Venice is grateful. My chamberlain will give you a purse of gold so you may celebrate appropriately. Then go wash, eat, and drink to our prosperity."
The soldier thanked him profoundly and left, still grinning.
"This is excellent," the doge said as soon as he was certain they were alone. "After this, any crusade will have no choice but to go by sea, which means in Venetian ships." He laughed. "I have an excellent red wine. Let us drink a toast to the future."
But Giuliano woke the following morning with an ache inside himself so deep, it consumed all the elation at victory he had felt the night before. With pale, sharp daylight came reality. Charles of Anjou coveted Constantinople, his soul starved for it. Giuliano had seen it in his eyes, in his clenched fist, as if he could grasp it and hold his fingers around it forever. He wanted to take it by violence and crush it unconditionally.
Giuliano knew Charles's brutal rule. He had seen it in Sicily, where he taxed his own people into penury. What would he do to a conquered nation, as Byzantium would become? He would crush it, burn it, murder its people.
Such thoughts of Byzantium were disloyal to all that had bred and nurtured Giuliano, and to the promise he had made to Tiepolo on his deathbed, but he could not deny himself.
Perhaps the decision had been there for a long time, and he had needed only to be here in Venice, to see the vast shipyards busy night and day, to make him face the reality of it. He could no longer belong to a place, with the ease of friendship it gave and its torture of conscience. He must choose a morality, a people and belief that he loved and that had held truths bigger than comfort or acceptance.
He might never again serve this doge or any other. The knowledge came with a wrenching loneliness and a sudden high, bright freedom. He must do what he could to prevent the invasion. Charles of Anjou had friends in Rome, but somewhere he must have enemies. Sicily was the place to seek them.
He returned to Sicily, finding lodging again with Giuseppe and Maria, where he had stayed before.
"Ah, Giuliano!" Maria said with joy lighting her face as she came out to greet him in the front room with its shabby chairs and well-trodden floor. She flung her arms around him, holding him tightly, then blushed as she realized that she was making a spectacle of herself.
"Have you come to stay for a while?" she asked him. "You must eat with us. Tell us everything. Are you married yet? What is her name? What is she like? Why did you not bring her?"
"No." Giuliano was used to her questions and shrugged them off without offense. "I'm here because no one can cook like you, or make me laugh as hard."
She dismissed this with a wave of her hand, but she colored with pleasure.
"I've been to all sorts of places," he said, following her into the busy, chaotic kitchen where loaves of bread and vegetables were piled up, olives in pottery jars, lemons, onions rich gold and wine-colored, and bright fruit.
"Sit," she ordered him. "There, out of my way. Now tell me about all these places. Where is it you've been that's better than here?"
"Jerusalem," he said, grinning at her.
Her hands stopped midair and she turned to look at him gravely. "You wouldn't lie to me, would you, Giuliano? That would be very wicked."
"Certainly not!" he said with much indignation. "Do you want me to tell you about it?"
"If you don't tell me, I won't feed you. And every word had better be true."
He told her many things, and the warmth of her friendship eased out the aches from his body and at least some from his heart.
And after Maria had gone to tidy up and the children were in bed, he stood outside with Giuseppe staring across the harbor. They walked together down to the wall to watch the sea lapping against the stones.
"How is it, really?" Giuliano asked. "People complain, but they always do. Is it worse?"
Giuseppe shrugged. "People are angry, and they are afraid. The king is planning another crusade, and as always we are going to pay for his ships and his horses and his armor." They were going to pay Venice, of course, but he did not say that. It lay an unspoken wound between them.