Chapter 6 The Missing Packet
They made the list three times.
The first was Lucetta's, written from memory in the order in which she had packed the chest at Ravenna.
The second was Adelasia's, arranged not by bundle but by value: which papers could establish custody, which could embarrass a family, which could support a creditor, which might be sold to someone who wished to know where the company intended to go.
The third was Bertran's, and he refused to write it at all.
He sat beside the shuttered window while Lucetta read names aloud and answered each with a question.
“Gherardo Bellandi's copy of the warehouse account.”
“Could it tell them where we travel next?”
“No.”
“Could it tell them who helped us?”
“Yes.”
“Then it has value.”
“The Santa Marta receipt.”
“Original?”
“Copy.”
“Could the copy prove where the casket went?”
“Only with the ledger reference.”
“Are they packed together?”
Lucetta stopped.
Adelasia looked up from the table. “They were.”
Bertran said, “Then separate value is irrelevant.”
Orsino, who had been pacing between bed and wall, said, “If anyone has opened that box, he will discover four files, two punches, a narrow saw, and my smallest hammer before he discovers anything worth stealing. I hope he cuts himself.”
Odelin said, “That would be a poor basis for identifying him.”
“I did not say I wished to identify him. I said I wished him injured.”
Ysoria returned after compline with wet dust on her boots and irritation in every line of her face.
She had found the courier stable that handled official messages from Ravenna and learned little that could be proved.
A rider had arrived shortly before noon the previous day, changed horses, and delivered sealed papers at the port office.
The stable boy remembered the horse because it had foam dried beneath the saddle cloth and a split near fore hoof.
He did not remember the rider's face except that the man had paid in good silver and had not bargained.
“That means someone wanted speed more than economy,” Adelasia said.
Ysoria removed her gloves. “It means the rider wanted speed. The person who paid him may be careful with coin in every other matter. Do not build a merchant from a stable boy's memory.”
Adelasia accepted the correction with a nod.
Lucetta asked, “Could he have left Ravenna after we made the agreement with Corrado?”
“If he had a fresh horse waiting between the cities and knew the road better than most, perhaps. But I would not wager on it. More likely the notice was prepared before we embarked, perhaps before Ziani agreed to carry us.”
Bertran turned from the window. “Then the watcher did not merely see us leave.”
“No.”
“They knew where we meant to go.”
Niccolò had not yet returned.
The absence entered the room like another person.
Adelasia said, “Do not begin that quarrel without evidence.”
“I have not begun anything.”
“You are looking at the door as though Corrado himself were standing behind it with a knife.”
Bertran's face remained unreadable. “Corrado prefers witnesses when he uses a knife.”
Lucetta said, “The agreement could have leaked without his consent.
Niccolò knew the route. Ziani knew it. Beatrice knew we meant to follow the coast, though not that we had passage with Ziani.
Bellandi's household knew enough to guess.
Agnese's household knew more. Anyone watching the quay could have learned the ship's destination from a sailor for less than the price of supper.”
“That is the problem,” Bertran said. “Too many people know pieces. We keep asking who possesses the whole answer when an enemy needs only the next mile.”
Odelin folded his hands over his knees. “Then perhaps our protection does not lie in secrecy alone. A secret shared among eight companions, a factor, a widow, a shipmaster, two family branches and whatever servants attend them is no longer a secret in any useful sense. We should ask instead which facts cannot be used against us even when known.”
Orsino snorted. “You have turned concealment into theology.”
“No. I have turned it into arithmetic. We have more mouths than locks.”
Lucetta smiled despite the pressure behind her eyes.
They worked until the lamp oil ran low. At last the likely target narrowed to three bundles left in Lucetta's chest: copies of the Ravenna ledger references; a packet of depositions concerning the Roncaglia grandfather's dealings with Santa Marta; and a thin set of notes made by Lucetta while comparing dates in the two family claims. None seemed independently decisive.
Together they showed not merely that a casket had gone toward the coast, but that the grandfather had continued paying storage and handling charges after he supposedly transferred the object to an heir.
That contradiction had been the reason Lucetta believed neither branch had ever possessed the key.
“If someone steals those papers,” Adelasia said, “we still know what they said.”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
Lucetta touched her forehead. “I remember the pattern. I do not remember every date, every witness, every amount. A court does not accept that I have a good memory.”
