by Smith, Skye
He was shown into a waiting room that was filled with men and women so over dressed with finery that you would think it was a coronation. No, it was just another day of business at the office of the Doxe of Venice. The abbot was already there waiting for him and crossed the room and shook his hand, and then waved to the doorman, who whispered something through a small hatch in the door, and then waved back that they should come forward.
At the door, they had to wait while the richly adorned people from the last audience stumbled through it backwards, still calling things through the doorway. When it came to them that their words were being heard by everyone who was waiting, they stopped calling and turned and gave the abbot a sour look as they hurried away.
Once inside the office, and indeed it was an office, a place of business, the clerks finished gathering up their papers, and left them alone by leaving through a side door. They seemed now to be alone in the room, but then they heard a murmur of low voices from the window arches. Raynar cocked an eye at the abbot, and the abbot said, "The windows are doors, and there is a balcony outside. Shall we join them?"
As soon as he stepped out onto the balcony, he could see the biggest construction site he had ever seen. A new basilica was being built across the square from this palace, and it was massive. The abbot said softly, "Selvo works in this small back office now so that at any time he can watch the basilica being built. His true office is on the other side facing the canal."
At the sound of a woman's voice, Raynar turned his head towards the man at the balcony edge who could only be the Doxe. Maria was standing close beside him.
"Ah," she said into Selvo's ear, "here is the very man I was telling you of. The Varangian sent from Constantinople.” With a quick step which jiggled an abundance of open cleavage, Maria came to him and took him by the hand and announced, "Domenico Selvo, may I present Raynar of the Peaks." This was all spoken in Greek, not Venetian, for the benefit of the guest.
After some more politeness and a bit of bowing, the abbot came closer and said in a soft voice, "I hope that my niece will forgive me if I ask that she retire to the ladies waiting room while I am present."
Maria stared daggers at the abbot but then softened her face before smiling at the Doxe. He smiled back and bowed his head slightly and said, "As he is a monk under a vow of chastity, I cannot blame him for asking not to be led into temptation by your beauty Maria. You may have more of my time when he is finished."
She had been dismissed, and she must obey, but that did not stop her from curtseying low enough to seduce any monk, and then slowly and closely pushed passed Raynar to lead them all inside off the balcony.
The abbot said nothing until she was safely through the side door used by the clerks, and that door was firmly closed. Even then he moved closer to his old friend Selvo before he whispered. "This man is not from Constantinople but from Flanders. His very presence means that the Varangians must be planning to march towards the Adriatic. They would only do that if Emperor Alexius himself was making plans for securing Illyria."
"Excellent, excellent," whispered Selvo, "And you sir, who are you really? Maria told me that you were one of the elite of the elite. A Varangian body guard to the Emperor. Did you lie to her when you rescued her?"
"At the time she was out of her mind with terror and grief. If dreaming that she was secure and protected by an elite guard eased her anguish, then it was not the time to worry her with reality. Now that she is secure in her home again, I will tell her that I am a peasant who owns and captains a few trading ships that carry wool and wine between Brugge and England."
Selvo stepped forward and took Raynar’s arm in a warrior greeting. "Well said and well met Captain Raynar. Thank the heavens that Flanders has sent us a useful man to replace the shopkeepers that run their Embassy here. I too began my career owning and captaining a few poor ships, though between Venice and Egypt. Now I am the grand admiral of the Venetian fleet. Wait here while I tell my clerks to bring me my maps of the Adriatic."
"I have one, sir," Raynar told him as he opened his scroll pipe to find it. Once found he spread it on the largest of the desks, and held the corners down using an assortment of curious things from the corner of the desk. All the time he was weighing whether he should tell this warlord that he was not here to replace the ambassadors. His mission was that of messenger-come-spy and nothing more.
