Chapter 5 Customs #2
The wind freshened after midday, and with it Lucetta's confidence in her stomach weakened.
She had endured worse seas in memory than the one beneath them, but memory did not roll beneath her feet.
She concentrated on a bundle of copied abstracts from Ravenna, comparing references to Santa Marta with the list of ports Ziani had named.
The old casket had left the land. That much had become certain.
What remained uncertain was whether it had remained one object through the next decades, whether the key had remained inside it, and whether the men pursuing Saint Aurelia property had known the difference between the strongbox and the key.
Bertran sat beside her after a time.
“You are reading the same line.”
“I am considering it.”
“You have considered it six times.”
She shut the paper. “You have been watching me read.”
“I have been watching whether you turn green.”
“That is an intolerable use of professional vigilance.”
“You may complain when the deck stops moving.”
“The deck has not moved. The sea has.”
“Ziani would approve.”
She looked at him. “You are enjoying this.”
“No.” His expression remained solemn. “I am enjoying that someone else dislikes it more.”
Lucetta would have answered, but Ziani's call from forward changed the quality of every movement on deck.
Sailors shifted. Naldo stopped smiling. The coast had come nearer again, low and pale beneath afternoon light.
A line of buildings stood beyond the water, with wooden structures extending toward channels and barges moving like dark insects between them.
Cervia.
The smell reached them first: brine intensified by evaporation, mud, smoke, fish, and something mineral that seemed to dry the tongue.
Ziani had them lower sail before the harbor approach.
A pilot boat came out. Questions were exchanged.
Papers changed hands. Stella Maris proceeded more slowly among salt craft and cargo boats, past sheds roofed in reed and tile, past men rolling barrels, past piles covered against damp.
Lucetta saw white everywhere: crust on boards, pale residue on boots, the brightness of salt beneath shelter, the powder that clung to clothing and made laborers look older at a distance.
They had nearly reached the assigned berth when the first customs official came aboard.
He was not Hugues Feraud, nor any hired sword. He was a narrow man of perhaps fifty with a clean-shaven jaw, a dark civic mantle, and two assistants carrying wax tablets. His authority was written not in armor but in the confidence with which Ziani stopped speaking when he approached.
“Shipmaster.”
“Ser Matteo.”
“Manifest.”
Ziani produced it.
Ser Matteo read slowly, one finger marking each entry. He asked the origin of the wax, the owner of the worked metal, the measure of oil, the number of paying passengers. His assistants counted. The process was ordinary enough that Bertran's shoulders relaxed by a degree.
Then Ser Matteo reached Niccolò's name.
“Commercial agent?”
Niccolò inclined his head. “For a Florentine partnership.”
“Which?”
“Salviati and associates.”
The official looked up.
Lucetta saw the moment. It was not alarm. It was recognition followed by caution.
“Your papers.”
Niccolò produced Corrado's letter and the copy of the cooperation agreement. Ser Matteo read both. He did not return them immediately.
“This vessel will discharge only after inspection.”
Ziani said, “The cargo has been declared.”
“Yes.”
“And the duties calculated.”
“Yes.”
“Then what remains?”
Ser Matteo folded the papers. “Passengers' baggage.”
Adelasia stepped forward before Bertran could. “Under what cause?”
The official's eyes moved to her. “And you are?”
“Adelasia Roncaglia, widow of Giacomo Roncaglia.”
This name also produced recognition, though of a different kind.
“Your baggage will be examined with the rest.”
“Messer, I did not ask whether my baggage would be examined. I asked under what cause.”
The deck had gone quiet around them. Men who worked for wages had learned to become deaf near disputes involving taxes.
Ser Matteo answered in a tone that suggested he had answered similar questions for twenty years.
“A notice reached the office yesterday concerning undeclared commercial papers and portable goods believed to be moving through this port. The notice does not accuse you by name. It instructs us to inspect baggage carried by persons travelling under certain commercial protections.”
Niccolò said softly, “Whose notice?”
“You know better than to ask me to disclose an informing party on a quay.”
“I know enough to ask whether there is one.”
“There is.”
Lucetta stepped closer. “You said portable goods. Are you seeking coin, plate, jewels, merchandise, or instruments?”
Ser Matteo looked at her for the first time with interest. “Instruments may have value.”
“That is not an answer either.”
“No. It is sufficient.”
She felt Bertran's attention settle on her, warning without touch.
