Chapter 116: The Arsenal’s Unclaimed Greek

By the next day, noon found Caterina bent over the little table at L’Angelo, her notebook open to a page where three fortunes fought against each other for the better part of an hour.

Marina’s wine and glass, the Scotti brothers’ pepper and cinnamon, and Florence and Siena’s hard-won alum. No matter how often she worked the figures, they refused to come out even.

Caterina grumpily whined. "Marito, I’ve been at these cursed numbers since dawn, and Ranuccio’s share still will not come right unless I steal the difference from Ginevra."

"Then take it, moglie. Rob Ginevra blind, make Ranuccio happy, and call the matter over."

She swatted at him without looking up and went straight back to the figures.

By then, she was already lost on them while Vito came out from behind the writing desk with a stack of vellum sheets tucked beneath one arm. The stack was heavier than it looked, awkward enough that he had to shift his grip twice before reaching the door.

Zaccaria joined him in the calle without asking what the errand was, and the two men went down toward the waterway.

A gondola waited there, black and low on the green water. Zaccaria climbed aboard, folded his arms, and waited while the gondolier got his stroke going.

"Where in God’s name are you taking us now, Barozzi?"

Vito looked down at the vellum in his lap, laid one hand across it, and waited until the oar started its rhythm. "There’s a shipwright at the Arsenal, amico. Best hands this lagoon has ever put to timber, and somehow the whole of Venezia has been content to leave him pounding planks for the Republic. I mean to remedy that."

Zaccaria’s eyebrow went up slowly. He let a calle slip behind them before answering.

"That good, and not a patrician laid claim to him?"

"Venezia is full of such mysteries."

Zaccaria’s mouth flattened.

"That tells me very little, Barozzi. If it pleases you, give me the answer you meant to give."

Vito shrugged and looked out over the water. "He’s Greek, amico. Foreign men don’t exactly get handed the keys to the Arsenal, and the Republic guards that place like a miser guards his last ducat."

Zaccaria breathed through his nose.

"Then how, exactly, do you mean to get the man’s hands working for you?"

Vito put two fingers flat on the vellum in his lap and left them there.

Zaccaria looked at the hand.

Then at Vito.

Then back at the water.

At last he abandoned the whole matter, much as an argument with a wall.

The gondola came around a bend, and the Arsenal’s walls appeared in bricks across the waterline farther than either man would care to walk in one stretch, high and bright red. All around, towers flew the Republic’s banner.

Adzes, mallets, the steady work of shipwrights bending wood by the hundred, then came the stank, tar and raw sawdust thick enough to catch in the throat. Here’s the reason why Venezia ruled every sea she touched, while most of her rivals spent their time trying to catch up.

The gondolier brought them alongside a stone landing near the gate and Vito paid him with a grossi flicked into his palm.

A guard stood at the gate with his spear planted and his face prepared to refuse them.

"Vitale Barozzi. I have business with one of the Arsenal’s shipwrights."

The guard couldn’t care less about the name.

Vito reached into his coat and pushed one hefty pouch into his hands. That name worked no better, but the silver certainly would.

"Which shipwright?"

"Nestor."

The guard’s expression changed. He repeated the name like identifying a toothache that had been troubling him for three winters.

"Ah. That Greek."

He shook his head. "Third shed beyond the timber stacks. You’ll find him there, if the Almighty figured you deserve the punishment. And don’t expect him to greet you warmly."

He turned and led them inside, muttering all the way about foolish patricians.

Then the guard left them at the edge of a yard given over to work spilling out from the sheds, with timber stacked in uneven rows and half-shaped hulls waiting their turn.

They were still well short of the Republic’s secret sheds behind its busiest yards.

In the middle of all that stood Nestor, wiry, sun-browned, and well past the middle of his years. He held an adze in one hand, with a long plank propped before him, and checked its texture as a soldier might probe an enemy’s stance and find a weakness.

<anno data-annotation-id="f88120f6-95f6-1f9f-5be1-19b9aedb8dce" data-title=""Ξανά;"">"Ξανά;"¹</anno>

He rapped the plank once with his knuckles.

<anno data-annotation-id="b2931107-2711-08e5-584d-d40c7873e28d" data-title=""Θα σε κάνω δοκάρι, είτε σου αρέσει είτε όχι."">"Θα σε κάνω δοκάρι, είτε σου αρέσει είτε όχι."¹</anno>

His hands knew the work and needed no instruction.

Vito stepped up beside the plank and offered an easy "Salve, amico," which earned him nothing but a glance sharp enough to strip bark.

<anno data-annotation-id="3e67d898-7377-3157-01ef-b2302dea0fb6" data-title=""Άλλος ένας ανόητος Βενετσιάνος."">"Άλλος ένας ανόητος Βενετσιάνος."¹</anno> Nestor told the wood.

<anno data-annotation-id="87582fe9-a866-946d-2276-a205a89d979a" data-title=""Δύο, για την ακρίβεια."">"Δύο, για την ακρίβεια."¹</anno> Vito answered in the same tongue.

The adze stopped in mid-stroke.

Nestor’s head came up slowly. Whatever he found in Vito’s face puzzled him more than it pleased him.

He spat to one side and changed tongues without the slightest effort.

"Wonderful, you speak Greek. Shall I clap, Venetian, or can I get back to the timber?"

Zaccaria looked from one man to the other with patience, as if he considered two dogs and whether they would bite each other.

"Vitale Barozzi."

The introduction came with easy confidence, and Nestor treated it like trash he found on the streets.

"And am I supposed to be impressed by that?"

"Oh, you will."

Nestor barked what might have been a laugh if a kinder man had made the sound. Then he turned the wood over and checked the texture on its other side.

"I wouldn’t wager on it. Barozzi or no, you’re still some Venetian who sailed east, filled his purse, and came home expecting the world to bow."

He finally put down the adze and reached for a rag to wipe his hands.

"Off with you, patrikios. Go spend your silver where it might impress someone."

Nestor kept his eyes down. "Barozzi, Contarini, Mocenigo... they all look the same from where I stand. The Republic owns my hands and if it means to put them to your work, it will. I don’t much care whose name is written above the order."

Vito shrugged and walked over to the bench to set the stack of vellum beside the timber, where Nestor couldn’t help glancing at it.

The sheets lay between them, in all their mysterious knowledge.