Title: Brothers of the Sea
Series: The Ballot Boy, Book Three
Author: Larry Mellman
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 01/07/2025
Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 121100
Genre: Historical, historical fiction/14th century Venice, lit/genre fiction, gay, May-December romance, age difference, political rulers, political intrigue and plotting, existential threat, apocalyptic wartime, military leaders, naval action and adventure, Venetian warships, lagoon warfare, protection of waterways and foreign trade routes, family drama, old friends, sex in a church
Add to Goodreads
Description
Running a gauntlet of raging seas and enemy warships, Nico and Admiral Vettor Pisani race to Constantinople to rescue Venice from Byzantine treachery.
A triple alliance of powerful princes plans to besiege Venice by sea and land and seize the reins of St. Mark’s legendary four horses. With Nico as his right hand, Pisani leads a war fleet to secure the island of Tenedos in the Aegean, fulcrum of the impending war. Amid the mortal dangers of the journey, Nico and Pisani wrestle with their overpowering physical and psychic attraction, knowing that the choices they make will change their lives irrevocably.
Nico first met Pisani and fell under his spell at the age of fourteen. In the decade since, despite great loves and failed loves, Nico never lost his starry-eyed admiration for Venice’s greatest admiral. Pisani, thirty years older and wiser, hesitates to risk everything for a young man’s love until Nico throws open new doors, and their age difference evaporates in the heat of battle.
The enemy triple alliance—Padua, Genoa, and Hungary—outnumbers Venice five to one. Mounted armies blockade the mainland shores and rivers while the enemy fleet breaches the lagoon. Venice can only win on water with Pisani leading her. When he is forced to fight a battle he knows he cannot win, Pisani’s disastrous defeat lands him in prison. Locked behind bars while Venice hovers on the brink of annihilation, Nico and Pisani sketch a bold plan to save the Republic.
Brothers of the Sea
Larry Mellman © 2025
All Rights Reserved
We swing wide of Zara and the coastal islands and hold to the open sea, rowing from sunrise to sunset with occasional boosts from the variable winds. Pisani assigns me to stay close to the sailors and learn the rigging with its web of stays and shrouds. On a dare, I shinny up the mast to the basket and scan the horizon on all sides. Nothing but water in every direction, flat and endless. My childhood vertigo comes back with a vengeance. I am a speck at the mercy of wind and weather, vulnerable, alone, and insignificant. The world spins as I climb down. The others below are laughing when jump to the deck, pea-green and unsteady on my feet. They assure me I’ll get used to it.
When the coast turns eastward, we lose our wind, and the oarsmen wrestle the sea. Pisani sights Spalatro by the light of the waxing crescent moon rising over the mountain behind the ancient city. I pace nervously, excited at seeing the palace Emperor Diocletian built for his retirement. Pisani watches me indulgently as if I were an eager child impatient to open a Christmas present.
“Will I be able to see it up close?”
“It’s not out of the question.”
“Emperor Constantinus Porphyrogenitus wrote that words cannot convey its magnificence.”
Pisani chuckles. “It’s not like that anymore, but there’s still a lot to see. The Romans knew how to build.”
He blows his whistle as we enter the bay, and our fleet clusters together for Pisani to address them.
“We’re well-served staying aboard ship tonight. Better cautious than dead. There’s nothing to be had here except a safe place to sleep. Eat what you’ve got.”
Audible groans come from the crews. Few can keep their eyes open.
“I know,” Pisani says. “I eat the same as you. We’ll feast properly in Modon. Now sleep. I must go ashore to inspect the wharf. Niccolò, you come with me.”
We lower the skiff from the outrigger and row toward the wharf.
“It’s a shame you can’t see the surrounds,” Pisani says. “No palace was ever situated better. The town, not worthy of a name, wasn’t here when Diocletian built this palace a few miles from where he was born a slave. He chose it for the soil, the air, the vistas of sea, and mountains in all directions. From his bed, he could see the harbor, the orchards, the olive groves, the sea, and his mausoleum.”
The outline of the palace slowly emerges as we glide closer.
“It’s vast,” I say.
“Nine acres inside seventy-foot-high, seven-foot-thick walls. Originally sixteen towers. More like a private city than a retirement home.”
Pisani stills his oars to permit me time to register the enormity of the palace and the scale of its conception. “From the outside, it’s a fortress,” he says. “Inside, well, you’ll see…”
The way he watches me and his delight at my wonder suggests we aren’t here by chance. Pisani moors at the base of the south-facing wall half again as long as St. Mark’s Square. The church and the Doge’s Palace would fit inside these walls three times over.
“Is it how you imagined?” Pisani asks.
“Way beyond.”
“Good. Then I’m glad I brought you here.”
Brought you here.
My mind races, and my heart quickens as I stand on the quay, Pisani close behind me. He bends his head next to mine to see exactly what I’m seeing. The tide laps the stone quay. A tang of citrus or jasmine run wild over a millennium bites my nostrils. I am dazed not only by the magic of the palace but, poured over that, like glaze on glass, Pisani’s joy at my delight.
