little group. We’d spread out a blanket on the flat roof of the church to hold our feast. Zilio’s father was a fisherman so he’d provided the spiced anchovies; Gerita and her little sister Maria had brought cheese stuffed eggs; Rigi had not been there, having come down with the pox, but his brother Gallo had brought a custard tart. Luysio and I had arrived last, having stolen some honey spiced walnuts from a vendor. We’d shown up breathless and pink cheeked, just before the fighting started.
There was a shout on the street, and we turned back to the fight, with Ray batting at long dead pigeons in order to see better, and me laughing when it didn’t work.
The captains gave the command and the two sides rushed together, each group running from a different end of the street, waving canes and cudgels and knocking over any observers who got in the way.
“Shit!” Ray yelled, as the two groups came together, with a clash of arms and a roar of approval from the crowd. An all-out melee immediately resulted.
The weapons being used were wood, but they still struck a good blow, and so did fists and feet and sheer momentum. One man duel wielded a couple of pointed canes, clearing a space all around him; another had a shield that he was using less for protection and more as a cudgel to batter his enemies; yet another lost his shield, but had stolen a cloak from a bystander to wrap around his arm instead. That gave him some protection, but also inadvertently brought another foe into the fight when the furious bystander waded in to the fray, determined to retrieve his outwear.
Eyes were blackened, faces were bloodied, and tender areas received rough treatment. There weren’t a lot of rules to the fracas, and bystanders were not above tripping or even punching members of the opposing team, to help out their favorites. It was a crazy, sweaty, chaotic good time, unlike anything I’d seen in the modern world.
“They fought for the honor of their neighborhoods,” I told Ray, as he laughed at a group who staggered off the main road and into a peddler, who saved his great dish of sardines in saor, a popular sweet and sour sauce, by holding it high above his head. “But they or their families often also had bets on the outcome.”
“So bragging rights and money, same as today,” he said, grinning.
I nodded, and we watched the fight for a while, because I found that I didn’t want to leave. I could feel that long-ago sun baking into my skin and see it sparkling on the distant water, could hear my friends’ laughter from behind us, could smell the food and the salt and the sweat and the blood. It had been a savage time, but I had loved it here, in this strange city in the sea.
I had never thought to feel at home again, after father took me from the dense forests of Wallachia, the only world I’d ever known. But I had been wrong. I had grown attached to our little sagging house on stilts, where you could sit in the open back door off the kitchen and dabble your toes in the surf. Had enjoyed getting up early to help Horatio, our old servant, fix breakfast, and to greet my father when he came home from a long night of gambling, having tricked the humans into providing our bread. Had loved . . .
Him.
Ray yelled and slapped the edge of the roofline excitedly, probably because the blue shirts of the fishermen had regrouped and were charging again, their numbers reduced but their courage undaunted. The black shirted Arsenal cluster had been distracted, fighting with some local boys who had decided to throw rocks. They turned just in time to see a wall of blue descending on them.
But I was no longer paying much attention, letting the memory play out for Ray while I toyed with another. It wasn’t one I usually allowed myself to see. There was no point anymore.
But something about today was different, as if there was magic in the air. Or perhaps seeing Venice once more, another memory I rarely looked at, alive and bright with Ray’s shared joy, had triggered it. Either way, I was suddenly back there again, seeing my father coming home on a winter’s night, knocking snow off his great cloak.
I knew immediately that he’d had success at the tables.