He looked at her. Speculatively, with a shy smile. "Maybe . . . later."
Chapter 64
The end came faster and more abruptly than any of the conspirators had anticipated. And it came at a damned awkward moment for Maria.
She'd gone up to the governor's palace the day before and missed seeing the contessa. Not wishing to make herself too obvious, she'd waited until this morning. Umberto had told her last night that the two guards had been transferred on to another duty, so something must be happening.
Renate De Belmondo had been organizing. Among the things she'd organized, Maria found, when she got up to the palace, was a huge basket of foodstuffs. Maria had the muscle in her back and shoulders from years of working heavy loads in a small boat—this basket she could hardly carry. "It's too heavy, milady."
Renate De Belmondo smiled. "You'll manage. There is considerable stage-management to be done before we can bring them out of there. Those women and children need food. And there are a lot of them."
So Maria had staggered down to the sheds. They were a good place to hide, actually; their men had chosen well. Although the sheds were within the compound, they were well away from the rest of the yard—up a steep bank, where there was a winch for loading materials from the street and a chute for sending timbers down to the workshops or the ship-gate. They were used when ships were in port and kept securely locked when they weren't. At the moment there just wasn't the call for cladding or masts. Getting up there unnoticed was considerably more difficult, but as Umberto's wife she could at least get into the shipyard.
She was distributing the contents of the contessa's basket when a hoarse whisper came up the bank. "Hide!"
Maria found herself dragged hastily into a long cavity roofed with masts and stacks of timber. It was dark, hot and airless.
And also a vain effort. Captain-General Tomaselli's men knew exactly where to look; somebody had plainly told them where to go. The women, Maria included, were hauled, blinking, into the bright July sunlight.
Maria knew that the one thing she must not do was to reveal who she was. At the moment the scuolo could still claim injured innocence; if they found her here, the cat would be out of the bag. Alessia was safely with Stella, but any baby would do for camouflage; almost all of them were awakened by the rough handling and almost all of them were crying. The poor mites were mostly hungry. She "borrowed" one, hastily. If there was one thing she'd learned since Alessia's birth it was that very few men will look directly at a breast-feeding woman that is not their own. It was as near as she could come to disappearing. She also realized that the moment was more serious even than she'd thought. There were some seventy of the captain-general's soldiers—quite enough to deal with frightened women and a gaggle of children.
What the captain-general hadn't taken into account was that there were some hundred or so Corfiote porters and laborers in the Arsenal. And they weren't about to watch their wives and children being herded away without a fight. Even if they weren't soldiers, they were men in a shipyard full of edged tools.
And more than just tools. Within less than a minute, a dozen angrily shouting laborers were standing on the walls around the compound holding, one between each two of them, pots of boiling pitch.
There was something very persuasive about that boiling pitch. A few of the troopers had been behaving with a fair amount of roughness to the captives. They suddenly became positively respectful.
"What do you men think you're doing?" demanded the captain-general.
"You tell them to leave our women and children alone and no one will get hurt!"
It was a very nasty situation. On one hand, the troops were armed, and armored. They had the women and children as virtual hostages. On the other hand, armor is no defense against hot pitch. And the Corfiotes were between them and the way out of the shipyard. Something else ominous was happening beyond the Corfiotes too. The scuolo, being Venetian guildsmen, were all part of the Militia. So they were in the habit of bringing their weapons and breastplates to work for duties afterward—and now they were arriving, armed, in dribs and drabs. They were positioned behind the Corfiotes with their pitch and crowbars, their felling axes and knives.
One of the guildsmen pushed forward. "Don't try to stop this, Master Grisini," said the big Corfiote. "We're desperate men."
The elderly guildmaster sniffed irritably. "We've no intention of stopping you. But I warn you, Dopappas. You get one drop of that pitch on my deck-planking and I'll shove that cauldron up your ass." Maria risked a quick peep to see that her Umberto was backing old Grisini up, coming up the ramp to where the soldiers stood with their prisoners. The master wasn't a big man. The Corfiote laborer he was threatening was enormous.
But the Corfiote nodded respectfully. "Yes, Master Grisini. But they want to take our women."
Grisini sighed gustily. "I'm old. I'm tired. But I'm also aware of the scuolo's rights and responsibilities."
The Corfiote blinked.
The old man walked on through the Corfiotes, Umberto following behind him.
Maria saw that some more entrants had arrived for the affair. The Contessa De Belmondo and her husband, the governor. And, peering nervously through the gate: Stella, with Alessia and several of her own children. She'd plainly gotten a message to the contessa.
"Good morning. And what is happening here?" De Belmondo enquired with gentle curiosity.
"We've found these illegal entrants hiding here, Your Excellency," said the captain-general. "These men seem set on daring to rebel against legally constituted military authority in a war zone. The penalty for that is death, as you might like to remind them."
Old Grisini bowed respectfully to the governor. "Morning, Your Excellency. We seem to have a problem here about authority. Would you please explain to the captain-general that the Little Arsenal is part of the Arsenal of Venice—not part of the military of Corfu. He has no authority here. We explained that to him when he tried to draft us, but he doesn't seem to understand it."
The captain-general looked frigidly at him. "In this case food and shelter intended for the island's people are being wasted on these women."
De Belmondo blinked. "Are these women and children from some other island then?"
"No, but they're not Venetian! They're locals." Tomaselli's tone added the unsaid words: and thus beneath contempt.
"I do not recall—as governor of this Venetian possession—anything which abrogates our responsibility for 'locals,' as you put it." The governor's voice was decidedly frosty. "In fact, I wasn't even aware of any such official category of people."
"But they're here illegally!" sputtered the captain-general.
Old Grisini snorted. "Not to make too fine a point of it—so are you, Tomaselli. They are in our building. They're the wives and children of our employees. We'll see to them. We'll see to their appropriate treatment."
The captain-general played his trump card. "Not with the food from the Citadel's stores. They must be put out!"
De Belmondo shook his head. "I cannot allow you to do that. And I don't think your men would be prepared to do something that would have them forever labeled as murderers of women and children. The Senate of the Republic would have my head, and yours."