We enter a gate in the sea wall and cross the atrium between the two wings of the emperor’s apartments. From there, we move into the vestibule and out the portico, which looks like a temple where the god/emperor presented himself to worshipful crowds herded into the peristyle below. Symmetrical colonnades capped with extravagant Corinthian capitals line a wide avenue stretching to a monumental gate in the far wall.
“That is the Gold Gate,” Pisani says. “Everyone but the emperor used it. He came in the way we did. And that, to our right, is his mausoleum.”
“It’s a temple of Jupiter,” I say.
“He thought he was. Doesn’t matter. It’s a Church to the Virgin now. The bell tower wasn’t finished until a few years ago.”
Stone piers flank the stairs to the mausoleum. A black sphinx crouches on the end of one of them. Pisani lifts my gaping jaw with his finger. He removes a torch from the wall, walks to the end of the stone pier, and illuminates the sphinx.
“Stroke her for luck,” Pisani says. “She’s older than Rome, than Greece, than Persia, than the pyramids of Giza. She and her sisters stood guard in the old Egypt that Diocletian loved. She guards the entry to his tomb, and the Madonna reigns in the apse.”
The sphinx rests on her elbows, her perfectly human hands extended prayerfully. Her headdress resembles a seashell sculpted at the base of her skull. Her limbs are lean, almost reptilian, and her lethal tail coils around her haunches. As I peer into her face, Pisani mounts the torch in a wall bracket.
“Aren’t you curious why I brought you here?”
Brought you here.
“Is that the sphinx’s riddle?”
He wraps his arms around me. I twist around, look up into his face, and stand on my toes to kiss him. But he covers my mouth with his hand.
“I have loved you since I first laid eyes on you,” Pisani says, “when I taught you to ride a horse along the lido dunes. I have wanted you every day. I waited for you to ripen and for the time to be right. I snatched you from Serenissimo and brought you here, for this moment, to see if you want to be mine.”
“I want to be yours.”
“It’s not as simple as a quick kiss and a fuck. Like everything else, there are complications.”
“Omnia vincit amor.”
“Love is all, but for it to survive and flourish, you must know what you’re saying yes to.”
I pull away. Not hurt, but disappointed.
“I’ve hurt you.” He pulls me closer. “I am duty-bound to warn you. Love is never easy, as you well know. It has its terms and conditions.”
“I thought love went beyond terms and conditions.”
“When it has blossomed, they evaporate. But getting there, that’s the problem.”
“Must I prove myself worthy?”
He nods. “And so must I. You are precious, my dear Nico, a pearl of great price. We must be worthy of each other. Donato wasn’t worthy of you because he lied. I don’t know how you survived that disaster.”
“On dreams of you.”
“I might burn in Hell for the dreams I’ve had about you all these years.”
“Then why can’t we kiss and make love like we’re supposed to do? Putting terms and conditions on love is like ordering the sea to behave. Love is a sea, a storm, an earthquake. It humbles you with its power and thrills you at the same time. If it was rational, it wouldn’t be love.”
“Yes, that’s as far as you’ve gotten. I’m telling you, there’s more. But to get there, you must agree to where you’re going.”
Pisani lifts me onto the sphinx’s back and holds my right hand. “There is an old maritime custom,” he says. “It goes back to the Romans and beyond. We call it ‘brotherhood.’ It is a sanctified bond between two men. Generally, one is older than the other, but not necessarily. Anything is possible. We say ‘brothers’ because nothing else fits as well. Not brothers by birth, brothers by choice. Only and exclusively, for as long as we live. That’s the measure of the commitment we make. Dying for each other…pffffft, it’s nothing compared to living together. For honoring this commitment, we gain more than a lover, more than a husband, more than a partner. We are more married than all the nobles of Venice combined. I am inviting you to become a brother of the sea, but first, I must be certain that you understand what I’m asking and then accept willingly.”
I slide off the sphinx into his arms. “Nothing you’ve said sounds challenging to me. That’s who I am. That’s what I want.”
“At sea?”
“Anywhere.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Can I kiss you now?”
“That’s how brotherhood is sealed.”
Purchase
NineStar Press | Books2Read
Amazon
Larry was born in Los Angeles and educated in literature, political science, and life at the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked as a printer and journalist in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and St. Paul, Minnesota. Larry also worked with Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground on the Exploding Plastic Inevitable in NY, Provincetown, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, was mentored by Dean Koontz, and shared a palazzo in Venice with international opera singers Erika Sunnegårdh and Mark Doss.”
While living in Venice for many years, Larry also taught English, led tours, and immersed himself in the history and art of the Venetian Republic. The Ballot Boy was born in Venice and completed in St. Paul.
Larry is a lifelong social activist and writer, a voracious reader and researcher, an opera fanatic, and devoted walker. He currently lives in St. Paul with his partner of twenty-one years and his ex-wife of twenty-five years. His son is a pianist devoted to blues and jazz.
Website | Facebook | Twitter
