Chapter 21: Ten Votes

The fisherman hauled Ettore over the gunwale of Agnese's launch, and he lay on the planks coughing seawater.

I climbed in after him and put a blanket around his shoulders.

His lips were blue, and his hand found mine at once.

"You came at once," he said.

"I told you I would not wait."

Above us on the yacht, Dario watched with his pistol at his thigh.

His men stood along the rail behind him with their rifles half raised.

Around the bay, twelve launches rocked on the water, and every one of them had armed men at the stern.

The Castellani did not need to count to know which side outnumbered the other.

Agnese stood in the bow of her boat with her hands folded.

"The council will vote," she said. "Each man will say a name, so that the sea hears it."

"The sea is not a legal body," Dario shouted down.

"It is the one that keeps our dead, my son. Be quiet."

She turned to the nearest launch.

"Speak."

An old man in a grey hat took his hat off.

"Ettore."

The next one said it, and the next.

I held my breath at the fourth launch, where one of the men Dario had promised a berth was sitting.

He looked up at the yacht.

Then he looked at me.

"Ettore," he said, and I let the air out.

Seven names, eight, nine.

At the tenth launch a man spat into the sea.

"Dario," he said. "He has been good to my boats."

"Noted," said Agnese.

The eleventh looked at the yacht, and then at the rifles, and then at the sea.

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