In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield Page B

gone, and the banks of Venice were clear, the city turned within itself, united. Agnello, the hero of the city, was elected, the only possible Doge. And by his side was something utterly new, even to the name given her by the Venetians: Angelica. Dogaressa, lady of Venice, queen of the land and sea.
    It was common to speak of a woman’s gentleness, but no one said that of Angelica. When an assassin tried to suffocate her in the night, Angelica lasted easily without air under the smothering pillow, wrapped her flexing legs around his hips and broke his spine with a single jerk of her strong, mobile back.
    Venice thrived in her salty grip. Icons of the Virgin took on her features when artists decorated the churches. But it was more than that. Angelica and her children spread their tendrils through the royal houses, until the houses of Europe all grew intermixed, the dark-tinged blood of the sea people safely mingled in the veins of its rulers. For what nation with a vulnerable coastline could call itself strong if it could not defend itself from attacks by sea? The first time Angelica’s deepsmen struck at the Spanish navy, out on open water, miles away from Venice, not even plundering but dragging the boat down and its sailors with it, was the beginning of the end of landsmen kings. Let the Switzers be ruled by landsmen, let nations with no sea borders keep their old ways if they wished, but there were navies to maintain, and the deepsmen of the sea were no longer neutral, no longer sailors’ yarns, but an engaged force with loyalties of their own. Venice had a sword against the throat of the world. For against the wolves of the ocean—that implacable army Angelica could command without warning—there was no defence. Unless there were other deepsmen on other shores.
    Angelica’s children by Agnello were strong and healthy, fast-growing, cloven infants that could chirrup and shrill their mother’s language, reproducing the deepsmen’s sounds as no landlocked throat ever could. For years, Venice grew in strength: a great empire,unchallengeable ruler of the waves, the deepsmen riding the trade routes and salvaging lost sailors, protecting their nation, mauling unauthorised ships. The world took notice of the small city, even far-distant continents, Chinese and Arab merchants bartering their wealth for safe passage, Europe in thrall. Venice was growing to a second Rome.
    Before Angelica’s first daughter was old enough to talk, she was being offered the hands of princes. That first generation, Angelica refused; instead, she favoured noblemen of her choosing, sending them out into the bay to find themselves brides in the water to bear husbands and wives of mixed-blood for her children. Before Angelica was an old woman, the spread across the courts of Europe had begun.
    A monument was raised by the Doge’s palace after Angelica’s death, housing a golden reliquary containing only her right hand. The remains of her corpse were buried at sea, but the hand rested in its glass-fronted, pearl-studded tomb, its webs shrivelling and pulling the fingers tight, until all that could be seen was a corrugated mass, small as an egg, brown and pitted like a bundle of seaweed. Angelica had never acquired the habit of piety, but the Virgin in stone adorned her tomb, and gilt letters announced the sacred legend: Stella Maris. Star of the Sea.
    This, Allard explained to his charge. The boy sat, black eyes wide open, his mind filled with the drifting corpses of deposed leaders, the jawless bodies of conquered dolphins and the broken limbs, crooked against the dark, vibrant emptiness of the deep that followed after a struggle for authority; of bodies falling through the empty, unresisting air. That was the lesson Allard had to teach. The words were hard for Henry to understand, but the images were not. There were others like him on the land. Not many, but others like him. Only they were not like his nurse, not like the men who obeyed Allard,