Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [77]
Twenty-four
GIULIANO DOCKED IN THE OUTER HARBOR, INTENDING to make his way to his own home just off the Grand Canal. First he would wash and change his clothes, rest a little, then eat a good meal in one of the cafés—something different from shipboard fare. After that he would report to the doge. He would probably have to wait some time for an audience.
However, he had barely stepped beyond the dock when he overheard hushed voices speculating as to who the next doge would be.
“Is the doge ill?” he demanded, pulling at the man’s shoulder to gain his attention.
The man turned, regarding his travel-stained seaman’s britches with pity. “Just landed?” he asked. “Yes, friend, it is feared he will not last long. If you have news for him, you’d better give it now.”
Giuliano thanked him and, with a hollow sense of loss gnawing at him, made his way as quickly as he could to the Doge’s Palace. Received by somber servants, he was told in a quiet voice to wait until he was called.
He paced back and forth from sunlight to shadow under the long windows, his feet whispering on the marble, the sound of muted voices beyond the door. Finally he was called in and told by a grim-faced, elderly man in black doublet and stockings that he must be brief.
The doge’s bedroom had the stale, sharp smell of illness and the watchful gloom of those who have urgent tasks to perform but want to seem as if they have all the time in the world.
Tiepolo lay propped against pillows, his cheeks sunken, his eyes hollow.
“Giuliano!” he said hoarsely. “Come! Tell me about Charles of Anjou, and the Sicilians. Will they rise, do you think? How is Byzantium? What of the Venetians there? Whose side will they be on if there is another invasion? Tell me the truth, good or bad.”
Giuliano smiled at him and put his hand over the old man’s frail fingers where they rested on the sheet. “I wasn’t going to lie,” he said so quietly that he hoped the others in the room would not hear him. This last conversation between them should have the dignity of not being overheard, so it could include all that either of them wished to say.
“Well?” Tiepolo asked.
As briefly as he could, Giuliano told him his opinion of Charles of Anjou and the differences he could see between his rule in Naples and that in Sicily and the corresponding reactions of the subject peoples.
“Good.” Tiepolo smiled faintly. “So you think Sicily could be made to rise against him, if the circumstances were right?”
“Certainly they hate him, but that will be a long way from rebellion.”
“Possibly.” Tiepolo’s voice was weak. “Now tell me about Constantinople.”
“I loved it and hated it,” Giuliano answered, remembering the soaring thoughts, the turmoil of ideas, the drowning pain of rejection.
“Of course,” Tiepolo said with a faint smile. “What did you love, Giuliano?”
“The freedom of ideas,” he replied. “The sense of being at the crossroads of East and West. The adventure of the mind.”
Tiepolo nodded. “And you loved the parts that were like Venice, and hated them because of your mother.” His eyes were gentle in spite of his own pain.
Giuliano picked up the thread of his mission. “None of them want war,” he said urgently. “Not the Byzantines and not the Venetians there—or the Genoese or the Jews or the Muslims. They’ll never hold off a crusader army, but I fear that most will fight to protect their own, and die with it.”
Tiepolo sighed. “Never trust the pope, Giuliano, not this pope or any other. They have no love for Venice, not as you and I do. There are turbulent times ahead. Charles of Anjou wants to be king of Jerusalem, and he will bathe the Holy Land in blood to do it.” His blue-veined hand tightened on the sheet. “Venice must keep its freedom, never forget that. Never give it up, to anyone, emperor or pope. We stand alone.” His voice sank a little lower, and Giuliano had to lean forward to hear him. “Promise me that.”
There was no choice. The hand on the sheet was cold when he placed his own over it. The pull of Byzantium was strong, the world