This Rough Magic (70 page)

"Besides, they're our own," said Maria resolutely. "You leave this with me, milady. I'll talk to Umberto."

The Contessa smiled. She took a small crystal bottle out of the pouch hanging from her chatelaine. "You may find this helps with your . . . talk." She laughed. "Sometimes men need to be distracted before they'll listen. I find a dab of this behind my ears even these days has the power to obtain my husband's full attention."

Maria blushed. "Milady. It is not necessary."

The contessa stood up. "I know. But I think you will enjoy it."

Another thought occurred to Maria. "Milady. I . . . am friends with Francesca de Chevreuse."

Maria expected disapproval. Instead she got another little laugh. "She has all the respectable matrons of this town in a terrible state! Mostly self-righteousness tinted with envy, I think. Do tell her that her attempts at information gathering have been reported to my husband."

That was more than a little alarming. But Maria persisted. "I could get her to ask the Knights to help."

The contessa shook her head. "This really is our own affair, Maria. We should handle it."

The contessa was scarcely around the corner when Stella reappeared.

"All right," she said with a terrier look on face. "Tell all. What has she got you to do?"

Maria hadn't thought of a good story yet. "Ah. Well she wanted to ah . . . ask me to get Umberto to organize something down at the Little Arsenal. Nothing important, but she did ask me to keep it a secret. And Stella, I can't tell you and keep anything a secret. It'll be a nice surprise for her husband." Maria thought that was a good touch. The podesta was a renowned naturalist, collecting everything from butterflies to eggs. Surely Stella would assume it was a special cabinet or something.

Stella snorted. "It must be those Corfiote women hidden down in the Arsenal."

Maria gaped at her. "How—?"

Stella shrugged. "The contessa is forever helping women. So it had to be a women's problem, and if it involves Umberto and the Little Arsenal, then that must be it."

"But how did you know about it?"

"I have my sources."

Maria scowled at her. "I need to know."

Stella looked mischievous. "If you must know, Alberto found them. He went up to the top sheds to look for some missing tools a few days ago. They've got lookouts, and they hide if someone goes to the timber-stores. But Alberto took a shortcut up the wall. He's lazy, and it saved him a walk. So he came up to the upper gate very suddenly. A couple of the big porters tried to head him off, but you know Alberto, he's like pig after truffles when he gets onto something. And he speaks Greek so he gets on with the boys. So . . . because he was a friend of theirs, they put off hitting him over the head until it was too late. There was a bit of a scuffle, but my Alberto is quite solid."

He was indeed. A very large, amiable man. "And what happened then?"

"Well, you know what Alberto's like. Soft as goose grease with children. Of course he promised he wouldn't tell a soul." Stella smirked. "I had it out of him in two shakes. He's like you, Maria. A terrible liar."

"And so? Does the whole town know?"

"Not from me. It's all very well saying they shouldn't be there, but what kind of person would leave them outside the walls? The Croats and Hungarians—" She shuddered. "They're like wolves with two legs, Maria. But somebody else has found out about them. I've heard two juicy rumors about it already, as I said to Francesca."

Well, then. "I think you should take me down there to meet them. The contessa's right. This is going to blow wide open soon, and I'll need to work on Umberto about this. The
scuolo
need to stand by them."

"Most of the guildsmen don't like the Corfiotes much," said Stella doubtfully.

"But they like the
Case Vecchie
trespassing on their areas even less," Maria pointed out. "The
scuolo
are touchy about their rights and privileges. The porters and laborers at the Little Arsenal are ours. And if I can convince Umberto of this, and you get Alberto to back him up, we'll be able to sway the rest of them."

Stella pulled a wry face. "Especially if that idiot Tomaselli puts all their backs up like he usually manages to do." Her eyes lit up. "The latest malicious gossip is about Sophia, believe it or not. She's been slipping out of the fortress to come and see a lover down in the old town!"

Maria snorted. "I didn't think anyone was that desperate."

Stella giggled in a worldly-wise fashion. "Honey, there are some men that would make love to a hole in the wall. And others, like Alberto, who would just fall asleep. I'm going to ration his wine soon."

