They might scold the child, slap it in temper, but let anyone else threaten it and they would learn what anger really was.
At midday he stood on the deck of the ship, heart pounding as they slid across the smooth, shining water of the Bosphorus and the great city grew closer and more detailed. His sailor's eye was drawn to the lighthouse. It was magnificent, visible to approaching mariners at night from miles away.
The harbor was crowded, scores of fishing boats and ferries and cargo carriers scudding about the huge hulls of the triremes hailing from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. And across that narrow channel of water, Europe met Asia. This was the crossroads of the world.
"Captain?"
There was no more time for self-indulgence. He must turn his attention to making harbor, seeing the ship safely anchored and the cargo unloaded before turning over command to his first officer. They had already agreed that the ship would return for him at the beginning of July.
It was the following day before he stepped ashore with his chest packed-a few clothes and books, sufficient to last him for nearly two months. The doge had given him a generous allowance.
It was an alien feeling to stand on the cobbles of the street. Half Byzantine, he should have embraced this as a homecoming, yet all he felt was rejection. He came as a spy.
He turned and looked back at the harbor teeming with ships. He might know the men on some of them, even have sailed with them, faced the same storms and hardships, the same excitement. The light on the water had the same strange, luminous quality that it had in Venice, the sky, the familiar softness.
He spent three nights in lodgings and the intervening days walking around the city, gaining a feel for its nature, its customs, its geography, even the food, the jokes, and the taste of the air.
He sat in a restaurant having an excellent meal of savory goat meat with garlic and vegetables, then a glass of wine that he thought not nearly as good as Venetian. He watched the people in the street, overhearing snatches of conversation, much of which he did not understand. He studied faces and listened to the tones of voice. The Greek he spoke, and of course the Genoese he heard disturbingly often. He understood snatches from the Arabs and Persians whose dress was so easy to distinguish. The Albanians, Bulgars, and high-cheeked Mongols were alien, and he was reminded with a tingle of discomfort just how far east he was and how close to the lands of the Great Khan or the Muslims the red-bearded man had spoken of in Messina.
He would find a Venetian family down by the shore of the Golden Horn. He wondered idly where his mother had lived. She had been born during the exile, perhaps in Nicea or farther north? Then he was furious with himself for allowing in the pain that always came with thoughts of her. He couldn't stop himself.
He closed his eyes hard against the sunlight and the busyness of the street, but nothing shut out the inner vision of his father, gray-haired, his face lined with sorrow, the locket open in his hand showing the tiny painting of a young woman with dark eyes and laughing face. How could she laugh and leave them? Giuliano had never once heard him speak ill of her. He had died still loving her.
He lurched to his feet. The wine would choke him now. He left it and strode out into the street. This was an alien city, full of people he would never be foolish enough to trust. Know your enemy, learn from them, understand them, but never, ever be seduced by their art, their skill, or their beauty; just judge whose side they would be on when it mattered.
The Venetian Quarter was just a few streets, and they made no great show of their origins. No one had forgotten whose fleet had brought the invaders who had burned the city and stolen the holy relics.
He found a family with the old, proud name of Mocenigo and immediately liked the man, Andrea. He had an ascetic face, bordering on plain until he smiled; then he was almost beautiful. And it was not until he moved that Giuliano noticed he had a slight limp. His wife, Teresa, was shy but offered to make Giuliano welcome, and his five children seemed happily unaware that he was a