Chapter 96: Cheese for Camels

Cups came closer, elbows found the wood, and the noise of the room dropped back a step.

Vito put both hands flat on the table and let his grin become a little more serious, though not so serious as to alarm.

"Cheese, and a spirit distilled from wine strong enough to put hair on a saint’s chest."

He watched both men lean toward the word. "I’ve kept it back since Alexandria for a night exactly like this, amici. Half a season’s worth sitting in my hold right now, with nowhere better to go than into your hands."

The merchants leaned forward at the word cheese, though only one of them had his mouth half open already.

Guibert started, drawing his own case a little closer as though the negotiation might suddenly reach out and break whatever was inside.

"Vessels, if you want the plain truth about my stock."

He pulled back one corner of the cloth without actually showing anything underneath. "Ewers, cups made in blue and green, beads enough to string a duchess twice over. Nothing I carry chips easily, and nothing I carry is common."

Vito considered the trade, and an old private delight rose in his chest that had nothing to do with what the things might fetch.

Back in the lagoon, the glassblowers of Murano still spent much of their time mending fishing nets. Their fame was still nearly a century away, and the market was still thirsting for the luxury goods.

Walter said it loudly enough to turn heads at the next table. "A man could drown a fortune in trinkets and call it trade, if he likes the sound of his coins clinking prettier than other men’s."

Guibert’s hand closed over the case at once. "A man could also smell of an entire caravan’s worth of dead flowers and call it trade, if he had nothing finer to sell."

Walter snorted into his cup.

"That’s rich from a man who weeps over broken glass."

Momolo laid a hand against his chest, delighted beyond reason. "Momolo weeps over a broken lute string, amico, and considers himself no less a man for it. Let the artist grieve his own art."

Walter waved that defense away and returned gladly to his own subject, his perfume rolling across the table again as he leaned forward.

"Since we’re naming true worth, hear the rest of mine."

He spread both hands, proud as a new father. "Silk from Damascus itself, woven so close a man could hold it to a candle and see nothing through it. Balsam carried down from the Jordan valley, the very stuff priests beg for and physicians pay double to get their hands on, and I’ve watched both sorts lie through their teeth trying to haggle it cheaper."

Damask took its name from the city that produced it, a cloth so prized that Europe called any close weave by Damascus’s name, whether it had ever seen the road there or not. Balsam fetched what it did because few men were foolish enough to carry it this far, and Walter was perfectly happy to count himself among them.

Guibert wrinkled his nose. "Fine cloth or not, it’ll smell of camel from Acre to the lagoon, and every lady who buys it will know exactly which animal rear it walked to reach her."

"Let them know."

Walter reached for his cup, not troubled in the least. "A woman who wants silk smelling of rosewater instead of sweat and sand hasn’t paid enough for it yet."

Vito laughed outright, amused with both of them. "Ma va’, keep going, the pair of you. Cazzo, I could sell tickets to this table and still make a profit before we’ve traded a single bezant."

Guibert put his offer before them properly, hands folded and manner polite as a man discussing the weather. "For glass of this quality, Ser Barozzi, I’d ask no more than what is fair. A generous share of your cheese, say, and whatever spirit you can spare besides."

Vito clutched his chest as if the man had stabbed him. "Fair, he calls it, robbing a man of his supper and calling it generosity in the same breath. Amico, I’ve bargained with archbishops less shameless than you."

Guibert’s mouth twitched, which was about as close as he had come all evening to admitting he was enjoying himself.

Walter, meanwhile, had gone silent in a way nothing else that evening had managed.

"And you, Walter?"

Vito asked, with all the innocence of a priest who has just found a sinner at the wine barrel.

"Match whatever the glass-doll offered."

Walter pointed a thick finger at Guibert.

"And throw silk in besides, before he talks you into believing cups are worth more than they are."

"They are worth more than you will ever understand."

Guibert fired back, and away they went again, each trying to out-promise the other for the privilege of emptying Vito’s hold first.

It went on for a while longer, offers and counters flying across the table like knives neither man actually intended to stick in anybody.

At last, the three of them reached a bargain close enough to fair that further discussion would cost more breath than either side could hope to gain.

Vito put out his hand first.

Guibert took it with a grip too careful for a man who spent his days handling breakable things. When Walter’s hand arrived, it swallowed both of theirs and pumped hard enough to rattle every cup on the table.

Around them, L’Ancora had filled without any of them noticing. The room was thick now with fresh crews coming in off the evening tide, and a boy went around relighting the lanterns one by one.

"A fine bargain."

Guibert reached for his case again, as though the agreement itself had made it more likely to be stolen.

"Though I still say your Fleming smells like a burning garden."

"And I still say your glass will shatter the first time a Venetian sailor sneezes near it."

Walter grinned.

Vito called for wine all around, and a serving girl brought four cups so mismatched that not one matched its neighbor.

"To cheese and camels."

He raised his cup.

"And to whichever of you two manages to cheat me worse over the winter."

"To profit," Guibert said, prim even in a toast.

"To profit, and better cheese than this." Walter added, already growing looser in the tongue.

They drank. The talk wandered through ships and weather and which port on this sea bred the ugliest women.

Then Walter leaned back and mentioned news he had picked up two towns back across the coast road.

"Word is the King himself isn’t keeping well."

He waved his cup loosely toward the north. "Physicians sent for out of Acre, so they say. Nothing official, mind you."

"Kings are always dying somewhere, Walter. It’s the one trade that never slows."

Vito laughed with the others, easy and untroubled on the surface, and raised his cup again as though the words had cost him nothing at all to hear.

He alone at that table already knew how little time was until the news arrived, and exactly how much of this whole sea would come apart when it finally ran out.