Chapter 166: Rise of the Barozzini

Through the days came the distellery, the hulls, and the yard, each entered in the same small, square hand, each with a sum beside it that the strongbox would soon have to pay. By San Martino, the first purchase had been sealed with wax on a notary’s table at the Rialto.

An old patrician house, deep in debt, sold an islet north of Murano for 3,200 grossi. It came with a stone grange, a pier, a cistern, while the wind blew off it in a direction that spared every nose in Venezia. Refitting the place cost another 1,800, which paid for hearths, brick flues, a cooling cistern, and a new roof over the building, now put to use as a storehouse.

The city’s coppersmiths made six alembics from Vito’s drawings at 380 grossi apiece, or 2,280 for the lot. The glassmen supplied receivers and settling jars for 350, the first casks and flasks cost 900, and two barges took another 400, bringing the whole undertaking to 8,930.

Six copper pots stood in a row inside the grange, each with a bald head on top and a worm coiled behind it.

Seventeen men went out to the islet. A Rialto apothecary took charge as master distiller, with two under-masters, six hands, two coopers, two boatmen, a tally-clerk, and three company soldiers to guard the works.

The annual bill came to 15,908, spread in wages of 2,388, keep of 1,020, wine worth 8,400 for fifty-six tons, fuel at 2,400, casks and flasks at 900, and 800 for the upkeep of copper and brick.

Father Ambrogio blessed the stills beside the splash and charged for each one as though it were three separate things, since each had a pot, a head, and a worm. The hearths were lit in December, with eight tons of spirit a year as the intended yield.

The apothecary swore before his under-masters that he would sniff the first run but never taste it. The oath held for one day.

La Rosa, Moresina, and La Serena, the three great naves bought at Constantinople for the voyage to Candia, were broken up in the shallows of the Riva for 300 grossi as expense, their iron, blocks, and masts stacked for reuse.

Three rebuilt naves at 2,000 each, seven new ones at 2,500, and one new galley at 5,200 brought the total to 28,700, with the full outlay standing at 29,000.

Five galleys and fifteen naves made twenty hulls, carrying 900 tons against the 545 that had crossed the Black Sea, while refit and caulking would cost another 9,000 a year.

On the Castello shore, beyond the cathedral, stood a shipyard with six berths, sheds, a wharf, and a master’s house. A second old patrician house, just as badly in debt as the first, sold it for 12,500, leaving the Barozzini in command of two properties belonging to houses on their way down.

The old yard was returned to San Pietro’s ground, and moving it all cost 600.

The works took another 7,700. Four more berths brought the number to ten, while a tide-fed saw frame and millpond, a smithy, a rope-walk, and a wall with a gate and watch-tower completed the job, bringing the yard’s total cost to 20,800.

The wall had two purposes. A red cap had once climbed the old fence and come away covered in tar, while the Church had a habit of reclaiming land it had once owned.

Nestor crossed the water by barge with his sixty carpenters and the sealed chest of ship sheets under his key.

Nane, who had built the fondaco at Candia, worked beside him at the saw frame and named it Menega the first day its wheel turned. Nestor, who had refused to give a hull a name, cursed that one in all three tongues, but the saw frame kept it anyway.

The carpenters’ number rose to 220, and the gulls of Castello moved to the Lido. On San Nicolò’s Day, exactly one year after La Greca first took to the water, the first keel went down straight, and the yard’s annual upkeep came to 6,600.

Ca’ del Leon housed sixty-eight souls, and keeping the place running cost 10,232 a year. Table, cellar, firewood, lamp oil, and linen accounted for 3,900, while nineteen servants drew 1,140 in wages, the company watch took 1,704, and nine clerks received 1,188.

The roof and walls demanded 900, the six households another 900, and church dues, alms, and candles a further 500.

The distillery, fleet, and yard had cost 58,730, leaving 128,663 grossi in the strongbox.

Caterina set aside a full year’s keep for them, 41,740 in all, spread in 15,908, 9,000, 6,600, and 10,232, leaving 86,923 grossi free for whatever else the winter might bring.

The family had come out of the sack with three galleys and a name. Now it owned an islet, twenty hulls, and ten berths.

With 400 Fate in hand, Vito spread the Purveyor’s shop. He bought what Venezia could use and what the Great Council would want.

