Praise for
The Venetian
“The greatest feat of this novel is that it takes a completely foreign world—Venice, Cairo, and Crete in the early 16th century—and, through the evocative descriptions of spices and architecture, the detailed history of trade and war, and an uncanny sense of place, turns out a suspenseful and fascinating tale.
One of the book’s strongest points is Venice: as much of a character as any human; ruthless, powerful, and beautiful.”
—Publishers Weekly
The Venetian
Copyright © 2016 by Mark Tricarico
All rights reserved.
This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.
To my girls,
whom I live for
Prologue
Venice, 1509
Ciro couldn’t help but grasp the irony even as his mind began to shut down, a primal attempt to protect it from what lay ahead. Glass, the very thing that gave him such joy, that had infused his life with light and grace would now, he knew, be the instrument of his death.
He looked about the dimly lit room with raw swollen eyes, could see little save for the quivering shadows cast by the flames of the crucible. He had no idea what hour of the day it was, but knew it was not the sinking sun that stole the light. His sight was leaving him, the first in an orderly procession of bodily functions abandoning what would soon be just a husk. He could still feel however, the numbness spreading too slowly, and he silently prayed to feel no more.
The heat was intense, but the man didn’t seem to notice. He sat hunched over his table, a brown hulk humming a tune Ciro couldn’t place. His hearing was going now too, sounds turning to vibrations. The progress of pain had been well thought out, enough to make him sever the tip of his tongue, but not quite so much to rob him of his consciousness. The bleeding too followed a course. Soon becoming weak and limp, Ciro was a docile subject, a puppet presented for carving like a bled-out boar.
The man stood, his massive shoulders blotting out the licks of light on the far wall of the room. He gazed down the length of the long rod he held in his hand, the pontello, caressing its smooth shaft. He walked to the crucible, plunged the rod into the molten pond, slowly turning it to gather the liquid glass, rolling it like a tasty confection from the campo’s Christmas market, until he had a glowing ball the size of his fist.
The pulsing orb was perfectly shaped. He felt an odd sense of pride in the fact. He had initially feared the crucible and the searing pain that could be inflicted by the small lake of molten glass that lay within. But he had come to see the beauty of it, how the purifying heat could serve a far nobler purpose than the making of pretty baubles for effete men and bored women.
He turned toward Ciro, the fiery ball safely gathered at the tip of the rod. He gazed down at the nearly eviscerated form before him. “Just one more,” he whispered, tenderly smoothing Ciro’s damp hair back from his forehead.
In the moment before the blinding pain killed him, what saddened Ciro most was that he was unable to summon the image of his family, of his home. He had nothing to fill the void, his mind’s eye gone dark as well. He began to cry, his tears quickly dissolved by the heat. The man began to hum once more. Ciro closed his sightless eyes, and longed for death.
One
The wine supplier was late, again. It was a habit old Francesco had taken up with increasing frequency. He had grown lazy in the last few years, knowing full well he was one of a very select group of men wealthy enough to accommodate the tremendous amount of wine the Arsenale required annually, and more importantly, at the consistently meager prices the Venetian state demanded.
Paolo rubbed his eyes, banishing the remnants of the little sleep he had enjoyed the night before. His eye sockets squeaked. That can’t be good. His heavy-lidded eyes, falsely suggesting sleepiness and some level of disinterest, continued to groan under the circular motion of his hands. Taller and thinner, yet more solidly built than his older brother Ciro, Paolo had close-cropped hair and a short beard that seemed to be of a single piece, making him look older than his twenty-six years.
He gazed across the Arsenale’s mammoth wine cellar, its two parallel rows of massive storage casks standing silently in the perpetual twilight. Annoyed as he was, Paolo couldn’t blame Francesco. He supposed he would behave in exactly the same fashion given the circumstances. Years of systematic extortion by the State would leave even the most eager of men somewhat more…relaxed.
Still, as Canever, Paolo had a job to do. With nearly two thousand workers at the Arsenale, it was no small task to calculate the amount of the wine and water mixture that was the daily refreshment for the workers, distributed in buckets across the Arsenale’s sixty acres of slips, sheds, and workshops by his twelve assistants. Poor wretches. They literally did nothing but carry wine all day, every day. Not that his own position was so grand.
And if Francesco was late, as rightfully outraged by the State’s perpetual disregard for his ability to turn a profit as he might be, Paolo’s operation would be delayed, and impatient gang bosses would be sending their own men to the wine cellar—a practice strictly forbidden, which of course meant nothing to a dry throat. The celebrated Arsenale would then not operate with its legendary efficiency. And, despite all evidence to the contrary, the blame would fall on Paolo.
Being Canever was not why Paolo had come to the Arsenale however, and he found it endlessly ironic that his relationship with his father had been destroyed by this, his occupation as a glorified wine steward. Even now—that very morning in fact—he still felt the excitement of the world inside the ornate turrets of the Porta Magna, the Arsenale’s main gate, looking more like the entrance to a royal palace than that of a bustling shipyard.
