Chapter 3 The Widows Papers
Beatrice did not sit until Baldo had sent for another chair, and even then she chose the place that left the table between herself and the sons-in-law rather than the place beside them.
It was a small decision, almost nothing, but Lucetta saw Lapo notice it.
Giuliano noticed too and hid the fact better.
The grey-haired steward remained standing near the wall with Beatrice's leather document case in both hands.
No sword hung openly at his side, though the weight beneath his mantle suggested a long knife or short weapon of the sort a household officer might carry on the road.
The maid had been left outside with the servants.
Beatrice therefore entered the argument with neither feminine retinue nor visible armed escort, yet no one could mistake her for a woman who had come dependent upon the goodwill of men at a counting table.
She waited while Baldo made an unnecessarily formal explanation of who was present, then looked toward Lucetta again.
“You have already examined the papers of both Roncaglia branches, I am told. I have no wish to ask you what they contain if you have promised silence, nor will I insult you by pretending that courtesy forbids me from wanting to know. What I need first is simpler. Have either of these gentlemen shown you an instrument proving that the iron casket belonged to Tomaso Roncaglia as his own property?”
Baldo drew breath, but Lucetta answered before he could turn the question into procedure.
“No instrument I have seen proves that. Several prove custody.
Some make later claims of ownership. One letter questions whether the casket belonged to the family at all, and another identifies it as the eastern brother's property, which may mean the confraternity, a particular officer, or merely the origin by which the family remembered it. I can tell you what the papers establish; I cannot improve them because one claimant arrived earlier than another.”
“Then we may save time.” Beatrice glanced toward Lapo and Giuliano.
“My claim is not that Tomaso owned the casket.
It is that he held, within or beside it, property placed with Saint Aurelia by my grandmother's mother's house before the eastern losses, and that his heirs afterwards confused custody with inheritance.
If that sounds convenient, it is because nearly every inherited claim sounds convenient to the heir.
I have not ridden here to demand that you accept it on the strength of my name.
I have brought the receipt from which the claim arose, two letters that explain why the receipt survived in my family rather than in a merchant archive, and an inventory made when Margherita Roncaglia d'Orsenna entered widowhood. I want them read against what your houses possess.”
Lapo laughed once. “A widow's inventory proves what a widow said she possessed.”
Beatrice turned her head slowly toward him.
“And a merchant's inventory proves what his clerk wrote down under the eyes of his heirs. If you mean to discard every instrument touched by self-interest, Messer Lapo, we may burn this entire room and go to supper. If instead you mean that an inventory requires comparison, then you have said nothing with which Mistress Verani could disagree.” She extended a hand to her steward. “Gervais.”
The man placed the case before her. He was older than Lucetta had first judged, the skin around his eyes creased by sun rather than study.
Beatrice took a small key from a cord at her waist and opened two brass hooks.
Inside lay three parchment packets wrapped separately in linen.
None was ostentatiously sealed. Lucetta liked that at once.
A fraud intended to impress often arrived with wax enough for a bishop.
Beatrice selected the narrowest packet and passed it across the table without touching Baldo's side of it.
“This is the receipt. Read it aloud if you please. I would rather hear where you hesitate than hear a polished judgment later.”
Lucetta unfolded the parchment. The hand belonged to the last quarter of the thirteenth century, perhaps earlier than the Roncaglia papers she had just examined.
The ink had browned unevenly. Two wormholes cut through the lower lines but spared the names.
She began with the invocation, then the date, translating the Latin where the formula would otherwise confuse the men around the table.
The instrument acknowledged receipt by a representative of the Confraternity of Saint Aurelia of a silver basin, a pair of cups, a belt mounted with gilt silver plaques, and a small sealed packet of stones “for safe keeping and possible pledge toward the ransom or passage of those of the house of Orsenna then overseas.” The depositor was Margherita's father.
The receiving witness was a clerk whose name Lucetta did not know.