The three men gathered around the desk, and the first thing that Selvo said was, "Hmm, not a very good map, but good enough for our purposes here today. I will have a better one sent to you at Maria's house. There, there is Messina, in Sicily. That ancient city is now controlled by the Normans under Duke Guiscard of Apulia, the duchy that forms the end of the Italian peninsula.
Last year Guiscard begged many North Sea longships from his cousin Duke William of Normandy. Those ships sailed from Normandy through the Pillars of Hercules to Marseille in Provence. Many Frankish warriors boarded them in Marseille and now they have reached Messina. Such a strong fleet based in Messina is a great worry to Venice.
We had hoped that he was assembling this fleet to finish taking Sicily away from the Saracens. That hope is now dead, for Guiscard is assembling an army at Otranto. Otranto is there, that port on the Adriatic coast where our sea narrows into the Strait of Otranto. Our ships that ply the Mediterranean trade routes must all pass through that Strait. Duke Guiscard begins to worry us greatly.
And now you arrive with that banking scroll. To us that is confirmation that the Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus believes that the greedy Normans intend to bite away yet another piece of the borders of his Empire. Probably the lands directly across the Strait from Otranto, there on the map, around the port of Avalona. From Otranto to Avalona is but seventy miles across the strait.
This is quickly becoming a nightmare for Venice. If Guiscard gains ports on both sides of the strait, and worse, has a fleet on both sides, then at a snap of his fingers he could block us from our most profitable trade routes. Your arrival gives me hope. Did you understand all of my words?" the Doxe concluded.
Raynar organized his thoughts before he spoke. "Yes. I understood. The Varangians expect to be moving towards the Adriatic, so Alexius may be with them, so perhaps a sizeable Byzantine army may be with them. That means that Venice can relax and wait for the opportunity of taking Guiscard's fleet away from him.
Hmmm, but what if Alexius is detained, or what if Guiscard hurries to cross the Strait before Alexius gets there. If you take Guiscard's fleet now, before he crosses, then he cannot cross. Hmmm.
Oh, of course, you want him to cross before you take his fleet away from him. That will leave his army stranded and facing Alexius.” Raynar raised his gaze from the map to the face of the warlord. "Are your own ships up to the task of defeating North Sea longships? Their design and speed has allowed the Danes and the Norse to rule the North Sea for centuries."
"You can judge our ships for yourself," Selvo told him. "I will instruct Maria to take you for a tour of our military shipyard.” He turned around at a knock on the side door. A clerk pushed his head through the crack of it as it opened and spoke urgently in Venetian.
Selvo called back to the clerk, and then took away the weights that held the corners of the map and let it furl. "We will talk again after you have seen the shipyard. I will look forward to a blunt and honest appraisal of our ships, captain to captain."
It was a dismissal, and the abbot pulled the flamboyantly dressed pilgrim with him and out the main door. Maria was just coming in through the side door as they left, and she was slapping at the hands of the clerk who was trying to stop her. He did not see more because the abbot was pulling him through the courtiers in costly clothing that had filled the waiting room during their short visit with the Doxe.
"Is he always so busy?" Raynar asked the abbot.
"These are interesting times, my son. There were twenty four great families that joined together to form the Republic of Venice. Until Selvo, the Doxe were all chosen by
those families and he had the powers of a tyrant. Selvo however, was chosen by the people, and he rules by consensus. This means that his waiting room is always full, and not just with those who have appointments, but also with those wishing to speak with those who have appointments."
* * * * *
The abbot left him at the gate to the public area. There was no sign of Magda or the lads, so he went out into the sunlight to warm himself and to browse around and watch the miriad of people. It was but steps to the Piazza, and by following interesting looking people just for the purpose of having a better look at them, he was soon surrounded by the crowd. The other end of the Piazza was the construction site of the basilica and was choked with workers and dust so he turned around and walked right into a slap across the face.
"You made me look a fool in front of the two most powerful men in Venice," hissed Maria. A passerby, another people-watcher like Raynar, had stopped to look down her divine cleavage and he earned a slap as well.
