Chapter 137: Ca’ del Leon

Frost had reached the calle, and Vito stood in it with his head tipped back.

A black lion crouched in the gate arch, and three floors of brick and marble rose behind with stilted arches and roundels carved with griffins and peacocks. A bare fig tree threw its branches over the wall.

Venetians called a house like this a casa-fondaco. A merchant built one to sleep above his cargo, keep the goods below and the people above, have a courtyard in front, and open a water-gate onto the canal behind.

Sensible enough, provided one had enough cargo to justify it.

Two company men stood under the arch, with chilblains on every knuckle.

A dry voice came through the wicket behind them. "Chain stays on after the bell, Messer. The lieutenant counts every soul through here, you included."

"Then count me, sergeant, count me twice, I’m worth it!"

Vito laughed, then stopped and bent to the iron. "But first, a name. What do they call you? I have owed myself that name since a hillside outside Chania."

"Gasparo, Messer. Is me who ran the rise."

The chain rattled through the iron. The wicket swung open, and Vito stepped into his own courtyard.

The flagstones sloped toward a grid that fed the cistern beneath an Istrian wellhead, its rim worn smooth by buckets. Rosemary and bay stood in pots, and a hammer rang behind a workshop door.

On the left, a lean-to sheltered the racks. Spears and pikes stood in rows, crossbows hung by their cords, pavese boards lay stacked flat, mail hung from pegs, and a grindstone sat beside a chain running through the lot.

Every rack stood with its back to the wall, the reasonable place for them in a house that had recently been accused before the Great Council of keeping a thousand swords. Then near enough, the ladder climbed to the loft overhead, and drill-sand lay in front of it with a straw post leaning in the middle.

Half a dozen soldiers hunched around a brazier beneath the eave. Domenego, now in command of the estate watch, stood over them with both arms thrown toward the sky.

"Barozzi! Behold, behold the terror of Chania, tamed! Tamed, and set to guard a well!"

He swept an arm toward the wellhead. "I, who held a pinch of field against five hundred men, five hundred, Madonna, and now I am promoted, promoted! To a chain, a gate, a cistern, and the cistern, Barozzi, mark me, hasn’t once attacked me! Chain on at the bell! I came for glory, Barozzi, glory! And they gave me a watch!"

Zuane sat on an upturned bucket, waxing a crossbow string.

"Reload, Lieutenant. Is the answer to everything."

Domenego nodded as if a saint had just answered a prayer.

From the brazier came Fosco’s voice, loud and delighted. "Ser Barozzi! The gap, the one I held at Chania, it has nine men in it now! Nine! And the baker’s girl, she swears to me one of them was a bear. I say, ’No, no, that was only me.’ And she looks at me, Ser, like I am a bad sum, and she says, ’Fosco, that does not make sense.’"

Vito clapped Domenego on the shoulder as he passed. "Courage, amico! Oil the chain, oil it well. By Easter we’ll be letting it out for you, link by link, like a doublet at a wedding feast."

"Mock me, Barozzi, mock me! Laugh while the wine is sweet!"

Domenego lifted his chin toward the heavens, a martyr who had been served his soup cold.

"Sant’Antonio keeps a list for it, and it is a long list, longer than your Rialto loan!"

A pale stone path spread from the well to the house, and the great doors stood folded back wide enough for a hand-cart. Beyond it, the androne stretched through the building, a long vaulted hall leading straight to a rectangle of white light where the water-gate stood open on the canal.

Two arched bays lined each side and stood nearly empty. Chalk crosses marked where the goods crates would stand, empty casks leaned in one corner, a scale beam hung from a hook, and an iron-banded door shut off the strongroom on the left.

On the right, the accounting room stood open with lamps burning over a long table. Cousin Tonin sat there, lean and past forty, grey coming into his hair and ink on both cuffs, whispering over books like saying to his rosary.

"Six thousand at the Rialto’s rate. The common chest for surety, six thousand. Six thousand, six thousand, Dio mio, why does it never get smaller when I say it..."