More important was the endorsement written in another hand years later: transferred with other pledged effects to the keeping of Master Enrico, shipmaster, under the common seal.
The room became very still.
Adelasia stepped closer. “Show me the endorsement.”
Lucetta angled the parchment. Adelasia read it without touching. “Enrico again.”
Beatrice's eyes sharpened. “You have his name elsewhere.”
“We do,” Lucetta said. “But a name repeated is not yet identity. Enrico is common enough, and a shipmaster more common than a saint's confraternity would like us to believe. Do your letters give him a family name?”
“Not directly. One refers to ‘Enrico who keeps the brethren's ship chest.’ The other says that after news came of his death his widow was to be approached in Ravenna concerning the pledged goods. The widow is not named.” Beatrice rested both hands on the table.
“You may now understand why I was interested when word reached me that the Roncaglia family was quarrelling over an iron casket delivered by a shipmaster's widow.”
Lucetta returned to the parchment. The receipt could be genuine and still prove less than Beatrice hoped.
It established that Orsenna goods entered Saint Aurelia custody, that at least some pledged effects were transferred to a shipmaster named Enrico, and that the common seal was involved.
It did not establish that those goods remained together when Enrico's widow later delivered an iron casket to Tomaso Roncaglia.
It did not establish that any particular stone, cup, or belt survived.
Yet it changed the moral shape of the problem.
The iron casket might never have been a treasure chest in the simple sense whispered by heirs.
It might have become a moving store of other people's property, shifted from officer to officer as institutions failed.
“You said there is a widow's inventory,” Lucetta said.
Beatrice unwrapped the second packet. “Margherita's. Made after her husband's death. She had married into Orsenna and lived there for years, but her brother Tomaso remained involved in some of her financial affairs. This is where the matter becomes disagreeable to my own house.”
“That may be the first encouraging thing you have said,” Adelasia murmured.
Beatrice gave her a direct look. “Because a claimant who admits harm to her own position is more believable?”
“Because a claimant who claims every ancestor behaved nobly is either a fool or has burned half her papers.”
Beatrice nodded. “Then you will enjoy Margherita. She believed her brothers had cheated her.”
The inventory was longer and more complex.
Lucetta read the household goods first, ignoring Lapo's impatience.
Beds, clothing, vessels, rents, two pieces of jewelry described with loving precision, a chest of letters, silver assigned to a daughter, rights in vines, a debt owed by a brother-in-law.
Then came a memorandum inserted between ordinary items: “Concerning the goods of my father's house placed formerly with the brethren of Saint Aurelia, which my brother Tomaso says are still held under seal and not to be divided.” A later line, written by the notary recording Margherita's instructions, said she reserved whatever hereditary right she possessed “if the eastern pledge be redeemed or restored.”
Giuliano leaned back. “That is not possession.”
“No,” Lucetta said. “It is evidence that Margherita believed the goods still existed and that Tomaso told her they remained under seal.”
Lapo pointed at the date. “It is after Enrico's death.”
“Yes.”
“And after the casket is supposed to have reached Tomaso.”
“Yes.”
“Then it proves the casket contained the Orsenna property.”
“No.” Lucetta kept one finger on the line.
“It proves Tomaso told his sister that goods connected to Saint Aurelia remained under seal. He may have meant the casket. He may have meant a separate packet. He may have lied. She may have misunderstood. If we later find a document linking the casket to this pledge, the two pieces strengthen each other. Alone, they do not become one merely because the dates are convenient.”
Beatrice looked pleased rather than offended. “That is why I asked for you.”
Lapo stared at her. “She has just weakened your case.”
“She has described my case. I can hire men to flatter it in Bologna.”
Adelasia's laugh was softer this time, with genuine amusement in it. “I begin to understand why you travelled without a husband to speak for you.”
“My husband has been dead eight years.” The answer was neither cold nor inviting. “His brothers speak very well for themselves and therefore imagine they can speak for everyone. Widowhood has disadvantages. It also removes one kind of permission.”