Giuseppe was in the doorway, tears running down his cheeks, the candlelight yellow behind him, a knife in his hand, preparing to defend his remaining children if Giuliano had been an enemy. His face split in a smile and he ran forward, dropping the knife and clasping Giuliano so tightly that he all but cracked his ribs.
Maria urged them inside, and obediently they followed her. Giuseppe barred the door after them.
“Go back to Gianni,” Giuseppe said to Maria. As she left, he looked at Giuliano. “He’s hurt,” he said simply. “She can’t leave him.” The explanation was unnecessary, but Giuseppe could not take his eyes from Tino for more than a few moments, and he kept touching the boy’s head, as if to assure himself that he was real and alive.
A little after first light, one of the other fishermen came, a man called Angelo. The children were asleep, and Maria was upstairs with them.
“We’re going to meet in the town center,” Angelo said gravely to Giuliano and Giuseppe. His face was burned and there was a cut on his brow, blood congealed, and his left arm was in a makeshift sling. He was filthy and he moved stiffly, as if his limbs hurt. “We must decide what to do now. There are hundreds dead, maybe thousands. The corpses of people block the alleys, and the stones are red with blood.”
“There’ll be war,” Giuliano warned.
Angelo nodded. “We must prepare for it. They have called for men from every district and trade so we can choose someone to represent us and ask the pope to recognize us as a commune, and ask for his protection.”
“From Charles of Anjou?” Giuliano said incredulously. “What the hell do you think the pope is going to do? He’s French, for God’s sake!”
“He’s Christian,” Giuseppe replied. “He can give us his protection.”
“Are you waiting on that?” Giuliano was appalled.
Giuseppe gave him a bleak smile, a flash of the old humor in his eyes.
Angelo nodded. “Runners have already gone out to all the towns and villages, closest ones first, to tell them what has happened and to call on them to rise up with us. The whole island will turn against the Angevins. We are going to march on Vicari and give them all the choice of leaving with safe conduct to sail back to Provence.”
“Or what?” Giuseppe asked.
“Or death,” Angelo replied.
“I imagine they will choose Provence,” Giuliano said dryly.
“And you, my friend…” Giuseppe turned to Giuliano, his face puckered with anxiety, his eyes gentle. “What do you choose? These were Frenchmen tonight, but by next week, or next month, they may be Venetians. The fleet lies at Messina. You are not Sicilian. This is not your quarrel. Any hospitality we gave you you have more than repaid. Go now, before you act against your own people.”
Still exhausted, aching, his clothes sticking to him with other men’s blood, Giuliano realized how alone he was. “I don’t have people of my own,” he said slowly. “I have friends, I have debts, and people I love. That isn’t the same thing.”
“I don’t know what debts you have,” Giuseppe answered. “None to me. But you are my friend, which is why I give you leave to go, if honor pulls you. I am going to Corleone with Angelo to tell them to rise also, and then after that on to other towns, and if I survive it, to Messina.”
“To the fleet?”
“Yes. Maria and the children will be safe here now. Angelo and his family will protect them.”
“Then I’m coming with you.” Already in his mind he knew what he was going to do. It surprised him. He barely had time to be afraid or realize the enormity of it, but now that it came to the moment, there was no choice after all.
Giuseppe grinned and held out his hand. Giuliano clasped it.
Ninety-five
GIULIANO WENT WITH GIUSEPPE AND THE OTHER MEN, leaving Palermo and traveling hastily, often by night. By the middle of April, the whole island of Sicily was in revolt; only one French overlord was spared, because of the humanity he had shown in his rule. Every other garrison was taken and the occupants put to the sword.
By the end of the month, Giuliano stood beside Giuseppe on the hillside overlooking the harbor of Messina. Below him lay the massed fleet of Charles of Anjou, ships of every size and rig he could name, at least two hundred of them crowded together so they darkened the sea and there was barely room for others to swing at anchor without touching one another.
How many catapults did they carry? How many siege towers to storm the city walls? How much Greek fire to ruin and burn?
“They look deserted,” Giuseppe said quietly, squinting into the sun.
“They probably are, all but a watch,” Giuliano replied. Two days earlier, Messina also had risen against the French, who had retreated to the great granite castle of Mategriffon but had not had the strength to hold it. “But they are still a threat to Byzantium. The Venetian fleet is coming with more men, more ships, more armor. The siege engines are still there, and the horses can always be stolen again.”
Giuseppe stared at him. “What do you want? To sink them?”
Giuliano knew that he would be breaking the oath he had made to Tiepolo that he would never betray the interests of Venice. But the world was not the same as it had been when Tiepolo was alive. Venice was not the same; Rome certainly wasn’t.
“Burn them,” he said softly. “Pitch. Small boats, ones we can tow behind a rowing boat. It must be when the wind is right, and the current-”
“And you would do that? You… a Venetian,” Giuseppe said softly.
“Half Venetian,” Giuliano corrected him. “My mother was Byzantine. But that has nothing to do with it… or not everything, anyway. It’s wrong. To conquer Byzantium is wrong. There’s nothing Christian in it. It doesn’t matter who they are, or what are their beliefs. The point is that it should not ever be who we are.”
Giuseppe stared at him. “You are a strange man, Giuliano. But I’m with you.” He held out his hand, offering it.
Giuliano took it and gripped it hard, holding on to it.
They gathered allies among the Sicilians who had lost relatives, friends, and brothers to the French. They found the boats they needed and the pitch. It was not as much as Giuliano would have liked, but they could not risk waiting any longer.
He stood alone on the quayside, watching the sun set in the west, sulfurous, underlighting the clouds that would make it darker and obscure the moon. He could never watch the sky now without a memory of Anastasius stirring in his mind. Their quiet conversations haunted him when he least expected it.
And it was Anastasius who had given him more than peace with his mother. He had healed that deepest wound.
What part had that in the terrible thing Giuliano was planning to do? While others were helping him, it was his moral decision. There were so many ships, some with men still aboard. He wanted to destroy them all, so they would never carry war to Byzantium. Did it matter that they would also not recapture Jerusalem? Would the crusading knights make anything better than it already was in that troubled city, anything safer or kinder than now?
It was too late to change the decision, even if he wanted to. His mind was afraid of failure, afraid of the horror he was about to unleash, but he was not in doubt.
Stefano, the strongest rower and most familiar with the Bay of Messina, set out first, rowing one boat and towing the other with the pitch and oil in it.
Giuseppe set out next when they judged Stefano to be halfway across, although they could not see him, hidden by the forest of ships at anchor. He would look as if he were some kind of supply boat. With a second unmanned boat behind him, he would not be mistaken for a fisherman.