Balancing The Scales
XXI
The moneychanger's shop sat under a green roof off the market square. A sign dangled above it with the name “Aramburu.” It was still early in the day, and only a few men lingered outside, mostly some swatting flies and talking, none looking as though they were there on business.
“This does not bode well,” Darcy muttered.
Elizabeth slowed. “Why?”
“Senor Aramburu will either be annoyed by our early intrusion on his morning, or he will see my money as his only opportunity for profit today. Either way, he will do his best to cheat us.”
“What would it cost to linger here in Estella until his mood improves? I daresay you will lose less in the exchange now.”
Darcy scowled. “Let us get it over with.” She followed him inside, where there was, indeed, a bored-looking fellow dozing on a stool. His arms were crossed over his ample middle, and his chin sagged to his chest.
It was not merely a money-changer's shop.
He appeared to have taken anything of value on trade, for his case and his shelves were filled with crosses, medallions, a gold watch or two, silver-framed spectacles, buckles, spoons, and even a few swords.
Elizabeth doubted not that he had other weapons stowed out of sight.
Darcy cleared his throat and laid the doubloons on the cloth.
The man stirred, then, oddly, looked swiftly towards his scale.
Elizabeth followed the direction of his gaze.
The chains hung evenly, but the pans were removed.
She frowned and nudged Darcy’s elbow. His response was nearly invisible — a faint tick of his cheek before he turned his attention back to the money changer.
Senor Aramburu did not reach for the gold.
He looked at it, and then he looked at Darcy — the shabby cuffs, the dust, the good bones of a man dressed like a bad month — and then back at the coins.
She could see his thoughts printed across his face, clear as a book.
Rich man. Tattered clothes. Something to hide.
She had copied her uncle's exchange tables for six months in a back room in Gracechurch Street, and she had never once imagined her survival would depend on her recollection.
She knew to the shilling what those doubloons were worth.
And she knew, the moment the man opened his mouth, that he did not mean to give it.
“He says the gold is very fine,” she murmured, while the man went on being pleasant.
“What does he offer?”
She made him say the figure twice, to be sure her temper was earned, and it was. “That is robbery. Two-thirds, perhaps, of their worth, and he is proud of himself for it.” She kept her face sweet, because a sweet face bought more than an angry one.
“Tell him he will earn his fee, but we demand a fair exchange.”
Elizabeth forced a little laugh, a wider smile, and started talking.
It was almost a pleasure, that was the shameful truth of it.
There was so little on this journey she could actually do — she could not pay the debt or free her uncle or do anything to turn away the black looks of men in doorways and courtyards — but this she could do, this she was good at, and it felt like taking off a shoe with a stone in it to be, for four minutes, simply competent.
She argued him up. Not to a fair price; fair was not on offer today. But to bearable, and she made him count it out himself, coin by coin, so that he should feel each piece of silver leaving.
“That ring,” Darcy said, pointing to a small, bright thing in the case. “Ask him for the ring.”
Something in her stomach lurched and clenched. A ring? That… that was…
“Elizabeth, the ring,” he insisted. “I cannot be forever chasing men off who mistake your impertinence for availability.”
She swallowed and pointed to the thing in the case. “Queremos isso — eso, también.”
Senor Aramburu was now counting out coppers, and he stopped.
Elizabeth saw the calculation cross his face before he smiled broadly, even laughed.
He put the rest of the coppers back into his tray and pulled the ring out, saying something about newly married Ingles, and offering his grandest felicitations.
He opened his palm to show her the ring, but the moment she reached for it, he closed his palm and named a price that would have subtracted half the silver he had already laid on the cloth.
“Is he trying to renegotiate?”
“He is trying to lie,” she replied.
“Tell him he has cheated us enough for one day. The ring is in addition to what is already agreed upon.”
“I have a better idea. And do not look surprised at anything I say, or you will spoil it.” She turned back to the man and informed him that she would not negotiate anything until she was permitted to inspect the merchandise.
Aramburu gestured magnanimously and held it to the light with a little speech she almost admired for its gall. But Elizabeth raised her hand between them without comment until he dropped it into her palm.
“Far too light for gold,” she told Darcy.
He plucked it out of her hand to examine it himself. “Pinchbeck. Brass, essentially.”
“So… worthless?”
“Not entirely, but close to it.”
“Rather fitting, do you not think?”
He made a face and put it back into her hand. “It shines like gold and looks convincing enough. Does it fit?”
She slid the ring onto her fourth finger, then held it to the light.
Brass, convincing enough to sell a lie, cool and weightless as a promise nobody meant.
“It may turn my finger green, but it will not fall off, and it looks exactly like what it is pretending to be. It would stay vaguely circular for long enough to get us out of the country.”
She put it back on the counter so that Senor Aramburu would not see her admiring it with anything resembling interest.
“Es falsa.”
Aramburu’s face altered. “?No es falsa!” He picked it up and held it so that the light caught the edge. “?Es oro!”
