Chapter 187: Silver That Doesn’t Sleep

Zorzi brought the northern fleet through the porto first, five ships flying the Lion of San Marco and the black lion. Then the southern fleet came in behind her, eighteen ships strung along the Lido.

The Rialto didn’t trust anything that arrived on schedule, so it spent the afternoon looking for the trick.

That evening, Marin came up the stairs from the water-gate with the Soldaia stamp book under his arm. He opened the book on the oak table to a page bearing three seals, examined it, and closed it again without ceremony before delivering his report.

Down on the Riva, Fantin had spent an hour telling anyone who would stand still about the southern fleet and hadn’t yet got beyond Alexandria.

The pier at Soldaia stood on stone footings and oak piles, with the warehouse walls finished, the roof on, and the black lion hanging above the gate. The fondaco was working, now as a permanent asset of the house and the first Venetian roof on that shore.

Pellegrino and his forty men had returned from the walls, and the hired guards from Venezia had taken their places. Other Venetian ships had called at Soldaia that summer, paying the archon’s dues, using the route the Barozzini had built, and trading with the same Cuman masters.

The route, then, belonged to every Venetian house that cared to use it.

The Rus markets at the end of that road paid good money for wax, furs, honey, and wine. The old caravan owner’s warning about the Mongol still hung over the place, though no one had invited it and no one seemed eager to discuss it.

At Phasis, the stakes had been driven and stone courses were rising beside them, laid by the workers carried there on the state galleys. The new quarter would need another season and more work before it was finished.

A Barozzini kin occupied the consul’s seat until Venezia appointed a man of her own.

By All Saints, the notaries’ leaves had been sanded, the strongbox stood open on the oak table, and Caterina had read every line. She had no intention of trusting a total simply because it had been written neatly.

Both roads had sold well and bought well. The silver had returned in grossi and hyperpyra, bezants and dirhams, and Georgian copper, which Caterina took to the exchange benches and had changed until all of it spoke the same language.

The increase was about the same as the year before.

On the southern road, the old truce that had kept the crusader coast peaceful since the autumn of 1204 had less than a year left to run, and anyone sitting at the Alexandria benches could count the remaining months down to six.

Beyond the mountains, German iron still came down the roads under the protection of dues that remained fixed, just as the Welf’s leaf had promised.

The Holy Roman Emperor had been crowned in Rome the month before, changing the title at the top of the documents and little else about those collecting the tolls.

Crete’s tolls and the Candia fondaco’s dues brought in more money than ever before. Genoa had been driven out of the harbors, the island was stable, and the southern and eastern routes were finally paying as they should. It had taken long enough.

The glass industry paid its rents and sold its mirrors, the spirit works on the islet shipped their goods by the barge-load, and the paper, silk, and salt industries paid their partners on the appointed days. Caterina handled every line of it.

A husband who spent his days with the Doge and the Great Council might be excused for forgetting just how much silver his wife managed before breakfast, though the excuse wouldn’t make him any less forgetful.

Before she put a single grosso as free silver, Caterina set aside the keep, the house’s stake in the colleganza for 1210, a reserve chest, and an account for each of the children. Two winters earlier, the free silver had amounted to a hundred and eighty thousand and a little more.

Now she wrote the new total at the foot of a clean leaf and turned it toward Vito.

"Keep, leaf, chest, children, every one of them paid first and written down, marito. No one will ever say Caterina wasted her silver before she fed her house."

She tapped the number twice.

"And there it remains three hundred and twenty thousand grossi, with its hands folded as a novice, waiting for you to tell it what it is for."

Vito inspected the figure, then looked at her. "Ostrega! Moglie, moglie, three hundred and twenty thousand, and you leave it lying on the table like a loaf of bread? Wake it up, cara, put it to work, before it takes to dice and wine like any idle sailor on the Riva. Idle money is the devil’s apprentice!"

He turned the leaf facedown on the oak table. A number that size was better kept out of sight until he found a use for it.

That night, when the lamps burned low and the household slept, Vito stood at the oak table and called on the Purveyor, asking for whatever Venezia could produce that the rest of the world would buy.

The box was the only answer he got, lying on the wood between the lamp and the old chart.

?? [FATE SHOP — KNOWLEDGE & BLUEPRINTS]

Movable-Type Printing

A system of metal letters cast in reusable molds, arranged in a frame, inked, and pressed onto paper with a screw press. Once the type is set, the same page can be reproduced hundreds of times with little additional labor.

Cost : 100 Fate

Loaf Sugar Refining

A method for boiling raw cane sugar, clarifying it with wet clay, and drying it in cone-shaped molds until it forms hard, white loaves capable of being stored for years without spoiling.

Cost : 40 Fate

Scented Waters and Essences

A method for extracting the fragrances of roses and other flowers through distillation, then preserving them in spirit with musk and camphor. The resulting essences can be bottled and sold by the flask.

Cost : 50 Fate

Spinning Wheel and Treadle Loom

A foot-driven spinning wheel capable of producing thread far faster than a hand spindle, paired with a treadle-operated loom for weaving it. The same number of hands can now produce considerably more cloth in less time.

Cost : 50 Fate

Hard Olive-Oil Soap

A method for boiling olive oil with lye obtained from wood ash, separating the soap with salt, and pressing it into hard white bars. The resulting soap is suitable for washing both cloth and skin, and keeps considerably longer than softer varieties.

Cost : 20 Fate

Tower Clock

An iron-framed mechanism driven by falling weights and regulated by a swinging pendulum, with gears that keep time and strike a bell on the hour. It allows an entire town to follow a reliable schedule without relying on the position of the sun.

