Chapter 120: The 1205 Season Accounts

The lamp had burned down to a blue finger, and yet Vito was still wide awake.

Caterina lay across his chest, her braid loose over his shoulder, her breath slow and damp against his neck.

He grinned at the ceiling without the need to say why.

"Numbers... one more... time..." Caterina murmured into his ribs.

She frowned at some figures in her dream and snuggled again, and his chest shook with a laugh he kept behind his teeth. The count-it-twice rule had followed her into sleep, and it would follow her to the grave to audit the saints.

His thoughts went to the trunk at the foot of the bed.

Under the scraps there was a small thing wrapped in linen, gilded silver bought in Alexandria for the price of four rings, with a Fatimid sultan’s daughter’s dowry thrown in free.

He owed her the word said aloud, with a priest, witnesses, and the ring, in a room she chose.

Vito tucked her braid behind his shoulder without waking her, and let these thoughts fade away for now.

The last warehouse doors were about to lock, and he ought to put their venture into his mind for the time. The numbers were still standing behind his eyes, Caterina had read him the sum across the little table, with the flat voice she kept for scripture and business.

Marina’s lot had gone first.

Fifty-eight tons of Commandaria at six hundred and fifty grossi a ton came to thirty-seven thousand seven hundred. Three and a half tons of Tyrian glass at thirty-six hundred made twelve thousand six hundred. Six tenths of a ton of Damascus silk at fifty-six hundred fetched three thousand three hundred and sixty.

The lot closed at fifty-three thousand six hundred and sixty grossi, and Marina took her twentieth of it and swore she was robbing herself.

The Scotti brothers finished their last grossi by clicking.

Seventeen tons of pepper at twenty-four hundred came to forty thousand eight hundred. Thirteen tons of cinnamon at seventeen hundred and fifty made twenty-two thousand seven hundred and fifty. Ten tons of cotton, whole, fetched three thousand five hundred.

The lot closed at sixty-seven thousand and fifty in drafts on the changers’ benches. The pepper Athanasia had sold him for a little more than half that was bound over Mont Cenis on a mule.

Then Ranuccio’s cane struck the floorboards for the sixth time.

Eleven tons of alum at seven hundred and sixty made eight thousand three hundred and sixty. Six went to Siena, five to Florence.

The plain goods had paid for the ships.

Forty-nine tons of sugar went to the spicers of the Rialto at three hundred, fourteen thousand seven hundred. Twenty-nine tons of salt went to the Commune’s salt keepers at seventy, two thousand and thirty, with Bepi at the scales telling every sack it was dry as a Lenten supper.

Twelve tons of Cretan wine, the vintage Cyprus had refused to drink, went to the tavern keepers and the Arsenal’s victualers at a hundred and fifty, eighteen hundred.

Thirty-four tons of grain, seven gone into the crews’ suppers, went to the granary keepers at eighty, twenty-seven hundred and twenty. It had crossed three seas and been refused in three ports, and at last it sold in the one city that never grew a stalk of its own.

The lot closed at twenty-one thousand two hundred and fifty.

Four tenths of a ton of balsam. One tenth stayed at San Pietro at four thousand the ton, four hundred. Three tenths went to Rome through the procurator at seven thousand, twenty-one hundred.

The draft was due in the autumn and the tithe of two hundred and ten would come out of it.

Twenty-five hundred in all, and the most sincere number on the Rialto.

Two hundred and thirty-seven and a half tons had crossed Venezia’s benches for one hundred and fifty-two thousand eight hundred and twenty grossi.

"Cazzo..." Vito breathed at the ceiling.

He didn’t stay with it.

The strongbox had begun the season with five thousand grossi, seven hundred and fifty dirhams, and no bezants. The dirhams went to the bench at thirteen grossi to ten, making nine hundred and seventy-five, the changers’ bite already in the rate.

Caterina’s ten thousand, the winter’s Cretan tolls sent ahead by draft, sat on a bench in her name.

One hundred sixty-eight thousand seven hundred and ninety-five grossi, all told.

Customs took sixteen hundred, at two in the hundred on the goods’ declared cost. Marina’s twentieth was twenty-six hundred and eighty-three, the tithe two hundred and ten.

The ship crews for four months cost twenty thousand two hundred and eighty. The oarsmen were paid on the pier, as the Republic required, the refit and caulking took thirty-six hundred while berths, porters, and lodging took seven hundred and twenty.

Twenty-nine thousand and ninety-three in all, gone before an investor saw a grosso.

The net income stood at one hundred and twenty-three thousand seven hundred and twenty-seven.

Half of it was sixty-one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four. Add the forty thousand of obligations, and the houses went away with one hundred and one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four.

He left every figure where she had put it.

The words gathered at the edge of his sight, unasked as ever.

🦁 [SEASON CLOSE — 1205]

Route : Candia > Alexandria > Acre > Limassol > Candia > Venezia

Goods Sold : Commandaria, Tyrian Glass, Damascus silk, Pepper, Cinnamon, Cotton, Alum, Sugar, Salt, Cretan Wine, Grain, and Balsam.

Revenue : 152,820 Grossi

Expenses : 29,093 Grossi

Net Income : 123,727 Grossi.

Investors’ Share : 61,864 Grossi

Merchants’ Share : 61,863 Grossi

Colleganza Obligations : 3,467 Hyperpyra, converted to 40,000 Grossi

Total Treasury : 37,838 Grossi

Fleet : Three War Galleys, Three Naves (Refitting)

Contacts Established : Alexandria, Acre, Limassol, Rialto

I checked the sums twice, on the assumption that you had not. The woman asleep on you checked them three times. I have filed her as the season’s only reliable check, despite how she is presently drooling on the variable.

Vito grinned at the top of her head and offered no reply.

Caterina had put the rest in her margin. Near forty thousand for next season.

That could buy a yard with a keel on the slip, if a Greek said yes. Perhaps second run to Alexandria, then Champagne road or a reserve for the southeast of Crete, where an old debt still sat.

The figures began to lean like crooked benches, and the sums went soft.

Vito snuggled toward Caterina and put his chin against her hair.

"Mia cara," he whispered.

Whatever the day meant to send up the stairs could wait until dawn.

The lamp hissed down to nothing, and the night went on outside the shutters.