The sounds of clanging metal and biting saws echoed off the thick walls, the sweet smell of freshly cut timber mingling with the sour tang of sweat. It was an intoxicating brew. He could literally feel the hum of the place move through his body. Venice seemed to breathe in rhythm to its hammers and saws, that breathing accelerating like the rapid beating of a bird’s breast in the weeks before a sailing. Paolo could not get enough of it, the clamor along the waterfront as benches were set up to recruit the galley crews while merchandise, food, oars, and sailing tackle were sorted, parceled up, and ferried out to the galleys anchored offshore. The voyage would be blessed in Saint Mark’s Basilica or the seafarers’ church of Saint Nicholas on the Lido, and would set out amidst cheers, prayers, and hopes for a successful journey. The Arsenale would change everything. It was what made Venice the most modern city in Italy, if not the world. Superstition and barbarism had been replaced by trade and enterprise. But it was a concept his father could never grasp.
All Tomaso Avesari had ever cared for was his legacy. Avesari e Figli, the family glassworks, was his world, and he meant it to be the world of his sons as well. Naming the business “Avesari and Sons” the moment he discovered his wife Donnatella was pregnant, Tomaso was convinced that the plan he had so carefully conceived would come to fruition. The fact that he had no idea whether his first child, or second when the time came, would be male was of little consequence. Tomaso seemed to extract two boys from his wife’s womb by the sheer force of his will.
And things appeared to be moving forward as planned. His brother Ciro, when old enough to begin instruction, responded enthusiastically to his father’s tutelage. And while not naturally gifted in the art of glassblowing, his insatiable need to please his father seemed enough to garner Tomaso’s love.
Th
ree years later Paolo was born, and Tomaso, more than simply confident that his dream would indeed become reality, felt as though God himself had anointed the glassworks. Unlike his brother, Paolo displayed an immediate affinity for the delicate technique and enduring patience required to be one of the true masters of the craft. He quickly and almost effortlessly surpassed Ciro.
But, as with so many gifted people to whom things come too easily, Paolo’s boredom overcame the designs of age-old tradition, and he longed for something not of his world, and especially not of his father’s.
It was also then that he had found the Arsenale. He dreamed of working on the frames of the great galleys, his hands shaping the wood, the majestic ships still but sketches on scraps of paper. There was something about being present at the genesis of a thing that would later demand awe from all who saw it. But instead, he had been apprenticed in the rigging shed. Too filled with the rashness of youth, he could not appreciate the value of his simply being there. All he knew was disappointment, and he had been unable to conceal it. His apathy all too apparent, he was dispatched to the then Canever as one of his assistants, had worked hard in the subsequent years to become Canever himself, always hoping to return to the heart of the Arsenale. But the elusive second chance never came.
A bark of alarm pulled Paolo from his thoughts. Turning toward the entrance, he expected to see Francesco’s plump face flushed red with wine arriving with his precious cargo. Regardless of when during the day Paolo encountered the old merchant, his countenance was always unchanged—a pink splash of sunrise across both cheeks and a crooked smile dangling below. Francesco was forever frozen in artifice, always too charming. It made Paolo feel as though the merchant were trying to manipulate him. No one was that happy to see you unless they wanted something you were unwilling to give.
To Paolo’s dismay however, it was not Francesco but rather one of the men from the rope shed. Each area of the Arsenale housed a different wonder, and each and every work gang was convinced that its particular specialty was the crucial element that made the great republic the dominant maritime power in the Mediterranean. Paolo had to admit, there was justifiable reason for such conceit. It was the same reason the Arsenale alone consumed ten percent of the Republic’s entire budget.
Squat, square, and powerfully built, the rope worker moved toward Paolo with a jutting chin and the authority vested in him by his gang boss.
“Canever!” The man spat out the title in a vain attempt to establish dominance. Paolo was in no mood. “The wine is late, yes?”
A master of the obvious. What the man didn’t say, but surely implied, was yet again. Paolo smiled graciously. “I hope you have not traveled all the way from the rope shed to tell me something I already know.” The man narrowed his eyes. “I fear,” continued Paolo still smiling, “that both our time has been wasted by your…revelation.”
Unaccustomed to the absence of fear in those he challenged, the worker tried to salvage the encounter. “Just see to it,” he sneered with counterfeit authority, but the moment for intimidation was past and both men knew it. The worker turned on his heel, a little too quickly, attempting to escape with the last menacing word before Paolo could snub him again. He departed, still puffed out in all the right places, playing at disdain but oozing humiliation. Paolo’s assistants were well acquainted with such daily displays, the thirsty workers invariably leaving the wine cellar in the same state—baffled as to how they could be so dismissed when they had honed their skills of intimidation to the finest of points.
Paolo’s enjoyment of playing with the workers had waned over the years, but he still practiced his craft; it was what he knew. It wasn’t that he didn’t respect the workers, quite the contrary. But when one does not care, one does not care to please.