Lucetta continued anyway. “If your notice concerns undeclared merchandise, private correspondence and evidentiary papers are not merchandise merely because a merchant has touched them. If it concerns stolen goods, you must identify the property claimed. If it concerns prohibited export, say what prohibition you mean. You cannot search every written thing carried by a traveller and decide afterward which law might justify your curiosity.”
Ser Matteo's expression hardened by no visible degree, yet the air changed.
“You speak like a notary.”
“My father was one.”
“That is not the same office.”
“No.” Lucetta held his gaze. “It is why I know the limits of what I may claim.”
Adelasia made a sound that might have been a cough.
Ser Matteo returned Niccolò's agreement but kept the letter from Corrado.
“Your baggage will be sealed here and taken to the customs house. You may accompany it. The inspection will occur before two witnesses. Papers bearing private seals will not be opened unless the notice requires it or a competent authority orders it. If you object, you may present that objection to the port officer.”
Ziani said, “And my cargo?”
“Discharge may begin after tally.”
“So the ship is not detained.”
“No.”
Bertran spoke for the first time. “Only us.”
Ser Matteo met his eyes. “Only baggage fitting the notice.”
“How does baggage fit words?”
“By belonging to people named in descriptions.”
“Which descriptions?”
The official looked almost weary. “A man-at-arms, a merchant widow, a woman carrying notarial papers, a monk, a craftsman with iron tools, an Istrian sailor, and a mounted courier are not a common pilgrimage company.”
Naldo said, “You make us sound organized.”
No one laughed.
The knowledge landed among them with more force than an accusation.
Someone had described the company.
Not generally. Precisely.
Bertran's posture changed completely now. He no longer watched Ser Matteo as the immediate threat. He watched the quay, the roofs beyond it, the men carrying sacks, the doorways between warehouses.
Ysoria said, “When did the notice arrive?”
“Yesterday.”
“By road?”
Ser Matteo hesitated.
“That is not a privileged question,” she said. “I am not asking who sent it. I am asking whether it came by rider, boat, or ordinary post.”
“Rider.”
“From the north?”
“I did not say that.”
“You did not need to.”
Adelasia turned to Lucetta. “We knew someone watched the road from Ravenna. We did not know they could move ahead of us.”
Ysoria's face had become very still. “If they left before we did, yes. If they left after, they changed horses.”
Bertran said, “Or had a relay waiting.”
Niccolò swore under his breath.
Ser Matteo motioned to his assistants. “You may debate couriers after the seals are applied.”
The baggage was brought together under the official's eye.
Lucetta's chest, Adelasia's two cases, Odelin's small trunk, Orsino's tool box, Ysoria's travelling roll, Niccolò's merchant satchel, Naldo's sea bag, and Bertran's spare pack were corded separately.
Wax seals were pressed over knots. Each was marked on a tablet.
Bertran did not surrender the Notary's Key.
Orsino did not surrender the other two.
No official asked them to empty their clothing.
Lucetta registered that distinction carefully. Whatever notice had reached Cervia, its author either did not know exactly where the keys were kept or had chosen not to name them. That was useful. It was also frightening.
As the first chest was lowered to the quay, Orsino leaned close to her.
“If they touch my tools badly, I shall become political.”
“You are already political.”
“I shall become violent politics.”
“You will do nothing until Bertran says so.”
Orsino stared at her. “I preferred you when you believed documents could prevent everything.”
“So did I.”
They went ashore under watch.
The customs house stood beside a series of salt warehouses, its stone lower walls whitened by dust and its upper timber dark with weather.
The room assigned for inspection had a broad table, two shuttered windows, shelves of tablets and bundles, and a crucifix on the wall above the official's chair.
A clerk sat beneath it with ink, quills, and the patient misery of a man who expected everyone entering the room to lie.
Ser Matteo named two witnesses: a port clerk and an older warehouse master. Lucetta approved of the choice despite herself. Neither appeared attached to Corrado, the Roncaglia family, or any known claimant.
The seals were shown intact before each cord was cut.
Adelasia's cases came first. Clothing. Account books.
Two purses. Letters. A small silver spoon wrapped in linen.
Ser Matteo asked whether the spoon was declared.
Adelasia replied that if the commune intended to tax the instrument with which widows ate broth, it ought first to provide better broth.
The warehouse master laughed. Ser Matteo did not.
Odelin's trunk produced books, linen, medicines, a wooden rosary, and enough letters of introduction to make the clerk sigh.