Elizabeth shook her head and told him it was too light. No proper gold ring of that thickness could feel like tin, but if he meant to back his claim, let him prove it with his scales.
He seemed to relish that idea. He took up the ring, set it in one of his pans, which he then suspended from the chains of the scale. Then he dropped three adarme weights into the opposite pan and hung it as well. The scales balanced.
“Squint,” she whispered to Darcy.
“What?”
“Just do it. Squint, as if you cannot make it out.”
He obliged, then Elizabeth crossed her arms and demanded that he put the scale on the counter in front of her. When the money changer protested, she informed him that her husband had poor eyesight and would wish to see for himself that the scales balanced, or he would not agree to the bargain.
Aramburu acted greatly put upon, but he did move the scale, setting it gently down on the cloth of his counter and pointing out the way the chains swayed, then balanced… perfectly.
“Oh, yes, indeed,” Elizabeth replied in Spanish. “Yes, I see that it does balance. But hold here…” She turned the pans on the chains and dumped out the contents.
The money changer never gave her a chance to let the empty pans balance. He moved to stop her, but Elizabeth was faster. She snatched the empty pans and dashed to the door, where there were still several men loitering. “?La balanza no es justa!” The scales are not fair!
Those were words to attract attention outside a money changer’s shop. Several men stirred, looks of suspicion, or perhaps confirmed suspicions, crossing their faces. Elizabeth kept repeating the accusation, holding the unbalanced pans up for all to see.
An outcry arose rather quickly, murmurings rising to consternation as she passed from one to another, demonstrating that one pan had a visibly thicker bottom than the other. One man reached to test them, but the money changer shoved her from behind.
She fell, the pans flying from her hands and her palms scuffing painfully in the rocky dirt of the street. Elizabeth gasped, trying to reach them again, but Senor Aramburu had already taken back his pans and gone inside the shop.
“Elizabeth, here.” Darcy reached for her hand, but when she held it up, and he turned it over, he saw the blood. He took out his handkerchief to wrap it, then helped her to her feet by tugging at her wrist. “That was rather rash. I think you may have just lost what fortune we had left.”
“What? No, I…”
The money changer’s door clanged from the inside… a bar had been dropped behind it. And their money was still on the counter.
“Oh, dear.” Elizabeth turned her other hand over, then numbly used the handkerchief from the right hand to dab the blood from the left. “Now what?”
But they needn’t have asked. Apparently, they were not the only people in town to suspect this man of cheating, for just then, someone threw a rock through the window. In the next instant, another man had crawled through, and a few seconds later, the bar was flung aside, and the door opened.
“Good Lord,” muttered Darcy. “You started a riot! Stand aside and let me salvage what I can.”
The next seconds passed in something of a haze.
Elizabeth tried to keep out of the rush of bodies, holding the bloodied handkerchief to her mouth as if it might stop her from saying or doing something else foolish.
Inside, she heard Darcy’s voice, shouting for order, demanding his silver and copper back, and even, twice, calling for the mob not to beat up the money changer.
She knew not how long he was in there. She knew only that the shouting had drawn attention, and attention brought more people every second. And her makeshift husband was in there, alone, trying not to lose everything they had… including his own life.
Some while later, long before the crowd had decided they were satisfied, he did not emerge so much as spill out past other bodies, his arm clutched over his chest and his hat gone. A trickle of blood showed at the corner of his mouth, but he appeared none the worse for wear. “Quickly!” he barked.
She ran to him, grabbing his free arm, and together, they hastened back to their rented room.
Darcy was still panting when he opened his coat on the bed. “I believe I was able to recover most of it.”
Elizabeth’s eyes skimmed over the coins. Half, perhaps, what she remembered seeing on the counter after he had counted, but then Darcy began dropping other items. A gold cross with gems encrusted on it. Silver shoe buckles. An entire roll of silver spoons.
And then, while she was still trying to calculate the value of the items, Darcy took her left hand and shoved a ring onto it. Her gaze shifted, and she spread her fingers.
“You got that, too, did you?” Her voice had gone strangely soft.
“I calculate that item alone may save me quite a bit of gold and perhaps my neck later, so yes, I made sure to get it. But we have made something of a spectacle of ourselves in this town. Everyone now knows we have gold, valuables, and not two wits to rub together between us. And even the most ignorant of them will be able to learn where we are staying.”
Elizabeth clenched her fist on the ring and made herself think. “We need to get out of town quickly.”
“That may be difficult,” he replied as he began to gather the coins back up. “The river is flooded. We will have to buy our way across.”
“Well, we have coins now. And even some items to trade, if it comes to it.”
“We have not much of the copper, and we would do better to keep that against the next town, and the next, where we wish to be overlooked and forgotten. Silver is too much for a barge passage, too notable, and these other items would mark us as thieves. Or, perhaps worse yet, prove we are the very foreigners who incited a riot. We cannot show them here.”
She sat down on the bed. “Is there no place to cross on foot? Perhaps the river may be persuaded to be reasonable.”