Chapter 12 Before the Gates Close #4
"You would rather leave it sealed while armed men enter the city?"
"I would rather open it once, correctly, with every present claimant and witness named, than tear it apart because a bell frightens us.
We can do that here. But first we must know whether the locks can be opened without destroying evidence and whether the room can be defended long enough to inventory the contents. "
Beatrice's impatience did not soften, but it became more precise.
"You speak as though procedure were a wall.
It is not. A written witness may protect us next month when men argue over ownership; it cannot protect this coffer if the warehouse is entered before sunset.
My family has preserved the claim precisely because some earlier steward refused to open what he had no warrant to open.
If I repeat his caution until the object is stolen, I shall have imitated his virtue and lost his result. "
Lucetta answered, "Then we distinguish caution from paralysis.
We know the coffer has two locks. We do not know whether either key survives, whether the locks were altered, whether opening one damages the other, or whether the contents have shifted against the lid.
Orsino can tell us some of that before iron is forced.
Meanwhile Niccolò can finish the witness instrument, Brother Paolo can attest the condition, and you can add your family's description.
Those are not delays for the pleasure of parchment.
They are the difference between finding a key and later proving where it was found. "
Niccolò lifted his pen. "And I would prefer not to write, 'At this point all parties became frightened by a horn and abandoned the clauses they had spent weeks defending.' Messer Corrado would quote that sentence until I died."
Adelasia said, "He would improve the grammar first."
Even Giuliano gave a short unwilling breath that might have been laughter. The sound broke some of the pressure without relieving it.
Beatrice looked at the coffer again. "Very well.
But understand me, Mistress Verani. If the locksmith says it can be opened cleanly, I will not consent to carrying it through a city in uproar merely so that everyone may feel virtuous about an unopened box.
We inventory here, under witness, and we decide custody item by item if we must. I will not permit Corrado's clerk to call the entire contents creditor property, and I will not permit your company to call the key yours merely because Saint Aurelia appears in your papers. "
Lucetta nodded. "Agreed. And I will not permit your family inventory to turn private deposits into d'Orsenna inheritance.
If the coffer contains twenty different obligations, then we may leave this room with twenty different answers.
That is less comfortable than a single claim, but comfort has never been evidence. "
Brother Paolo, who had spent the morning trying not to become adventurous, said, "I begin to understand why canon lawyers age badly."
Odelin looked at him. "You are learning quickly."
From the quay came the grinding complaint of heavy timber and chain.
Naldo's head snapped toward the sound. "That is the boom gear," he said.
"They are not merely warning ships now." Ziani's deckhand, who had remained near the stair, crossed himself and muttered that the captain would already be cursing every authority in Christendom.
Bertran asked how long the mechanism required.
The man spread both hands. "With a full crew at the capstan, not long.
With half the harbor shouting contrary orders, longer. But not long enough to waste."
Outside, the harbor answered with another bell, and every man in the room heard urgency become something solid.
Orsino put both hands on his knees and rose.
"At last, someone asks the locksmith before ordering the lock."
He bent over the first keyway.
Outside, another horn sounded from the harbor mouth.
Bertran stood between the coffer and the stair, sword still sheathed but hand resting near the hilt.
"Work quickly," he said.
Orsino looked up with deep offense. "There is no faster method of making a craftsman slow."
"Then imagine I said nothing."
"I shall imagine you were born mute."
He returned to the lock.
Lucetta watched his hands and listened to the city closing around them.
For years the fourth key had been a line in a list, an office without a holder, a possibility carried from one record to another. Now there was only oak, iron, witnesses, two unknown locks, and the measured movements of a craftsman who refused to be hurried into error.
Somewhere beyond the warehouse walls men were running to gates. Ships were shifting berth. Militia were climbing the wall. The harbor boom was rising or falling into place. Their enemies, whoever had cut the water latch, knew the building.
The coffer remained shut.
For the moment, that was not failure.
It was the last protection they possessed against everyone who wanted what might be inside.