The sailor nodded. "A risk a thief takes. It's not something I've tried before, or I'm in a hurry to try again. And your girl should be very sorry you're leaving. Any chance I'd be shipping out with you, Milord?"
To his surprise Benito realized the man wanted him to be on the vessel. That was admiration in his voice. "I'm not shipping out." He waved at a dark, sleek gondola out on the Grand Canal. "She is. And as far as I can see she's not a bit sorry," he added, bitterly.
The gondolier had responded to his wave, and the vessel was just about at the canalside. Benito vaulted down into it, with athletic ease. "Bacino San Marco," he said, taking his seat.
"Morning, Valdosta. Or are you too important to greet us these days?"
Benito looked up. "Oh, hell. Sorry, Theobaldo. My mind was somewhere else."
The gondolier shrugged. "It's too late, boy. She's married and he's a fine man. Besides, she is one of us and you're one of them. It would never have worked."
Benito was not in the least surprised that the canaler knew all about his private life. He'd lived next to these canals himself for far too long not to know that the real lifeblood of Venice was not the water in her canals or the trade of her far-flung colonies, but gossip. When you and your brother are real, romantic heroes, nobles hidden in slums, who come into their own while saving the city in its hour of need . . . When your patron is the new Doge . . .
Well, suddenly everyone knows you. To be fair, on the canals, most of them had known his brother Marco anyway. Marco was pretty well regarded as the local saint, for his work in healing the poor and sick of the canals. He, Benito, had a fairly well-deserved reputation for being a thief and trouble, and a pack follower of the assassin Caesare Aldanto, until almost the last. He'd redeemed himself in the fighting, to be sure. Fighting was one of the few things he was good at, thanks in part to the treacherous Caesare, and thanks in part to his father's blood—neither of which most people regarded as good things.
Benito sighed. His skills: fighting, carousing and climbing buildings. None of the three seemed to fit him for the aristocratic mold Petro Dorma wanted to cram him into.
His half-brother Marco, on the other hand, was a gentleman born. Fitting into the
Case Vecchie
mold was easy enough for him, so long as he could go on with his beloved medical studies and seeing Katerina Montescue. Besides, ever since Benito's brother and the Lion of Venice had shared a body, Marco was . . . different. He was still the brother Benito knew and loved. But he'd always been the thinker. Benito was a doer, not a thinker. Marco was no longer unsure of himself, and now it was Benito's turn to be. It was something Benito had never been before.
"I know, Theobaldo. I messed up good, huh? But I grew up as a bridge-brat. I'm still learning this
Case Vecchie
stuff, and, to tell the truth, I don't like it much."
The gondolier sculled easily, moving the boat along the limpid water of the canal, under the Rialto bridge. A few bankers' clerks were already setting up their masters' stalls. "We always reckoned you were born to be hanged," he said. "That brother of yours is too good for this world, but you! Anyway, you're not going to make trouble for Maria and Umberto, are you? Because if you are, I'm going to pitch you into the canal here. You and that fancy sword of yours."
Benito knew he was good with that fancy sword, so long as he was on dry land. He also knew what Maria had taught him: Never mess with a boatman in his own boat. The gondolier had spent forty years staying on his feet in this vessel. Benito was a landsman, even if he'd grown up canalside.
Besides, Benito had no intention of causing trouble. Umberto
was
a fine man, even if he was twenty-five years older than Maria. And never mind the gondolieri—Maria would pitch him into the water herself if he tried anything. She was certainly strong enough and quite capable of doing it.
"I'm just going to say 'good-bye,' " he said quietly. "And good luck. She deserves some."
He withdrew into a brown study, thinking back to that time of poverty he'd spent living with Maria and Caesare, when both of them, in their different ways—Maria as Caesare's lover and he as Caesare's young protégé—had thought Caesare Aldanto was some kind of demigod on earth. Until, in one night and day, Aldanto's evil nature had surfaced and Benito and Maria had wound up becoming lovers themselves. A night which was still, for all the horror of it, Benito's most precious memory.