?? [FATE SHOP — KNOWLEDGE & BLUEPRINTS]

Spectacles

Ground lenses set in horn frames, with the measurements and methods needed to produce reliable spectacles for aging eyes and close work.

Cost : 30 Fate

Salt-Pan Cascade

A system of graded evaporation basins and tide-timed sluices that extracts more salt from the same flats with less wasted water, labor, and time.

Cost : 20 Fate

Clear-Glass Method

A refined method of washing ash, selecting raw materials, and controlling the melt to produce clear glass with considerably less color and fewer impurities.

Cost : 35 Fate

Lead-Backed Mirror

A method for backing clear glass with a reflective lead surface and fitting it into a wooden frame, producing mirrors far superior to polished metal.

Cost : 25 Fate

Silk-Throwing Mill

A tide-driven mechanical frame that twists raw silk into strong, even thread at a rate no hand-operated workshop can match. Any competent millwright can build and maintain it once shown how.

Cost : 40 Fate

Paper Mill

A water-powered system of stamps for beating rags into pulp, complete with the methods for forming, pressing, and drying the sheets. A cheaper source of paper for merchants, notaries, and anyone tired of paying for parchment by the skin.

Cost : 25 Fate

Lead-Sheathed Hulls

A method for fastening thin lead sheets below a ship’s waterline to discourage shipworms and protect the timber beneath. The added weight and cost are modest prices for keeping a vessel afloat longer.

Cost : 15 Fate

Total Cost : 190 Fate

Fate Balance : 210 Fate

The knowledge arrived in Vito’s head, and the winter supplied the workmen.

Lapidaries ground beryl into lenses and set them in horn frames, and by Christmas a dozen pairs sat on the oldest noses in the Great Council. Trial basins were dug on the salt flats at Chioggia, with sluices timed to the tide, and the yield was promised for summer.

In December, a trial melt of washed ash and a black stone came out of the glassmen’s pot as clear as lagoon water. A hand’s breadth of the glass, backed with lead and framed in boxwood, went to the wives of the grandest houses in the hall.

A tide-driven frame was built in the millpond to twist raw silk into thread, where it waited for the spring’s silk to arrive. The rag-men of the Rialto sold their linen to the stamps, and the first sheets dried in a loft in December before going to the notaries and the Avogadori’s copyists, who had been recording the Republic’s rolls on vellum bought by the skin.

At the Riva, La Greca received a thin lead covering below her waterline, and the lagoon’s shipworm found it inedible. The Great Council accepted every gift as a courtesy and recorded every one as a debt, while Vito held no office but the hall behaved as though he had misplaced seven.

In the week of Santa Lucia, Caterina turned green at the smell of Cristina’s bream, the same fish Vito had eaten with such devotion at their house. Cristina and Marouda reached their verdict in the pantry before anyone thought to send for a physician.

A midwife and a physician trained at Salerno confirmed it by the signs and the water, and the child was due in summer.

On the Epiphany, the display came to Ca’ del Leon again, this time with considerably more to list than a well.

?? [HOLDING — CA’ DEL LEON, CASTELLO]

Status : Occupied (Free of Debt)

Governance : Barozzi del Leone (Fraterna)

Population : 68 (Family 27, Servants 19, Clerks and Hands 9, Company 13)

Courtyard : Cistern, Fig, Vine, Armory Lean-to, Drill-Sand

Water-Gate : Landing, Hoist (Lucietta), Barge, Gondola

Ground Floor : Androne, Four Bays, Counting Room, Strongroom

Second Floor : Kitchen, Larder, Scullery, Laundry, Servants’ Hall, Clerks’ Room, Sewing Room, Linen Store, Guest Chamber

Third Floor : Sala, Family Quarters, Office, Master Chamber

Storage : Approximately 90 Tons (22.5 in Use)

Goods : Wine (10 Tons), Charcoal (6 Tons), Pitch and Hemp (3 Tons), Iron and Nails (2 Tons), Lamp Oil and Tallow (1 Ton), Distillate, First Run (0.5 Ton)

Defense : Gate, Wall, Company Watch

Fixed Assets : Distillery Islet and Stills, Private Shipyard, Fondaco di Candia

Obligations : None