Maria decided she'd had enough. Out in the piazza there'd be real music and singing. Real talk, about things she knew, not her trying to keep her mouth shut. She got up; Alessia was in a room just off the banqueting hall with a dry nurse, and by the feel of it Alessia could use some feeding.
She walked across the crowded room to Umberto, moving carefully on the slippery marble, pausing every other step to keep from jostling someone who was probably important. It took an age to go thirty feet. He was laughing when she reached him, and greeted her with a smile that spoke of both care and happiness. "Ah, Maria! It is so good to be back in Venice again. Nice to be away from rude nature."
She smiled back. She couldn't exactly tell him that she was finding the smell of the canals hard to live with. "Yes. But I must go to the baby, husband." He'd like that, being called husband with respect in her voice, and showing herself a good wife and a dutiful mother. It would make him feel good, in front of the other masters.
"She must be fed, and then I think I'll take her to our lodgings. It has been a long day, and I confess I'm tired."
He took her arm. "I'll come along to assist you home. A woman needs an escort on a night like this."
Irritation flared. This being a good little wife was not something she did well. This was Venice. Her Venice! She'd sculled a vessel around it alone since she was fourteen.
She shook his arm off, but did it gently, so it didn't seem as if she was rejecting his help. "I still need to feed Alessia, and then probably to change her." That would put him off, quickly enough. "It will take a while. Then the nurse can accompany me. She can do something to earn the wage that Katerina has paid her, and we'll take a gondola. You stay, please. You're enjoying yourself, and I don't want to spoil that for you. You won't see the other masters for a long time again."
"You're sure?" He was plainly tempted, but he was dutiful. A solicitous hand touched her elbow.
"Absolutely. Enjoy yourself." She kissed him on the cheek and went to find Alessia.
She found the salon easily enough. By ear. Alessia was bellowing. The dry nurse was nowhere to be seen. There were, however, five or six empty goblets, one of which lay on its side in a pool of spilled wine. Wine stained the satin of the chair that had been provided for the nurse. And Alessia was demanding instant attention. Hastily Maria struggled with her lacing and quelled the bellows, rage building inside her that she had to tamp down, lest it affect Alessia's feeding.
She'd just fed, winded, and changed Alessia when the nurse returned with a goblet in her hand, slightly unsteady on her feet.
Maria put Alessia down. Carefully. Only then did she round on the slut who'd deserted her baby. "Where the hell have you been?" she demanded, anger putting an edge to her voice that only a drunk could have ignored.
The nurse, it seemed, was just such a drunk, and beamed at her. "Just went to get a glass of wine, dearie. The poppet was sleeping beautifully."
Fury passing all ability to use mere words seized Maria. She grabbed the woman and shook her like a rag doll. "You . . . you puttana," she hissed into the wine-laden breath. The woman swayed. "You're drunk. You left my baby, all alone. Anything could have happened. Anything!"
The nurse wrested herself away, clumsily, and looked down her nose at Maria, her face reddening with more than just wine. "You're nothing but a canaler, even dressed up like that. Why should I sit here with your misbegotten brat?" she spat. "You begrudge me a glass of wine . . ."
Maria stepped forward, pulled back her arm, and slapped the woman hard. And hard again. The nurse's head jerked back and her cheeks each had a scarlet handprint on them, but Maria wasn't done. She seized the woman by the front of her gown, and threw her at the seat. It cracked as the dry nurse fell onto it, her eyes wide, her mouth falling open with shock. It didn't break—quite—but Maria knew with satisfaction that it was damaged. The dry nurse was going to have to answer to one of the Doge's upper-servants for it.
"I might be a canaler," she hissed, "but I'm worth three of you. At least I always did what I was paid to do, honestly."
Maria snatched up Alessia and stormed out; out into the crowd, out past the crowd, too angry to even hear if anyone was trying to hail her. She was still so angry she wasn't really thinking, just walking, once she'd got past the revelers. But when she got out of the palace and past the fires in the piazza, the night air was cool. It helped to cool her temper and her anger, too. After a while she paused and took stock of where she was.
With a sense of surprise rather than shock, she saw that she was on one of the walkways bordering the canals, and must be more than halfway to their lodgings. She'd walked farther than she'd intended in this dress. The hem and the petticoat hems would need washing.
Her feet, crammed into shoes that were too narrow for her, complained. One of the disadvantages of marrying Umberto had been that she had to wear shoes all the time. His position, he said, demanded it. Well, her canaler feet demanded space. She kicked the shoes off, then struggled to pick them up, with Alessia fast asleep in one arm. She gritted her teeth, as she realized that the shoes were meant for dancing in ballrooms, not striding along canalside. The pretty doeskin would be ruined.
She sighed irritably; there was little point in spending money on a gondola now. Anyway, the gondolas would be as thick as flies down at the Piazza San Marco, and few and far between anywhere else. She might as well walk the rest of the way, cross the Rialto bridge and go to the apartment. Not more than a few hundred cubits now.
Besides, she'd been walking and poling for most of her life—her own two legs were good enough. She was just a canaler, after all; canal-born and canal-bred, and the day she couldn't make it anywhere in Venice on her own feet, they might as well start building her coffin. So she walked on quietly. With half of Venice already drunk on the Doge's wine, and the other half trying to get to that state, there probably wasn't a bullyboy or a pickpocket anywhere nearer than Naples. She'd be more than safe enough tonight.
* * *
The riot and rumpus met her just short of the Rialto bridge.
Schiopettieri. A lot of them. The professional soldiers who served Venice for a police force had two struggling figures in their midst, yelling and fighting like young bulls. Maria stepped up onto a mounting block, partly to avoid the press of Schiopettieri, partly to see what was going on.
She looked across the heads—and straight into Benito's eyes. As their eyes locked, he stopped, and a look of absolute horror transfigured his face.
That was the opportunity that the Schioppies needed. They piled onto him. Maria caught a brief glimpse of Benito, upended over someone's shoulder. He wasn't wearing any trousers. Or small-clothes.
Maria, with Alessia in her arms, stood transfixed, watching the tide of Schiopettieri bear Benito and his large companion away. The large companion seemed content to be restrained. All the fighting had obviously come from Benito.