Juan watched her go. ‘Par dieu,’ he said and grinned at me. ‘Let me see … where was I? Ah, Nerio Acciaioli has taken a new mistress! And she, defying convention, is young and beautiful!’
I must have snorted.
‘He has also managed to forget her name only once,’ Juan went on, ‘and – well, no more should be said.’ He pretended to roll up a scroll and toss it over his shoulder. ‘We leave aside the hunts, the ridings abroad, the secret visits, and the new clothes as of no interest.’ He mimed the opening of a second scroll. ‘Ser Fiore has stunned the company by spending his days, not in frivolous conversation, but in the practice of arms. Suddenly this appears to be his consuming passion.’ He went on until I was convulsed with laughter, the knitting bones of my ribs grating together until tears came to my eyes and suddenly he was holding both my hands.
‘Oh, my friend, I’m so sorry!’ He shook his head. ‘In truth, I’m bored to death without you. Hurry and get well – we’ll ride abroad, slaughter your enemies and …’ he laughed, ‘and doubtless borrow money from Nerio. Is it true? That it was the fine lady’s husband?’
I wheezed. But some secrets were not mine. I shook my head.
He shook his. ‘I think you are a liar. Listen, if you die, we will rip off his balls and make him eat them. We have sworn it.’ He leaned close. ‘They say he is at Mestre, with the army. We’ll kill him, yes?’
This from one of my brothers in the order. Juan was always my favourite.
I wish I had told him so.
A beautiful pair of galleys were fitting out across a narrow arm of the lagoon. Because I watched them every day, I learned a great deal.
Listen, much of the rest of this story is tied up in ships. I grew to manhood in London, with one foot in the sea, and yet I knew almost nothing of its ways. I had been to sea; I’ve crossed the channel a hundred times in everything from the royal flagship to various fishing busses and smugglers with a pair of oars and six sticks that float.
But life as animate cargo does not a sailor make.
Thanks, however, to the old monk Fra Andrea, I learned much of the terminology from the comfort of my bed. I learned that the two low, sleek predators fitting out across the lagoon from my window at St Katerina’s were galia sottil or ‘light’ galleys. Fra Andrea pointed out that if I rose from my bed and hobbled as far as his rose garden, I could see the massive elegance of a galia grossa towering over the narrow streets of Mazzorbo, the small town on the back side of our island.
The galia sottil was not like any ship I had seen in England. We have galleys – King Edward had a dozen – but they are simpler vessels and built smaller. Even the ordinary galley had twenty ‘banks’ of oars a side. Each bank is in fact a bench, set slightly diagonal to the keel of the ship, where the rowers sit. In a Venetian galley, there are three rowers on a bench, and all of them have oars, but save in the direst emergencies, only two men row at any time, which allows a constant rotation of manpower.
English galleys also lack the apostis, which is a shelf, an outrigger that extends the width of the deck and the corresponding bulwark or fence to allow the oars to sit well out and pivot at just the right distance for the weight and length of the oar. In English galleys, without an apostis, the rower can never balance his oar, and has to use his main strength at all times just to support the weight. Fra Andrea told me that the apostis was a new invention. Fra Peter told me later that it had been well known in antiquity and was rediscovered by Petrarch, cementing the serenissima’s love of that difficult gentleman.
I say difficult, because as I improved, he came to visit me, not once but several times. Each time he would sit and read to me, which was a delight – but he would cast Emile out of the room. He was, apparently, no lover of children, or bright sunlight, or strong red wine, or Ser Fiore, with whom he had a quarrel, sotto voce, down the hall from my cell.