Chapter 110: The Widow’s Appetite

The crowd swallowed them in an instant, with benches that stretched farther than imagination, one after another, with brokers, lenders, and merchants packed so close that face became another within three strides. Somewhere past the fortieth bench, Vito gave up counting.

There are limits to what a man ought to ask of his eyes.

"This way, moglie, we’ll spend the whole blessed week walking every bench on this bridge one by one."

"Then we do not walk them one by one, do we?"

Caterina’s eyes moved over the crowd, quick and practiced, the way his own hand went to a sword hilt without waiting for permission from his mind.

Vito stepped out of the worst of the crowd and close to a pillar, where the noise dropped by half.

He looked up, half joking, and spoke to the air. "Purveyor. You keep the secrets of a whole island in that head of yours and never so much as sweat. Surely, then, you can spare me a name or two from this bridge."

Fifty Fate, for a problem your two legs and patience could solve without me. I find that almost touching.

"Then charge me for the touching part, purveyor, and give me the names."

🪙 [FATE SHOP — INTELLIGENCE]

Rialto Roll Call

Every broker, factor, and moneylender presently working this district, named clearly and nothing else beside it.

Cost : 50 Fate

Fifty Fate deducted. Balance now zero. I do hope those instincts of yours are worth what I’m charging you for them.

Vito paid without haggling. The balance emptied itself in the same breath that the names arrived, laid out in his head like a page had written for him.

Three names caught his attention.

First of them, one widow interested in glass, silk, and fine wine from a stall near the goldsmiths’ row, cittadina by birth, with no patron’s name recorded against hers.

"Then there we begin, moglie."

Caterina looked over, previously occupied with her own observation. Despite her uncertainty with his sudden confidence, she followed without much hesitation.

Zaccaria stood just behind them, a satchel of samples slung over one shoulder. He had brought it without complaint since L’Angelo, and his face made it perfectly plain what he thought of being given the work of a pack mule.

"Keep a hand on your purse, on this street, you can lose it without even feeling the hand that takes it."

Then he nodded toward the goldsmiths’ row ahead, where silver and dyed cloth flashed from every open shopfront. "I have fought in alleys with fewer thieves than you’ll find on this bridge, Barozzi, and not one of them had the shame to dress so fine while doing it."

"Noted, amico, only keep your hands on the silk until we have the good fortune to sell it, sì?"

"If silk thieves is what finally kills me, you may tell the priest I died a disappointed man."

Soon, the merry band found their destination, one simple stall.

Silk hung from the portico’s frame, while glasswork lay across a low table to catch that light and throw it back twice over. One caged songbird hung at one corner.

Beneath it stood a woman who scolded an apprentice half her age in one breath and cooed at the bird in the next.

The woman was well into middle age, with silver running through dark hair pinned up with more ambition than care. She had a soft, voluptuous figure that filled her silk gown handsomely, the fabric drawing neatly across her bosom and waist.

A low neckline showed a little more skin than modesty required, while small glass beads circled both wrists, as though she had figured to be her own best advertisement.

<anno data-annotation-id="ce562c8e-0e45-1fbb-5af1-3311b1840165" data-title=""Ferma quel becco, Nina, o ti vendo al primo marinaio che passa."">"Ferma quel becco, Nina, o ti vendo al primo marinaio che passa."¹</anno>

She slapped an apprentice’s hand away from a bolt of cloth, and when she turned, her eyes went over her new customers.

"Marina Badoer. There, now we have begun properly."

She gave her name as a fact. "And what has brought you to my little corner of the Rialto, signore? Come, come, don’t stand there like a lost pilgrim. Tell me what you are looking for."

"Vitale Barozzi, signora. At your service, and hoping to be of service to you."

He gave a short bow, more habit than ceremony.

"And this is my dear Cateri..."

The name caught on, and her eyes sharpened for a moment. The practiced blankness slipped for an instant before she caught it and put it back.

"Ah. So that is the Barozzi."

She rolled the name once across her tongue. "I’ve heard that name rattling around this bridge for weeks, signore, and in my head I had made you twenty years older."

"Have I disappointed you, then?"

"Madonna, no, not in the slightest."

Her eyes looked over him again, longer this time, and this inspection had nothing to do with cloth or silver. "Unmarried, are you? What a waste, I know a Molin girl with a dowry twice the size of her good sense, and God knows a face like yours could stand to marry into a little more of it."

Caterina slipped her hand around his arm, fingers curling firmly against him in a reminder of exactly whose belonging he was.

"He’s spoken for, signora. Quite thoroughly, by me."

Marina’s expression barely changed. "Well, cara, how was I to know that by looking at him? Was I supposed to read the wedding vows in his face?"

She turned her attention to Caterina. "Contarini, unless my eyes have finally gone traitor on me. And that look tells me you’ve already decided where this conversation is going, whether the rest of us know it or not."

She said it as praise and insult in the same breath, and plainly intended both.

"I like you already, cara. Now don’t let it go to your head, I charge dearly for compliments, and I’ve just spent one on you."

"High praise, signora, from a woman who has just tried to marry my marito off to a stranger, no less."

"I try to marry everyone to someone, cara. A terrible habit, I admit, but I’ve made a handsome little fortune from it, so who am I to repent?"

Marina dismissed the matter with one ringed hand.

"Now then. What have you brought me to buy, signori?"

Vito’s gaze turned more attentive as he glanced over the stall, and then back to Marina.

"That is not all, no. We have come to hear what you intend to make of yourself, too."

Caterina picked up the thread effortlessly. "We’re not here for simply a merchant content with one good stall, signora. You seem to me like a woman who has done more than she was given, and perhaps has no intention of stopping there, so we’re curious where you mean to take it."

Wariness and interest moved behind Marina’s composed face at that, quickly. She spread both hands over her stall, silk and glass and all of it.

"Then show me you’re worth the risk, and perhaps we’ll discover just how far we can take this."

Vito nodded to Zaccaria.

The captain set the satchel down with visible relief and pulled out a fold of Damascus silk and a small stoppered flask.

Marina took the silk first. She brushed it between two fingers and held it up to the light, then she smelled it. Afterwards, she uncorked the flask, poured herself a measure no larger than a thimble, and drank it as though she had already half decided it would disappoint her.

It didn’t.

She nearly moaned in delight. "Ah. Honey and raisin on the tongue, dried fig underneath, and oak coming through at the end. Sweet enough to charm a priest, but with enough bite to remind him he’s still a sinner."

She turned the flask once in her hand and studied it properly. "Whose vineyard, whose cellar, and how long it slept in the cask before some ship got its hands on it?"

Vito replied with pride. "Cyprus itself, Commandaria. The grapes are left on the vine until they have taken the sun as far as they can, then dried before they are pressed. This came through Alvise Trevisan, bought from the House of Choniates, and it went from their cellar to our naves without passing through any further hands."

Marina nodded slowly.

The answer had clearly satisfied whatever she had been thinking.

"Well, now."

She put the flask down with close to genuine respect.

Not one of them had named a price yet, and none of them had agreed to terms beyond what each had already shown the others freely.

Still, the three of them stood there another moment.

The business hadn’t started, but it was about to.

<annotations style="display: none;">“Shut that beak, Nina, or I’ll sell you to the first sailor who comes along.”</annotations>