Chapter 27: Isotta Objects to Modernization

By sunrise, Vito had timber underfoot, sawdust in the air, and enough broken stone around him to keep a mason busy for a year.

Two days of invented cousins and wine debts that nobody intended to pay were behind him now. At last he had work in front of him, the sincere sort a man could sweat over instead of standing about and talking himself respectable.

Vito drove his knife through the curling corner of a chart, pinning it to the table before the wind could carry it off again, then looked over the wreck of the fish market that would, if the gods were feeling unusually patient, become his fondaco.

There was not much market left in it. The rotten stalls had crumbled in sections, gull-picked bones lay in stinking heaps, and gray planks had been stacked aside for firewood. The workers were clearing the ground, mostly sailors from the ships, digging footings and dragging timber and rope up from the piers since dawn.

Zaccaria’s soldiers were somewhere else, stationed on the ships and walls, where a sword could still make a show of force and authority.

Caterina remained in the noble district, buried under books and whatever scribe available, which left Vito in charge of the louder and considerably dirtier part of their work.

Vito looked over the chart once more, following the work from the first footings through the timber coming up from the piers and the walls that would follow, until he had the whole day’s labor in his head.

He left the chart pinned to the table and went into the yard to find Nane, the master carpenter who had been given charge of making sense of the construction and making sure the rest of the men acted likewise.

The old man was in one of the foundations nearby, with one ear pressed against a standing beam as solemnly as a physician listening to a dying patient.

Nane whispered in a soothe tone, "There now, Isotta, nobody’s asking you to hold the whole pavilion up today. Find your feet first, as the rest of us."

Vito had learned that a man coaxing wood deserved the courtesy as a man coaxing his wife. An attempt to interrupt either one rarely improved the morning, so he waited for him to notice his presence nearby.

"Paron!"

Nane straightened with a grin broad enough to display the tooth he missed, while sawdust had amassed so thoroughly into his beard that his next sneeze might spat a table.

"Come to see how she’s healing?"

"She?"

"Why, yes, Isotta."

Nane looked genuinely offended. "You don’t raise a beam this size without naming her, paron. Sant’Antonio watches over lost things and carpenters both, and he has a special eye for fools who introduce themselves to trouble."

Vito laughed outright. After a day spent listening to noblemen argue over who had been related to which dead emperor, it was a relief to have an argument with a beam.

"How long before she’s got company?"

He nodded along the row of raw standing posts, waiting for walls to grow around them.

Nane’s grin remained in place while his eyes went off, "Slower than you’d like, paron. Faster than you deserve, considering how often you stop my work to ask me how fast it’s going."

Vito walked over to the sole scaffolding, a warped ladder leaning against a timber support that appeared to have been borrowed from some smaller building with considerably smaller ambitions, and kicked it. It rattled against the stone, shed a little dust, and lurched sideways under his boot.

He clicked his tongue, "That’s meant to support the workers while they raise a warehouse, an inn, and and enough cargo to make my customs forget what sleep is?"

"Only the three she’s agreed to carry, paron. She doesn’t trust the rest."

Nane shot him the look of a father who had just been informed that his daughter ought to marry the first idiot to knock on the door. "The ladder is like a bride, she doesn’t want the whole village climbing onto her before she’s had time to find her balance."

"Brava, a shy little ladder. Let us hope the fondaco turns out more confident."

The old carpenter puffed his chest, "She’ll learn, paron. I’ll make the fondaco brave enough to face the sea, stubborn enough to outlive a dozen owners, and proud enough to be a Venetian building. If I have to teach every beam to stand up straight and every stone to stop trembling, then that’s what I’ll do."

Vito shook his head with a smile. There it was, beneath all the talk about brides and offended beams, a fact that was actually worth remembering.

Actual scaffolding meant planks laid across lashed poles, a platform across the length of the wall instead of one man’s weight balanced on a rung, and enough men working the same stretch that nobody had to keep climbing up and down with a full hod. In the end, fewer journeys also meant fewer opportunities to fall with the thing.

"Nobody’s asking you to abandon the girl, just give her a proper scaffolding."

"Even planks, then. None of your Rialto shortcuts, and I pick the poles."

"Pick every pole you want, amico."

"Done."

Nane spat into his palm and held out his hand as solemnly as though they had agreed on a marriage between two important families. Vito shook it, laughing, a little carpenter’s spit was a fair price for having a scaffold by sundown.

With the discussion over, Nane went back to the men and the work, leaving Vito to watch the yard for a while longer.

There were a dozen little things he could change, one better way to raise this, a more sensible way to lay that, some improvement that would save an hour here or a handful of hands there.

He knew the idea, what ought to exist, what a machine could do, what a building could be made to accomplish if some clever enough soul had the patience to work it out. He did not, unfortunately, knew how to turn all of that into timber, stone, rope, and work without spending countless hours explaining to stubborn carpenters modern construction.

The few lessons he had been forced to endure in geometry and engineering had seemed perfectly adequate when the only thing at stake was his grade. They were less impressive now that a bad decision meant a wall coming down on some heads.

And his previous work had not helped much either. He had spent years around a construction business, which was wonderful until one remembered that the business had mostly existed to give the famiglie a respectable reason for being interested in buildings, contracts, and where the money ended up.

Still, he knew enough.

Enough to know what could be built, enough to recognize when an old way was ridiculously inefficient, and enough to ask the right man to try new ideas.

That, for the moment, would have to do.

Vito walked back to the little overseer’s tent and found the chart still pinned beneath his knife. He ducked inside, pulled the flap closed behind him, and looked over the day’s plans one last time.

There was nobody there to hear him.

"Now, my dear purveyor. I’ve a sudden urge to browse your wares."