Chapter 168: Charters Before Piers

The mantle went on the peg-stand beside her cloak, and the lamp above the oak table burned low over a sheet that still lacked its last name.

It was the last week of February, and Cristina had left them an hour’s worth of flame.

Caterina had pushed the footstool away again and snuggled into her nest of goose-down cushions, quill in hand, books at her elbow, and a vinegared fig on the corner of the table. Vito washed at the ewer in the master chamber, warmed his hands over the brazier, then sat on the matting and took her swollen, hot feet into his lap.

Once, he warmed those same feet when they were cold, and now his thumbs eased her aches.

She let out a deep exhale.

"Madonna santa, Vitale, guarda! Look at them!"

The quill scratched an aggrieved little line across the margin. "Feet like two loaves left too long to rise, and my breasts, Dio mio, my breasts, too sore for any bodice in all Venezia. Ecco what you have made of me, a ship with her hold stuffed to the hatches and not a pier in the lagoon where she may tie up."

"Ah, but fear not, anima mia, for I shall be your pier."

He bowed his head over her foot and massaged with his thumbs, as she hissed through her teeth, and he only beamed the brighter. "Your pier, your bollard, I will have Nestor lay you a keel this very week, and the whole Riva will pour down to the water-stairs to launch you with trumpets, mia cara, with trumpets and a bishop."

"Per carità, let the Riva keep its trumpets and choke on them."

She flicked the quill at him.

"What I want are your hands, marito, and start with the left foot first."

"Obeyed, moglie. The left, then the right, then the left again for luck."

When both feet had softened under his hands, he rose onto his knees and laid his palm against the round belly beneath her gown. It was warm, although nobody moved, which was hardly surprising this early.

Vito left his hand there while she continued reading.

The colleganza was ready. A season of silver had brought more houses onto the sheet than the year before, all under the old terms. Only one line remained blank, wide enough for a thumb, where the merchant overseeing the venture was supposed to be named.

The route came first, because everything else depended on it. The venture would return to the Black Sea, sailing from Venezia to Constantinople, then to Soldaia and Phasis, back to Constantinople, and finally home.

Sinope was out, taking with it every port belonging to the Empire of Trebizond, along with the monastery that had sold them the Georgian books.

Last time, the fleet had passed Trebizond with every lamp shuttered. The Emperor owed a Lion no favor for a archon’s poverty, and he would be expecting them with an army and ships. Any captain foolish enough to put in at his piers might finish his career hanging from them.

Soldaia would come first. Phasis would follow, with its dear merchandise and the Queen’s piers. From there, the fleet would head home across open water, keeping well out from the coast, with the compass guiding it away from the Emperor’s reach.

Vito intoned. "Poor Sinope’s bell-ringer, ah, poveretto. Picture him, cara, perched upon that pier with our little silver bell clutched to his chest and not a soul left to ring it for. Ding. Ding. And only the gulls for his congregation."

"Save your tears, marito."

The book page turned with a snap that finished the elegy where it stood.

"He will ring that bell for the Genoese, or for the throne, whoever pays the quicker."

When her back began to ache, Vito went behind her chair and massaged the knots between her shoulders. She leaned into his hands and continued reading, as the accounts had more pages than a merchant could comfortably sit through, but the venture wouldn’t organize itself out of consideration for her back.

Next, they meant to establish a house on each shore.

A fondaco at Soldaia and at Phasis, each with a harbor, whether leased, bought outright, or built on piles. Vito preferred stone, as he had done much the same at Candia, where the blocks had gone down on a handshake, but Caterina preferred a charter before a pier, written and sealed by the authority that couldn’t later deny it.

At Soldaia, that meant the archon’s seal, kept by his steward while three offices inspected every hull and answered to Emperor. At Phasis, it meant the Queen herself.

The Barozzini owned no land on that sea, and there was no consul to speak for them on its shores. They would ask for fixed dues, a single inspection accepted by every office, their own weights, a pier, and the right to maintain their own house.

The papers alone might take a season, and a draft in Greek and Georgian would travel with the merchant in charge while construction waited for the ink to dry. Vito could raise walls quickly enough, but getting a ruler to promise he would be allowed to keep them was another matter.

Next came the goods, and here nothing had been decided.

Caterina’s two rules still applied, as the cargo must have a buyer with silver in his purse, and it must fit aboard without ruining the ship. Now there was a third, anything making the long journey home had to survive the summer.

Vito slipped an arm around her from behind and lay his hand on the round hill beneath her gown. She laid her own hand over his, a fig still between her fingers.

Woolens, Lombard linen, metals, and altar goods were familiar merchandise, though Soldaia’s license might classify the metals as war goods.

