“So? And what will be the cost if we do not arm, and the Stilettos do attack, eh? No, all in all, I think it will be cheaper to arm.”
“Well…” Gar looked rather befuddled. “When you put it that way, of course it’s wiser to prepare for war.”
Papa Braccalese nodded. “Let’s hope the Council sees it that way.”
“Some of them are skinflints,” Gianni whispered to Gar as they entered the long wide room. “They would rather believe anything false than have to pay an extra florin out of their profit.”
“You have watched their meetings before, then?”
“No, never,” Gianni said. “I only know what rumor says—and what Papa curses when he comes home from a Council meeting. I wouldn’t be here now, if they didn’t need to hear my story from my own lips.”
“And mine.” Gar nodded. “There’s much less question of accuracy, when they hear it from the survivors.”
The Maestro came into the hall, and the merchants stopped gossiping in their small groups of two and three and turned to look to their elected leader for the year. Oldo Bolgonolo was a heavyset man in his late middle age, his hair grizzled, his face lined—but his eye still sharp and questing.
“Masters,” he said, giving them their Guild title (for no journeyman and certainly no apprentice could hold office here), “we are met to hear disturbing news from Paolo Braccalese and his son Gianni. I know rumor has already borne it to all your ears, so let us begin by hearing it stripped of all the fat that grows as the story goes from mouth to mouth. Gianni Braccalese, speak!”
The master merchants had by now all taken their seats, and Gianni felt the weight of fifty pairs of piercing eyes upon him. He tried to calm his stomach as he stood, leaning on the table in case his knees turned to jelly, and began, “Masters …” Then he cleared his throat to rid it of the squeak in his voice—but his father’s colleagues were understanding of human frailty, and made no comment. Gianni began again. “Masters, I was conducting a goods train to Accera, to trade with old Ludovico for grain and timber and orzans …”
He told them the story, his voice as dry and matter-of-fact as he could make it, showing emotion only when he had to speak of Antonio’s death. The merchants stirred restlessly at that, muttering angrily to one another. Gianni waited for them to be done, then took up his tale again. They seemed impressed by Gar’s improvisation to impersonate the weak-minded and showed surprise at Gianni’s rescue by a Gypsy. But he saved the worst for last, ending by telling them about the remarks he had overheard, about a lord paying the Stilettos to discipline some unruly merchants, whereupon they erupted into a furious clamor of denunciation and calls for vengeance, countered by shouted arguments for caution. The Maestro let them work out the worst of their anger, and Gianni sat down, shaken but exhilarated.
Gar was staring at the shouting merchants. “These are your cool-headed men of business?”
Gianni shrugged. “We’re human, and as apt to anger as the next man.”
“I don’t think I want to be next to that man,” Gar replied.
The Maestro picked up a stick and struck a cymbal suspended near him. Some of the merchants looked up and stopped their debate, but others went on arguing furiously. The Maestro had to strike his cymbal again, then again and again, before they all subsided, muttering, and took their seats once more.
“I think you have all worked out the basic positions now,” the Maestro commented dryly. “May we hear them stated clearly? No, Paolo Braccalese—this meeting comes at your demand, and it is your son who was attacked, your goods that were lost; I scarcely think you can see the situation clearly. You, Giuseppi Di Silva! What say you to this news?”
“Why, if it’s so, we must arm as quickly as possible!” A tall merchant leaped to his feet. “Arm, and recall the fleet to guard our shores!”
“Nay, more!” shouted a shorter merchant with long yellow hair. He stood, thumping the table with his fist. “They’ve slain two drivers and a caravan master, and enslaved the rest! They’ve burned the warehouse of a merchant we deal with, and slain him! They’ve stolen the goods of a merchant of Pirogia and wounded his son! Are we to suffer these affronts with no revenge? Surely not—for if we do, we give them leave to do it all over again, to each and any of us!”
Angry shouts agreed with him. Equally angry shouts denounced them. The Maestro struck the cymbal again, and they quieted. “Clearly spoken,” he said. “We have two positions set forth now—one that we defend our city, another that we seek revenge, which I assume means that we should send out an expedition to attack the Stilettos. May we have the opposite position stated so clearly as these? No, not you, Pietro San Duse—you would cloud your statement with so much insult and so much emotion that I would have to parse your words to find your meaning. Carlo Grepotti, you have spoken little, and that quite calmly—will you grace us with your words?”
An elderly merchant arose, a man with a face like a hawk and the ferocious eye of an eagle. “Grace? I fear there will be little of that in what I say, Maestro—but of good sense, I can promise you abundance! What I see in the hot words of my respected colleagues is waste, atrocious waste pure and simple! They would have us take hundreds of florins from the treasury—nay, thousands!—to train our young men as soldiers and sailors, to build more war galleys and buy cannon and swords, to feed and clothe and pay this force, and where is this money to come from? For surely the depleted treasury must be refilled! Have no mistake, my brother merchants—these thousands of ducats will surely come, directly or indirectly, from your profits! How will you tell your wife, when she asks for a new gown, that you must pay the soldiers first? How will you tell her, when the roof leaks, that you must buy a barracks for the soldiers before you can have that leak stopped? Be sure that, once begun, it will not end, for having spent the money, we must justify it if no enemy comes! How shall we do that? Why, by marching out and declaring war where there is none, just as my colleague Angelo has suggested even now! Then it’s we who shall be taking away others’ freedom, even as we fear they shall do to us!”
“And if the enemy does come?” the tall Di Silva demanded. “If they do come, and we beat them off?”
“Why, they you shall cry that we must always keep the army standing and the navy afloat, for fear others may come!” Grepotti retorted. “Then if they do not, you shall call for a war to conquer Tumanola and expel the Raginaldi, or some such, and overlook the fact that we have become conquerors! Thus we shall impoverish ourselves to turn Pirogia into a bully among cities—and all for what? The word of a boy who brings us no proof and no other witnesses! Surely, my colleagues, we must have better grounds than this!”
“But we do have another witness,” Di Silva retorted. “Let us hear from him.”
“From a mercenary who will admit, I’m sure, that he failed in his duty? Surely he will seek to excuse himself, to justify himself!”
Gar’s face turned to flint, and Gianni said instantly, in a low voice, “He speaks only to support his argument, Gar. He means no harm—and he wasn’t there.”
But the Maestro had noticed. “What do you say to that, young Braccalese?”
Gianni stood, anger overcoming nervousness. “That it was one mercenary against fifty, that we stood back to back with twenty-five against each of us, and could not possibly have won! Gar has done his job well, for I have come back to you alive!”
“Aye, and come back with two sentences overheard, nothing more!” Carlo Grepotti retorted. “You cannot even tell us surely who was the ‘lord’ this captain spoke of, nor who the merchants!”
Now Papa Braccalese rose. “Maestro?”