Chapter 112: The Poor Man’s Fat Mule

The walk to San Bartolomeo was far shorter.

As they left the Rialto behind, its noise faded little by little. The brokers and church bells let way to mules stamping and braying under their pack-saddles, boys tugging girths tight, and crates stacked three deep and marked with scripts that neither of them could read easily.

To their left, a man in a felt cap conducted a loud and lengthy argument about the true weight of a scale’s counter-stone, in a tongue that felt like German with Venetian gusto.

There was a single word Vito was looking for, one of the bare entries on the list.

Scotti.

He didn’t explain it to Caterina. Somewhere between Crete and this street, she had learned that some of his certainties came from places she couldn’t name.

"There."

He nodded toward a stall crowded with sample pouches and rolled wool and Caterina moved beside him without a word.

What they found there was not one man.

It was two.

Vito blinked.

Then he blinked again.

For a moment he suspected the wine had followed him farther into his head than he had realized. The same face was staring back at him twice, with hardly a hair between them to tell one from the other.

Only the clothes gave them away.

One wore Lombard silk, cut close and fine, with a ring on every finger God had thought to provide him. The other wore plain, severe wool the color of a rain cloud. A wax tablet lay against his forearm, and he looked at them as though a number mattered more to him than introductions.

Behind them, Zaccaria gave a low whistle.

That was about as close as he ever came to genuine astonishment.

"Signore! Signora!"

The man in silk swept into a bow so deep that he nearly folded himself into a crate of raw wool, with one hand to his heart, and his feathered cap dipped dangerously over one eye.

"Ricciardo Scotti, wholly and gloriously at your service, signori, and at the service of every soul here whose heart might yet require my humble talents on this most splendid and blessed afternoon!"

"Rickhart Scotti."

The man in wool gave one short dip of his chin, his stylus waiting over the wax.

"Our father saddled us both with the same name, signori."

"Cazzo..."

Vito grinned before he had decided to.

"There has to be a joke in that, amici."

He let that thought go as quickly as it had arrived and gave them the introduction.

"Vitale Barozzi. And this is Caterina Contarini, the good sense in this partnership."

Caterina inclined her head and said nothing. She was content to let the brothers take the measure of their new visitors first.

"Barozzi!"

Ricciardo’s eyes flashed, and before Vito could offer his hand, he had seized it in both of his. The rings clicked together with every enthusiastic shake. "Signore, your name has crossed this campo twice before you ever set foot upon it! I have heard the stories, I have repeated some of them, and I confess I believed barely them. And now I find, to my everlasting delight, that I was a fool to doubt a single word!"

Rickhart continued perfectly stoic. "Pepper and cinnamon, we are told. How much have you brought, Signore, and what do you want for it?"

"Well, this one wastes no time dressing the pig before he puts it on the spit."

Vito glanced at Caterina. She had already pulled her small notebook from her hip.

"Terms will have their turn, signori. I would hear the road before I hear the price."

Her voice remained warm, but there was no mistaking that the matter was not up for argument.

"First, tell us how the goods travel once they leave your hands."

Ricciardo was the one to reply, spreading both arms wide. "Over the Alps, signora, through mountains enough to make a saint weep for his mother’s skirts! Eleven times I have crossed Mont Cenis, twice I have dined at the table of a count of Champagne’s household!"

"Nine times."

Rickhart’s stylus kept scratching across the wax. "And it was the count’s steward, not the count. He invited us because our mule ate his prize rooster the night before, the one meant for his daughter’s wedding feast. He wanted payment for the bird before he would hear another word about commerce."

Vito laughed outright.

Caterina’s lips twitched at one corner, though she quickly put it back where it belonged.

Rickhart continued without concern for his brother’s glare. "Roughly one month, if the snow has the decency to stay out of the way. Then tolls at every valley where some lord has a gate, and when Mont Cenis is blocked, we take the Great Saint Bernard and pray the mountain is feeling kinder than usual."

"Troyes in the summer, I reckon."

Vito said it lightly, almost as though it meant nothing. "Then Provins not long after, and two more before the year’s done. A merchant need not be a prophet to read the road, amici. Watch the price of bread long enough, and even a merchant’s almanac opens as readily as the Bible."

Ricciardo’s hand stopped in midair, his rings catching the light. Rickhart’s stylus came to a dead stop against the wax.

Rickhart recovered, and his voice became more cautious. "The road takes more from a traveler than silver ever will, signore Barozzi. Bandits wait above the snow, and frost finds fingers no matter how thickly wrapped. Whatever price you have brought in your head, scrape a good deal of it away before we call it fair."

Ricciardo put both hands against his chest. "We left poor Enzo beneath that mountain less than three winters ago, finest company I could hope for on a bitter night. He knew every word of Boethius by heart, and still laughed when I told the same damned joke for the ninth time. Then the mountain took him in a single afternoon and, the bastard, never thought to give him back."

Caterina watched the two brothers without hurry.

She looked at Ricciardo’s silk collar, Rickhart’s fine leather boots, and the mule beside them, fat and glossy and better fed than the sailors they had crossed a sea with.

"Yet here you both stand, all ten fingers, and your boots are dry enough to walk straight across a church floor without leaving a mark."

Caterina let that remain between them for a moment.

"Tell me, signori, does a road so ruinous truly welcome the same two faces every season, only to send them home with heavier purses each time?"

The question was gentle.

Ricciardo opened his mouth, then closed it.

For one brief moment, the look in his eyes said they had caught him.

"Four crossings last season alone, and every one of them paid its way."

Rickhart heard the mistake as soon as the words were out, a full breath too late to take them back.

"Herrgott."

The word came out low and guttural. There was not a trace of Italian in it.

"Ah! Hear him now!"

Ricciardo turned on his brother, all his grand manner gone at once.

Then they truly went at each other.

One voice rose in wounded flourish and outrage, the other stayed flat and furious. Neither permitted the other an inch until both ran out of breath within a heartbeat of each other.

Only then did they turn back and discover Vito and Caterina still standing there, watching with the same patient expression.

"Enough of that. We are here for business, Barozzi."

Rickhart spoke plainly now, there was no performance left.

Vito looked at Caterina.

She looked back, one eyebrow lifted by barely the width of a hair.

That was enough.

"Zaccaria."

Vito held out one hand without turning his head.

Zaccaria’s face passed through many varieties of betrayal.

He reached into a second pouch buried at the bottom of the satchel, muttering unkind words about pack mules and patricians, and came out with two small twists of cloth.

Pepper was bound in one. A stick of cinnamon lay in the other.

Rickhart’s tablet dropped an inch when he took the pepper between two fingers. He crushed a corner, lifted it close, and drew in the scent.

For one breath, the cautious face of the man who kept numbers slipped away.

"Ja."

The word came gently, to himself.

"Good stock, clean and whole."

Ricciardo had taken the cinnamon and snapped off a piece, then held it beneath his nose, eyes closed.

For one unguarded moment, all the flourish fell away from him too. He wore the same hungry, interested expression his brother had shown over the pepper.

Two men dressed as though they belonged to two different countries, wearing the same expression over the same goods. Whatever either brother claimed to be, there had only ever been one face standing at that stall.

Vito had promised Caterina fat fish.

Instead they had landed a mule, glossy enough to make a poor man’s claim look suspicious, and a catch he suspected was worth every bit as much.