"Ugh," replied Raynar as he grabbed her elbow, both to stop any more slapping, and to pull her out of the endless stream of people, and towards the centre of the Piazza which was almost empty save for pigeons. "I did nothing but explain that I had misled you out of a need for security. And for that I have a stinging cheek that needs a kiss to make it better." He pulled back as her other hand lashed out to slap him, but the hand stopped halfway, as if frozen in place by the cold of an Alpine pass.
"One more slap," she told him, "and my temper will be gone.” She watched as he turned his cheek and offered it to her. This man was maddening. Last night she had given him endless hints that he could share her bed, and yet he had slept with his men. Yes, that in itself was worth another slap, and she did so, hard.
"Owe," he yelled out in pain and compete surprise. "What kind of Christian are you. I offered you my other cheek."
"Well there is the lesson of why there are so few good Christians. They tend to get slapped around a lot. And if you want that cheek kissed better, then you will have to wait until tonight, in my bed.” What is it with men that they always miss the subtle, romantic hints of women. With an impulse that she could not stop, despite the public place, she wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him sweet little kisses all over his cheeks and neck.
They were interrupted by two well meaning guardia who questioned Maria to make sure that she did not need help. After she had sent them on their way with a coin each, she told Raynar, "They said that we should get a room. That making love in the Piazza was only allowed on Festival days. They also told me that it was unseemly for a citizen to be displaying passion for a foreigner in public."
"Did they say where the closest room was?" He expected a laugh at his jest, but jests are difficult to carry off when you are weak in the language. She didn't see the humour, and went into a tirade about how the rent charged for rooms these days was far too expensive because of all the rich foreigners who were moving to Venice. "Fifty thousand souls now in this city," she told him. "Too many, far too many."
To Raynar, the number was unbelievable. To his knowledge there were less than thirty thousand in London, the largest city he had ever been to, and fewer still in Paris, although Paris was now growing very quickly because of the peace brought on by their king and the weakening of the Norman armies on France's border.
There was an active market happening on the other side of the Piazza, and they strolled arm in arm towards it. Every man that passed them smiled and winked, and every woman that passed them smiled and went "Ahhh.” They were not the only couple strolling along arm in arm along the outside of the market stalls. It was spring in Venice and love was in the air.
* * * * *
Before sunset Maria took him up four flights of stairs to her room at the top of the house. It was small but private, and had one of the balconies that Venetians seemed to delight in. Her room was at the back of the house away from the main canal, and faced north. From this height he could see over the roofs of the city, and he spent many minutes doing so while she fussed about in her room.
From the low point of view of a boat, the houses of inner Venice seemed to form a long continuous wall, but from this bird's eye view he could see that the houses only ringed the squarish islands. Inside the ring of houses, some islands had pools of water, while other islands had kitchen gardens. The center of the islands were kept private through the lack of any access other than through one of the houses.
The entire city seemed to be in the throws of a building boom. He noticed that the newer buildings had roofs of fired brick tile rather than thatch. There were no thatch roofs at all any where around the Piazza. This made sense. Tile roofs could not burn. A few years ago he had watched the thatched roofs of the city of London burn. That fire had been terrifying and devastating.
Maria joined him on the balcony dressed in the thinnest of silk shifts, which made him stare at her dark nipples and dark thatch beneath the fabric. "What are you looking at?" she asked, secretly very pleased by the effect.
"Down at the children playing in the garden of your courtyard. They are playing the same game that children everywhere play, Hide and go Seek."
"Hah, the devils. They are hiding from their older sisters who have been told to bring them home for an early meal before bed. It is a safe place for women and children because it is surrounded on all sides by the houses of my.... my. I don't know the word for bigger than family."
"Clan," he replied.
"Yes, all of the houses on this island are folk of my clan, my village. Our clan is one of the original twenty four. We now worship in the Romanized churches, but in the old clans we still keep our language and our customs. The children are raised by the clan, and that garden and courtyard, and the rest of the land of this island belong to the clan."
