presents...
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In theory, Vodacce's island nobility never need descend from their terraced villas high above the water. Bridges arc from islet to islet, connecting all the places a gentleman or lady might wish to go. But Vodacce's nobility often need or want to go places where no gentle man or woman would darken the door. These trips may be moves in the Great Game, with some prize to be taken found in a waterfront storehouse or the backroom of a genne house. Some of these unsavory places are most accessible via the canals that thread through the islands, and so a gondola must be hired. And that means hiring a gondolier, a man, who might know who you are and where you went. Very, very early on, the gondoliers developed a code of omerta, silence, more sacred and more profound than any save the seal of the confessional. Their lives often literally depended upon it.
Guild of Squeraroli and Gondoliers
Squeraroli are shipbuilders, specializing in gondolas. These craft are unlike any other boats. Their left sides are larger than their right, causing the craft to list when it is empty and to navigate through the calm waters of the lagoons at an incline. A special iron weight, highly decorated, is attached to the prow, to offset the weight of the gondolier in the stern. Even the oar and forcole, the oar rest, are not simple and are carved by experts.
There are a few women among the squeraroli. They are mostly the wives of squeraroli and they all work on the decoration of the felze, the wooden shelter that rests in the center of the gondola. The felze itself in not hard to construct and is not an integral part of the gondola - it is moveable and can even be taken out (say, if the gondolier wishes to run ferry service during the day and more private outings at night). Ornamenting the felze with paint, upholstery, silks and embroidery, on the other hand, is an art. Felze, like gondolas, are painted black on the outside, but this can be augmented with black-on-black decorations in different textures or materials, and some discreet gilding or silvering can add dramatic highlights. Inside the felze, anything goes. The women craft tiny worlds here, evoking ancient Numa's grandeur, the exotic opulence of the Cresent, the stylishness of the Montaigne courts or of course the deadly elegance of modern Vodacce through the careful selection of fabric, paint and paper in an array of colors, decorated with ribbons or tassels or nothing at all.
But few of the nobility ever see the squeraroli. Their work goes on behind the scenes, in the squero, the gondola shipyards. The public face of this guild is the gondoliers.
A typical gondolier owns a craft in good repair, perhaps in need of a repainting. He spends his days and nights as a ferryman, filling up his craft near to sinking with a load of islanders who need to get from the market to their homes, or from the taverna to the market, or from the courthouse to the taverna. It is simple enough, routine work. But even these innocent transports are bound up in the omerta: a gondolier will not even try to remember who is on his boat and when. It is not his business. On market days, he might ferry goods to the market - the draft of his boat is so small that he can go where other boats cannot.
The invention of the felze, originally a shelter against bad weather, gave the gondoliers a whole new role and gave their omerta a whole new meaning. A gondolier who is doing well, who can afford a beautiful felze suitable for a nobleman and his friend or his courtesan, can hire out for substantially more than what he charges for simple ferry rides. The Vodacce islands crawl with spies, even moreso than the rest of Vodacce. Informers for the local prince lurk in many corners, as do agents working for foreign interests. And while the prince can guarantee himself some privacy in his palace, the rest of the island's population finds themselves often looking over their shoulders when they meet to scheme. Is the taverna girl listening at a keyhole? Is that Church acolyte dousing candles while you whisper reading your lips and reporting to a bishop? Who are the spies, and where is safe?
Out on the canals, inside a curtained felze, there is privacy, so long as you can depend upon the silence of the gondolier. There are no knotholes, no keyholes, no secret passageways on a gondola. Just you, your companions, and water for yards all around. Even Lord's Hands want that kind of privacy some of the time. And so, the omerta of the gondoliers is respected and preserved - both within and without the Guild.
Gondoliers heavily police their own ranks. Any man suspected of breaking the omerta threatens the livelihood of the entire guild. If gondoliers can't be trusted, their lucrative role as providers of privacy disappears. Men who tell tales aren't just killed - they are killed in such a way as to serve as an example to others. Lord's Hands have sometimes admitted to being impressed on the rare occassions the guild finds this necessary.
Villanova versus the Gondoliers
Nor can they be seen as being vulnerable to outside pressures. Not so terribly long ago, the grandfather of the current Prince Villanova - still riding high from his victory over the Caligara - demanded that a gondolier tell him what had passed between two men who had disembarked from his gondola. The gondolier refused, and the prince had him taken to his dungeons.
That very evening, all the gondolas on Villanova Island put in to their docks.
Two days went by, and the island was crippled. The common folk were not allowed up to the levels of the great flying bridges, and so were stranded on whatever islets they had found themselves. It took some time for the effects of that to percolate up to the level where the prince would feel it, but on that second morning there was no cream at Prince Villanova's breakfast table.
Before the week was over, the head of the Guild and his first replacement were both dead, two squero had been torched, and thirteen gondoliers suffered fatal "accidents." But the gondolas stayed docked. And, as word got out, gondolas on other islands began to slow, or to come out of the water. The other princes, displeased, pressured Villanova to resolve this stupid little argument.
Before the next week was over, what was left of the body of the gondolier who had refused his prince was returned to his family for internment in the catacombs. Harrassment of the gondoliers and squeraroli ceased. No prince has since found it worth his while to test the omerta of the gondoliers.
The information presented on gondolas and their construction comes from the Venetian gondola home page. Some of it has been elaborated or altered to fit Vodacce or my fancy, so if you want the real deal, go there.
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