Benito realized now with crystal clarity, looking back, how he'd been shaped by those times. His blood, if you were shaped by blood, was terrifying enough. His mother was an undutiful daughter of Duke Enrico Dell'este. The Old Fox, they called him. Lord of Ferrara, Modena, Este, Regio nell' Emilia, and, since Milan and Verona's defeat a month back, of several more Po valley towns. Dell'este was supposed to be the leading strategist of the age. A man feared and respected. A nobleman.
But Benito's father was worse. Carlo Sforza, the Wolf of the North. A man feared. The most powerful and deadly soldier-of-fortune of the day, Italy's most notorious
condottiere
. Undefeated, until the debacle at the Palatine forts on the Po during the battle for Venice last month, when the Old Fox had bloodied the Wolf. Bloodied the Wolf, but not killed him. Benito still had his father's broken sword in the cupboard at the
Casa
Dorma.
They all expected him to be like one or the other of these men. And maybe, in time he might be. But he knew very little of either of them, or of their very different worlds. He'd learned how to live, and how to behave, mostly from two women street-thieves, until he and Marco had tied up with Caesare. Like it or not, Benito had to admit he'd modeled himself on Caesare Aldanto. The man had been something of a hero to both of them. Caesare and Maria had been the center of their world for some very crucial years.
Maria
. If there was ever going to be a reason why Benito didn't turn out as much of a
pizza da merde
as Caesare had turned out to be, she would probably be it. Deep inside him it ached. Her values were hard, clear, loyal and true. And she'd turned him down to marry a caulker. Here he was, protégé of the man who was the new Doge . . . hurting because some canal-woman had spurned his offer of marriage.
Deep down, he was also worried that she was dead right to have done so. He'd nearly killed those two stupid sailors, just because he was in a foul mood and looking for excitement to distract him. Caesare would have done the same, but would not have stopped short. So, according to rumor, would Carlo Sforza. As for the Old Fox—well, stories painted him as a good friend and a bad enemy, but a cautious and wily man. A cautious and wily man might well have done as Benito had.
Or perhaps, not.
But the Old Fox, Maria—or a younger, less arrogant Benito—would never have gotten into that position in the first place. He sighed. Maybe part of it was that he was so short. One of the other things he owed to growing up a thief, living under bridges and in secret in other people's attics. With no money, but lots of enthusiasm. More enthusiasm and conviction that things would come right, than food, sometimes. Food had been hard to come by for a few years. He was growing broader now. But he'd never be as tall as his brother. Marco had done his basic growing before hard times hit the two of them. Besides, the Dell'este were not tall. The tall willowy shape was that of the Valdosta family.
"You going to sit there all day?" asked the gondolier, interrupting his musing. "Or are you going to get out?"
Startled, Benito stood up and reached for the mooring-pole.
"You can pay me, Valdosta," said Theodoro, dryly.
Flushing, Benito did. Generously. After all, money was the one thing he had plenty of now.
Benito was not surprised to find Katerina Montescue on the quay-side. And if Kat was going to be there, his brother was almost inevitably going to be, too.
Marco and Kat eyed him with considerable wariness as he came up. "You shouldn't be here!" hissed Kat.
Benito held up his hands, pacifically. "I'm not going to cause any trouble."
"You
should
have caused trouble," said Kat crossly, "before she did this. It's too late now."
Benito nodded, and swallowed to clear the lump in his throat. "I know. Now all I can do is . . . not make trouble. So I'm just going to say good-bye to an old friend."
The spitting-tabby glow in Kat's eyes died. She patted his arm, awkwardly. "Maybe it is for the best. I mean, she seems happy enough."
Benito looked over to where Maria Garavelli—no, not Garavelli any more; Verrier, now—was talking to two older women. She seemed, if not happy, at least to be her usual abrasive self.
"Don't be crazy!" she was saying. "The boat's worth twice that. Put it up on blocks in Tomaso's yard if you won't use it."
Benito missed half of the reply. Something about " . . . when you come back."
Maria shook her head emphatically. "I'm not coming back."
Benito winced at that certainty.
Maria caught sight of him, then. Immediately, she turned and strode over to him, her dark eyes flashing.