He looked up, and the pen stopped halfway to its next figure. "Second drawer, Vitale. The second, not the first, the first is the seals. There is a saucer, the good ones I kept back, you understand, the clerks, they eat like locusts."

"Grazie, Tonin."

The fig was small and dry, and it tasted like a kitchen table seen from underneath. Vito ate it in the doorway, then went back out into the cold.

The exterior stairs rose across the left end of the front wall, all stone, with frost glittering on the balustrade.

A Madonna stood in a niche, a lamp burning at her feet, and beyond her the timber balcony on stone brackets turned the corner and continued across the walls. The laundry door breathed lye and wet wool, a slatted vent breathed cold cheese from the larder, and steam came out from behind the kitchen shutter, carrying a woman’s voice with it.

"Which of you, which of you thieving bastards puts a live eel in my washtub? A live one! I put in my hand for the shirts, Madonna santa, and it looked at me! It looked at me!"

At the corner, the privies hung from their brackets well away from the cistern, exactly where Vito had insisted they should be. The balcony continued across the back wall, and from there the water-gate lay open below, an arch onto the canal with an iron grille raised on a windlass and a small crane with its jib swung inboard.

The household had named the crane Lucietta, Marietta’s little sister.

A barge and a black gondola waited at the steps. Across the water, lamps pricked the far bank and a bridge arched to the right, and beyond it, out of sight, the private yard water-gate held La Greca and the stank of tar.

From below came a boatman’s bellow, hoarse from a lifetime. "Tie to the post, you drowned goat, the post! Not the grille! The grille is not a post, you mona! And swing Lucietta in before the barge takes her arm off, or I swear by San Nicolò, who watches over sailors and not over you, I will leave you on the steps for the crabs!"

At the end of the back wall, a door stood with warm light beneath it. An ewer of boiled water stood beside the door, and Vito washed his hands first and foremost.

A basket had tipped over beside a washtub in the corner, where a dozen eels moved in the dark water, and the cook, a broad woman with a burned thumb wrapped in a rag, held a wooden spoon over them like a baton.

The smaller kitchen boy kept his eyes on the spoon. "From the Doge’s kitchen, Messer, I swear it on my mother! The last night of the year. The Contarini, they send them to the Doge, and the Doge, he has too many, he sends them on. And we, Messer, we are the on!"

Vito spread his hands. "Gently, gently! They have outlived a Contarini kitchen, a Doge’s kitchen, and the lagoon in winter, which is more than can be said for half the Great Council. Such eels, they have earned a death with dignity. A little vinegar, a leaf of bay, and your good hand over all of it."

The cook lowered the spoon, and her whole face softened toward the eels.

A long passage spread forward, and Vito’s breath smoked in it because no coals had reached that far yet. From the open servants’ hall came a maid’s voice.

"Brighter than the old one, I swear it on my mother’s bones! That gold, Madonna, you could read by it! You could read the Gospel by it! And I say this as a woman who cannot read a word."

A laundress came over her voice, her arms red to the elbow. "Ink! On every cuff in this house since Christmas, ink! I scrub until my arms are boiled lobsters, and still the lye, she weeps!"

Quills muttered behind the clerks’ room door and steam crept beneath the scullery. The linen depot and guest chamber stood shut.

The sewing room was at the front end beside the narrow door of the inner staircase.

Marouda sat with a child’s hem across her knee and a slipper beside her, ready but still on the table. Her eyes went to the new Lion on his mantle, then she sniffed at the stitching.

"Eels, in vinegar and bay for supper, Messer."

She bit a thread. "And while you wait, shameless messer, go. Light a candle for a priest. This house, it has one master bedroom, one bedroom, one door, and the door, the door is the office! Panagia mou, I am Greek woman. I can count!"

"Light two, amica, and put mine on credit."

The interior staircase was narrow and enclosed, with a rope for a rail, and each step warmer. The sala filled the front half of the third floor with a brazier in the middle, a long table beneath a cloth, a settle against the wall, and a window over the courtyard where the soldiers’ fire glowed small below.

Kin filled the room, one long Barozzi nose after another.

