Reborn in The Most Serene Republic of Venice – Rise of a Doge

The grille at Ca’ del Leon’s water-gate rose on its windlass in the dark, while the black gondola waited below with frost covering its cushions. Vito came down wearing the wine-dark mantle, while a lamp burned in the office window above him.

From Epiphany until the last week of February, he left for the Doge Palace at dawn and returned home in the evening. With each sitting, he learned to read the hall a little better, its workings becoming clear to him as a pilot reads a chart, knowing where trouble lies before the ship reaches it.

The old man on the dais was worse than ever. Some mornings, four servants brought him out before noon, and the Ducal Council took over the sitting. The rows of councillors dragged on, all pulling toward the ducal chair, though no one said so aloud.

Every night, Vito found the office better equipped. Cristina’s goose-down cushions had made a bench of their own behind Caterina’s back, a footstool stood beneath her feet, and vinegared figs waited beside her elbow, along with dry bread for mornings that refused to leave her alone.

Her gown had been let out a finger at the laces, and whenever anyone looked too closely, she covered the first little curve with her books. A woman could conceal a great many things behind a page of accounts, provided she was determined enough.

Since the Doge had returned from his years of crusading, the Great Council had divided itself into two armies, with three market stalls left between them. The Feathers and Ranieri’s knot had joined the Young, named i Giovani, alongside the colleganza houses, Donata Morosini’s circle, and Fantin’s households, and Vito belonged to their company.

The Young wanted new works, shipyards that could outbuild the Arsenal, land bought before its price went up, and, although no one had dared put it into words yet, military expansion.

Marco’s bare oak, Ser Piero’s pious rows, and the followers of Ser Orio and Ser Nicolò formed the Old, i Vecchi.

The Old wanted the oath kept as it had been sworn, the oars pulled as they had always been pulled, the Arsenal preserved as the Republic’s shipyardsyard, and the furnaces left where they stood.

Despite the names, a gray beard could sit with the Young, and a boy of twenty could sit with the Old. Both did.

Sixty-two councillors sat with the Young, sixty with the Old, and eighty-eight remained in the middle. Naturally, those eighty-eight were where the business lay.

They occupied three benches.

The first belonged to i Salinari, eighteen Salt Lords of Chioggia and the kin of salt keepers, men with brine into their knuckles. The Young offered them the Cascade, with its basins dug and the summer yield promised, while the Old offered papers on four of their leases, which was described as a courtesy.

The second bench belonged to i Marinai. There were forty-two of them, the tar bench, the Zara veterans, and the Arsenal’s red caps, who wanted great hulls that lasted and the state’s yards kept in state hands.

The Young offered lead below the waterline, saving a season of refits but taking the work away from the red caps, while the Old offered Arsenal contracts.

The third bench belonged to i Netti, twenty-eight men from debt-free old houses, along with Giacomo Tiepolo’s silver.

They wanted honors and owed no one and needed nothing, which made them difficult customers. Neither gifts nor credit could buy them, so both parties offered a post, and Rialto laid odds on which office would suit them.

During all that mess, Vito crossed to Murano by barge in the January haze. The island lay low beneath it, with net racks across the shore, a monastery behind them, and the stumps of old furnaces standing in the reeds.

He had put a proposal to move the city’s furnaces there, which rested on the danger of fire, a perfectly good reason. Vito knew the year the Council would have ordered the move and was ready to bring it about eighty-four years early.

The island belonged to three parties, a monastery with a stretch of shoreline, the island’s common inhabitants, and two patrician houses with orchards behind them. Marina’s brokers found all three within a week, and the Barozzini leased the shoreline and bought the orchards for 2,400 grossi.

The law would make the ground worth five times what it had cost.

Vito would receive rent from every furnace master who moved there, raise the first two furnaces for the clear melt and the lead-backed mirror, and teach the melt to any glassman willing to sign for a plot. The Republic would get its safer furnaces, the Barozzini would get their money, and he would earn an income from every man who came to work.

Of course, the glassmen of the city disliked being moved, but that was a problem for the future.

Back into the hall, horn-framed spectacles flashed on the oldest noses.

Seven men of the Old read the charge to its last line through them, found it well drawn, and complained about it for a week. By Candlemas, every grand wife who owned a hand’s breadth of mirror wanted a second one, and her husband’s vote acquired a price measured in hands.

A man could oppose progress on principle for quite some time, but it became harder when his wife wanted a better look at herself.

The Council had accepted every gift as a courtesy and entered every one as a debt. That was how the game was played, and during the weeks the proposal was under discussion, the bills came due.

On the eve of the sitting, the office window still glowed. Caterina’s notebook lay open on the desk, every figure filled except for one name.

She wrote Tiepolo’s name on the empty line, then added the cat beneath it in smaller letters.

The Doge was brought out before the charge was read, and the Ducal Council took the chair. The Six read every charge, the Avogadori secured its form, and the Great Council, with two hundred and ten men on the roll, decided each matter by dropping balls into boxes.

The Council of Forty named whatever men a proposal required, as they had named the Duke of Candia, and numbered forty-nine because Venezia named its councils for the day they were founded and counted their seats according to custom.

A week before the sitting, Vito had filed a declaration with the Avogadori stating that the shore was his. The charge called for a warden but left the appointment to the Forty, with the charge to be read first and the man named afterward.

Marco rose to point out that the proposer owned the ground the law was about to favor. The Avogadore turned a leaf in the records and showed him Vito’s declaration.

The proposal was approved by one hundred thirty-five votes to seventy-five.

The Young, the Netti, the tar bench, the Zara veterans, and fifteen Salinari voted yes.

The result showed just how far Marco’s influence still reached. He had lost the charge, but his promises had bought enough votes to make the loss worth consideration.

Then the Council of Forty named the warden.

Giacomo Tiepolo took Murano by forty votes to nine.

Tiepolo accepted in thirty-six sentences, one more than his thirty-five in October, and every row in the hall counted along.

By the last sitting of February, Caterina could no longer hide the curves of her belly.

Marouda had let out the laces twice, and the gown now fell over a small, round hill on which her kyria rested her forearm like a shelf. The mornings that had turned against her were gone, replaced by a hunger for vinegar and a tiredness that arrived with dusk.

She had pushed the footstool away, for the work had not become lighter and she was not inclined to pretend otherwise.

Cristina set the footstool beneath her feet regardless, placed broth beside her elbow, and took the oil flask with her, leaving an hour of flame. She had evidently decided that if Caterina would not rest for her own sake, she might at least be persuaded to do it for the sake of the child.

Then, at last, the caulkers’ mallets had begun their work across the Riva, and Nestor’s ways stood full of ribs.

The new colleganza leaf lay open on the oak, every line written but one, the blank as wide as a thumb and waiting for the name of the merchant who would oversee the season venture.

The sea would open in March, and the child was due in summer.