Chapter 162: Return to the Lagoon

At first light, the crews cast off from the bollards, and twelve hulls sailed away from the Goldn Horn under twelve Lions.

La Contessa led the way, with Zorzi and Zustignana at her flanks, the eight naves following low in the water, and the branch’s galley bringing up the rear, where Cristina stood with hands locked around the rail.

The sea behaved itself all the way west. The young kin spent most of the voyage leaning over the rails, Cristina took charge of the galley’s cookfire on the first night, and by the time they reached the Adriatic, the captain was asking her permission before changing course. Bepi, meanwhile, kept La Contessa far enough away at supper that no one could hail her.

Ahead, the low line of the Lido rose out of the water.

The fleet passed through the porto under oars in the thin golden light of autumn, sailing past weirs hung with drying nets and salt pans shining white in the sun. The water hadn’t changed, but the fleet certainly had.

By the time La Contessa entered the Bacino, the Riva was crowded with clerks, each one eager to inspect what belonged to someone else.

Caterina took the prow, her eyes raking the waterfront. "Look at them, marito mio. Ebbè, I shall send each one a bill for the privilege of looking."

Vito flung an arm with flourish. "Behold, twelve ships and a debt so fat it needs its own gondola. Eh, but any fool can go broke in a puddle, cara, I am going broke in the open sea, with twelve Lions flying and the whole city watching!"

She laid one finger against his chest, exactly where he kept his pride, and tapped it twice. "Drown in it, marito, with my blessing, but only after I have audited the books. Not an hour before! I forbid it. Andiamo, andiamo, caro. Let them count, it is the paying that makes men sincere."

The customs man checked the twelve hulls against the twelve names and found them in agreement, entering the inspection with unhappy care. Along the Riva, the crews threw their ropes over the bollards.

The Republic required the pay table to be set up on the stone before the last rope had been made fast, and so it was. Oarsmen, sailors, and hands came forward one by one to receive what the strongbox owed them, then dispersed to the taverns, the stews, and the dice tables.

A sailor who had spent weeks earning his wages at sea could hardly be expected to keep them all in his purse once he reached land.

Zaccaria sent the company to the yard, the warehouse, or a few free days, and most chose the free days first. Domenego marched the house guard home to his chain, while Bepi remained with the hulls.

The bulk of the cargo went by lighter and cart to the rented warehouse near the Rialto, under protection. The smaller, more valuable lots went through the water-gate into the strongroom and storage bays of Ca’ del Leon.

The barge and the black gondola reached the water-gate at dusk, and the whole household came out to meet them. Tonin waited in the androne with the books open, while the six households crowded the sala, and the cook and the kitchen boy watched from the pantry door, beside Marouda, who had kept Ca’ del Leon running throughout the voyage.

She gave Caterina a sniff, and blamed the smoke from the lamps for the tear in one eye.

Cristina climbed off the barge with the young kin following behind her and went straight to the pantry. "Eh! Madonna santa! Look at this bread. Look! You could mend a roof with it, you could kill a man! And these faces, cara. Dio mio, thin as candles, all of them, pale as candles in Easter."

Marouda’s slipper rose from her side with the slow menace. "Po po po! Panagia mou! One minute in my kitchen, Kyria, and already you insult my bread? Since the fleet sailed I have run this house, I, Marouda, with these two hands, and not a soul is thin. Even the old uncle has his own ladle, ela, go look at his belly, then come and talk to me!"

Cristina’s hand dove into her sleeve and came out with a wooden spoon, held high in guard. Marouda’s slipper met it with a crack that cracked through the pantry and stopped every soul in the house where they stood.

She clicked her tongue. "Eh! Would you look at that, I see you haven’t lost your form, Marouda! Brava, brava, cara. Now listen, between women of sense, you keep the door, I keep the pot, and no one in this house goes hungry. A man with a full belly has no time to sin!"

Marouda considered the matter for a moment. "The pot is yours, Kyria. Ela, don’t smile so fast, yours, until I taste it. Then we shall see whose pot it is."

