Chapter 14 The Closing Harbor #2
Lucetta turned partly away from the crowd, opened the inner pouch, and exposed only enough of the wrapped iron for him to see that the object existed. Orsino stated his provisional identification. The officer touched nothing.
"Write their names," he told his clerk. "Ship Stella Maris. No cargo. Documents and disputed key under witnessed custody. Let them pass."
Beatrice inclined her head. "You have saved yourself several letters."
The officer looked at her with a dryness worthy of Corrado. "Lady, that is the finest service any traveler has offered me today."
They passed.
The pursuers did not.
Lucetta heard one begin arguing behind them. She almost laughed from relief, then heard the harbor horn again.
Ziani's deckhand began running.
"Now we may be criminals of haste."
They followed.
The quay between the customs barrier and Stella Maris was worse than the streets.
Sailors hauled warping lines from bollards.
A mule had fallen between two carts and screamed while men tried to free it.
Families carrying bundles pressed toward vessels whose captains refused them.
Harbor laborers dragged a floating timber barrier into position.
Crossbowmen were moving onto the tower platforms. Somewhere outside the wall came the distinct percussion of men striking a gate or shield wall with something heavy.
Stella Maris lay thirty yards from the quay, held off by another vessel between them.
Ziani shouted when he saw his deckhand. The words vanished under harbor noise, but the gesture was unmistakable.
"Boat!" the deckhand shouted.
A ship's tender was tied below the steps, already half full of water and gear. Two sailors jumped into it. Lucetta, Adelasia, Beatrice, Odelin, Orsino, and Niccolò crowded after them. Bertran remained on the quay until the last possible moment, scanning behind.
The two pursuers had cleared customs.
One had drawn his sword.
That was their mistake.
The nearest watchman shouted. The man tried to push past. Another watchman struck him with the butt of a spear. The second pursuer turned away and vanished into the crowd.
Bertran did not chase him.
He stepped into the tender and pushed off.
"Row."
They rowed around the stern of a grain boat while curses descended from above.
Stella Maris seemed impossibly close and impossibly difficult to reach.
A larger merchant galley was moving under poles and tow lines toward the channel, forcing everyone else aside.
Ziani had already loosened his forward line.
His crew shouted instructions. The tender struck the hull hard enough to make Beatrice swear with startling invention.
A rope ladder came down.
Orsino went first because no one wished to discover whether he could swim while carrying tools.
Odelin followed. Adelasia climbed with her skirts gathered in one fist. Beatrice refused assistance until the vessel rolled and then accepted Bertran's hand without comment.
Niccolò passed his document case upward before climbing. Lucetta put one hand on the ladder.
A bolt struck the water beside the tender.
Everyone froze.
It had not come from the harbor towers. The angle was wrong.
Bertran looked toward the quay.
On the roof of a low warehouse beyond customs, a man with a crossbow was winding again.
"Up," Bertran said.
Lucetta climbed.
The next bolt hit Stella Maris's hull with a hard wooden crack. Sailors shouted. Ziani bellowed for the mainsail. Bertran came over the rail last and immediately pulled the ladder up.
"Who is shooting at my ship?" Ziani demanded.
"A man who objects to our departure."
"Then he may object from farther away. Cast off!"
The harbor had no room for elegance. Stella Maris moved under sail and sweeps, then slowed when a barge crossed her bow.
Ziani cursed the barge, the harbor master, the wind, the city, and anyone who had ever invented walls.
His crew used poles to keep them clear of another hull.
The deckhand they had brought back took his station without waiting to explain where Naldo was.
Lucetta stood near the mast, one hand pressed over the inner pouch holding Key IV.
Bertran saw and said, "Stop touching it."
She stared at him.
Despite everything, she laughed.
It came out too sharply, close to tears, and stopped almost at once.
"You said that when we entered this harbor."
"It remains true."
"If we survive, I shall develop an entirely new collection of nervous habits merely to inconvenience you."
"Choose ones that do not tell thieves where you keep iron."
Ziani shouted for everyone not working the ship to get low.
The boom was almost closed.
Lucetta finally understood its motion. Heavy chain and timber elements were being drawn across the narrow entrance from one tower toward the other, reducing the navigable gap.
A patrol boat lay near the remaining opening.
