Chapter 9 The Island House #5
Not one of the Saint Aurelia keys, but a thin piece of horn, pierced for a cord, found years earlier among old storeroom debris and kept because a former cellarer had used it to scrape wax from a candle stand. One side bore a scratched merchant mark. The other had three letters.
P. V.
Orsino examined it.
"It tells us Pietro Varesi owned a label."
Canon Leone looked offended. "You could permit an old man one dramatic gesture."
"Drama damages evidence."
Lucetta took the tag. The merchant mark resembled one she had seen on the torn Santa Marta fragment, though not closely enough to declare identity without comparison.
Adelasia saw her hesitation. "Related?"
"Possibly. Not identical."
"Good," Bertran said.
Lucetta ignored him.
Canon Leone permitted them to copy the mark. The original remained with the house.
After supper Niccolò wrote Corrado's message. Lucetta dictated the substance while Adelasia watched as though each word cost silver.
They had found evidence that Martino de Marelli died at the island house while carrying an iron-bound coffer and sealed letters.
The effects were delivered to Pietro Varesi in the presence of a Chioggian shipmaster.
Later evidence connected Varesi to a specified fortified harbor.
The company intended to proceed there when transport allowed.
Originals remained in ecclesiastical custody.
Niccolò sanded the letter.
"He will know we have omitted details."
"We are permitted to omit details not necessary to the material location," Lucetta said.
"He will know that too."
"Then your employer hired a literate man."
Adelasia said, "Send it when we sail."
Niccolò looked at Lucetta.
She nodded.
The agreement had teeth at both ends. It did not require them to place their own ankle beneath the jaw.
Before bed, Odelin returned the registers to Canon Leone.
The old canon laid one hand on the burial book.
"You will go north tomorrow and perhaps find what Martino carried.
Perhaps you will find only another dead man's receipt.
Before you leave, remember something I have learned from keeping names no one comes back to read.
Men believe records preserve truth. They do not.
They preserve what someone thought worth writing, in the words he knew, on the day he had enough ink.
That is less than truth and more than memory. Treat the difference carefully."
Lucetta answered him with unusual humility. "I will try."
"Good. People who promise certainty are either young or selling something."
Adelasia said, "Usually both."
The next morning the wind came from the west.
Ziani sent a boy to the gate before sunrise.
The Stella Maris would sail.
The house stirred around them as they packed.
Naldo argued for his second boot until a servant produced an old sandal that could be tied loosely around the swollen ankle.
Ysoria confiscated his staff again and then gave it back only after extracting a promise he would not climb rigging.
Orsino checked the keys. Bertran divided papers between three satchels.
Odelin wrapped the copies in waxed cloth.
Adelasia paid for their hospitality despite Canon Leone's objections and then paid separately for the damage Naldo had done to a stool while trying to stand without help.
"The stool was weak," Naldo protested.
"So are you," Adelasia said. "I am paying for both."
At the gate Canon Leone blessed them.
Lucetta looked once toward the cemetery.
Martino de Marelli had died there because a ship would not wait.
Pietro Varesi had died there because a later journey ended badly.
Neither had known that forty years afterward strangers would follow the ink left by their deaths.
At the landing the morning sea looked harmless.
Lucetta no longer trusted harmless water.
They rowed out to Stella Maris under a pale sky. Ziani stood at the rail, watching each of them climb aboard with the severe attention of a man who had recently been reminded how many ways passengers could become cargo.
When Naldo reached the deck, Ziani pointed to a coil of rope near the mast.
"Sit there."
"I can work."
"You can sit."
"I know ships."
"Then you know captains."
Naldo sat.
Niccolò handed his sealed message to one of Ziani's shore contacts before the boat returned to the landing. The messenger would carry it after the tide turned, honestly and not rapidly.
Adelasia watched the letter disappear toward the gate.
"I dislike agreements," she said.
Lucetta stood beside her. "You make them for a living."
"Exactly. That is why I know what they cost."
The anchor came up.
Sails took wind.
The island house receded astern.
Ahead, somewhere beyond the visible curve of coast, lay the fortified harbor named in Pietro Varesi's burial entry.
They still did not know whether the Shipmaster's Key had ever entered it.
They knew only that a dead man had carried an iron-bound coffer north, that another had received it, that the second had returned from that harbor years later, and that someone else had once come searching after Saint Aurelia property.
For Lucetta, that was not certainty.
It was enough to move.