Chapter 7 Beneath the Salt Sheds #2
Cilia considered. “Before my youngest was born. The year the winter flood took the lower sheds.”
Odelin asked two careful questions about the local priest and feast days until they narrowed the memory to more than thirty years earlier. Lucetta exchanged a glance with Adelasia. Someone had searched for the key long before the present pursuit.
“Did they ask about the strongbox?” she said.
Cilia’s eyes shifted to Naldo.
He had been standing beside the doorway with Bertran’s sword belt slung over one shoulder. “I am not Piero’s ghost,” he said. “If that helps.”
“It does not.”
Adelasia sat opposite the old woman. “Mistress Cilia, listen to me before you decide whether we deserve your memory. We are not asking because we believe your husband’s kin stole a treasure.
Men with better boots than ours have already begun asking the same questions, and one of them has burned papers to keep us from learning where the strongbox went.
If your family remembers something dangerous, silence may no longer protect it.
Yet I will not tell you that speaking to us is safe.
It is not. What I can tell you is that we will distinguish between what you know and what others merely want to claim you knew, and we will not put words beneath your name because they would make our work easier. ”
Cilia studied her. “You are the merchant widow.”
Adelasia’s eyes narrowed. “Who told you?”
“The young man three days ago. Asked whether a widow from Bologna had arrived. Said she might pretend the Marellis owed money.”
Niccolò swore softly.
Cilia pointed at him. “That one speaks like a clerk.”
“He is one,” Adelasia said. “Do not hold it against the rest of us.”
The old woman almost smiled. Then she looked toward the courtyard where her granddaughter was knotting net twine.
“My husband’s father said Piero took a box by water because two men were watching the road.
That is all. He said the boat went first to the reed cut, then to a place where a larger vessel could take it without unloading onto the quay.
There was a store there belonging to men from farther north. ”
“Name?” Lucetta asked.
“No.”
“A sign?”
Cilia shook her head, then stopped. “A saint painted on a wall. Woman saint. Gold circle around the head. One hand raised.”
Odelin said, “There are enough painted women saints on Adriatic walls to keep us wandering until Judgment.”
“Blue dress,” Cilia added.
Naldo said, “That narrows it to half of Judgment.”
Bertran, who had entered without his weapon and therefore looked strangely incomplete, crouched beside a low stool. “You said a larger vessel could take the box without unloading at the quay. That means deep enough water close to a store or landing. Did your husband’s father name the reach?”
“Madonna della Barena, perhaps. Or Barena della Madonna. He was an old man telling a boy to stop asking questions. Boys remember the parts forbidden to them.”
Ysoria said, “There are marsh chapels called Madonna of something everywhere. But barena means raised salt-marsh ground in some places. It may not be a formal name at all.”
Cilia nodded. “Then you know as much as I do.”
Lucetta turned over the rent receipt in her hand. The parchment had nothing to do with Saint Aurelia, yet its witness names mattered now. “Who among your husband’s family worked the water after Tommaso?”
“My husband, before his lungs failed. His cousin Lapo longer. Lapo’s sons moved south. One still runs eels to the market when his joints permit.”
Naldo was already on his feet. “Where?”
Cilia gave him directions to a reed landing beyond the old sheds, then caught his sleeve as he passed. “If Lapo’s son tells you the channels are open, do not believe him merely because he loves water. Men who love water forgive it too much.”
Outside, Bertran took back his sword belt. He fastened it slowly because of his injured hand. Lucetta noticed and said nothing. He noticed her noticing.
“Brother Odelin has already threatened me with tighter bandages,” he said.
“He described experience.”
“That is worse.”
They did not reach the eel landing before they found evidence that someone wanted the old route left undisturbed.
Naldo saw it first. He had gone ahead with Ysoria along a packed-earth lane between two disused sheds. The nearer structure sagged toward the water, its lower boards dark with rot. Naldo stopped so abruptly that Ysoria nearly struck his shoulder.
“What?” she asked.
He pointed down.
A line had been scored across the mud by something dragged from the shed toward a narrow channel. Not old. The ruts from salt carts crossed it, but the cut beneath remained sharp where the wheels had not crushed it. Beside the wall lay fragments of reed and a smear of black pitch.
Bertran came forward. “Boat?”
“Small one pulled out or pushed in. Flat bottom, likely. The pitch is fresh enough to mark.” Naldo touched it and rubbed thumb against finger. “And someone repaired a seam badly.”