"If you take me down to meet the women hiding out in the wood-store, I'll give you a drop of this perfume to put behind your ears." Maria showed her the bottle. "It was given to me by the contessa. She guaranteed it would even wake her old man up."

Stella chuckled throatily. "If it can wake that old man up, it should be called resurrection juice, not perfume. You're on, sister."

When Maria went down to the wood-store with Stella, she was shocked by the thinness of the women, and by their obvious desperation.

"We can't go on like this, kyria," said one young girl—barely sixteen and trying to nurse a pair of twins. "I just don't have milk for them any more."

Maria took a deep breath. "We're going to sort this out. By tomorrow. Nobody should have to starve like this."

"We expected the siege to be over in a few weeks at most. When will help come from Venice?" asked an older woman bitterly. "Are we only worth keeping as expendable serfs, and not worth protecting?"

Maria looked her straight in the eye. "Venice had to be told before they could mount a rescue. And the Island is blockaded. You know that. I can tell you this much—a messenger has gone over to Italy, taking word to Venice, a clever messenger, who can get past anything."

She wondered just where Benito was, and uttered a silent prayer for his well-being. "The Republic won't fail you. And the
scuolo
won't fail you either. Your men work for us. It's up to us to care for you."

She was surprised by the hastily hushed cheers.

That evening Umberto arrived home a little late and looking worried. He didn't even notice Maria's belladonna-widened eyes at first. He was just looking gray and stooped. He took the cup of wine gratefully from her hand, then swallowed a long, appreciative draft. And then blinked at his wife. "You're looking beautiful tonight, dear. And your hair is done up in that way I like so." His nose twitched. He smiled tiredly. "I'm a lucky man. And I don't appreciate you enough. And how is our little girl tonight?"

Maria felt truly guilty. Like a complete slut. "She's fine, asleep now," she said gruffly. She decided that directness and honesty suited her better than feminine wiles. She was better at those than seduction anyway. "Umberto. I need to talk to you about the wives of the Corfiote laborers."

"They're hiding in the back sheds at the Little Arsenal," he replied conversationally.

She didn't need the belladonna to widen her eyes. Had everyone known except her?

"I'm sorry dear," he said apologetically. "That's what kept me. There was a fight between one of the Illyrians and a Corfiote—something to do with the women. I'm afraid both of them are with the hospitalers. I had to see to it."

"Oh, hell!" she said in dismay. "Will this mean fighting between the Illyrians and Corfiotes?"

He actually laughed. "Not unless they both don't recover from being hit by me with a cladding plank."

She stared, seeing a man she hadn't known hiding in Umberto's very ordinary frame.

"I had to do something," he said, uncomfortably. "The Corfiote accused the Illyrian of betraying the women to the guards. But Guildmaster Grisini asked the guard to organize more food, quietly."

"Two guards called Oliviolo and Nona."

It was Umberto's turn to gape at her. "How did you know—?"

"Because far from organizing more food, the pair of bastards have been extorting money and food from the Corfiotes," she told him with savage satisfaction. "The Corfiotes blame the Illyrians, which is where your knife-fight came from."

Umberto shook his head. "I don't understand them. They're our people. Why didn't they come to us? The
scuolo
looks after its own."

Looking at him with a mixture of pride and love, Maria realized that the perfume probably wasn't wasted after all. And she realized that—just as old women always said—you didn't have to be
in
love with the man you married to learn to love him. "Can I get you some supper?" she asked, rubbing his shoulders.

He looked at her. Speculatively, with a shy smile. "Maybe . . . later."

The end came faster and more abruptly than any of the conspirators had anticipated. And it came at a damned awkward moment for Maria.

She'd gone up to the governor's palace the day before and missed seeing the contessa. Not wishing to make herself too obvious, she'd waited until this morning. Umberto had told her last night that the two guards had been transferred on to another duty, so something must be happening.

