Chapter 177: All Debts Come Due

Vito trimmed the wick, turned the flame down a finger’s width, then lifted Lucia onto his shoulder. She kept complaining, though more calmly now, while Leonardo slept through his sister’s performance.

Caterina laid the sealed leaves across the quilt in the order the ships had written them.

The Golden Horn first, then Soldaia, then Phasis, then the Horn again. Each had its own lump of wax.

The venture had crossed a sea that a monk’s chart once showed as a winged beast, then crossed it again, bringing every ship home without a storm or a corsair. Seventeen hulls, four galleys and thirteen naves.

Vito’s hand paused against Lucia’s back for a breath before resuming its steady patting.

Fantin had told the voyage three times since the Riva, with the bear visiting different ports in every version. It was a remarkable amount of travel for an animal that had never left a tavern in Castello.

Lucia let out a fresh protest against his collar, and Vito met it with a bounce and a flourish, conducting two quarrels at once with the same free hand. "Moglie, per l’amor di Dio. Three times Fantin has told it, and three times that bear steps off the gangplank at every port like a bishop come to bless the fleet! By Phasis, I swear, the beast was dining with the governor. Tonight I want it once, plain, the ships, the goods, the truth, if the poor thing is still breathing."

Caterina brushed her thumb over the wax on the first leaf. "The leaves tell it once, marito, and only once. No bear, not in the wax, nor in the margins."

"Cazzo, read it, anima mia, read it quick, before I weep all over my daughter."

She lifted the first leaf toward the lamp.

The first seal belonged to Zeno, a lion pressed into red wax, and Caterina set her thumb on it as though the beast might bite.

In spring, the fleet had come up the Horn. The senior clerk came down to the wharf with his board, counted seventeen hulls by their noses, then wrote down the number and remarked to no one in particular how the fleet had grown.

Zeno put his wax on every lot of cloth and metal he bought, while the Patriarch’s steward took the altar goods. The metals were sold here and nowhere else, since Soldaia’s license forbade war goods, and a city whose roofs still showed bare rafters had plenty of use for nails.

At the green door, Lunardo and the three cousins looked at La Verde, a Contarini war galley that had returned as a Barozzini hull, and found they could bear the sight.

The talk on the harbor was of war. Henry had finally worn his crown, though he had no more knights with it than he had possessed without it, while Kaloyan’s trebuchets stood before Adrianople for the second time.

Caterina put down the first leaf and picked up the next.

The second leaf was written in Greek beneath the archon’s seal, which his dry steward kept. The letter went first to the steward at the customs house, who sent it up to the archon on his summer estates.

On paper, Soldaia answered to the Empire of the Romans, whichever of the three claimants happened to be using the name that month, and paid none of them. That made a Venetian pier a gift worth accepting.

The archon limped down to the water with a stick and two nephews to inspect the plot himself. The visit went into the record, but no one broke ground.

The five terms in Vito’s draft had survived, fixed dues, one inspection accepted by every office, their own weights, a pier, and a house of their own.

The dues were divided so the archon’s kin and the town’s great houses each received a share, which was why he signed. Archons answered to the people who ate at their tables, in Crimea as anywhere else.

The customs house, the weigh-house, and the sworn measurers fought the arrangement to the last stamp. In the end, they put one leaf under three seals, and each office declared victory.

The spirit were sold first. Then the monks and the steward bought the paper, spectacles found their way onto the noses of abbots and scribes, and the road brought fewer wagons than it had the year before, just as the old caravan owner had promised.

Those that did come brought furs, wax, amber, and ivory.

A convoy master told Fantin, through one of his young kin, that Cuman kinsmen had ridden home from Kaloyan’s camp.

Caterina held the leaf toward the lamp until all three seals caught the light.

Lucia settled against Vito’s neck, and the flame steadied.

Vito laughed, a low rolling laugh he kept down in his chest out of respect for the child, so that his whole frame shook with it and Lucia rode the tremor like a boat on a swell.

"Answers to three emperors and pays not one silver to any of them! And still, still, the old fox finds room for a Venetian pier."

He shook his head in rapture.

"Ma va’, moglie, what a magnificent thief. I could kiss him on both cheeks."

Caterina turned the leaf again so the seals caught the light. "Vitale, think. What do we hold? A pier on a leaf, and not one stone in the ground. Ecco, I have my charter. Now let me see him keep it."

She laid the Greek leaf face down and lifted the Georgian one.

The writing was round Georgian script beneath the governor’s seal, with a Greek translation in a monk’s hand below it. Vito read the Georgian under his breath, following the line with one finger, while Caterina followed the Greek with hers.

There had been no signal fires that year. A customs boat came out before the sandbar, which was what a fleet earned by making a good first impression the previous year.

The envoy in mail and the monk in the black cowl came aboard and knew where to put their feet. A Contarini clerk with good Greek stood between the envoy and Fantin, carrying the words in both directions.

The governor read Vito’s Georgian letter, then sent a rider up to the court and feasted the fleet while he waited.

The answer that came down was friendly, but cautious. It offered warm words, a blessing, the Queen’s name, and a promise that friends of Georgia would be received when the court could meet them face to face.

Nothing had been set in motion. A court far up in the hills could not be hurried, and a governor told to be friendly would remain friendly until told otherwise.

The church goods and the spectacles sold first, followed by carpets, lapis, turquoise, crimson dye, rhubarb, and boxwood from the dealers at Phasis. This year they also sold raw silk, which had gone unsold on their stalls before.

Vito laid the leaf on the quilt.

Lucia had fallen asleep against his neck.

From Phasis, the fleet crossed open water by Bepi’s needle, keeping well clear of Trebizond’s piers before coming up the Horn for a second time that summer.

Henry’s people were sending to Nicaea about a truce, the barons were dining at one table for once, and bread was expensive without yet becoming a panic.

The last seal was Zeno’s again, and beneath it lay the return list in Caterina’s hand.

Zeno put his wax on the leaf again at the old price. Pellegrino, Orso, and Domenego kept their three platoons out of the colony stews with about the success their ranks promised, while the captain scowled through the whole business and Bepi cursed the refit the hulls would need before winter.

The goods bound for Venezia came off three shelves.

From the Soldaia road came furs, wax, amber, and ivory; from Phasis came carpets, lapis, turquoise, crimson dye, rhubarb, boxwood, and raw silk.

The Horn’s eastern benches supplied figured silk, saffron, pepper, indigo, madder, galls, gums, alum, sugar, flax, and salt.

New on this voyage were ash for Murano’s furnaces, raw cotton for the Lombards’ looms, and musk and camphor for the apothecaries and the censers.

Caterina laid the list over the leaves.

She reached for it on the chest and opened it to a clean page.

Vito clicked his tongue and added. "Four ports, seventeen hulls, and not one sword out of its scabbard. Cazzo, moglie, I am insulted! We might as well have carried wool to a monastery, and the monks, at least, would have tried to cheat us."

"Be bored on your own time, marito. The accounts will tell us whether Fantin’s name was worth the wax, and whether Soldaia gets a mason in the spring. Basta now. Let me tally."

"Then begin with the spirit, anima mia. Go on, let it make a liar of you. I’ll be kind about it."

He considered.

"Mostly."

Every cargo the fleet had carried out was sold, and what it had brought home was already loaded for the usual buyers.

The last hurdle of the season was the accounts, and they were beginning tonight.