Niccolò said, “Perhaps an eel fisherman.”
“Perhaps. Eel fishermen also own the right to be suspicious.”
Orsino examined the shed door. “Opened recently. Hinge pin polished.”
The door itself was secured with a wooden bar from the outside. Bertran looked at the surrounding lane, the roofline, the water, and the gap between sheds before touching it.
“Everyone back.”
Adelasia exhaled. “We cannot suspect every door.”
“No. Only the doors placed exactly where our dead porter’s route should be.”
He sent Naldo around toward the channel and made Ysoria watch the rear lane. Then he lifted the bar with his uninjured hand. The door opened inward three fingers before stopping.
A cord tightened inside.
Bertran froze.
Orsino leaned past without crossing the threshold. “Do not move it.”
“I had not planned to.”
The craftsman crouched and peered into the darkness. “Cord runs low to something on the left.”
Lucetta’s stomach tightened. The weakened floor at the red fish shed had taught all of them a lesson too recent to ignore.
Orsino took a small iron hook from his pouch, caught the cord, and drew it gently toward the gap. Something scraped inside.
“Jar,” he said. “Or pot.”
Naldo’s voice came from the water side. “Back opening is clear. No one inside that I see.”
Orsino cut the cord.
A clay jar toppled in the darkness and broke. The smell reached them immediately.
Lamp oil.
Brother Odelin crossed himself.
Bertran pushed the door wider and waited. Nothing ignited. Sunlight entered far enough to reveal a heap of old salt sacks, broken baskets, and a dark stain spreading from the shattered jar.
“Not a trap to burn us,” Bertran said. “A warning or a way to burn what was left.”
Orsino pointed at a striker and rag positioned beside a low crate. “Someone could have fired it quickly from the back.”
They entered in pairs. Lucetta stayed near the door despite every part of her wanting to search at once.
The shed held almost nothing of value. That made the fresh traces more obvious: boot marks on old salt dust, a coil of new rope among rotten cordage, reeds cut within the week, and a shallow groove on the floor from something heavy dragged toward the channel.
Naldo came through the rear opening. “A punt was here. Gone now.”
“Recently?” Bertran asked.
“Today perhaps. Yesterday certainly. Water mark is fresh.”
Lucetta knelt beside the groove. “Something heavy was moved from here.”
“Or brought here,” Niccolò said.
She looked at him. “Yes.”
He seemed surprised by the agreement.
Adelasia examined the new rope. “What did the thief take from the burned packet?”
“Knowledge,” Lucetta said.
“No. He already knew enough to steal the correct packet. What did he gain by removing it?”
Lucetta thought of the reconstructed witness names. Piero Marelli. Santa Marta custody. The strongbox moving from cart to water. “He kept us from seeing the destination.”
“And if he knew the destination already?”
“Then he kept us from knowing what he knew.”
Adelasia nodded. “Which means he expected to move faster.”
Ysoria entered from the lane. “Then he has.”
They turned.
“A boy at the corner saw two men pull a punt from this channel before noon. One limped. They loaded nothing here, but one carried a leather case. They went south along the cut.”
Bertran said, “Can we follow by land?”
Naldo shook his head. “Not continuously. Channel splits through pans and reed beds. Paths break. A boat can take three turns while a man on land goes half a mile to cross a ditch.”
“Can we get a boat?”
“I can steal one.”
Adelasia said, “No.”
Naldo looked hurt. “I was answering the question.”
“Answer a better one.”
“Then yes, for money.”
They found Lapo Marelli’s surviving son before they found the boat.
His name was Martino, and age had turned him nearly the color of the reeds among which he worked.
He listened to Cilia’s name with suspicion, then to Piero’s with irritation, and finally to Lucetta’s description of the old transfer route with the exhausted resignation of a man whose ancestors had found one inconvenient thing to do and thereby cursed descendants they would never meet.
“My father told me the story because his father told him,” Martino said.
“Piero took the iron-cornered box through the red fish shed, then down the San Michele cut to the barena. A northern ship’s boat met them there.
Not a full merchant galley. A tender or lighter from one.
They shifted the box and sent it east across the lagoon water to a vessel waiting outside the shallow reach. ”
“Which vessel?” Adelasia asked.
“No name.”
“What merchant house?”
“No name.”
“What port?” Lucetta pressed.
Martino glared. “If old men had known scholars would question every breath a hundred years later, they might have spoken more carefully.”
Odelin said, “If old men had known scholars would exist, many would have spoken less.”