Renate De Belmondo had been organizing. Among the things she'd organized, Maria found, when she got up to the palace, was a huge basket of foodstuffs. Maria had the muscle in her back and shoulders from years of working heavy loads in a small boat—this basket she could hardly carry. "It's too heavy, milady."

Renate De Belmondo smiled. "You'll manage. There is considerable stage-management to be done before we can bring them out of there. Those women and children need food. And there are a lot of them."

So Maria had staggered down to the sheds. They were a good place to hide, actually; their men had chosen well. Although the sheds were within the compound, they were well away from the rest of the yard—up a steep bank, where there was a winch for loading materials from the street and a chute for sending timbers down to the workshops or the ship-gate. They were used when ships were in port and kept securely locked when they weren't. At the moment there just wasn't the call for cladding or masts. Getting up there unnoticed was considerably more difficult, but as Umberto's wife she could at least get into the shipyard.

She was distributing the contents of the contessa's basket when a hoarse whisper came up the bank. "Hide!"

Maria found herself dragged hastily into a long cavity roofed with masts and stacks of timber. It was dark, hot and airless.

And also a vain effort. Captain-General Tomaselli's men knew exactly where to look; somebody had plainly told them where to go. The women, Maria included, were hauled, blinking, into the bright July sunlight.

Maria knew that the one thing she must not do was to reveal who she was. At the moment the
scuolo
could still claim injured innocence; if they found
her
here, the cat would be out of the bag. Alessia was safely with Stella, but any baby would do for camouflage; almost all of them were awakened by the rough handling and almost all of them were crying. The poor mites were mostly hungry. She "borrowed" one, hastily. If there was one thing she'd learned since Alessia's birth it was that very few men will look directly at a breast-feeding woman that is not their own. It was as near as she could come to disappearing. She also realized that the moment was more serious even than she'd thought. There were some seventy of the captain-general's soldiers—quite enough to deal with frightened women and a gaggle of children.

What the captain-general hadn't taken into account was that there were some hundred or so Corfiote porters and laborers in the Arsenal. And they weren't about to watch their wives and children being herded away without a fight. Even if they weren't soldiers, they were men in a shipyard full of edged tools.

And more than just tools. Within less than a minute, a dozen angrily shouting laborers were standing on the walls around the compound holding, one between each two of them, pots of boiling pitch.

There was something very persuasive about that boiling pitch. A few of the troopers had been behaving with a fair amount of roughness to the captives. They suddenly became positively respectful.

"What do you men think you're doing?" demanded the captain-general.

"You tell them to leave our women and children alone and no one will get hurt!"

It was a very nasty situation. On one hand, the troops were armed, and armored. They had the women and children as virtual hostages. On the other hand, armor is no defense against hot pitch. And the Corfiotes were between them and the way out of the shipyard. Something else ominous was happening beyond the Corfiotes too. The
scuolo
, being Venetian guildsmen, were all part of the Militia. So they were in the habit of bringing their weapons and breastplates to work for duties afterward—and now they were arriving, armed, in dribs and drabs. They were positioned behind the Corfiotes with their pitch and crowbars, their felling axes and knives.

One of the guildsmen pushed forward. "Don't try to stop this, Master Grisini," said the big Corfiote. "We're desperate men."

The elderly guildmaster sniffed irritably. "We've no intention of stopping you. But I warn you, Dopappas. You get one drop of that pitch on my deck-planking and I'll shove that cauldron up your ass." Maria risked a quick peep to see that her Umberto was backing old Grisini up, coming up the ramp to where the soldiers stood with their prisoners. The master wasn't a big man. The Corfiote laborer he was threatening was enormous.

But the Corfiote nodded respectfully. "Yes, Master Grisini. But they want to take our women."

Grisini sighed gustily. "I'm old. I'm tired. But I'm also aware of the
scuolo
's rights and responsibilities."

The Corfiote blinked.

The old man walked on through the Corfiotes, Umberto following behind him.

Maria saw that some more entrants had arrived for the affair. The Contessa De Belmondo and her husband, the governor. And, peering nervously through the gate: Stella, with Alessia and several of her own children. She'd plainly gotten a message to the contessa.