Chapter 6 The Missing Packet #5
“No. But he may tell us where someone else did.”
Ziani stared for a moment, decided the explanation would not improve with detail, and turned away.
By noon, the company had their baggage again.
Lucetta's chest now carried a repaired staple fitted by Orsino himself, who used one of his own nails and struck it with such offended force that the customs clerk moved farther down the room.
Ser Matteo provided a written statement that one packet of papers had been unlawfully removed while the chest stood under seal and that fragments believed to belong to those papers had been recovered from the red fish shed.
It was not proof of the depositions' contents, but it was proof that something had been stolen.
Lucetta read the statement twice.
“Keep it,” Ser Matteo said.
“I intend to.”
“I assumed so.”
There was almost respect between them now, though neither would have named it.
Outside the customs house, the light had become harsh. Salt dust shone white along the road. Men pushed barrows beneath the sun. Somewhere a bell marked the hour, thin against the cries from the sheds.
Bertran flexed his bandaged hand once.
Lucetta saw and frowned.
“It does not hurt,” he said.
“I did not ask.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to tell you that if you tear the bandage by pretending nothing happened, Brother Odelin will make the next one tighter out of spite.”
Odelin, walking behind them, said, “I had not considered it. I do now.”
Bertran sighed.
Naldo pointed south. “The old gate district is that way. I found a salt carrier who remembers a Marelli family, but he wants money before he remembers more.”
Adelasia said, “How much?”
“Too much.”
“How much?”
Naldo named the sum.
Adelasia stopped walking. “For memory?”
“He says old memory costs more because there is less of it.”
“That man has the soul of a banker.”
Niccolò said, “My employer will pay.”
Everyone turned toward him.
He lifted both hands. “You may dislike the source of the coin after we learn the destination.”
Adelasia considered, then smiled without warmth. “At last, Messer Corrado's cooperation becomes useful in a manner I understand.”
They walked south between salt sheds and low houses while the afternoon heat gathered.
Lucetta carried the surviving fragments inside her document case, separated from every other paper by clean linen.
The missing packet had become three scraps, a remembered name, a wife with a food stall, a red fish sign, a damaged drainage channel, and a direction toward older water routes.
It should have felt like loss.
Instead, the road had narrowed.
Adelasia fell into step beside her while the others moved ahead. For several paces neither woman spoke. The salt carrier's district lay beyond a row of sheds whose walls had been patched with boards from old boats, and every open doorway seemed to contain someone watching someone else work.
“At Ravenna,” Adelasia said at last, “you treated the depositions as though the paper itself were the witness. That is what notaries teach, because paper is less troublesome than people and generally remains where it is put. Yet Giacomo used to say a merchant account was only the shadow cast by a bargain. Burn the page and the bargain may still have left a scar on three households, a debt in one shop, a widow who remembers waiting, and a porter who cursed the weight. I thought him self-important when he said it. I find myself irritated that death has made him wiser.”
Lucetta looked at her. “You remembered the beans.”
“I remembered a woman trying to earn money while her husband was late. That is not the same thing.”
“It is precisely the same thing today.”
Adelasia's mouth tightened, not quite a smile.
“Then remember this also. Whoever stole those papers thinks documents are dangerous enough to burn. Do not answer by believing documents are therefore all that matter. If Marelli is dead, find the person who cursed him. If his wife is dead, find who bought beans from her. If the shed is empty, ask who stole its boards. Men who plan these things imagine they can erase a line. They are less successful at erasing the inconveniences of ordinary life.”
Lucetta touched the document case beneath her cloak.
The three burned fragments inside were lighter than the packet had been, almost nothing in weight.
Yet around them now gathered the boy at the warehouse, the cut floor, Bertran's torn hand, Naldo's knowledge of old channels, Adelasia's remembered stall, and Ser Matteo's offended seal.
Evidence had ceased to be a bundle. It had become a company of unwilling witnesses.
Behind them, the customs house began its own search for a man with a scar.
Ahead, Naldo led them toward a carrier who sold memory at merchant prices.
Somewhere beyond Cervia, perhaps already warned by the same rider who had described them so precisely, another man believed the packet was gone and the trail with it.
Lucetta thought of the burned edge beneath her fingers.
He was wrong.