it that he had satisfied his own thirst for knowledge-and rejected Byzantium?
He put it from his mind. He was returning home.
The voyage was swift, and by mid-August he stood on the deck gazing at the skyline of the city that seemed to float on the face of the lagoon. Byzantium was a bright memory like the colors of a mosaic in someone else's ceiling: touched with gold, but too far away to see clearly. Only an impression remained on his mind in a multitude of facets, tiny and beautiful-and beyond his reach.
It was 1275. In Rome, Pope Gregory X arranged a one-year-long truce between Emperor Michael Palaeologus of Byzantium and Charles of Anjou, king of the Two Sicilies. Anna never learned how much the papal legate in Constantinople had had to do with that.
Twenty-four
GIULIANO DOCKED IN THE OUTER HARBOR, INTENDING to make his way to his own home just off the Grand Canal. First he would wash and change his clothes, rest a little, then eat a good meal in one of the cafes-something different from shipboard fare. After that he would report to the doge. He would probably have to wait some time for an audience.
However, he had barely stepped beyond the dock when he overheard hushed voices speculating as to who the next doge would be.
"Is the doge ill?" he demanded, pulling at the man's shoulder to gain his attention.
The man turned, regarding his travel-stained seaman's britches with pity. "Just landed?" he asked. "Yes, friend, it is feared he will not last long. If you have news for him, you'd better give it now."
Giuliano thanked him and, with a hollow sense of loss gnawing at him, made his way as quickly as he could to the Doge's Palace. Received by somber servants, he was told in a quiet voice to wait until he was called.
He paced back and forth from sunlight to shadow under the long windows, his feet whispering on the marble, the sound of muted voices beyond the door. Finally he was called in and told by a grim-faced, elderly man in black doublet and stockings that he must be brief.
The doge's bedroom had the stale, sharp smell of illness and the watchful gloom of those who have urgent tasks to perform but want to seem as if they have all the time in the world.
Tiepolo lay propped against pillows, his cheeks sunken, his eyes hollow.
"Giuliano!" he said hoarsely. "Come! Tell me about Charles of Anjou, and the Sicilians. Will they rise, do you think? How is Byzantium? What of the Venetians there? Whose side will they be on if there is another invasion? Tell me the truth, good or bad."
Giuliano smiled at him and put his hand over the old man's frail fingers where they rested on the sheet. "I wasn't going to lie," he said so quietly that he hoped the others in the room would not hear him. This last conversation between them should have the dignity of not being overheard, so it could include all that either of them wished to say.
"Well?" Tiepolo asked.
As briefly as he could, Giuliano told him his opinion of Charles of Anjou and the differences he could see between his rule in Naples and that in Sicily and the corresponding reactions of the subject peoples.
"Good." Tiepolo smiled faintly. "So you think Sicily could be made to rise against him, if the circumstances were right?"
"Certainly they hate him, but that will be a long way from rebellion."
"Possibly." Tiepolo's voice was weak. "Now tell me about Constantinople."
"I loved it and hated it," Giuliano answered, remembering the soaring thoughts, the turmoil of ideas, the drowning pain of rejection.
"Of course," Tiepolo said with a faint smile. "What did you love, Giuliano?"
"The freedom of ideas," he replied. "The sense of being at the crossroads of East and West. The adventure of the mind."
Tiepolo nodded. "And you loved the parts that were like Venice, and hated them because of your mother." His eyes were gentle in spite of his own pain.
Giuliano picked up the thread of his mission. "None of them want war," he said urgently. "Not the Byzantines and not the Venetians there-or the Genoese or the Jews or the Muslims. They'll never hold off a crusader army, but I fear that most will fight to protect their own, and die with it."
Tiepolo sighed. "Never trust the pope, Giuliano, not this pope or any other. They have no love for Venice, not as you and I do. There are turbulent times ahead.