Chapter 92: The Alexandria Accounts

Word of what happened at La Sirena traveled through the quarter within days, and the rumors made Theophylact look even worse. Before long, the merchant houses were swearing they’d stood close enough to see the man’s face turn white.

House Argyropoulos moved quickly once the story reached its elders. A cotton house trading through Venetian channels cannot afford to be remembered as the family that tried to force a bride on a Barozzi in a wine house. Its patriarchs understood that well before Theophylact had finished explaining himself.

He received the scolding of his life behind closed doors, and the family afterward forgave a good part of the interest on Athanasia’s debt, though they wrapped the whole thing in the respectable name of generosity. The marriage claim died there and was never brought up again.

Athanasia took the news practically, already counting what she’d gained from it. Vito took it about as seriously as he’d expected to, an afternoon of theater had bought him a season’s worth of contacts in Cyprus and the Levant, and in his book that made them square.

He gave Theophylact no more thought after that.

The weeks that followed were calmer than expected. Vito went back into the city again and again, walking through the things his first life of reading had promised he’d someday see.

He stood beneath the Pharos until his neck ached, watched a Coptic service with his hat off and his mouth shut for once, and walked down a goldsmiths’ street bright enough to leave even Orso without a complaint.

He sat through more merchant dinners than he cared to count, every host eager to tell his grandchildren afterward that a Barozzi had eaten at his table.

The fleet stayed docked through most of it.

Of them all, a couple of those outings deserved a proper story.

The first was a pillar standing alone among old ruins near the scholars’ quarter. It was a granite shaft so tall that Toffolo had to tip his head all the way back to find the top, and so broad at the base that three men together couldn’t have put their arms around it.

A guide met them there, proud of his trade and prouder still of his story. He began to tell the tale before either man had finished admiring the thing.

Giants had raised it, he swore, in a single night, to win a wager against a djinn who had bet the whole city that no mortal hands could finish it before dawn.

Vito listened with genuine pleasure until his lips got ahead of his good sense.

The correction came out clear and certain. The pillar had been raised centuries after any djinn’s wager, he said, for a Roman prefect currying favor with an emperor nobody in this market would ever have reason to name.

"That’s the trouble with a good story, amico. The truth never wants to be half as entertaining."

The guide took this badly.

He drew himself up to his full, unimpressive height. Loudly, and in three languages at once, he informed Vito that he’d been telling that story since before his own mother learned to walk.

Giants had built the column. The djinn had lost fair and square. And no foreign patrician with more coin than sense was going to stand in his city and tell him his own trade was wrong.

Toffolo tried once to make peace by agreeing with both men at once, which naturally doubled the shouting.

After that he gave up and admired the pillar in silence, looking from one certain man to the other and siding with neither.

Neither man budged an inch and they parted unconvinced and thoroughly pleased with themselves besides.

The next outing cost him more.

Orso made it as far as the first stall selling combs before his patience gave out. Haggling over trinkets for another man’s woman, he declared, was work for fools with more patience than sense, and went off looking for wine.

Vito kept going alone, working his way down the goldsmiths’ street with a purpose. He passed rings and pendants without slowing.

Caterina had told him simply, in a courtyard on the day he asked her to marry him, that she had no interest in becoming a pretty vase on anyone’s shelf. A man who wanted to keep his hide intact remembered a lesson like that.

Vito had a ring in mind, naturally. Whatever Caterina might say about jewelry, surely their wedding ring would be an exception.

He’d gone looking for something worthy of her, only to remember who he was buying for and change his mind. Gilded silver, true and well-made, would serve her better than some pretty thing she would never wear.

The old vendor understood the whole affair inside one breath of conversation. A foreign patrician with a woman’s face in his mind had given away half his purse before either man named a price.

By the time the old fellow finished explaining that this exact ring had once been part of a Fatimid Sultan’s daughter’s dowry, Vito was nodding along and reaching for his purse.

He paid, by his own later reckoning, somewhere near what four plain rings ought to have cost him for the one he actually carried away.

"Ma va’, at least it really is an absurdly pretty ring."

He wrapped it carefully all the same, and considered the purpose alone had been worth the price.

Vito filled his days with ancient pillars and gift-shopping. The season’s real work went on perfectly well without him.

Soranzo’s man moved his modest cut exactly as arranged, harmless and satisfied just as intended. Athanasia moved considerably more, and moved it well.

The full tally came together when the season’s business closed. The fleet had sailed from Candia carrying nearly two hundred and forty-five tons across three nave.

La Rosa with grain, wine, and wool; Moresina with honey, wax, and cotton; La Serena with cheese and the distillate.

The grain never found a buyer, as expected. Egypt exported grain by the shipload and wanted none of a Venetian’s.

It remained in the hold instead, where it could feed the crew on the next leg.

Wine, wool, honey, wax, and cotton together brought in nearly twenty thousand dirhams once sold. Sixty parts moved through Athanasia, with nearly twelve thousand landing in Vito’s purse.

Ten parts went to Soranzo’s man, another two thousand or so. The remaining thirty stayed aboard, held back for whatever market awaited them toward Cyprus.

Cheese and the distillate alone made every ordinary good look like an afterthought. Fifty-five tons of cheese, at the price Athanasia agreed to the instant she heard it, came to nearly eleven thousand dirhams.

The distillate weighed a tenth of that and still sold for several times the price. At nearly forty thousand dirhams for the full measure, it was the single most valuable thing the fleet brought.

Both were split the same way, half through Athanasia and half held back for the Levant. Her share of the rare goods alone came to nearly twenty-five thousand dirhams, the largest sum that changed hands all season.

All told, the season brought in nearly forty thousand dirhams. A fine return, he decided, for one island’s worth of cheese, wool, and good timing.

Selling that much cargo left nearly a hundred and thirty tons of empty hold behind it. An empty hold was money wasted on the trip home.

Pepper took the largest share of what went back in, seventeen tons at the price agreed, nearly eighteen thousand dirhams. Cinnamon followed with thirteen tons and nearly ten thousand more.

Sugar and alum filled out the rest, cheaper and less glamorous but just as necessary, adding another six thousand dirhams between them.

The whole purchase came to nearly thirty-four thousand dirhams, drawn partly from the season’s earnings and partly from the venture’s purse.

When the last sack went aboard, the fleet was back to roughly one hundred and seventy tons, only headed in the other direction now.

When the accounts closed, the voice offered its own display without being asked.

🦁 [TRADE OVERVIEW — ALEXANDRIA, 1205]

Contacts, Fondaco : Established (Bertuccio, Bribed, Reliable)

Contacts, City : Established (Athanasia of Rakotis, Trusted, Personal)

Goods Sold, Crete : Wine, Wool, Honey, Wax, Cotton, Cheese, Distilled Spirits

Revenue : Approximately 39,000 Dirhams

Goods Purchased, Egypt : Pepper, Cinnamon, Sugar, Alum

Expense : Approximately 34,000 Dirhams

Cargo, Departing : 170 Tons

Next Port : Acre, Levant Coast

One afternoon of shameless theater, and an entire season’s accounts to show for it. Call it ambition, if you’d like the flattering word.

Vito read it grinning.

He was pleased with how clean the season had closed, and not at all troubled that the voice had managed to get the last word.

Alexandria’s business, at last, was finished. The books balanced, the holds were full again, and nothing in the city gave the fleet a reason to stay another day.

Vito said his goodbyes to Bertuccio at the harbor, promised him a bottle of whatever Cyprus had worth drinking, and gave the order to cast off.

The Levant came first, where every contact Athanasia had promised was already waiting on the other side of a knock.