Chapter 115: No Eggs in One Basket

The stillness lasted about as long as it took Ranuccio to reach it.

He got there before Ginevra, prying a corner of the alum stone loose with his thumbnail. Neither Vito nor Caterina had even drawn breath to offer him a more civilized way, such as a knife.

The old merchant went straight for the old method instead. Every trader learns to taste the goods before he learns all the letters in his name.

Behind his teeth, a curse began its journey, thought better of it halfway through, and came out as a long, wounded hiss through his nose.

"Madonna Santissima."

He forced the words through clenched teeth, blinking hard enough to tear up. "Sound! Good stock, this. It bites the tongue harder than my confessor ever managed to bite my conscience, and there’s your proof, amico."

Ginevra showed no interest in what her tongue thought of the matter. She held a sliver between her fingers and turned it slowly in the light.

She had spent three decades learning to read dye from a grain of stone, and Ranuccio’s performance wouldn’t hurry her now.

"No cloud in it, neither. Clear as a saint’s conscience."

Her voice was low, almost meant for herself. "No yellow bleeding through the white. Whoever pulled this from the earth knew his trade, and whoever laid hands on it afterward had the good sense to keep them shut. That’s a rare talent on a road like this."

Ranuccio’s small eyes narrowed. The pain was fading, but his attention had not. "And where, Barozzi, does a stone this excellent crawl out of the earth? I’ve bought Levantine sacks sworn on every saint’s relic in Christendom, only to find they had never come within three days of the Levant, the lying little bastards."

"Phocaea, amico. Or close enough that neither of you need lose a wink over the difference."

Vito spoke as easily, with all the confidence in the world.

The satisfaction that came over both rivals was immediate.

Ranuccio loosened his grip on the stone. Ginevra’s fan, forgotten behind her until then, stirred once through the afternoon, as it had grown rather too warm for the amount of composure either rival still had left.

The old man found his voice first.

Then his tongue, still sore from its recent quarrel with the alum, reminded him what happened when he talked too quickly over an injury.

He winced, swallowed the half-formed insult, and lowered the cane.

"Well, well..."

He cleared his throat and rubbed his jaw. "Then let us speak of business, shall we? I presume that is why the four of us are still planted here instead of sitting over supper."

Ginevra’s smile grew when she saw him swallow the insult.

She took the chance when it appeared. "The Arte della Lana has looms standing idle for want of this very thing, signore. They need a mordant strong enough to make a red worth the name, one that claims the wool and does not wash its honor away with the first rain."

She said it plainly, without dressing it up, which he suspected was as close to sincerity as she intended to come that afternoon.

Then Ginevra continued. "Give Firenze her alum and the cloth goes to market within the month, and the silver close behind. Your stone leave storage, and the grossi is in your hand in that same season, not after some forgotten spring has come and gone."

Ranuccio’s cane struck the stone again. This time it felt less like complaint and more like punctuation. "Silver the same season, she says. Once the wool’s been shorn, spun, dyed, woven, hauled to market, and finally laid beneath the nose of some baron’s lady while she spends three weeks deciding whether the red makes her look fat."

He snorted loudly enough to make a nearby moneychanger turn his head. "Siena does not ask a merchant to sit twiddling his thumbs until some loom wakes from its nap, Barozzi. Give us the goods and I can have Sienese silver counted into your hand before the bells call vespers."

Ginevra breathed out through her nose. It wasn’t laughter, though it had enough contempt in it to pass for one at a distance. "Silver sulking in a Sienese vault has never dyed so much as a single thread, caro. What does it do in there all day, polish itself?"

That caught Vito’s attention.

An old, nearly forgotten fact had suddenly proved useful in a room full of people who would have preferred he had never learned it.

He asked his question lightly, which was often how he began before ruining someone’s afternoon. "Speaking of things that spend their days admiring themselves, signora, does the Arte della Lana still have to tiptoe through Pisa’s harbor whenever one of its precious bales takes a fancy to seeing the sea?"

He let the question there for a moment. "I only ask because a guild that struts about with so much pride ought surely to own a quay by now, cara."

Ginevra’s hand stopped on the ivory spine of her fan.

It lasted no more than one breath, but Vito noticed it. So did Ranuccio, by the fresh interest that appeared on his face.

"Every port bows to someone, signore."

Her voice cooled by one cautious degree, smooth enough that a stranger might have missed the crack underneath. "Even Venezia’s galleys leave a coin in some harbor-master’s palm before they reach the next sea, signore, so spare me the sermon on freedom."

