The Long Sword(155)

            I learned about him and his history from Carlo Zeno, one of the Venetian gentlemen. Zeno didn’t like me when I came aboard, and I heard him, at meals, make slighting reference to my poor Italian. I might have bridled, but I was working very hard on my temper, and Pisani gave me yet another example of a dignified chivalry. So I smiled at Zeno whenever we met, and refused to accept his ill humour. When the officers began my sea education, he mocked my ignorance.

            I was, I confess, angry. I’m sure I showed it, and his mockery continued. I bit my lips and tried to listen when Messire Pisani showed me how best to grasp the tiller and taught me some of the Italian words of command. A galley is strange animal, which is a country of its own. It speaks Italian, but does so with both Greek and Arabic words thrown atop the Italian.

            I walked about the ship after exercise each day, chanting my new words to myself. I’d say them to Marc-Antonio when we wrestled, or to Fiore when we fenced. Zeno would walk along the corsia, the central gangway, with his hands behind his back, saying the same words – aping me, in other words, while the oarsmen laughed.

            I bit the insides of my cheeks.

            Nerio laughed at me. ‘Smack him,’ he said. ‘He’s a Venetian – he’ll resent it the rest of his life, but that will be the end of this.’ Nerio grinned. ‘Venetians are good haters.’

            Fiore was no use; he was virtually prostrate with seasickness.

            Use, however, made him master, and by the time we reached Piraeus under the magnificent hill of ancient Athens, Fiore was at least able to keep his feet at sea and could engage in some practice of arms. The Venetian gentlemen, Carlo Zeno and Gianni di Testa, were both young men, but they had each served in a sea fight, and had participated in many drills and exercises at sea, and with their help we practiced clearing the central gangway, repelling boarders, clearing the little poop behind the ram – the spur – and protecting the helmsman’s station.

            The Venetian marines both used spears in sea fights. We practiced with spears and with longswords. As far as we could tell, each weapons offered some advantages. The spear gave you reach, and offered no threat to your oarsmen – remember, in a fight on a galley, your own motive power is sitting in vulnerable rows not more than a few inches on either side of where you set your feet. On the Christ the King the rowers were set low, so that the benches were below the height of the gangway and the rowers’ heads came up to the marines’ knees or slightly higher. This required a man using a longsword to be judicious in wielding his sword from the lower guards.

            I know this, as I clipped a rower in the head with a wooden waster one afternoon off the Hand, south of the Peloponnesus. He was quite kind about it when he came to, but the incident made me more wary of heavy blows from low guards. And of course, Messire Zeno mimed my bad sword cut and made the rowers laugh.

            It was not all bad. Several times Zeno held forth, very intelligently, on matters of navigation, or on history, ancient or modern. He knew the Levant well, having served all over for Venice or as a mercenary for the Turks, who he rather admired. He’d been an exile for some time. I had a hard time hating him, even when he was mocking me.

            It was also during this voyage that I fell in love with the stars. At sea, you can see them all, thousands and thousands of them. It is not like watching the stars on land. It is, instead, like communing with God. At first I dreaded night watches, but I fell in love with stars, and then the watches passed in learning their names.

            At Athens we paused to take on water and dried food, and the admiral had most of the Venetian ships sell off their heavy cargo, if indeed they had shipped any. We were told to take a few days to rest.

            Nerio explained that the Duke of Athens – also the King of Sicily – was not always a Venetian ally, but that summer, with the crusade at sea and the Venetian fleet supporting the Achaean lords in their attempts to stem the Turkish tide, the Duke of Athens was very friendly to Venice indeed.