Cost : 40 Fate

Total Cost : 300 Fate

Fate Balance : 0 Fate

The knowledge entered Vito’s head just as the lying-in rules had done, and before the lamp went out, he had written most of it down in his own hand. The balance stood at zero.

From the week after All Saints until Christmas, the grille at the water-gate rose on its windlass every dawn to let a barge through, while Gasparo, who now had two chains to keep track of, checked every barge going out and coming in.

The first purchase was a tall house behind San Bartolomeo. Its owners were already sliding down the social ladder, so the house bought the property and turned it into a printing works.

Marina Badoer’s row supplied a goldsmith, who cut the first letters in a week and cut them backward. A joiner built the presses from Vito’s sheets, and a copyist who had just lost his livelihood to the new machinery was hired to correct the proofs.

Ca’ Memmo’s stamps would supply the paper.

The first publications would be a calendar of feasts and tides, a notary’s book of forms, and a psalter. The scribes would hate the new business, the Church had spent a thousand years copying books by hand and saw no reason to hurry now, and the Old trusted vellum.

Still, no notary had ever refused a cheaper book of forms.

A small island south of the city came next. Another house that had fallen on hard times sold it, and Vito put the sugar industry there.

A boiling house rose with clay cones and copper pans, and two boilers were hired off the Cyprus ships. One of them scalded his arm during the first week but carried on working with it wrapped in a wet cloth, cursing in Greek. The sugar wasn’t going to refine itself, and the man apparently understood that.

The scented waters works went up on the Murano shore beside the glasshouse. The still-house would use the spirit made on the islet, while Murano would blow the flasks.

A perfumer arrived from the eastern benches at the Golden Horn, a small, tidy fellow carrying a case of dried musk. Brides would buy the waters, along with patricians’ wives and the women on the Rialto bridge who sold whatever else.

All three groups would swear they had bought them for the linen, which was a useful excuse that no one had any reason to challenge.

A long shed beside Ca’ Memmo’s wheel became the cloth works. Joiners built spinning wheels and treadle looms from Vito’s sheets, and Lombard weavers were hired away from the fustian towns.

The Scotti brothers, who sold the cotton, were not told about any of this. There was no need to give a supplier advance warning that his customers intended to become his competitors.

The soap works went to Chioggia, in a shed beside Ca’ Zane’s basins. Salt was cheap there, and soap needed salt to separate it from the pan.

Oil came over from the oil-men of Bari and Monopoli, while ash came from the Murano furnaces. A soap boiler hired off a Levant coaster sniffed the first vat, nodded once, and refused to discuss the matter for a week.

The product apparently spoke well enough for itself.

The last project was the strangest. In the workshop behind the hammering door in the courtyard of Ca’ del Leon, a Brescian smith and a bell-founder began building an iron frame taller than a man.

Stone weights would drive it, and its final home would be the tower of San Giacomo at the Rialto. The first weight they dropped from the loft went straight through the floor, and everyone agreed that the loft was the wrong place to test it.

The Rialto, which sold time by the day and lied about it by the hour, heard what was coming and began to grow nervous.

Every house that lent a wall, a wheel, or a customer received a corner of the new leaf, a small share for each contribution. Vito wanted them all to have a reason to love the house, and a little piece of the profits was a reliable way to encourage affection.

By Christmas, two hundred and ten thousand grossi had gone out through the water-gate, and a hundred and ten thousand remained behind the bolt. The grille came down after the last barge passed, and the house fell quiet.

It now had more irons in the fire than any smithy on the lagoon, and the people running it had reached the point where they could do no more until the work began to pay.

Christmas passed in one long meal. The household attended Mass at San Pietro, ate Cristina’s pot down to the bottom, and put two children to bed in two rooms of their own. That left the bed in the master chamber to make its usual comment on the arrangement.

On the last evening of the year, the sea had been shut since San Martino and the barges were at rest, while the city bells began their long ringing to see the year out.

In the office at Ca’ del Leon, Caterina hung the warehouse key on its hook, as she did on one night each year.

"That is the year, marito. Closed, sealed, and owing nothing to anyone. Every grosso that came in is written down, and every grosso that went out is written beside it, so the two can look each other in the face."

She laid her palm flat on the page, over the lower column. "And your six new works have a column all to themselves, down here. Not the Rialto, the Avogadore, nor the saints in heaven can say we hid a thing."

For the fourth time, the display appeared in the lamplight at Ca’ del Leon.

?? [HOLDING — CA’ DEL LEON, CASTELLO]

Status : Occupied

Governance : Barozzi del Leone (Fraterna)

Population : 104 (Family 29, Servants 31, Clerks and Hands 20, Company 24)

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

East Wing : Accounting Hall, Warehouse Bays, Servants’ Quarters, Guard Post, Children’s Rooms

Storage : Approximately 150 Tons (41 in Use)

Defense : Gate, Wall, Company Watch

Fixed Assets : Distillery Islet and Stills, Murano Shoreline and Glasshouse, Silk-Throwing Frame, Fondaco di Candia, Fondaco di Soldaia

Foreign Seats : Phasis Quarter (Consul’s Seat Held for the Republic)

Partnerships : Ca’ Memmo (Paper Stamps, Spinning Shed), Ca’ Morosini (Silk Looms), Ca’ Zane (Salt Basins, Soap Shed)

Under Construction : Printing House, Sugar House, Scented-Water House, Cloth Works, Soap Works, Tower Clock