Chapter 107: Kin, Suddenly Fond

Vito’s laugh was still leaving him when Caterina’s hand tightened on his arm.

Behind them, Marouda was haggling with a porter over the price of one more trunk, while Domenego had turned toward the water with the hope there would one more good show.

Vito followed Caterina’s stare.

A private gondola was coming through the merchant ships, black-lacquered and polished bright enough to throw the sun back at the harbor. A page stood at the prow, holding a banner that hardly needed holding in air this still.

On it was a white horse rearing across a field of deep blue, with gold thread in its mane. It was a handsome piece of cloth, and it plainly belonged to those who had money to waste on handsome pieces of cloth. ℴ

Vito didn’t know the arms.

Caterina did.

She had gone so rigid that even those who didn’t knew her could see the tension. Whatever was coming down that canal, it was Caterina’s trouble to carry.

The gondola came alongside without hurry, its oarsmen easing her in with care. Servants came ashore and cleared a path across the boards, and then a heavyset man stepped onto the pier in clothes far too fine for fish guts.

He mopped his neck and brow, and winced at the pier as though it had insulted him.

Beside him came a smaller woman with sharp eyes. She was three steps ahead of her husband and heading straight for Caterina with both arms wide.

"Caterina! My own dear girl! Madonna, look at you!"

Orsola Contarini, her great-aunt and one of the women who had once ruled the family household, wrapped her arms around her before Caterina had quite managed to get hers up.

The middle-aged woman continued. "So thin! So brown! Dio mio, the sun has eaten you alive. Almorò, look at her! You would pass her in the street and never know your own blood."

Caterina let herself be hugged, her arms loose at her sides with patience. She had seen this storm coming for some time.

Almorò Contarini, her great-uncle and head of the household, arrived half a step behind his wife and made a bow that looked as though it cost him a fortune. "Caterina, nipote mia. Why, the whole Rialto has talked of little else this past month. I dined with the Procuratore di San Marco not six days ago, and he asked after you by name. By name, mind you! I told him myself, ’Our girl has done the family proud.’"

Caterina kept her voice warm enough to make the courtesy convincing. "And how fares your health, Zio? I confess, I could hardly say. I have had so little chance to hear of it these past years. Letters seem to travel very poorly these days, or so I am told."

"The distance, Caterina. Ah, you cannot imagine it, half the world between us."

Almorò spread both hands, as though the entire Mediterranean had conspired against his correspondence. "We wrote, Caterina, every year, without fail. What could we do when the waters themselves are cursed? One galley taken by corsairs, another lost at sea, and there goes another year’s correspondence. You may laugh, but I swear to you, the letters we sent must be feeding the fish by now."

Orsola patted Caterina’s arm, now wounded on behalf of the family as well. "And what were we to do? We thought it kinder not to burden a clever girl making her way with a flood of letters she had no time to answer. A mother writes when her daughter needs mothering. You, thank God, were never such a daughter."

Caterina let the two explanations there together.

Then she caught Vito’s eye enough to raise one eyebrow at him before turning back.

She replied, pleasant as poured wine. "How curious, then, that a house so faithful with its letters never once found a corner in them for the little matter of my dowry."

She let that rest for a moment. "My branch never had the fortune to fill a dowry chest, Zio, and every soul in this family knew it. That was precisely why the chest was meant to come from this house, yet not one trunk arrived, not even a word to say why."

She tipped her head, still smiling.

"Tell me, Zio. Whose failure was it, then, if not this house’s?"

Almorò lips parted open.

Orsola’s hand stopped brushing Caterina’s sleeve.

Vito watched them recover, and quickly at that, like they were accustomed to finding bad numbers in books and shrugging them to be another sort of problem. Now he understood what had brought an uncle and aunt down to a pier in their best silk.

His name had become heavier over the past year. Apparently hers had too.

Vito’s hand found the small of Caterina’s back, and he leaned close enough that only she could hear him.

"Nice gondola, though," he murmured. "Almost worth the years."

Orsola then talked. She had spent forty years surviving Rialto gossip and knew better than to leave an empty patch of conversation lying around. "And is it true, then, what they say? You really mean to marry Vitale Barozzi himself? Dio mio, Caterina, tell me it is so!"

Her eyes brightened with an appetite she did not bother hiding. "Have the banns been read yet? Have you chosen your priest? If not, Caterina, you must allow us the pleasure of arranging it. The Contarini chapel, the family name, the proper patricians to see it done beautifully. Such an occasion ought to be worthy of you, and surely, after all these years, we may at least claim the honor of giving you that."

"We shall see to the wedding ourselves, Zia. Every last detail."

Caterina made it warm enough to pass for gratitude, but firm enough to leave no door open. "I have learned to keep my affairs in my own hands, Zia. A house that cannot find the time to answer a letter is hardly the house I would trust with a wedding."

Vito’s arm went around her waist.

He grinned, showing plenty of teeth. "Exactly what she said. Cazzo, I wouldn’t trust you lot to buy a market list without losing half of it on the way home."

Almorò ignore the joke and recovered quickly enough that Vito almost respected him for it. He changed direction with ease. "Then come home to us when your business here permits it. Let the family have the pleasure of seeing you properly, and let an old house make up a little for lost time. There are some debts a man ought to settle while he still has the good fortune to do so, Caterina."

Caterina lightly nodded. "Some time, perhaps. Once the cargo is dealt with and the season gives us leave."

That was enough to leave both of them pleased, probably the cheapest victory anyone had won that afternoon.

The departure went much better than Andrea’s had gone a while ago.

Orsola embraced Caterina again, softer now, and promised a dinner that both women knew would have to be pried out of a calendar with no room waiting for it.

Almorò kissed Caterina’s cheek and shook Vito’s hand with surprising strength for a man who had spent the whole visit dying of the heat.

He whispered about the honor of it, then led the household back toward the gondola.

The sun caught the banner all the way out into the crowded water. The white horse kept rearing bright against the blue long after the gondola had become just another small shadow among the harbor traffic.

For one breath, before she caught herself, Caterina’s sentiments went somewhere Vito wasn’t invited to follow.

It disappeared before he could decide whether to reach for it.

She turned to him first, quicker than he could move. The laugh that came from her was thin enough for him to see through.

"Both families in one afternoon. Dio mio, Vito, we are becoming fashionable."

"Ma va’. And I thought Andrea had already given us the full performance."

She laughed loudly this time and let her head lay against his shoulder.

Behind them, three ships were still half unloaded.

Neither of them moved to deal with any of it.

Not just yet.