17

The lamp was about to burn out when Giulietta heard footsteps beyond the sacristy door. Warmest room in the basilica or not, she was frozen and fed up with waiting. Her fingers were so cold her knuckles ached, and she’d been reduced to folding her arms over her chest and tucking her fingers into her armpits.

“Well. What did Uncle Alonzo say?”

She didn’t expect the patriarch to have much success. He was allowed into San Marco at will and his unofficial palazzo, behind the basilica, shared a small garden with the ducal palace; but those were concessions Marco Polo offered for acceptance of his family’s legitimacy. San Pietro di Castello, Venice’s official cathedral, and Theodore’s formal palace, were on the city’s edge for a reason.

Mostly Uncle Alonzo got what he wanted. Unless, of course, Aunt Alexa objected strongly. If she did, she’d have stopped this already. That was the conclusion Giulietta had reached as she nursed her frozen fingers, shuffled her feet and wished she’d thought to visit the privy before this.

Here came Theodore to give her the bad news. Only the hooded figure in the doorway was not the patriarch. For a second, Giulietta believed that the silver-haired boy was back. But he wasn’t this tall.

Other hooded figures appeared behind the first.

Wolf Brothers, she thought, feeling her guts lurch. Then she heard a clang as the man in the doorway turned and his dagger hilt hit the arch, and knew she was wrong. Krieghund went unarmoured. At least the ones that inhabited her nightmares did. When the man drew his dagger, Giulietta grabbed an altar cross, muttering an apology to God as she reversed it to use as a weapon.

The man laughed.

So she swung the cross hard, its base denting his vambrace as he threw up an arm to protect herself. The blow rang like a bell. His dagger landed on the sacristy floor.

“Laugh at that,” she said.

When he retreated, Giulietta saw his face in the lamplight. A hooked nose, a sharp beard and a smile so cruel she shivered. “You burnt our ship,” he said over loudly. “So now we kill you. Or you come with us…”

A man behind raised a crossbow.

“First,” she said. “I must replace this.”

Replacing the silver cross, Giulietta lifted the chalice from where it rested on the vestment chest, kissed it as if obeying some obscure rite and put the chalice carefully on the altar beside the cross. As she did, she palmed the wedding ring it contained.

“You’re sure she’s the right one?”

Grabbing her, their leader wrapped his fingers in her hair, and yanked back her head to take a better look. She would have tripped if his grip hadn’t kept her upright. She found herself staring at a man with a golden earring.

“Oh yes,” he said. “This is her.”

Oars slapped against water and Lady Giulietta felt the boat rock as it drew away from a jetty. A man spoke once, his words guttural and only half heard through the darkness of the rug wrapped around her. All she could hear after this was the creaking of the boat which stole her away.

Later she realised her hand was still clenched. Pins and needles stabbed it, but clutching her fingers confirmed something she hadn’t dared hope. She still had the ring she’d grabbed from the altar.

Uncle Alonzo might have spent his life demanding demons take her. But he’d come after the sacred ring, Giulietta had no doubt of that. Without it, how could Marco marry the sea?