He tied the scarf under her chin, making sure both ears were covered. “Now you have. Promise?”
She nodded, then unexpectedly threw her arms around his neck and kissed him messily. He hugged her back, and she squirmed out of his grasp to go and crouch at Tonio’s feet. He knew he was still blushing a little, but he was feeling better than he had all day, kind of warm inside. She was a little sweetie—a lot nicer than the last one, who’d kicked him. He got gingerly to his knees and edged carefully off the pitching boat onto solid land, tucking his chilled hands under his arms as soon as he got there.
Tonio cleared his throat, and Marco knew what was coming next.
“Dammit Tonio, I’ve said I won’t take anything about a hundred times—and I damn sure won’t take anything this time either. You folks haven’t any more to spare than I do, and I haven’t done a damn thing this kid’s papa couldn’t have done if he knew how!”
“But he didn’t, did he—”
“So you tell him and he will.” Marco set his chin stubbornly. “And don’t you go bleating debts or imperiled souls at me either. There is nothing magical about this, and by the Lion of Saint Mark, even if there was, then surely Christ himself would have blessed it. He said ‘Let the children come to me,’ after all. I don’t believe in counting favors. I do what I can. Let the accounting be set in God’s hands.”
“That’s true enough, may be—” Tonio replied, just as stubbornly, “—but this baby’s papa does believe in the payment of debts. He may be poor, but he’s proud and honest.”
That just about described all the boatmen, caulkers and fishermen of Venice. Only the rich and the rogues had other standards. “Oh, hell—” Marco sighed, pulled the rope loose, and stood up holding it in both hands, braced against the tug of the sluggish water and the icy wind on the boat. “All right, I tell you what. If you people are so worried about debt, here’s what you do. When there’s a few lira to spare, have the people I’ve helped put it in some kind of common pot against the day when I can’t help one of these children and they need a real chirurgeon. I suppose you might as well hold the pot, Tonio, since you’re always the one bringing them here. If they do that, I figure we’re even. Si?” That should solve two problems—theirs and his.
Tonio’s face still looked stormy, but he must have reckoned that that was the only concession he was going to get out of Marco. “Si,” he agreed, after a long moment of stubborn silence.
He signaled to Marco to toss back the rope and poled back out into the current.
Marco headed back along the walkway, resuming his interrupted journey. His leather-soled boots made no sound on the damp wood as he kept to a warming trot. No bare feet in this weather, not for him or Benito—Aldanto had bought them boots when he caught them without foot-coverings. Another undeserved kindness.
Sounds were few above the wind; the occasional murmur of voices from above, the slap of waves on boats and buildings, the ever-present creaking of wood, canalers calling out to each other down on the water. Cold—God, it was cold. Weather for sickness, that’s for certain; in the swamp, down on the canals, weather for dying, too. Winter would be bad this year, he thought.
Funny, this business with Tonio della Sendoro. It had started when Marco caught Rafael de Tomaso with a cut hand going septic and forced him to let Marco clean it out. Then de Tomaso had brought him a child with a bad case of the fever. Then Tonio had gotten into the act. Always children, though, never adults. Eleven, no, twelve of them so far. Marco couldn’t resist a sick child—not even when they kicked or bit.
Soft heart to match my soft head.
No matter. Marco knew damned well he could no more see a child in pain and walk on, without doing something about it, than he could stop breathing.