Chapter 4 Messer Corrados Proposal
The first warning came from Ysoria before the salt pans were fully visible.
She appeared on the embankment ahead as though the wind had placed her there, her borrowed grey mare lathered lightly at the neck but not blown.
She raised one hand, palm outward. Bertran stopped the party with a gesture.
The formal group behind them compressed awkwardly: Pietro Bellan swore at the sudden halt, Giuliano's servant nearly rode into Beatrice's groom, and Brother Odelin's mule took the opportunity to lower its head toward a strip of grass.
Ysoria waited until Bertran reached her rather than carrying news back to every listening ear.
Lucetta saw his face alter before he returned.
“Two mounted men passed the lower crossing before sunrise,” he said.
“They asked whether Bellan had opened the store yet.
One used the name of a Ferrara creditor.
Ysoria knows that creditor's courier and says neither man serves him.”
Pietro Bellan's jaw tightened. “Men ask when I open because they want salt.”
“Then they chose a strange day to lie about whose salt.” Bertran looked along the embankment.
Flat ground gave an illusion of safety because danger could be seen far off, but reeds and drainage banks cut the plain into narrow corridors.
“We keep moving. No one leaves the road alone. Naldo stays ahead of the carts. Ysoria goes behind and tells us if anyone follows.”
Baldo had sent Giuliano as the younger branch representative after all, perhaps trusting the more measured son-in-law to avoid a public quarrel.
Agnese's branch was represented by Matteo, who had inherited his mother's suspicion without her patience.
He turned toward Bertran. “You have no authority over my men.”
“No. The road does.” Bertran pointed toward the water lying against the lower ditch. “If your men want to ride three abreast and discover which part is mud, they may. I will not pull them out.”
Beatrice's steward Gervais hid a smile by adjusting his reins.
The Bellan store stood on slightly raised ground beside a canal broad enough for shallow cargo boats.
It was less impressive than the years of paper quarrels suggested: a long timber-and-brick warehouse, two attached sheds, a counting room with shutters painted once-red, and a yard hard-packed by wheels.
Salt whitened the lower boards. Men moved sacks beneath an awning while another crew unloaded barrels from a flat-bottomed boat.
The smell was mineral, wet wood, horse dung and fish from somewhere farther down the canal.
Lucetta understood at once why everyone who spoke of the “house of salt account” had imagined permanence.
Businesses loved names that concealed how often walls were rebuilt.
Pietro dismounted and became another man.
In Ravenna he had been a grandson summoned by an imperious widow.
Here every worker looked toward him before making a decision.
He gave orders rapidly: no carts to leave until inspection ended, no stranger admitted to the counting room, ordinary trade to continue so the store did not become a theatre.
Bertran approved of that last order. “A closed yard tells anyone watching that something unusual is inside.”
“An open yard tells them they can walk in,” Matteo objected.
“A working yard tells us which strangers do not belong.”
The receiving ledger lay in a cupboard inside.
It was as poor an object as Pietro had promised: boards warped, leather cracked, sewing loose at three stations, corners polished by hands.
Lucetta would have trusted it before a jeweled charter.
Working books were often ugly because people used them.
She and Odelin took the table nearest the window.
Representatives stood behind them. Bertran remained by the outer door.
Naldo drifted through the yard pretending interest in cargo, while Ysoria had not returned.
The first leaves contained ordinary entries.
Salt by measure. Timber. Empty barrels. Linen sacks.
Advances against expected deliveries. Two pledged bundles of wool.
A chest of tools left overnight by a smith.
Lucetta turned leaves slowly, following the old dates.
The handwriting changed. Stefano Bellan's period began with a neater clerk and wider margins.
Then, three leaves after the year Rinaldo died, she found an entry whose plainness made her heartbeat stumble.
“One iron-bound casket,” she read. “Received sealed from Master Giacomo Roncaglia's clerk, to remain in the inner store until instructions of T.R. concerning the eastern deposit. No opening. No inventory. Charge to private account.”
Matteo pushed closer. “T.R. is Tomaso.”
Giuliano said, “Likely.”
“Likely?” Matteo rounded on him. “Whose account would it be if not his?”
Lucetta lifted a hand. “Let me finish.” Beneath the entry appeared a small mark rather than a name, then a later note: “Removed by sea carriage under sealed warrant. Charges paid by C.S. factor. Receipt retained separately.”