Paolo sighed. The man from the rope shed would only be the first in a line of irate workers, each more arrogant than the last, although his hubris may have been well-placed. The State laid a permanent requisition on all crops of hemp grown in its considerable territories. Only after the government appropriated sufficient quantities for the Arsenale did it make the rest available for sale at a price regulated by law. As a result, Venetian cordage was superior to that of any other navy. Of course, workers building ship frames, developing powder, or designing artillery could all claim the same thing. And they would all be correct. Each area of the Arsenale produced a different prefabricated ship part, from rigging to munitions, and by outfitting a newly built galley with such standardized parts, the shipyard could conjure up a new vessel in just a few days’ time as though by magic.
This mastery of invention inexorably drew Paolo away from Murano. It was the opposite of what had awaited him there. It was the future and the glassworks was the past. And while his talents had been well suited to his father’s craft, he was forever attempting things that hadn’t yet been done rather than simply follow his father’s instruction. Always something new, Tomaso would lament. Always something else. And in the end, his father never forgave him.
That had been seven years ago. Although he and Ciro still saw one another, he hadn’t seen either of his parents. At his mother’s request, Ciro had tried to arrange a reunion five years before, and it had gone disastrously wrong. The two-year interval had not been long enough. Two years after that, Paolo’s mother was dead and Tomaso cursed his second son all over again. She had taken such joy from her family, and with her family broken, Paolo knew she had simply relinquished her hold on life. His father chose to bear no responsibility, laying the blame at Paolo’s feet. It was a charge no worse than the one Paolo leveled at himself and could do no more damage than a man’s own mind forever accusing itself.
“Canever!” Paolo turned to see Francesco’s plump body filling the doorway, arms outstretched to either apologize, embrace, or both. The crooked smile was firmly in place, the cheeks appropriately hued.
Two
Cairo
Abramo Lanzi lifted his face to the cerulean sky and breathed deeply, filling his lungs with torrid desert air. Was there ever such a place as Cairo? The month long journey from Venice to Alexandria and onto the Egyptian capital was finally behind him, and he couldn’t wait to stretch a body that felt as though it had been folded like a napkin in a drawer since the last Sensa.
Fifteen hundred miles in a cramped cabin had taxed his long limbs, but in the end it would be worth it. With a thousand ducats to buy pepper and a forty percent profit from its sale, Abramo would have happily endured far worse. Because the Venetian merchant fleet was militarized, he could not make the journey in anything resembling luxury, the bulk of the massive galley being given over to cargo space and fighting men. He didn’t mind, indeed he loved the notion—waging war and doing business in the same breath. He had learned very early in life that he could have been nothing other than a Venetian.
He had sensed the African coast before it had come into view. Miles out, the sea became muddied by the outflow of Nile silt, Alexandria rising from the morning haze, a shimmering vision that swayed with the coastal breeze. Below, a frantic and disoriented hippopotamus struggled to stay afloat, wondering how it had been washed out to sea.
***
AWAITING THE ARRIVAL of the spice caravans in the fondaco proved too taxing for Abramo. Sleeping quarters, warehouses, kitchens, a bakery, a bathhouse, a chapel, and a garden made it the most pleasant of prisons, but he longed to escape the melancholy of the once-great trading center, now little more than a tired port town.
Abramo had been taught the life of a trader at his uncle’s knee. A tender image when he took the time to think of it, but he had plans his uncle would never have dared. He would be a great trader, but he would do it his way. He had endured too many lectures on the fruits of hard work—pride, accomplishment, on and on. Some people—his uncle, his friend Ciro. Afraid of their own shadows. His uncle had even admonished him for associating with Signore Gambare, Abramo’s sponsor. The old man didn’t trust him. If he only did business with those he trusted impl
icitly, he’d never make a single ducat. Plodding away like a plow horse may work for some, but Abramo was smarter than that.
He booked passage on the next barge headed up the Nile to Cairo, planning a return to Alexandria in a few days. It was a pleasant trip, the scorching sun mellowed by the refreshing river breezes, the tall reeds on the Nile’s banks lazily waving him on toward promised riches.
***
NOW, STANDING HERE amidst the jarring tumult of Cairo, Abramo knew the few ducats less he would have to spend on pepper once back in Alexandria were well worth the adventures he would have in such a city, one to easily rival even Venice. Silk, spice, gold, slaves: no matter which way he turned his head, a new wonder. Having left Venice in late August, he had only just missed the Festival of the Nile, which began on the day in late summer when Isis wept and the great river rose to its annual flood stage. He would have liked to have seen the festival, the spectacle of the city’s religious leaders rupturing the dike, flooding the city’s canals in water and ritual. Illuminated boats would sail the canals nightly as celebrants tossed candy and coins to children and the poor on shore.
***
AFTER HOURS OF wandering, Abramo found himself in the capital’s outlying districts, although he couldn’t be sure where, dizzy as he was from the day’s carnival, the mournful calls to prayer from the Muezzins sounding like a keening lover. Little light found him here, the buildings like some ancient forest with limbs and leaves blotting out the sky. The odor of grime and urine pulled the bile from his stomach while the scent of onion and garlic, stuffed pigeon and roasted lamb made his mouth water.
The twisting maze of Cairo’s alleyways was even more baffling in the purple twilight. While every street near the city’s center was illuminated, filled with residents dining and shopping, light was mostly absent here, as were people. Abramo looked about for a friendly face.
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