"Ah, like in my Frisian villages in the Fens of England, though none of them yet bow their heads to priests. Your clan is lucky to have such a high and dry island. Look at the pools of water on the other islands."
"But Raynar, this island was man made, all from centuries of continuous rebuilding by my clan. Look, do you see the island to the north of ours. It is ringed in houses but has a pool in the center instead of a courtyard. And see beyond it, much further out, there is an island that has a few poor houses and wooden shacks and is mostly the central pool. That is how our island was two hundred years ago. A salter island."
"What is a salter island?"
"Salt, you know. It must be the same word in your language. Salt. Those folk fish in the rainy season and make salt in that salter pool in the dry season. The ring of land, the dykes, keep the sea out of the pool so that it can dry and leave it's salt to be harvested. They flood the pool, then dry it, then flood it, then dry it, and harvest the salt.
I know that family. They will not be salters much longer. They are driving piles along the canal face to stop the sea from stealing their soil. When the piles are completely around the island, then they will harvest the salt one last time, and then dig out that pool to be deeper and use the soil to build up the outer ring where their buildings are. Then they will line the pool with fresh clay to seal it from the brackish water, and then wait for the rains to fill it with fresh water."
"And what do they do with the fresh water pool?" he asked, wondering if it would become a fish pool.
She looked at him as if he were a fool and clucked her tongue. "They will drink it, and cook with it, and wash with it. The islands of Venice are like ships at sea. There is water all around but not a drop to drink. Our only fresh water is from rain, so we must catch the rain and hold it. You must have seen the rain barrels on each of our balcolnies, and under every eave."
"So where is your pool? In a cavern under the courtyard and garden?"
"A few years ago we paid a great deal of coin to have clean sand brought from the dry-land quarries, not salty sea sand but clean sand. We filled in our pool with the course sand and then made the garden and the courtyard on top of the sand. You see the gazebo in the
center. Under that open roof is our clan well. The overflow from our roofs and our rain barrels is guided to the sand, where it settles and runs towards the well. After the water has trickled down through the sand, it is pure."
"Come," she said in a breathy voice as she pulled him into the room. "I will wash you in some of my clan's pure water and then our wine, so that you will be clean enough for intimate pleasures."
He did not resist the pull back into her room, and did not bother to close the door to the balcony because the air was still warm, and a length of cloth as fine as spider webs hung across the doorway to keep out the biting insects of the lagoon and its marshes. She saw how wide his smile became as she helped him out of his clothes, and bathed him gently, and she smiled too. It had been so long since she had been caressed by a man, and she was certain that this man would know how to be gentle and patient with a woman.
He had seen lust in the faces of women before, and so he recognized it in hers, and was not surprised when her teasing became more and more hurried. He tried to slow things down, so they could savour the expectation. He whispered complements to her. He kept his own mind off her luscious body by thinking of other things. Unfortunately instead of whispering to her about how she was an angel come down to him from the moon goddess, he asked "So how long have you been widowed?"
Well, the clumsy private question did indeed slow her down. She sighed in disappointment and whispered, "I have never been married.” When he froze, she pulled back from him and searched his face. "Oh you poor dear. Have no not fear. My brothers will not force you to marry me just because we share a bed. They will never allow me to marry."
"Ahhh, then you are already promised. Is it to a man or to your gods?"
She thought that she must have misheard the word 'gods', for there was only one. She had him down to only his silk shirt. Yesterday he had asked the tailors for a silk shirt to be next to his skin, and she had been pleased to pay for it. Now she was even more pleased. "My family own land in the Dodecanese islands of the Byzantine. We Venetians base our trading posts on islands rather than mainlands, and we have a post on the Island of Rhodos. Do you know it? It controls the great corner on the sea route from Constantinople to Egypt.