Every person in the room spoke at once.
Adelasia's voice cut through. “Silence. Lucetta, read it again.”
She did.
Beatrice came around the table. “Removed by sea carriage. Then it did not remain here.”
“Not if the note is accurate.”
“C.S.?” Giuliano asked.
Baldo was not present to restrain him, and for the first time anxiety showed clearly. “Corrado Salviati.”
Lucetta's head came up. “The initials fit.”
Adelasia's face had gone hard. “They fit too well.”
Matteo struck the table with the side of his fist. “Salviati's people removed family property?”
“Do not improve the entry,” Lucetta said sharply.
“It says charges were paid by a C.S. factor. It does not say who ordered removal, who received the casket, or whether the factor acted for Corrado Salviati personally. This ledger is older than some of his present partnership claims. There may be another Salviati, another C.S., another factor entirely.”
Adelasia shook her head. “Corrado's house has been buying old Saint Aurelia obligations for years. If this is coincidence, it has dressed very carefully.”
Orsino leaned over the ledger without touching. “Where is the separate receipt?”
Pietro swore.
He crossed to the cupboard and removed three bundles.
None contained it. A second cupboard yielded freight receipts from later years.
The private account book named in the entry was absent.
Pietro called his oldest clerk, a white-haired man who had worked under Pietro's father.
The clerk remembered a packet of obsolete receipts moved to an upper store after damp entered the counting room twelve years before.
He remembered no casket. He remembered no Salviati.
He did remember, after much thought, that one old packet bore a painted black circle and had been kept apart because “the gentlemen from the sea company” once asked for it.
“What sea company?” Adelasia asked.
The clerk lifted helpless hands. “Madonna, I was twenty. Every man with a cloak and a sealed letter was a gentleman to me.”
They searched the upper store. Dust lay thick on rafters. The packet with the black circle was gone.
Bertran came up after them. “Ysoria is back.”
They descended.
She waited in the yard beside her mare. “The two mounted men did not leave. One is across the canal at a tavern hut used by boatmen. The other rode south. A third rider met him on the road and turned east with a message. I followed far enough to see they are changing horses at a farm two miles on. Someone is paying for speed.”
Pietro Bellan looked toward his clerks. “No worker leaves.”
“That will not stop the message already gone,” Ysoria said. “And if you lock everyone inside, the honest men become angry while whoever sold the news learns only that you noticed.”
Pietro looked at Bertran as if expecting contradiction. Bertran nodded. “Keep the yard working.”
A shout came from the yard.
Bertran moved first. By the time Lucetta reached the door, Naldo had a boy by the sleeve beside a stack of empty barrels. The boy could not have been more than fourteen. He was thin, bareheaded, and furious rather than frightened. A folded strip of paper lay in the mud near his foot.
“He came through the canal gate,” Naldo said. “Not to steal. To deliver.”
The boy spat toward him. “I was paid to give it to the Paduan reader.”
Every gaze turned to Lucetta.
Bertran picked up the paper before she could. The outer fold carried no seal, only her name in a clerk's hand. He opened it, read, then gave it to her.
MISTRESS VERANI,
YOU HAVE NOW SEEN ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT WE ARE FOLLOWING THE SAME OBJECT FOR DIFFERENT REASONS.
IF YOU LEAVE BELLAN'S STORE BY THE NORTH ROAD, YOU WILL FIND ME AT THE CHAPEL OF SAN VITALE BY THE OLD CAUSEWAY BEFORE THE AFTERNOON BELL.
COME WITH MADONNA ADELASIA RONCAGLIA AND SER ALBARIC IF YOU WISH.
brING NO KEY. I WILL brING NO ARMED COMPANY.
IF YOU PREFER THAT OUR NEXT MEETING OCCUR BEFORE A MAGISTRATE, I CAN ARRANGE THAT ALSO, THOUGH IT WILL COST US BOTH TIME.
C. SALVIATI
Adelasia read over her shoulder. “There. He has saved us the trouble of wondering whether the initials are his.”
Matteo reached for the note. Bertran moved it out of reach.
“It concerns partnership property,” Matteo said.
“It was addressed to Lucetta.”
“Your distinction is becoming tiresome.”
“Good distinctions often are,” Lucetta said, folding the note.
Beatrice stood in the doorway. “You will meet him.”
It was not a question.
“Yes.”