiss of peace, still wet-faced, and Vito had the duty of passing it on.

He lifted the cendal, and Caterina’s lips were warm and a little chapped. He kissed her briefly enough to satisfy the Republic’s right to watch, but not so briefly that the Republic had nothing to discuss.

Then the priest turned them toward the nave, and the congregation answered with one great amen. Marouda sobbed, while the company cheered with confidence.

Dorsoduro woke at the word, said ’Amen’ to the ceiling, and went back to sleep. He had done his part, and no one could reasonably ask more.

In the front bench, the old steward wept with his whole face, while the nurse pressed a hand to her mouth. Vito looked at them, and for once he had no joke ready.

Then Fantin let out a whoop that broke the spell.

Caterina dashed the heel of one ink-stained finger across her eyes, quick and furious. Then she glared up at him through lashes that gave her away.

"The incense!"

Brisk and clipped, her voice a half-tone too high. "They burn it by the pound in this church, Vitale, by the pound. A Christian cannot breathe, never mind see, and do not stand there grinning at me. It is the incense. Enter it so."

Vito’s grin broke wide as the lagoon, and he leaned in close enough to steal her breath. "Mia cara, I would marry you again, this minute, before the incense smokes us all out like bees from a hive!"

From there and into the palace, the ceremony hall in the residence had Constantinople silks along its walls. The Doge took the head of the board, with Cannaregio and Dorsoduro at his elbows, while the steward, the nurse, and Tonin sat first.

Bepi, wearing a borrowed coat, told his neighbors he had foreseen the whole affair ever since the mole at Candia. At the far end, Orsola and Almorò Contarini ate their eels and spent the afternoon admiring their banner’s blue on the bride.

Commandaria went around the board, and the Doge raised his cup.

The Doge raised his cup well off-center, at the clink of the hall as a blind man finds a harbor by its noise, and his voice came out a rusty trumpet.

"Eh! Silence, silence, you thieves and merchants, all of you!"

The cup wavered, then found the air. "On the Rialto, I hear, they laid wagers. Would the old man reach the altar? Would he die in the barge? The odds, poor, I am told. And the taste of the wine they bought with my misfortune, worse!"

The laughter swelled. "So I drink! To every man who bet against me, and may he have had the sense, ostrega, not to borrow the money!"

His cough cut the toast short, but the hall roared regardless.

Vito rose at the high board and poured himself into the formal costume, shoulders squared, chin lifted, voice glazed smooth. He swept the cup to his heart.

"Messer Doge."

He bowed. "Messeri of the Council. With all humility, and all reverence, and the whole of my gratitude, I render thanks unto Your Serenity for the barge, for the blessing, and for the honor of your most august presence at this, our humble board."

The Doge flapped a hand toward the noise. "Basta! Basta, basta, putel! I hear you bowing from here, the creak!"

He let out a wet chuckle. "Sit yourself up, Lion’s Blood. Enough with the Serenities and the humble boards, I get enough of that from the council."

Vito laughed and let the costume fall, then turned to Caterina, and the hall might as well have been empty.

He let out warmly. "Moglie, a year you stood behind me, breathing down my neck, reading my books over my shoulder. And a hundred errors you found, a hundred! Ostrega, I would have married you in a barrel. In a barrel, in a ditch, in the mud at Crete! But you gave me the Basilica for a church, and the Doge himself for a delivery boy! And what price do I put on that. So I drink it in Commandaria, and you, my accountant, you enter it later."

Caterina rose with her cup, wearing the expression she gave a new account.

"Messer Doge. Messeri."

She let the silence spread, then continued. "This marriage I have entered in the household’s books, in ink, and for witness I have the tally stick of the Republic itself, there in the hand of Cannaregio, which is the only witness on all the Rialto that cannot be bought."

Whispers ran down the tables. "And I have opened another section, for Your Serenity’s share of this day. I headed it, ’A debt, not yet named.’ Today I have the name..."

She turned toward the blind old face, and her voice thickened for the first time. "A Friend of My Grandfather’s. The sum beside it blank. Blank, Messer, because no books I own has a line long enough. Enter that."

The Doge’s laugh went to a rattle, and he thumped the board with the flat of his hand, setting every cup dancing. "Eh! Name it, name it as you like, putela, and the Six will swear on the Gospel they never saw it, never heard it, never even learned to read! Cannaregio! Cannaregio, you old stick-scratcher, did you hear her? Enter it!"

Cannaregio’s thumbnail dug a deep, slow notch into the stick, and the scrape sounded loud in the pause.

"Item." Dry as a week-old crust. "Entered. And witnessed."

Caterina sat down, and beneath the board her hand found Vito’s and squeezed hard enough to bruise. She had made her entry, and he had understood it.

She whispered. "Basta, marito. Basta! Eat your fish. Look at you, staring at me like a merchant over a sack of pepper, weighing, weighing... Half the Council is watching, and the other half is laying odds on how long you will keep it up!"

He murmured back. "Ah, yes, mia cara, and the scale, she says too much, too much for one poor merchant! So I round up. I always round up, for love, it is the only honest fraud in all of Venezia."

The afternoon wore into dusk as marsh duck followed the fish, then eels and sweetmeats made with Cyprus sugar, while a lute and a pipe struck up a round dance.

When the Doge had spent the last of his strength, four sailors carried him up the forty-one steps, and he groaned at every one. From the stairs, he called back that the wine was on his account and the councillors could enter it however they pleased, a generous offer, particularly since he wouldn’t be the one worrying about it.

Night fell, and the last guests went home, with Ambrogio following them with a flask of holy water intended for the marriage bed. He made it as far as the office before Marouda met him with her slipper raised.

Beyond the chamber door, two bolsters lay side by side. It was the first night of the marriage, and the bed had finally been left to the bride and groom, neither of whom meant to waste much time getting started.

The door shut, and the new bolt slid home from the inside.