Odelin said, “Nor should it.”
“Thank you, Brother.”
“You are welcome.”
Bertran asked, “Could we reconstruct them?”
“From Ravenna, yes, if Bellandi and Agnese allow access again. That costs weeks. Perhaps more.”
Ysoria said, “Weeks are enough for the rider to cross half the north of Italy.”
Silence returned.
Lucetta gathered the papers still in her document case and tied them again.
“Then we assume the packet may be taken. Tomorrow, before we touch the baggage, we have the seals examined in front of witnesses. We do not accuse customs unless the seals are broken. We do not accuse Corrado. We do not accuse Beatrice. We count first.”
Bertran said, “And if everything is there?”
“Then I shall be delighted to have been frightened by honest officials.”
“You will be offended.”
“I can be both.”
They slept badly and in turns.
Before dawn Bertran woke Lucetta because someone had crossed the yard behind the lodging house and stopped beneath their window.
By the time he reached the street, the person was gone.
There were footprints in damp refuse and no proof they belonged to anyone more dangerous than a servant taking a shortcut.
Bertran returned without satisfaction. He did not lie down again.
At prime, Niccolò came back.
He looked as though he had not slept at all.
“Corrado has answered,” he said.
Adelasia stared at him. “From Ravenna between dusk and prime?”
“No. I sent a man north with the facts. I also opened the packet of standing instructions my employer gave me before we left.”
Bertran's expression sharpened. “Standing instructions.”
Niccolò met the look without retreat. “Yes. He anticipated obstruction. He did not anticipate this form of it.”
Lucetta said, “What do they authorize?”
“To retain a procurator if municipal process threatens the partnership's claim, to pay surety within a stated sum, to request copies of any instrument naming Salviati interests, and to protest seizure of documents not described in the notice.”
“Convenient.”
“Competent.”
“Those are sometimes the same thing.”
Niccolò took out a folded parchment. “More important, he instructed me that if the notice appears to have been issued on private information rather than a sworn claim, I am to ask whether the informer deposited security against malicious accusation.”
Adelasia's face changed. “Did they?”
“I have not yet asked. I wanted Mistress Verani present because she will hear a lie differently than I do.”
Lucetta looked at Bertran.
He said, “Go. Odelin with you. Adelasia too. Ysoria stays here. Orsino stays because if his tools are released he will count them twice. Naldo finds out who worked the warehouse last night. I watch the yard.”
Orsino said, “Three times.”
“No one is surprised.”
The port officer received them after terce in a chamber above the customs hall.
He was a heavier man than Ser Matteo, with thinning hair, rings on two fingers, and a habit of looking at documents as if deciding whether they were worth the trouble they caused.
Ser Matteo stood beside him. The clerk from the previous day sat at a lower table.
Niccolò presented Corrado's protest in formal language. Lucetta listened rather than speaking until he reached the question of security.
The port officer said, “No security was deposited because no accusation of theft was made.”
Niccolò replied, “Then what legal injury was alleged?”
“Possible evasion of duties on portable commercial property.”
“By persons most of whom are not merchants.”
“The notice described a commercial undertaking.”
Adelasia said, “An undertaking can be commercial in one respect and private in another. I may carry my husband's letters while travelling with a factor. The factor's presence does not turn my marriage into cargo.”
The port officer pressed thumb and finger against his brow. “Madonna, nobody has taxed your marriage.”
“Not yet.”
Lucetta stepped in before impatience became insult.
“Messer, we do not ask you to decide who owns Saint Aurelia property.
We ask whether the notice identified an actual taxable object or merely described our company.
Yesterday's inspection showed no undeclared goods. If the notice named no object, continued detention serves no customs purpose.”
The port officer looked toward Ser Matteo. “Did the inspection find anything?”
“No.”
“Any discrepancy in the manifest?”
“None concerning the passengers.”
“Any sealed correspondence opened?”
“No.”
“Any object specifically named in the notice?”
Ser Matteo hesitated. “There was no specific object.”
Niccolò exhaled through his nose.
Lucetta kept her voice level. “Then someone purchased a day's delay by giving you an accurate description of us and an inaccurate implication concerning our baggage.”
Ser Matteo said, “No one purchased me.”