Chapter 114: Firenze Against Siena

Naturally, San Bartolomeo kept its promise.

The mules and pack-crates fell away behind them, replaced by stacks of raw wool stacked higher than the crowd. The moneychangers sat beneath strips of canvas, weighing silver coins from palm to scale and back again with steady rhythm.

There’s been one more name on his mind, a bare entry from the list, waiting for the face that belonged to it. Vito had just turned it over in his mind when Caterina caught his sleeve and pulled.

"Look there."

Her voice had dropped into a whisper. "Before you go galloping off after whatever devilry is rattling about in that head of yours, marito, look. Ginevra Frescobaldi. And unless these books have finally addled my eyes, that great peacock across from her is Ranuccio Salimbeni, and by the look of him, he is three words away from bursting a vein."

Vito laughed under his breath. He had come looking across the bridge for a Tuscan voice, or perhaps a Florentine one, and San Bartolomeo had apparently figured to save him the trouble by providing both at once, already trying to tear each other apart.

Ginevra Frescobaldi was a Florentine woman who had long since passed whatever year she might have called her first youth, and she wore the fact without apology.

Her gown was a red so deep it seemed to drink the afternoon light, a hue no common dye vat on the whole bridge could have held through its washing. It was cut close enough to follow the mature fullness of her figure without ever appearing indecent, drawing the eye to the curve of her hips and the soft, womanly weight of her bosom beneath the fine cloth.

Behind her followed a maidservant with a folded fan that appeared to have no purpose at all, since not a bead of sweat appeared on Ginevra’s brow.

Across from her stood another kind of fortune entirely.

Ranuccio Salimbeni had a broad belly, heavy jowls, and the flushed, well-fed face to show his prosperity. A Sienese banker, he had one hand clutching a cane that served him far more readily as a weapon than a walking stick, and every few words, he jabbed it toward whatever had most recently offended him, and today Ginevra had earned the honor.

"...and I’ll say it again, and Sant’Ansano himself can come down from Heaven and hear me say it, Firenze breeds nothing but tailors who put on silk and start calling themselves princes!"

His cane struck the stone hard enough to make a porter flinch and walk away.

Ginevra’s smile widely. "How delightful, coming from a city that cannot decide whether it is a banking house or a kennel. Tell me, Ranuccio, do your grand banks still carry the sweet perfume of the stables they were built beside?"

"At least a stable earns its keep, donna, and never asks for more than a little hay. Your fourth husband managed rather more expense for considerably less use, if memory serves. Or was he the fifth? Damn me, Ginevra, you’ve married so often even the dead must be losing track."

"You would know about losing count, Ranuccio, your bankers have been doing it for years. I doubt your clerks could tell a florin from a fig if you pressed both into their hands."

Vito and Caterina stepped into the space between them, in a disappoint attempt to have their attention.

"Buon pomeriggio, signori."

Ginevra offered the greeting without turning her head. Her eyes remained on Ranuccio, the way a hawk watches its prey.

"Sì, sì, buon pomeriggio."

Ranuccio waved the cane vaguely in their direction without looking at either of them. He was ready to draw breath for the next part of his argument.

Vito figured the moment could use a little help.

"Vitale Barozzi. I have come to sell alum."

He told them clearly, with no bow and no flourish, and left the name there for whoever cared to pick them up.

"And this is Caterina Contarini, who keeps my accounts from wandering into sin whenever I am foolish enough to leave them unattended."

Ginevra changed completely in the space of one heartbeat. The polished distraction vanished from her face, replaced by sharper interest.

Ranuccio reacted in the same instant. Whatever insult he had prepared stopped behind his teeth, his lips left open around the beginning of a word whose ending neither would ever hear.

"Barozzi..."

Ginevra turned the name over as carefully as a jeweler turning a diamond toward the light. "The Barozzi of Crete. Ah, now there’s a name that has been making the rounds of my house. I had begun to wonder whether the man behind it was flesh and blood at all."

She let the silence sit for another breath, then shot Ranuccio a brief, pointed glance before looking back at Vito. "Then you are precisely the man Firenze has been waiting for. The Arte della Lana can weave the finest cloth in Italy, but without good alum beneath the dye, all that fine wool is wasted."

Ranuccio’s cane struck the stone hard enough to startle the moneychanger two stalls away.

"Wool! Always wool with you Florentines!"