Ranuccio’s grin came slowly, and there was no mistaking how pleased he was with himself.

He struck the cane twice against the stone, giving himself a little victory drumbeat.

"Meanwhile, the Via Francigena runs straight through Siena’s gates on to Rome, signore."

Ginevra was out of words for a moment, and let his triumph stand there in full daylight.

Caterina allowed the silence to remain only long enough to make certain neither merchant intended to snatch back what had just been admitted.

"Enough fencing with one another. You both know your markets, you both know your purses, and you both know what your houses can swallow. So spare me another round of boasting and tell me simply."

Her voice stayed light while her eyes moved from one face to the other.

"Which of your houses could take the whole hold off our hands in one stroke?"

Ranuccio’s cane slapped against the stone.

He clicked his tongue, scratched one heavy jowl, and took his time giving an answer he plainly disliked. "My house does not let a single florin slip from the strongbox without counting it twice, donna Caterina. That is how Siena keeps its bankers rich and its fools poor."

He spoke calmly now, almost grudgingly.

Ginevra’s fan stopped in her attendant’s hand. It was a small pause, but it told the same story on her side of the argument, however neatly she wore it.

"My looms have no appetite for more than they can turn into cloth, signora."

Her chin remained high. "I know what Firenze can use, and I have no habit of stuffing my warehouses merely so I may admire a full room."

Vito glanced at Caterina.

Caterina glanced back.

They didn’t need to discuss it. The answer passed between them in a single unhurried breath.

"Then there we are. Done and settled."

Vito said it as clearly as he might have ordered a round of wine. "Then Firenze takes her share, Siena takes hers, and there is the whole matter finished, amici."

Both faces changed at once, though in different ways.

"A share!"

Ranuccio’s cane struck the stone hard enough to send a stray dog scrambling out from beneath a nearby wool bale. "I have stood on this cursed bridge, bitten my tongue bloody on that accursed stone, and spent the better part of it defending Siena’s honor against a woman who has buried five husbands and outlived every fortune they were foolish enough to leave her, and now you tell me I am to limp home with half a loaf, Barozzi?"

Ginevra straightened, and the composure she had worn a moment earlier cooled into indignation. "A house of Firenze’s standing does not carve up goods like some fishwife hacking herring apart on the Rialto, signore. I had heard such splendid things of your manners, Barozzi. I see now that the stories were kinder to you than you deserve."

For one breath, their eyes met over the alum, wounded, betrayed, and, for the first time, in perfect agreement.

Then they both realized whom they had agreed with.

Each pulled away as though they had reached for the same hot coal.

"Though naturally..."

Ranuccio recovered his dignity while his cane found the stone again.

"Though naturally, whatever portion Siena is granted ought to be the larger one."

Ginevra raised one eyebrow.

"Larger? If one of these shares is to outweigh the other, it is clearly Firenze’s that should."

Caterina closed her notebook with a small, decisive snap. It cut through the next quarrel before either merchant could properly begin it.

"The exact measures can wait until the proper terms are written, signori."

Her voice left little room for argument. "Two days hence. At None, L’Angelo. Be there, and we shall put numbers to what we have agreed."

Ranuccio grumbled about Sienese patience being disrespected well beyond its reasonable limit, but he inclined his head all the same, cane, belly, and dignity together as best they could.

Ginevra gave a much more elegant bow, then turned toward her attendant with some fresh remark about their discussion.

The two of them disappeared into the crowd still trading barbs all the way across the campo.

Zaccaria patted his satchel once. It was an odd little gesture, like checking whether a wound had finally stopped bleeding.

Then he breathed out long and hard.

"That’s truly the last of it, then?"

"Truly, amico."

Vito clapped him once on the shoulder.

Caterina turned back toward the crowd. "Then we had best get back to L’Angelo and make proper figures of this unruly afternoon before it scatters any further."

She looked up at him, one eyebrow raised. "Someone in this marriage must keep the numbers in order before they grow teeth and start biting back, marito."

"Cazzo, moglie, if the numbers have teeth, let them bite you. That whole cursed business is yours."

Vito grinned and fell into step beside her, while Zaccaria followed a stride behind, his empty satchel finally riding light on one shoulder.

"I’ll charm the merchants, you’ll tame the figures, and between the two of us, perhaps we shall leave this bridge with our purses lighter than our tempers and our shirts still on our backs."

The three of them disappeared into the crowd together.

San Bartolomeo swallowed them up in its noise, closing behind them as though they had never left it.