Chapter 10 What the Dead Man Sent
For the first three hours northward, the sea behaved so well that everyone aboard distrusted it.
The Stella Maris moved under a steady western wind, repaired rigging taking the strain without complaint.
The coast remained visible to port as a pale succession of low land, towers, fields, and distant bell roofs.
Fishing boats crossed their course. Once they passed a heavier merchant vessel southbound, square sail full, whose master exchanged shouted questions with Ziani about weather farther north.
The answer came back that the sea was moderate and the harbor roads open.
Ziani accepted the news without smiling.
"A man who says the weather is good means only that it has not killed him yet," he told Naldo.
Naldo sat where ordered with his injured foot extended on a folded sail. "You are very cheerful in calm water."
"Calm water gives me time to remember accounts."
"Then I understand the misery."
Lucetta worked beneath the lee of a cargo stack where the wind would not take her papers.
Odelin sat opposite, one hand holding down a copied burial entry.
Adelasia had made a rough table of names on a wax tablet: Marelli, Varesi, Badoer, Zorzi, Domenico da Chioggia, and three merchants whose connection remained uncertain.
Orsino had insisted on adding two small drawings—one of an ordinary iron-bound merchant coffer, another of the Seven-Lock Chest as they understood it from the confraternity records—because, he said, people who confused them in conversation would eventually confuse them in action.
"Again," Lucetta said.
Adelasia looked up. "We have done it twice."
"Twice while packing. Once while Ziani shouted about ballast. Again now."
"You seek certainty by repetition."
"I seek error by repetition. Certainty is what errors wear before someone notices them."
Niccolò, sitting close enough to hear, said, "That deserves to be written on a notary's wall."
"Notaries already have too much writing on their walls."
Odelin tapped the copy. "Begin with what is certain, then."
Lucetta drew a line with her finger beneath the first name.
"Martino de Marelli died at the island house in 1279 or within the narrow date range we already established.
He was traveling north from Ravenna. He possessed personal effects, a packet of sealed letters, and an iron-bound coffer fitted with two locks, one damaged.
His instructions excluded his kin from receiving the coffer and letters. "
"Certain according to the house record," Bertran said from nearby.
Lucetta looked at him. "Yes. According to the record."
"Canon Leone's warning has survived one morning."
"Do not sound proud."
She continued. "The coffer and sealed packet were delivered to Pietro Varesi under witness. Varesi later returned to the same house and died there. His final journey had come from the fortified harbor we are now approaching."
Adelasia added, "Varesi's name is not in the surviving Santa Marta deposition fragments."
"Correct."
"Which means we have linked him through the island record, not through the merchant testimony that first brought us north."
"Correct."
Niccolò said, "And the horn tag bearing P. V. resembles the freight mark but does not match it exactly."
Lucetta nodded. "Also correct."
Orsino pointed at his sketch. "And the coffer is not the Saint Aurelia chest."
"We know."
"Say it anyway."
Lucetta exhaled. "The iron-bound coffer with two locks is not the Seven-Lock Chest of Saint Aurelia."
"Better."
Naldo called from his coil of rope, "Could it contain the Shipmaster's Key?"
"Yes," Lucetta said.
Orsino said at the same moment, "It could contain onions."
Naldo considered. "Then I hope for the key."
Orsino turned toward him. "That is the problem with all of you. A box enters the story and you decide it contains whatever would save you three weeks of work."
"What would you decide?"
"That it contains what someone put in it."
Adelasia gave Orsino a look of reluctant approval. "Annoying, but sound."
Lucetta took up the argument. "The coffer's value lies first in the fact that Marelli distinguished it from his personal property.
He ordered it delivered to a representative of a house connected to shipmasters.
That makes it commercial or institutional property, not necessarily Saint Aurelia property.
But the timing, the freight route, the Marelli connection, and the earlier search for Brotherhood goods make the possibility serious enough to follow. "
Bertran said, "And if the coffer was opened forty years ago?"
"Then we follow what came out of it."
"If it was moved?"
"We follow the movement."
"If the records burned?"
"We find witnesses, copies, heirs, disputes, debts, marks, anything that survived."
"If nothing survived?"
Lucetta looked at him. "Then you may tell me you were right."
"That is a poor reward for failure."
"It is the only one I offer freely."
Their eyes held for a fraction too long.