He said the word as though it were a disease. "Sheep, shears, and dye pots! That’s Firenze’s grand kingdom, and she’d have every fool believe the wool makes her a queen. Siena wastes no silver dressing cloth, Barozzi. We buy the alum, we buy the ships that carry it, we buy the road beneath their wheels, and every merchant foolish enough to think otherwise."

"That is a bold claim, amico."

Vito let his grin appear, easy and unhurried. "Then tell me this, does a Sienese florin truly open every door? The Arte della Lana has held those doors open for generations, and guilds have long memories."

Ranuccio’s face darkened toward purple, and this time the cane found the stone with gusto. "Their guilds remember friends the way a dog remembers the hand that fed it last, Barozzi. Feed it tomorrow, and you are its oldest friend, miss the bowl once, and it will bite you for the trouble."

Ginevra laughed, light and immediate. "Listen to him, signore, boasting of buying a ship as though he had bought his wife back from the Turks. Any fool with a fat purse can buy a ship, Ranuccio, the harder trick is making people eager to have you aboard once you’ve bought it."

Caterina interjected with a small, measured smile. "And when the accounts are done, signora, does fine cloth weigh more than a banker’s purse? A guild may hang its pride on the walls for everyone to admire, but pride has a curious habit of growing very quiet when the coin comes out."

Ginevra’s smile grew slowly. "Silver hoarded is asleep, cara, no matter how handsome the number beside it. Siena counts her florins by candlelight and congratulates herself on being wise, while Firenze spends hers on everything worth having that the Mediterranean can offer, then dresses Europe’s altars and daughters in the proof."

Ranuccio made a grunt halfway between a laugh and a cough and struck his cane against the stone for emphasis. "Extravagance, she calls it pride! Mark my words, Barozzi, that boasting is how a grand house ends up selling its silver by the weight just to keep the dyer’s bill paid. Give Firenze ten years of such wisdom and she’ll be pawning the candlesticks to pay for the cloth."

Ginevra let the insult to sit there for a moment. When she replied, her voice had gone soft, almost tender. "Tell me, Ranuccio, caro, how is that gout treating you these days? Still creeping up that leg by Vespers, or has age finally managed to teach your tongue the mercy it never could?"

For one moment, not a soul around that stretch of the bridge said a word.

Then Ranuccio laughed.

It burst out of him, folding him over his cane and leaving him wheezing for the better part of a breath.

"Ah, Madonna, that’s a good one! A devilishly good one, donna. I’ll not deny you that."

He straightened and wiped one eye with the back of his hand.

For that single breath, the two of them stood there looking fond of one another, remarkable considering the twenty years of practice they had apparently devoted to doing the opposite.

Then they both remembered who was standing beside them, and why.

Ranuccio’s face closed again like a shutter against rain.

"Enough. We’ve given these good people quite enough of a spectacle."

He straightened his coat with genuine dignity, although the cane still trembled slightly in one hand. "At least Siena teaches her sons some courtesy. We do not marry them off five times just to watch them carry the family fortune into the grave with them, donna."

"And every one of them found me quite capable of counting to ten without taking off my boots. Your bank, meanwhile, has never managed anything half so impressive."

"Basta, you two, and perhaps we might return to the reason we are standing here."

Caterina’s voice cut through them both, with the finality of a door being shut, and neither rival seemed interested in checking whether it would open again.

Ranuccio shut his mouth around whatever he had been about to say. Ginevra’s attendant took a small step backward, as though the single word had more force than its volume suggested.

Vito caught Caterina’s eye and unspoken words passed between them.

"Zaccaria."

He gestured forward.

"The alum, amico."

Zaccaria breathed out through his nose, deeply and slow. He had hoped more than once that his work for the day was finished, only to discover that the day disagreed.

"Of course."

He said it to nobody in particular as one hand disappeared into the depths of his satchel. A small lump emerged next, wrapped in plain, undyed cloth, hardly larger than a fist.

The cloth was folded back to reveal a pale crystalline stone inside, rough at the edges and faintly glittering wherever the light caught its broken side.

Ginevra’s words died in her throat, and Ranuccio’s cane stopped moving against the stone.

Neither, for once in what was clearly a long and very loud rivalry, seemed to have anything left to say.

They only stared at it.

For that one held breath, Florence and Siena wanted exactly the same thing.