They went toward the pantry together, as they knew each other from years. Tonin put the young kin to work at the desks in the clerks’ room, while Cristina took the guest chamber.

That first night, the brazier burned high in the sala as the six households crowded around the table, Fantin sitting in the middle with a cup in his fist and his rings clicking against it whenever he moved his hand.

The Great Council was still the Great Council, with Marco’s hat on the front bench, the Feathers on their cushions, and the bare oak in its place. Some things in Venezia could be trusted to stay exactly where they were.

As for their reputation, he didn’t left it out. "Cugino! Ostrega, the whole Rialto is singing it, that you own the sea beyond Constantinople and rent it out by the bucket, ciò, like a water-seller! And me, I tell them, ’Of course! He is family!’ And I pass around my hat."

Fantin struck his cup against the tablecloth, then set it down carefully. "But the Doge, cugino, he is worse than the rumor. Every time they change the cloth it comes away dark, dark, and the whole hall sees it, and every month more of his labor slides to the Ducal Council, ciò. Soon the poor old man will be there only to keep the chair warm."

Vito watched his cup, the cloth, and the brazier. Usually, he could find a grin for almost anything, but this time he kept it to himself as Caterina reached across and took his sleeve.

Farther down the table, the old uncle asked for a second helping, and Cristina, who had been in charge of the pot for exactly one hour, gave him a third.

Tonin had arranged the letters from Crete on the counting-room table, while Pellegrino stood in the strongroom doorway with his thumb resting away from his medal for once.

The letters from Candia, Chania, Rethymno, and the Duke all told the same story. Ranieri’s duchy had grown stable, the garrisons were under his control as the agreement required, the archons had kept their privileges, and the tolls arrived on the appointed day.

This year, he had begun pushing into the south and east, and the hill villages and old Greek houses in those districts were paying for his ambitions through higher tolls and harsher terms.

Leon wrote that the agreement made on his word still held, and that he and the Duke had formed a partnership that suited them both. Beside his letter lay the original terms, written out and approved under the Duke’s seal.

Pellegrino and the company soldiers had returned that summer as escorts aboard merchant ships. The island’s tolls, the fondaco’s dues, and the sealed terms had remained in Tonin’s keeping ever since, waiting for the household to come home and settle its accounts.

The strongroom door closed on the chests from Crete.

Caterina took the old sheet with its three headings down from the plaster and replaced it with a new one bearing the buyers’ names.

The year before, she and Vito had walked the Rialto bridge looking for people willing to buy their goods, but this autumn, the buyers came climbing the stairs of Ca’ del Leon instead.

Marina Badoer arrived first and swept through the house like she expected every step to be worth what she had paid for it, taking the silks, carpets, furs, lapis, turquoise, and saffron.

The Scotti brothers bought the pepper and a share of the flax for the northern markets, then gave two accounts of the road that disagreed about nearly everything except the mountain.

Ginevra Frescobaldi and Ranuccio Salimbeni came by different bridges to buy the alum, madder, and indigo, only to meet on the gate, where she blamed his gout for the delay and he blamed her husbands.

Father Ambrogio bought the gums, wax, and incense for his altars and charged the household for his blessing of every bale.

The rest of the cargo found buyers across the city.

Spicers, salt keepers, weavers, tanners, painters, apothecaries, goldsmiths, comb-makers, and victualers all took their shares. Before long, every bench on the Rialto had bought goods from the venture, while the inkmakers brought off the oak galls of a ruined capital to make the black ink that would cover the Avogadori’s leaves.

Every contract was put at the table in the office. Caterina pointed, Vito signed, and after enough weeks of it, his hand cramped as badly as an oarsman’s.

At last, after weeks of hard work, the final cart rolled out of the warehouse. Caterina took the key, and with the warehouse emptied, the strongroom held more than it had in a year.

The sea was about to close for the season, and the notaries of the colleganza houses had sent word that the reckoning at the Rialto would take place that morning.