"What are you doing here, 'Nito?" There was challenge in her voice, challenge, and deep down, anger. If there was anything else there, he didn't want to know about it.
Benito shrugged. "I heard an old friend was leaving Venice. She did a lot toward raising me. I came to say good-bye, good luck, and a safe journey. And I hope—I mean, I
really
hope—she's happy."
For a moment she said nothing. Then: "Good-bye, Benito." It was said very quietly, with just a flicker of pain. She turned her back on him and walked away.
Benito had spent his life knowing exactly what to do next. For once, he didn't. So he walked blindly off into the piazza, leaving Maria to embark with her new husband on the ship outbound for Istria.
The roll of the ship on its way to Istria was comforting, something familiar in an increasingly unfamiliar world. Maria needed that comfort now, as she lay sleepless. For the first time in her life she wasn't going to be living in a city. That worried her, more than she liked to admit, but it worried her a lot less than the life stirring inside her did.
Beside her, Umberto snored. She'd get used to that, she supposed, eventually. At least the snoring made him different from Caesare. And Benito, for that matter.
Benito had upset her; the baby had kicked just when he'd said good-bye. She'd swear it was his—it was so damned restless, just like him. But it would be a long time before she forgot the look on his face, there on the quay-side. Not for the first time, Maria wondered if she'd made a mistake. Still, she'd made her decisions, made her bed, as the old ones said, and now she must lie in it. Benito just reminded her too much of Caesare. Caesare had hurt her, worse than she'd ever been hurt in her life, and in ways she was probably never going to get over.
Whatever else, she wasn't going to have that happen to her again. Umberto wasn't an exciting man, true, and hadn't been even in his youth. But Maria had known him since she was a little girl. Umberto Verrier was as decent as they came and as reliable as the seasons.
She sighed. It was good fortune that Umberto had gotten this post as chief forester for a district in Istria. The post usually went to one of the master-carpenters from the Arsenal, which the caulkers technically were, but normally it went to one of the more prestigious guilds, not to the poor-relation caulkers. She suspected the hand of Petro Dorma in that appointment. His family had huge estates in Istria, and besides, the Doge had influence everywhere in Venice. But she was grateful, even if all it meant was that the Doge was trying to get Benito Valdosta, of the
Casa
Vecchie
Valdosta, away from the canals and a certain boat-girl who might try to exercise a hold over him. It would take her away from Venice before her pregnancy began to show.
Now all she had to do was bear with the interminable voyage, an alien new life, and try to love the husband she had bound herself to. He was a good man, Umberto. He deserved at least that she try, try as hard as she ever had in all her life.
The voyage wound up not being as long or as uncomfortable as she had feared it would be. But once the tarette had dropped them at the tiny harbor at Rovini, the enormity of the change in her life really struck her. She had not been on the dock for more than a minute before she was aware, deep in her gut, that Venetian-held Istria was . . . different.
All her life had been formed around the bustle of Venice, around an existence that centered on people and water. She stood on the dock with a bundle of her personal belongings beside her, as Umberto looked for the forester who was to meet them, and fought down a sudden surge of fear.
Fortunately, the forester was also looking for them, and his arrival pushed the fear aside in favor of more immediate and practical concerns. There was the usual confused comedy over boxes and chests. Eventually, Umberto and the other man got it sorted out while Maria stood by, trying not to feel impatient because
she
would have had it dealt with in two minutes. The effort to control her often-brusque temperament steadied Maria—the brusque temperament itself, even more so. Whatever else Maria had to worry about in the future, her own practical competence was not one of them.
The foresters had arranged for a small caretta to transport the new chief forester and his bride up to his home in the forests and the hills. Bouncing up the muddy track beyond the olives and the bare fields, they moved into the fringes of forested land. For the first time in her life, Maria found herself out of sight or scent of the sea.
The forest smelled. A damp, rich, mushroomy smell, that probably, under other circumstances, would have been pleasant. At least it wasn't the sewage-stink of the canals in high summer. But it wasn't familiar, either, it wasn't anything she was expecting, and it was strong. That, or pregnancy, or just the bouncing of the cart, made her feel sick.