One harbor official signaled vessels to stop.
Another signal came from the wall, contradictory or delayed.
A galley ahead of Stella Maris turned broadside, blocking half the channel.
"We cannot pass," Beatrice said.
Ziani heard her. "Lady, ships are not inheritance disputes. They do not improve when discussed from shore."
He ordered the sail eased, then shouted to the galley.
Men shouted back. The words were lost, but money became visible: Adelasia reached into her purse, took out coins, and handed them to Ziani's deckhand, who held them up while shouting toward a harbor launch.
The launch's officer waved furiously. Ziani waved more furiously.
"Are we bribing him?" Lucetta asked.
Adelasia said, "We are paying an emergency pilotage fee that neither side has had time to name correctly."
"That is bribery with bookkeeping."
"Most civilized corruption is."
The harbor launch came alongside long enough for a pilot to jump aboard. He did not greet anyone.
"You have one passage," he told Ziani. "The galley moves when the tow line clears. Keep to her stern and then hard east of the chain anchor. If the tower signals stop, I never saw you."
Ziani grinned. "You are a saint."
"I am expensive."
"Better."
The galley moved.
Stella Maris followed.
The channel narrowed around them. Stone towers rose on both sides, close enough that Lucetta could see individual faces on the parapets. A crossbowman looked down and shouted. The pilot shouted back. The boom chain dragged through water ahead, its nearest section not yet fully tensioned.
Ziani called for more sail.
Bertran said, "If they fire from the tower—"
"Then bend low and pray they value their own pilot," Ziani snapped.
A bell struck above them.
The pilot swore.
The chain lifted.
For an instant Lucetta saw no gap at all.
Then the galley's stern cleared left. Ziani put Stella Maris toward the remaining water between the chain anchor and the tower footing.
Sail cracked. One sweep struck stone and splintered.
Men shouted and let it go. The vessel heeled.
Lucetta fell against Adelasia, caught herself, and heard Orsino cry out as his tool bag slid across the deck.
The hull scraped something below water with a grinding sound that turned every sailor's face pale.
Then sunlight opened ahead.
They were through.
A bolt struck the stern rail.
Another fell short.
Ziani did not celebrate until the harbor towers began to recede behind them and the wind filled the sail cleanly. Only then did he turn to his passengers.
"If any of you possess another ancient box, cursed ledger, disputed key, dead merchant, hereditary widow, creditor, assassin, or ecclesiastical complication, you will declare it before booking passage with me again."
Beatrice adjusted her sleeve. "I am the hereditary widow."
"Then I shall charge you twice."
"Send the account to my steward. He will pay half and explain why the remainder is an insult."
"At last, a passenger I understand."
The deck laughter was brief and exhausted.
Lucetta waited until full dark before opening the selected Saint Aurelia papers.
They used Ziani's small cabin because the deck wind threatened loose parchment.
A lamp hung from a hook. The vessel moved gently at anchor, enough to make the flame lean and the lines of text shift beneath Lucetta's eyes.
Adelasia sat beside her. Odelin took the other side of the table.
Orsino had insisted on examining Key IV again and now held it under lamplight while Beatrice watched.
Bertran stood at the door, though there was nowhere on the vessel for danger to enter without first becoming extremely obvious.
Lucetta unfolded the cracked shipping abstract.
The first entries were ordinary enough: quantities, vessel names, advances, shortages, repairs. Then the pattern changed.
Goods assigned to eastern provisioning had been marked against one account and then partly transferred against another.
The language was not dramatic because fraud, if fraud it was, rarely announced itself as sin.
A shipment of grain became "reassigned against western guarantee.
" Iron fittings became "credited in substitution.
" Salt meat was divided, with one portion marked lost to delay and another entered elsewhere under a factor's sign.
Money advanced for transport appeared again as a claim for non-delivery.
Adelasia read in silence for a long time.
"This man kept a shadow account," she said at last.
Lucetta looked at her.
"Not secret in the childish sense. A working account beside the formal books.
Shipmasters do it when they need to remember what the clean ledger does not explain.
See these marks? He is matching cargo to instructions received after the original contract.
Someone told him to divide loads. Someone guaranteed payment. "
Odelin said, "Could the division have been lawful?"