Chapter 46: Marietta and Her Sisters

The five days since the archbishop incident had gone by in the fashion Vito liked best, in how nobody had required him to do much beyond listening.

Every evening Caterina arrived with another headache tucked under her arm, an archon that argued with his conscience over Genoese silver, an Orthodox bishop prepared to starve rather than kneel to Latins.

Every evening Vito told her the same answer.

Let it simmer. Once Chania was behind him, he would stir the pot properly.

Vito crossed into the fondaco yard, just a little shy from noon, and stopped inside the gate. The place had grown considerably louder since his last visit, and busier too, which was generally what happened when men were actually being paid to build something.

Nane instantly spotted him and shouted. "Paron! Perfect timing! Perfect, come, come. You ought to see what your money has bought you."

He hauled Vito past a stack of cut stone toward the tower of raw timber that formed Marietta’s frame. Her great wheel turned steadily while two men trudged inside it, and the rope sang tight through the pulleys overhead as a cut block climbed toward a wall that was still waiting for the courtesy of being there.

Nane’s chest stuck out like a father showing off his firstborn. "Look at her, paron, that block weighs more than four good oxen, and she doesn’t even breathe hard lifting it. I’ve heard of French machines half her size begging for mercy under a quarter of that weight."

"Heard of them, or seen them?"

"Heard is close enough for a man who’s never had to eat his own words."

Vito laughed.

"Giulietta would have managed it just as well, you know."

Nane spat the name out as if the girl had cheated him at cards. "Paron, we’ve had this discussion before, Giulietta is a name for a girl who embroiders handkerchiefs. You don’t give a mountain-mover the name of a handkerchief girl and expect her to forgive the insult."

"Come now, she might have grown into it."

"Or spend her whole working life resenting both of us. She never complained about Marietta."

Nane reached out and slapped the nearest support beam with affection.

"And this one, you remember her."

Vito remembered. The beam had once needed coaxing like a nervous bride.

"I see you hammered some confidence into her."

Nane grinned, broad and shameless. "Found her feet, this one, carrying half the north wall and she hasn’t given one bad creak. We’re ahead, paron, well ahead, you’ll have your walls standing before the leaves turn."

He waved Vito onward, ducking beneath a crossbeam. Vito ducked lower still as he followed, then climbed a run of scaffold planks toward the old fish-market ground.

The stink of the market had finally surrendered to sawdust and pitch, which was a great improvement, though nobody had yet thought to ask the fish.

The mechanized pile driver stood over a piling like a gallows that had taken up bloodless work. A knot of men hauled the windlass hand over hand, and then the great iron-shod weight came down with a crack and drove the post another hand’s breadth into the soft old harbor mud.

Vito felt the blow through his boots.

"Santina," Nane proclaimed.

He patted the frame as fondly. "Baptizes every post she meets, paron, whether the post wants it or not. Faster than any priest I’ve ever watched work, and considerably less talk about original sin while she’s at it."

"That’s blasphemy, amico."

"Bah, God can sort out the difference when He’s got time."

Above them, the timber cableway hauled a fresh log in from the pier. The carriage groaned along its rope between two towers of lashed timber.

One of the men below cupped his hands and bellowed at whoever was minding the far end.

"Bring her down easy, you cross-eyed whoreson, or I’ll feed you to Santina headfirst!"

Whatever came back from the other tower vanished beneath the racket, though it must have been foul enough, because the man’s mate nearly dropped the coil of rope in his hands laughing.

Further on, Vito passed two men sharing a skin of watered wine on an overturned crate. One was wincing as he dug at a splinter buried somewhere south of his belt, cursing every saint he could remember by name.

The man explained when he caught Vito looking, with no shame whatever. "Sat on a fresh-cut plank without looking first, wouldn’t wish it on Pescatore himself. Well, fuck that, I would. May he sit on a whole cartload of the bastards, just not on his own arse."

His mate added before the wounded man could object. "Best-paid splinter of his life, though. First week any of us has had enough coin left over to spend on something besides bread and cheap wine. Took half mine straight to the brothel."

"Half? Saints preserve us, what the fuck’d you do with the rest, buy the place?"

"Wine."

"Course. Half your wages up some girl’s skirt, other half down your throat so you can’t remember how much it cost you."

"Better’n you spending yours at the tavern till the bastard behind the bar started watering the piss he calls wine."

"Last I heard, th’ red-haired girl on the third floor was charging you by the hour just to stop laughing at your prick."

"She wasn’t laughing at that."

"Then what in God’s name was she laughing at?"

"You, mostly."

"Fuck you."

"After you, cretino."

Vito let them to their friendship and walked past, where the ground fell away toward a trench dug alongside the old market wall. A thin brown trickle crawled through it instead of the proper current it plainly wanted to be.

The water-driven sawmill’s wheel turned there, slow and thirsty, her blade dragging through a plank at a pace that made it look as though she’d rather be anywhere else. Beside her, the stamp mill kept up an uneven thumping, fed by the same miserable ration of water.

Nane’s whole bravado changed when they reached the two machines. The bragging went out of him like air from a punctured bladder.

"This one hasn’t earned her name yet."

"No name at all?"

"Not until she behaves."

He crouched beside the channel and checked the thin flow with two fingers, frowning at it like a man watching a fever refuse to break. "The girl wants a nice drink, paron, not this little piss-trickle we’re feeding her while the men widen the leat."

Vito crouched beside him and watched the blade labor through the wood.

"How long till then?"

"A week, maybe less."

Nane stood and wiped his wet fingers on his trousers. Then he looked at Vito with plain and sheer curiosity. "Paron, where does a man get plans like these? I’ve never seen their like in Venezia, and I’ve built half the things that city is standing on."

"It was some gift, from a source that prefers to remain a mystery for a while longer."

"Butter my arse but don’t lie to me like this, paron. I’m not stupid."

Vito clapped him on the shoulder before the question could grow another head.

"There’s more where that came from, amico. Someday."

Nane took with a shrug and a quick return to what mattered. "Well. Mystery or no mystery, we’re ahead of where I told you we’d be. Season, I said. Maybe two, but at this rate, paron, you’ll be cutting your own boards in two months, God and the water willing."

Vito stepped back from the channel and looked across the whole yard. The walls were rising in patches where, only days ago, there had been rubble and gulls. The crane rope sang overhead while the pile driver kept hammering beneath it all, steady as a heartbeat.

The whole yard seemed to have grown itself around that sound, and for one good breath, it was something a man could be proud of.

🦁 [HOLDING — FONDACO DI CANDIA]

Status : Under Construction

Treasury : 3000 Marks

Annual Revenue : 0

Trade Reach : Venezia, Constantinople, Alexandria, Aegean Sea, Cyprus, Levant

Trade Routes : None

Trade Volume : None

Main Trade Goods : Grain, Wine, Cotton, Salt, Honey, Wax, Cheese, Wool, Spices, Silk

Economic Growth : Non-existent

Vito was still turning the display over when a shout came from the direction of the sawmill.

Nane changed in an instant, the softness vanished from him. He waved Vito away as if swatting a fly that had landed too close to his supper.

"Go, go, paron, I have her. I have her."

He rushed over, his voice tightening as he shouted ahead.

"Easy, tesoro mio, easy. I’m coming. Don’t you dare seize on me now..."

Vito laughed and let him go, watching Nane disappear into the knot of workers already crowding around the stalled wheel.

He turned from the yard and headed back toward the city at large. A cathedral currently had more prisoners than it had ever had saints, and an archbishop was still waiting for somebody to decide what, precisely, was going to become of him.