* * *
“Is it murder?” demanded Ricardo Brunelli.
Marco looked up from where he knelt next to the Doge. “He’s still alive. His pulse is faint and fast, but erratic. It may just be his heart or . . .” Marco looked at Petro. “Could be poison.”
Ricardo Brunelli looked at Petro Dorma and Vettor Benero, the three of them the only Senior Collegio whom the guards had permitted onto the balcony. “What now?”
Petro gestured at the crowded piazza. Already the noise was alarming from down there. “Tell them the Doge has been taken sick. And finish his speech. We all know what he was going to say.”
Ricardo Brunelli gave Signor Vettor Benero a look designed to silence a mate-hunting tomcat—never mind the head of the pro-peace-with-Milan faction. Ricardo cleared his throat. Then took one of the Doge’s gawping trumpeters by the ear and said: “You. Sound that thing. I want the people to listen to me.”
The shrill of the trumpet, and the sight of someone standing up to address them, silenced the surging crowd. Marco was too busy applying his limited knowledge to examining the Doge to pay much attention. But it sounded—by the cheering—as if the one thing that Ricardo certainly did really well was give a speech. And, as Marco examined him, the Doge did slowly begin to recover.
” . . . And so, my fellow Veneze, to the ships!” Ricardo boomed.
The Doge opened his eyes. “I was going to say that.”
“Quick!” said Petro, “get him to his feet. Your Excellency, can you wave to the people?”
Foscari nodded. “Of course.” He tried to get up, but his frail octogenarian body was no match for Marco’s restraining arm.
“It’s not wise,” Marco said gently.
Petro pushed him aside. “A lot more lives than his hang in the balance, Marco. The Doge is the servant of Venice first. Take one side.”
So Doge Foscari was able to wave to the crowd, and reassurance rippled through it.
They would have been less reassured if they’d felt his body go limp in their arms and seen his eyes roll back as his head lolled. “Turn!” snapped Petro Dorma. And they took the Doge away, hopefully before the crowd noticed.
* * *
Down in the crowd, Benito looked up to see his brother supporting the Doge. “That’s Marco!”
“Who?” said a neighbor.
“Marco Valdosta,” supplied Maria.
“The new Valdosta,” added another woman.
“I’d heard he was a healer,” said the first with satisfaction.
“The best,” said Maria, giving Benito’s arm a squeeze. “I’d trust him with my life, never mind the Doge’s.”
“Heard he treats canal-kids,” said someone else.
“What? D’you believe in unicorns, too?” chuckled a well-to-do merchant.
“You watch your mouth, mister,” said a brawny bargee. “Valdosta, eh? Good name in my father’s time. You know, he treated my little Leonora.”
As the crowd began to disperse, Benito had the satisfaction of realizing that, at least among the common people of Venice, his brother was already well known. And well liked. Unlike Mercutio . . . Venice would not forget Marco Valdosta overnight.
He took a deep breath. “The Capi are taking lists of volunteers over at the foot of the columns of St. Theodoro and St. Mark. Maria, I’m going to volunteer for the galleys that are going to the Polestine forts. They haven’t said so, but I think they’ll make an alliance with my grandfather.”
Maria looked startled. “What’s Dorma going to say? What’s Cae . . . he going to say?” She still wouldn’t say Caesare’s name.
Benito shrugged. “I’ve made up my mind.”
Marco would keep the name alive. And he could get away from this situation of divided loyalties. The more he thought about Maria—and part of his mind wanted to think of very little else—the more things he kept thinking of about Caesare that bothered him. Bothered him a lot.
* * *
Marco and Petro walked slowly from the Doge’s chambers, where the old man lay under the care of doctors who really were the best Venice had to offer. The Doge had regained consciousness again when he was ensconced in his great pilastered bed, a tiny old man propped on mountains of snowy white pillows. He’d talked perfectly lucidly and with no sign of any impairment of his faculties for near on five minutes. And then, shuddered and lapsed into unconsciousness again.