An old aunt jabbed her needle at the draught. "Shut it! Shut that staircase door! Santa Maria, it would take the beard off a bishop! And I, I who have buried two husbands, I will not be murdered by stairs! Not by stairs, not me!"

In the corner, the two boys rolled over each other. "No, no, no! You are the Emperor, you die! You die, and then the Bear, he eats the apple! Those are the rules, ask cousin!"

At an accounting board, a fourteen-year-old chanted to his slate. "Twelve sacks at four grossi, forty-eight! Forty-eight, and the clerk at Candia gets it wrong. And the clerk at Candia, Madonna, the clerk at Candia is me!"

A woman hoisted a small child up by the collar, and the child dangled, boots dripping like a fish on a line. "Boots! Boots, I say! I do not care whose hem it is, I do not care if the Doge himself is hemming it! No one, no one drags the rio into my sala!"

Six doors stood three to a side, each marked with a painted lozenge in a household’s colors. Each opened onto a family’s own small run of rooms.

Fantin was off the settle before Vito reached it, cup in one fist, rings clicking.

He caught Vito by both shoulders and held him "Ciò, cugino! Ciò! The Lion of Constantinople, home from the Rialto, and not one bear in sight! But hear it from me, cugino, I pledged my crest-spoon to the common chest. The one with my grandfather’s face on the handle! So if the Rialto calls the loan, it eats its soup with the old man’s nose, and that nose, cugino, it could curdle a pudding! Ecco! Surety! The only silver in the Barozzi family that has ever done an honest day’s work!"

He steered Vito to the window, and the performance went out of his voice. "You should have seen it, cugino. First Sunday at this table, my old uncle, he asks for a second helping. Out loud, and no one mocks him. And then the cook, she gives him three. Three! She keeps a ladle for him now, his own ladle."

"Then we are ruined by Lent, cugino. Ruined. And your grandfather, God rest his nose, ruined with us."

Fantin barked a laugh, and the lamps came back into his face. "Now go! Go, go! Since Vespers she is in there, cugino, and Marouda says the man who opens that door is done, he answers to the slipper. The slipper! I have seen that slipper work, cugino. I have seen it work!"

A company guard stood at the entrance of the back corridor.

Vito went past him alone.

The noise of the sala dropped away behind him, and the corridor grew silent. A single lamp burned at the far end, with one door beneath it and a line of lamplight showing under the sill.

He stopped and put his palm against the cold wood.

🦁 [HOLDING - CA’ DEL LEON, CASTELLO]

Status : Occupied (Purchased on Credit)

Governance : Barozzi del Leone (Fraterna)

Population : 56 (Family 20, Servants 16, Clerks and Hands 7, Company 13)

Courtyard : Cistern, Fig, Vine, Armory Lean-to, Drill-Sand

Water-Gate : Landing, Hoist (Lucietta), Barge, Gondola

Ground Floor : Androne, Four Bays, Counting Room, Strongroom

Second Floor : Kitchen, Larder, Scullery, Laundry, Servants’ Hall, Clerks’ Room, Sewing Room, Linen Store, Guest Chamber

Third Floor : Sala, Family Quarters, Office, Master Chamber

Storage : Approximately 90 Tons

Goods : Pending, None

Defense : Gate, Wall, Company Watch

Obligations : 6,000 Grossi (Rialto Loan, Surety on the Common Chest)

Fifty-six people, one well, and a roof with your name on it. In most cities, you pay for the foundation before anyone sleeps on it.

Vito read the box, the whole column from top to bottom. His breath left him, but his palm stayed against the door.

"Ma va’," he told the corridor. "Dio bon, it has a well."

He lifted the latch.

Caterina sat at the table beneath the window with the lamp pulled close, writing. The week’s worth of lamp oil and leeks marched down the page in her small, square hand, and ink blackened one fingertip. At her elbow lay the notary’s draft, the line for the dowry still blank, the space wide as a thumb.

Behind her, a door stood shut on the one room in the house that belonged to both of them.

She didn’t look up.