The household now had products of its own to offer, as the distillery had produced their first spirits under supervision. There was also clear glass and mirrors that came out of a trial melt, though a mirror sold on a distant shore might soon have a local copy competing against it.

Caterina bit the fig clean in half, and chewed her verdict before delivering it. "I distrust the spirit, Vitale, I distrust it to the last drop. The batches small as thimbles, and the master, Madonna, the master drinks his own samples, and then he swears on his mother that it is perfect. Of course it is perfect, after the third cup, everything is perfect."

Vito squeezed the hand lying over his and chuckled. "But cara mia, an artist who drinks his own work believes in himself. That is faith, that is a martyr staking his liver upon his craft."

"Faith does not keep a cask sweet, marito. Ask the shipwrights first, then say your prayers."

Raw silk would supply the mill waiting for spring. Soldaia could provide furs, wax, amber, and ivory, while Phasis offered carpets, lapis, turquoise, crimson dye, rhubarb, and boxwood.

With no ship to Alexandria, Murano’s furnaces would have to get their ash from Levantine coasters. Captives would be offered at every wharf again, as they always were, but not one person would enter the venture’s books.

Still, no goods had been ordered, and no goods had been bought. The brokers would answer first, and only then would the accounts record the lots.

Vito’s hand moved to the nape of her neck, where her hair was coiled in a married woman’s style. The quill still hovered above the blank line, for Caterina couldn’t sail, though she had a list of reasons why she should.

She huffed a dry laugh. "Ostrega, Vitale, I drew that route in my own ink, with my own hand. I speak Greek like a Constantinople fishwife, I read a Cuman tally-stick better than any Barozzi alive, any, and I can tell sable from squirrel with my eyes shut and my nose in the sack. And who, tell me, who will price a fleet’s worth of silk from a heap of goose-down? The goose?"

Then the soon-to-be mother stuck out a tongue, as if all was a joke. "But the child does not sail. I decided it in the week of Santa Lucia, with the saint herself for witness, and I do not break a vow made under a saint’s eyes, even if she did carry hers about on a plate."

Vito bent and kissed the coil at her nape, lingering, and the words came out warm and muffled against her hair. "Then the little one is the wisest Barozzi of us all, moglie. Booked passage in the only hold in all Venezia that stays dry in a tempest, and provisioned with figs, no less. A clever creature, takes after its mother."

The laugh broke out of her before she could stop it, an undignified snort that she smothered too late behind an inky wrist. "Ma dai, Vitale, stop, you will make me burst a seam. Marouda has let out these laces, and let them out again, and by the saints she will not forgive me one more stitch. She sighs at me, that woman, she sighs, as though I swelled out of spite."

"I stay, moglie, I stay."

He spoke into her hair, grinning where she could hear it. "How could I leave? I am a member of the council, a landlord, a master of ships, and, let us not forget the finest office of them all, a footstool. Four great titles, and I intend to remain all four, so help me San Marco."

Her hand stopped above the sheet. "Ah, so, you stay. And the houses, Vitale? The houses expect a Barozzi on that line, a Barozzi, and a husband, caro mio, goes wherever his venture goes."

Vito chuckled lightly. "Then a Barozzi will sail, mia cara, and what a Barozzi, Fantin. He knows a bale from a sack by the smell alone, and he owns a bear, cara, a bear, that someone must explain to the Cumans."

Caterina bent her head over the round belly beneath her gown. Her nape was bare and red under his hand, flushed out joy, and then shame due her happiness, while she kept her face hidden from him.

Then she spoke to her belly. "Do you hear that, piccolino? Do you hear? Your father asks a man before he asks his wife, Santa Maria, the audacity. And that man’s sea chest has been packed all week, all week, and your mother so brave, so gentle, so saintly about it. But he will grow out of this, your father, he will, or else I shall grow it out of him, with a wooden spoon."

She reached sideways, pulled a cushion from the pile, and dropped it onto the matting beside her feet. "Sit, Vitale. The floor is hard, your knees are old, and I will not nurse a husband on top of a child."

"Ah, cara mia, you are most beautiful when you pretend not to be embarassed."

Fantin was family, and like every Venetian, he knew merchandise by handling it. A few of the younger kin from the clerks’ desks would help with the books, while Bepi would take the fleet and Zaccaria and Orso would inspect the cargo.

Caterina wrote it in her small, square hand. Fantin Barozzi, merchant of the venture.

Vito sat on the cushion, took her left foot in both hands, and massaged gently. At first light, the books would go to the notaries, and afterward the brokers’ benches would open.