Chapter 100: If It Isn’t Too Much

Dawn came to Limassol much as it had left it.

Vito found Alvise in a small room off the courtyard, a place that had probably begun life as a chapel, or perhaps its storeroom, before someone figured a fondaco needed an office more than God needed another closet.

One wall still had a niche where a saint’s image had stood, the plaster around it paler than the stone. Now it watched over nothing more holy than a table buried under papers.

Alvise had three daybooks spread across the table, and judging by the middle one, he had already spent some of the morning dealing with problems that had nothing to do with trade.

Toffolo, following a step behind Vito, stretched his neck to see it as they came toward the chairs.

"Ser Barozzi! Toffolo!"

Alvise sprang from his seat so quickly that the chair scraped hard against the floor.

He was warmer today, though no calmer. "Please, sit. Forgive the state of things, I’ve been at this since before the bells rang. The Latin father insists it has always been his right to bless the ships before they sail, and the Greek papas next door insists the same right belongs to him. Neither man can accept that they might simply take turns like reasonable Christians."

"An old argument, that one?"

"Older than I am, Ser Barozzi. It came with the house."

He shut the middle daybook with relief, then pulled the two that actually mattered toward him.

Toffolo dropped into his chair.

"Alvise, amico. Is today finally the day I get to taste that purple wine?"

Alvise blinked, caught for a moment between two priests and one boy.

"The wine, yes. We’ll come to it before we’re finished here. I give you my word."

Vito laughed and reached over to swat Toffolo lightly across the back of the head.

"Let the man breathe, ragazzo. We’ve got a whole season’s cargo to settle first."

He sat across from Alvise, looking entirely at his ease. "Business first, amico. Tell me what this island wants from a Venetian merchandise, and what it’s prepared to put into one in return."

Alvise’s shoulders dropped a full inch at that.

"Now that, Ser Barozzi, I can help with properly."

He placed both daybooks squarely in front of him, almost reverently. "Ships, cargo, measure, that is a language I speak. The succession, the truce, the whole kingdom holding its breath, I confess I only repeat what better men than I have already decided to worry about."

Vito laughed. "Start with my cheese, then, and what is left of the fire-wine. What would a buyer on this island pay for either?"

Alvise’s whole expression changed to one of a merchant. "Cheese like that does not often reach this island, Ser Barozzi. Two bezants the measure, I should think, and we will not have much trouble finding buyers. More once word of it gets past the first sale."

He hesitated before going on. "The spirit, I cannot say so well. I’ve never handled anything like it myself. Ten bezants the flask, perhaps, though I confess that is more guess than knowledge."

Vito grinned, amused less by the number than by the honesty of the answer. "One doesn’t have to taste the goods to know what they’re worth, amico. He only needs to know which men will pay for them."

"I’ll hold you to that, Ser Barozzi. It’s the only comfort I’ve got."

"What about the rest? Wool, honey, and wax?"

He nodded. "Steady buyers for all three, Ser Barozzi. Nothing that’ll make either of us rich, but forthright trade every time, as always."

Alvise said it almost fondly. Small, steady sums seemed more comfortable to him than grand ones.

"And the wine? Cretan, I mean. Any room for it?"

Alvise winced. "Forgive me, Ser Barozzi, but not a soul on this island will pay premium for Cretan wine when Commandaria is growing a few hours inland. It would shame itself on the same table."

"Cazzo, that bad?"

Alvise made a face as though he had bitten into sour vegetable. "Worse, if the men I’ve spoken with are telling the truth. I’d sooner sell snow to a Cypriot in August."

Vito laughed outright.

"And the cotton?"

That earned him genuine laugh. "The island grows its own, Ser Barozzi, plenty of it. Selling Cypriot cotton to Cyprus would be like selling fish to a fisherman."

"Then tell me what I should actually be buying instead."

"Commandaria first, of course."

Alvise put forward the obvious subject. "Buy heavily, Ser Barozzi, as much as your naves can carry. Not many merchants have shipped a proper measure of it home yet, and every patrician on the lagoon who has heard the name will pay through the nose just to say he has tasted it."

"Then buy it for Venezia."

"Exactly so, Ser Barozzi."

"I agree. What else?"

Alvise nodded. "Sugar, though the trade is still finding its feet here. The Franks have only lately learned to coax it from the ground, so do not expect the prices Egypt spoiled you with. Salt as well, thick enough to shovel rather than mine, if you’ve got hold space to spare for goods so unglamorous."

There was one matter left, and Alvise’s hands made it obvious enough by how anxiously either swatted around the daybooks in the table.

"There’s one more thing, Ser Barozzi."

His voice dropped.

This time he placed each word carefully, as though the table might object. "I’ve arranged the introductions, and I’ll arrange whatever else is needed. I wondered, if it isn’t too much to ask, whether my part in it might be worth a small share for myself, as perhaps a twentieth, buying and selling both. No more than that, I promise you."

Vito had spent an entire evening trading insults with two merchants over half that much. He had also watched a consul in Alexandria try to talk him out of a season’s trade with nothing but a borrowed chair and a title that wasn’t even his yet by treaty.

This was nothing in comparison.

"Done."

He said it before Alvise had time to draw the breath for the apology already waiting behind the request.

Alvise blinked.

"Done? Just like that?"

"It’s a fair price for honest work, amico. I’ve paid a great deal more for a great deal less."

Alvise watched him for a moment, waiting for the trick.

Then he laughed, openly and without restraint, like he finally put down a most horrible burden.

"I confess I was braced for a great deal worse than that, Ser Barozzi."

"Then I’m glad to disappoint you. Consider it the easiest bargain either of us makes on this whole island."

Alvise reached for a fourth daybook, thinner than the others and still untouched. "I’ll have the names in front of you within the week, Ser Barozzi, sooner if I can manage it."

Vito nodded and let him get on with it.

The business went well enough. Cheese and fire-wine were sold, wool and honey and wax were dispatched without discussion, Commandaria was bought heavily for a market that hadn’t tasted it yet, and a broker’s small cut was agreed to faster than either man had expected.

What remained was waiting, made longer by a city Vito still could not enter and a cargo already spoken for down to the last measure.

There were duller places to wait out a kingdom’s troubles than a converted Greek house with decent wine somewhere inside it, whatever color that wine actually turned out to be.

And there was only one direction worth sailing afterwards.

Back to Crete.

And then home.