Chapter 9 The Island House #2
Near terce, the wind shifted and sunlight entered the cloister for the first time.
The pages brightened. Dust rose in the beam each time a leaf turned.
Lucetta's eyes began to ache from cramped hands and abbreviated names.
Canon Leone fetched a small horn window from another room and set it upright to soften the glare.
Odelin stopped speaking.
Lucetta knew the silence before she saw the line.
He had turned to a damaged section of the burial record. Water had stained the outer margin. The ink in several entries had feathered into brown clouds. One name remained almost entirely legible.
Martino de Marelli.
No one moved for a moment.
Naldo broke the silence. "Marelli."
Adelasia stood so quickly the bench scraped stone.
"Read it," she said.
Odelin did not. He looked first at the top of the page, then the preceding entry, then the following one.
Lucetta felt impatience rise and forced it down. "You are checking the year."
"I am checking whether the leaf belongs where the binder placed it."
"Does it?"
"Probably. The feast references are consistent. The hand is the same as the previous six leaves."
Canon Leone bent close. "Brother Anselmo's hand. He was precise when sober and decorative when not. This is sober."
Odelin read aloud.
The entry recorded that Martino de Marelli, a merchant's agent traveling north from Ravenna, had been brought ashore in severe fever.
He had remained at the house for nine days.
On the seventh he had confessed and dictated instructions concerning a locked coffer and a packet of letters.
On the ninth he died. He was buried in the house cemetery because the ship that had carried him would not wait and because no relative could be reached.
The entry continued into the damp-stained margin.
Lucetta leaned closer until her hair almost touched the page.
"There," she said. "What is that word?"
Odelin narrowed his eyes. "Capsa. A box or chest."
"Coffer," Orsino said from behind them. "Size tells you which, not Latin."
"And the next?"
"Ferreis... something. Ironed. Bound with iron."
Orsino came closer. "Let me see."
Canon Leone shifted aside with the patient resignation of a man watching his archive become crowded by trades.
Orsino did not touch the leaf. "Iron-bound tells us nothing. Half the boxes worth keeping are iron-bound."
"And half the boxes not worth keeping," Adelasia said.
Lucetta pointed farther along the line. "The packet of letters?"
Odelin read slowly. "Litterae sub sigillo... letters under seal. Delivered... no. Entrusted. Entrusted to one Pietro..."
The surname had bled into the stain.
"Pietro what?" Bertran asked.
"If the water knows, it has kept confidence."
Lucetta's pulse had quickened. "Where was he going?"
Odelin traced the next line. "That is clearer. Ad portum... to the harbor..."
Again the place-name was damaged.
Naldo groaned theatrically. "God preserved the man's death but drowned his destination."
Odelin looked at him. "Complain more quietly in a religious house."
"I am praising divine selectivity."
Adelasia ignored them. "What else?"
The next surviving words stated that the coffer and sealed letters were not to be sent to Martino's kin. They were to be delivered to a named shipmaster or warehouse keeper after presentation of a token or written sign. The crucial name was again partly lost.
But one phrase remained.
Lucetta read it first.
"Domus navicularii."
Odelin nodded. "The shipmaster's house. Or house of the shipmaster."
Every face around the table changed.
Orsino said, "Do not decide that means our key."
"It means a man called Marelli died here carrying an iron-bound box and letters intended for a shipmaster's house," Lucetta said. "After we traced a Marelli family from a deposition concerning the same northern freight route. That is not one coincidence."
"It is two," Bertran said.
"You are becoming intolerable."
"You invited me into archives."
Adelasia lowered herself slowly onto the bench. She did not share their brief humor. "Martino de Marelli was not the elder custodian."
Lucetta turned to her.
"No."
"Then he was carrying something for him."
"Likely."
"Or for someone who had already taken it from him."
That possibility sobered them.
Niccolò, who had remained quiet through most of the search, spoke from the far side of the table. "If he died with a coffer and letters, why did no one come looking for them? A box entrusted by a merchant's agent is not a forgotten cloak."
Canon Leone answered before Lucetta could. "Someone did."
All of them looked at him.
The old canon frowned, turning his memory over with visible effort.
"Not in my time. I told Brother Odelin last night that merchants once used the landing.
Brother Anselmo spoke of a dispute from his youth.
I thought it was about burial fees because he complained often that rich men expected charity to include accounting.