Adelasia noticed. Lucetta knew she noticed because Adelasia suddenly became interested in her wax tablet with the exaggerated courtesy of a woman who had learned that privacy sometimes required pretending blindness.
Odelin rescued them both by returning to the document.
"There is another question. Why did Marelli forbid delivery to his kin?"
Niccolò said, "Because the coffer was not his."
"Likely. But whose was it? The merchant house's? The confraternity's? A depositor's? A shipmaster's? Until we know, we should resist saying that possession of the coffer means ownership of anything inside."
Adelasia's stylus stopped. "That question will matter the moment Beatrice reaches us."
"If she reaches us," Ysoria said.
She had been standing near the stern, watching their wake and the distant coast. Now she turned.
"She left Ravenna by road after we sailed from Cervia.
She cannot ride directly over water. If she guessed our northern destination before Niccolò's message leaves the island route, she may reach a port ahead of us.
If she did not, she follows old information. "
Adelasia said, "Beatrice rarely follows old information for long."
"No one does if enough servants are paid to make it new."
Lucetta folded the copied burial entry. "She has every right to pursue her claim."
Bertran said, "Rights do not make people slower."
"Nor should they."
"I did not say they should. I said we should expect her."
The expectation became fact before noon.
They had entered a sheltered roadstead to take on fresh water and allow Ziani's carpenter to inspect the repaired stay under reduced sail.
The anchorage served a small settlement clustered around a watchtower, two stone warehouses, and a landing where fishermen sold part of their catch directly from the boats.
Stella Maris had scarcely settled to anchor when a narrow rowing boat came out from shore carrying a servant in Beatrice d'Orsenna's colors.
Bertran saw it first.
"There."
Adelasia looked once and sighed. "Of course."
The servant came aboard with the caution of a man who considered decks an inferior form of floor. He carried a sealed letter inside a waxed leather case.
"For Mistress Lucetta Verani, or Mistress Adelasia Roncaglia if the first is unavailable. From Lady Beatrice d'Orsenna."
Adelasia said, "I am wounded by the order."
Lucetta accepted the letter.
Beatrice's seal was intact.
The message was concise by her standards and therefore still longer than most men's arguments.
She had learned from a factor at Ravenna that Lucetta's company had taken the coastal route north.
She had also obtained a copy of a family inventory, dated thirty-five years earlier, referring to "one old sea coffer received from the Varesi house, not opened for want of the proper warrant.
" The inventory belonged to a collateral d'Orsenna estate whose deceased steward had conducted business with Adriatic merchants.
Beatrice did not claim the wording proved the coffer was the same one described in the island record—she did not yet know of that record—but she believed it relevant to the disputed property trail and intended to present the original or an authenticated copy at the fortified harbor.
She concluded with a warning.
Do not permit Corrado Salviati's men to describe urgency as title.
Lucetta read the letter twice.
Adelasia held out her hand. "Give it to me before your face becomes an argument."
Lucetta did.
Adelasia read, then passed it to Odelin.
Niccolò said, "She assumes Corrado knows our destination."
"He does not yet," Lucetta said. "Not unless your messenger has learned to fly."
"She assumes he will."
"That assumption is safer."
Orsino took the letter last and frowned at the phrase sea coffer. "Old sea coffer means nothing. A coffer used near the sea, a sailor's coffer, a box with pitch on it, a clerk choosing words because he was tired."
Lucetta said, "But Varesi house means something."
"Yes."
Adelasia tapped the parchment. "And 'not opened for want of the proper warrant' means someone considered authority necessary. That is more interesting than the box."
Odelin agreed. "It suggests custody rather than ownership."
Niccolò's expression tightened. "Or it suggests a steward protecting himself from blame."
"Also possible," Lucetta said.
Bertran asked the servant, "Where is Lady Beatrice?"
"On the road north, ser. She expects to reach the harbor by tomorrow evening if the road remains good. She sent me ahead from the last crossing."
Ysoria's mouth flattened. "Tomorrow evening by road. We may reach before her if the wind holds."
The servant looked at her. "My lady expected you would say that."
"Did she also expect the wind?"
"No, mistress. She said anyone who claims to know wind should be sold a ship and punished by ownership."
Ziani, passing behind them, stopped. "I like this woman."
Adelasia said, "You would not if she owned your debt."
"Then I would admire her at greater distance."