"When the fleet neared the Lido, [Lucas] discerned other craft..." (p. 16)
Merchant ships sail to Venice from:
Dalmatia;
the eastern Mediterranean;
the Black Sea;
Iceland;
Cathay;
Saracen lands;
Genoa.
For some of us, perhaps, a reference to "...the hated Genoese..." (ibid.) recalls:
| Who knows how oft with squat and noisy gun, | |
| Questing brown slaves or Syrian oranges, | |
| The pirate Genoese | |
| Hell-raked them till they rolled | 10 |
| Blood, water, fruit and corpses up the hold. |
- but the Genoese in Lucas' time would not have been able to "rake" anyone.
The knight who challenges Lucas speaks the Venetian patois with a Catalonian accent. (p. 17) He inquires about his missing servant but Lucas responds that he would not trust the latter:
"'...to say a truthful Credo.'" (p. 17)
Lucas' Venetian father was stationed at the mercantile center at Canea on Crete.
Lucas' Venetian master had caught Lucas with his wife on returning from "'...an entertainment at the Rialto.'" (p. 19)
Now, what news on the Rialto?
-copied from here.
The Catalan knight, being one of those "...haughty nobles of Iberia...," (ibid.) is merely amused to hear of a Venetian merchant's discomfiture.
This is a dense PROLOGUE but that is what we have come to expect from Andersonian texts.
2 comments:
At that time most of the Romance languages in the Mediterranean basin would have had a strong degree of mutual intelligibility -- if you were careful and stuck to simple things. Literate men would have used Latin of course.
Standard Italian was just in the process of formation: it's based on the Florentine dialect of Tuscan.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Wait! Merchant sailed to Venice from CATHAY? I think not, at least not at that time in history. Rather, goods were exported from Cathay overland to the Black Sea ports, and then sent to Venice by ships.
Mr. Stirling: And what you said about most Romance languages being still mutually intelligible when used with care reminded me of the story about the Italian who visited Romania. He was what he thought of the country on returning to Italy. He said something about having a good time except the people there had funny accents. IOW, it seems some Italians and Romanians could still understand each other.
Ad astra! Sean
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