Chapter 2 Two Heirs To One Key #4
"No. My manner suggests I know when a procurator is delaying because the answer will make his complete proof less complete.
" Adelasia leaned forward. "I did not come to steal your clients' claim.
I came because my husband's name appears in Saint Aurelia accounts, and because men are asking after old iron with enough urgency to put riders on our road.
If the house of salt account still exists, someone else may already be going there.
You may spend the next hour protecting a secret from me and lose the object to a stranger, or you may tell me who controls the place and then argue with me over law after we know whether anything remains to argue about. "
Baldo looked at Lapo. Lapo looked away. Giuliano said, "The present lease is held through a company in which both branches have shares.
The working factor is Pietro Bellan, but the land rights derive from Rinaldo's old salt interest. Neither branch can remove fixed property without the other's consent. Movable goods are another question."
"And who has keys?" Orsino would have approved of the question.
"Bellan. Agnese's eldest grandson. My wife's brother. Possibly two foremen."
"Then half Ravenna."
"It is a working store, not a reliquary."
Lucetta looked at the receipt again. The brother's casket.
Men from across the sea. Removed by Tomaso's order.
House of salt account. She began to see why the two branches had clung to inheritance stories that contradicted their own papers.
If Tomaso had deliberately moved the casket beyond the immediate control of either son, later generations had inherited not possession but uncertainty.
Uncertainty was intolerable when rumors transformed iron into treasure.
A knock came at the outer door. One of Baldo's clerks entered, crossed directly to him, and whispered. Baldo's face changed in a way no trained argument could conceal.
"What is it?" Giuliano asked.
Baldo waved the clerk away, but the man glanced toward Lucetta before leaving. That was enough.
Adelasia rose. "Someone else has arrived."
"This meeting is private."
"Then you should tell your servants not to look at the private guests when announcing the new one."
Lapo stood as well. "We are under no obligation to explain every visitor."
"No," Lucetta said. "But if the visitor concerns the same papers, our position changes. We came on the understanding that your clients wished an independent reading. If you intend to use our presence to strengthen negotiation with another claimant, we should know it."
Baldo pressed two fingers to his temple.
"The visitor is a lady with a letter of introduction from the bishop's household.
She claims descent from Margherita Roncaglia d'Orsenna, sister to Tomaso's father.
She says her family deposited valuables with the confraternity of Saint Aurelia and that one of those deposits passed into Tomaso's custody. "
For one heartbeat no one reacted. Then Adelasia laughed once, softly and without humor. "There is your third branch."
"She is not a branch," Lapo snapped. "The d'Orsenna claim was settled two generations ago."
"Apparently no one informed the lady."
Baldo straightened his robe. "Her name is Beatrice d'Orsenna. She has asked to see the Roncaglia papers and to speak with the Paduan woman who has been examining them."
Lucetta felt every face turn toward her.
"How does she know I am here?" she asked.
Baldo did not answer.
Bertran, she thought. Brown hood. Mounted messages.
Someone watching Bellandi. Yet the answer might be simpler and therefore more dangerous: Ravenna was a city of households and clerks, and they had entered two family disputes in as many days.
Information did not need a mastermind. It needed servants, cousins, creditors and people who liked being paid.
Adelasia's gaze had sharpened. "Did she come armed?"
"She came with two servants, a maid, and a gentleman who identifies himself as her steward."
"Then she came as a claimant, not a raider. Receive her."
Lapo objected at once. "This is our countinghouse."
"Then behave like men who control it," Adelasia said. "If you send her away now, she goes to Agnese and offers the elder branch whatever papers she has. If you receive her, you learn the shape of her claim before choosing how frightened to be."
Giuliano looked at Baldo. "She is right."
Before Beatrice was admitted, another message reached the countinghouse, this one from Brother Odelin.
He had found no register naming Enrico as a permanent resident of either religious house he had searched, but one old sacristan remembered a shipmaster's widow who had paid for anniversary masses "for a husband drowned in foreign waters, though his body came home.
" Odelin's note was cautious: the memory might concern another Enrico entirely, and the sacristan had supplied no family name.
Yet he added one useful warning. A charitable confraternity's maritime officer might have held private merchant deposits alongside institutional property, and later descendants could honestly confuse the two. Lucetta passed the note to Adelasia.
"He has written this because he thinks we are about to make the key prove too much," Adelasia said.
"He is probably right."
"He usually is when that is most inconvenient.
" She folded the message. "Keep it in mind when the lady enters.
A hereditary claim may be genuine without giving her the key, and the key may have travelled with a deposit without becoming part of it.
We have already seen one family turn custody into inheritance because time made the difference troublesome.
We should not reward a nobler surname by making the same mistake more politely. "
Lucetta nodded. The reminder steadied her.
Beatrice's rank, introduction and travel retinue could create the impression of a claim already half-proved, but parchment did not become stronger because a servant carried it in a better case.
If anything, the arrival of a third claimant made precision more necessary.
They were no longer asking only where the casket had gone.
They were approaching the more dangerous question of what people believed had travelled inside or beside it.
The door opened ten minutes later.
Beatrice d'Orsenna entered without haste.
She was perhaps a little older than Lucetta, dressed for travel but in cloth whose quality announced wealth more effectively than ornament would have.
Her veil was pinned neatly; her gloves were pale leather; a narrow silver clasp at her throat bore a device Lucetta did not recognize.
She did not have the fragile pallor of a woman carried everywhere behind curtains.
There was dust on the hem of her gown. The man behind her was grey-haired and watchful, with the careful posture of a household officer who had spent years preventing other people from confusing rank with permission.
Beatrice greeted the room according to hierarchy, not affection. Baldo first, then the sons-in-law, then Adelasia after hearing her name. When Lucetta was introduced, Beatrice studied her with an attention that was neither rude nor warm.
"Mistress Verani," she said, "I was told you can distinguish an old claim from a new invention. I hope the report is true, because I have ridden farther than I intended to discover which I possess."
Lucetta inclined her head. "That depends less upon my skill than upon your papers, Madonna."
"Good. I dislike experts who promise victory before opening the packet." Beatrice removed her gloves one finger at a time. "Then perhaps we may begin without pretending that any person in this room is disinterested."
Adelasia's eyes met Lucetta's across the table.
The fourth key had not yet appeared. The number of hands reaching toward it had already increased.