But there was a stranger who came years after a burial, asking for effects left by a dead merchant. Anselmo refused him something."
Lucetta leaned forward. "Which merchant?"
"I do not know. I was young. He told the story to explain why property should never be released without witnesses.
The stranger had a seal, or claimed to have one.
Anselmo said the seal proved a man had wax, not a right.
I remember that sentence because he repeated it whenever anyone presented a seal too confidently. "
Adelasia's expression became intent. "Did the stranger leave empty-handed?"
"According to Anselmo, yes."
"According to Anselmo," Bertran repeated.
Canon Leone gave him a level look. "Brother Anselmo embellished sins, weather, and the incompetence of cooks. He did not embellish inventories."
"Then we need his inventory," Lucetta said.
The canon's mouth tightened.
"There is the trouble."
He reached for the smaller packet of loose leaves.
"These were removed from a damaged account book when the binding failed. Some concern guest property. Some are lists of repairs. Some are merely numbers without heads because God wished future readers humility. We have never had reason to put them in order."
Orsino looked at the packet. "How many?"
"Forty or fifty leaves."
Naldo sighed. "I preferred the storm."
Ysoria said, "No, you did not."
"I prefer saying I preferred it."
They divided the loose leaves.
The work was slower because sequence had been lost. Lucetta sorted by hand, ink, ruling, and recurring names.
Odelin grouped entries that referenced the same feast days.
Canon Leone identified changes in officeholders.
Adelasia ignored ecclesiastical order and looked for commercial words: storage, freight, seals, delivery, money received, witnesses.
Niccolò proved unexpectedly useful at recognizing sums and abbreviations used by factors.
Orsino refused to read anything longer than a line but noticed every reference to iron, locks, hinges, or chests.
Bertran lasted perhaps twenty minutes.
Then he stood.
"I am going to the landing."
Lucetta looked up. "Why?"
"Because if the coffer was delivered onward, someone had to carry it from here to a boat. If the old landing still exists, I want to see whether there was one route or three."
"The route is forty years old."
"Stone is older."
Naldo lifted his staff. "I will come."
"You will not."
"I know boats."
"You know one boot."
Naldo began a reply. Ysoria took the staff from him.
"You may describe boats from here."
He stared at her. "You have stolen my weapon."
"I have removed temptation."
Bertran went alone at first, though Adelasia sent a servant with him after explaining which ruins had been pointed out that morning.
Lucetta watched him leave and returned to the leaves.
She found the inventory near midday.
Not because it named Marelli.
Because Orsino cursed.
"What?"
He held up a leaf. "This brother knew nothing about iron."
Lucetta took it from him.
The list described property stored after the death of a foreign merchant: one wool cloak, poor; one leather purse containing seven grossi and assorted denari; one knife; one belt with bronze fittings; one small writing case; one iron-bound coffer with two locks, one damaged; one packet under three seals.
No name appeared at the top because the upper edge had been torn away.
Adelasia was beside her before she finished reading.
"Two locks."
Orsino shook his head. "Not our seven-lock chest."
"We know that."
"I am saying it before everyone forgets."
Lucetta placed the leaf beside the burial entry. "Does the amount of money matter?"
Adelasia considered. "Seven grossi is not nothing, but it is not the traveling purse of a merchant carrying a valuable commercial consignment unless expenses had already stripped him. The coffer may have held papers rather than money."
Niccolò said, "Or something whose value was not obvious to the brother making the list."
Odelin looked at the three seals notation. "The packet was sealed separately."
Lucetta's eyes moved to the bottom of the leaf.
There, cramped beneath the inventory, a later hand had added three lines.
She read them once.
Then again.
"Brother Odelin."
He came around the table.
The later note stated that the purse and personal effects had been sent to Marelli's kin after inquiry.
The writing case had been retained against expenses and later sold.
The iron-bound coffer and sealed packet were delivered, under witness, to a representative of the house named in the dead man's instruction.
The representative's name was preserved.
Pietro Varesi.
The destination was not.
But the witness was.
Ser Domenico da Chioggia, shipmaster.
Adelasia whispered, "Chioggia."
Niccolò immediately said, "That is north of here."
Ysoria corrected him. "Far north of here compared with where the storm threw us."
Odelin read the line again. "Domenico witnessed delivery. He did not receive it."
"But he may have known where it went," Lucetta said.