Chapter 147: Business in the Basileuousa

The lions had barely reached the mastheads when the entrance of the Golden Horn closed around them, and La Contessa shoved her way through the crowd.

A harbor boat flying the Lion led the fleet down the waterfront, through a sea that stank of tar and low tide, with the fat naves behind.

The naves took the long wharf, while the galleys went to the exterior berth. Zeno’s customs men came aboard, checking every hull, bale, and tun against the manifest until sundown and writing down every figure twice, once for the government and once for their own peace of mind.

Bepi, who had managed twenty-four whole days without a grievance, now had a queue for his berth, a second count of his cargo, and a clerk who corrected his estimate of his own ship.

He fell on them like a starving man on a banquet. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

A fresh edict at the gate confined the crews to the piers between the bells.

When it was finally over, the senior clerk straightened his back and read out the sum in one flat breath. "Eleven hulls, sior. Five hundred and forty-five tons, checked twice, and twice they agreed with themselves, which is more than ever I got out of my brother-in-law."

Lamps appeared across the piers, and there lay the fleet, inspected and cleared.

Vito was on the pier before breakfast the next morning, carrying a bar of iron in one fist and a fold of red cloth in the other. Zaccaria accompanied with the sample satchel, demoted to pack mule yet again.

The goods were brought to the Republic warehouses, earned after centuries of treaties and a crusade, while the brokers were engaged and samples of every lot sent out.

The Latin Patriarch’s steward heard about the vestments and chalices, while the palace stewards heard about the red cloth. The brokers came back with the news that buyers existed and coin didn’t, while some reported that the palace had offered a candlestick for a bar of iron, been refused, and then offered two.

Caterina wouldn’t let a single lot leave a warehouse until she had read her branch’s books. A house that had spent three generations in this city knew who paid in silver and who paid in promises, and there was no reason to let the cargo go before finding out which was which.

At the evening bell, the couple turned toward the green door, with Domenego and a few company soldiers behind.

The green door stood in a high wall beyond the church, and the porter had it open before Caterina reached the brass ring. Inside was a courtyard with a cistern, Greek and Venetian servants crossing it and speaking both tongues, and an accounting room already lit.

Her father waited at the top of the steps. Lunardo was a mild, stooped man who had spent his life just below the old blood who ran the branch. His mother, Cristina, stood beside him, small and quick, folding and unfolding her hands.

Vito had rehearsed every charm he could muster and every defense of his intentions all the way there, only to discover that no one seemed inclined to attack him. Caterina told her parents the news flatly.

The letters meant to arrive ahead of her had been held all winter by a sea that never opened early enough. They arrived an hour after she did, brought up the steps in Domenego’s hands.

Lunardo looked at the ring for a long time. Then his eyes climbed to his daughter, and his shoulders let go of an inch they had been holding since before she was born. "Ah, figlia... figlia mia. Since you could walk you have known your own mind, and Dio forgive me, I never once found the courage to argue with it."

His voice cracked on the last word, and he let it. "So. If that stubborn head has brought you a husband, then a husband we are glad of. Let him come in."

Cristina had Vito by the sleeve and halfway to a chair while he was still preparing to bow. "Eh! Do you eat fish, caro? What a question, everyone eats fish. Sit, sit, siediti! Madonna santa, Lunardo, look at him, look! The sea has been eating this poor boy’s suppers and left him only the bones!"

Vito, who had arrived armed to the teeth with charm and found no one to fight, sprang to his feet with a hand on his heart. "Messer Lunardo. Madonna Cristina. For your daughter, my thanks, and may the saints strike me if I ever give you cause to regret it. And for this supper, my thanks again."

He sat, and to settle any doubt about the second thanks, he went through two bream with devotion.

They put the couple in Caterina’s old chamber, where a bed built for one unmarried woman now had to accommodate a council member and a fleet owner. It creaked under their nightly exercise, while Domenego inspected the cistern for enemies and Zaccaria slept.

The next dawn, the three cousins who kept the branch’s accounts came to the accounting room and lined up across one side of the long table, each wearing a polite smile.

Vito laid out his merchant fleet, a seat in Venezia, and a Doge who had personally given away the bride. He watched the smiles as they thought over their scheme all over again.

By noon, no one was asking questions about the dowry. The assent was written and sealed before a notary, settling the matter her wedding deed had left open, and the sum was entered in their book.

The Barozzini and the Contarini exchanged terms. Their books would lie open to each other, as Caterina required of every partner, with either house free to store cargo in the other’s warehouses and sell it through the other’s brokers at fixed shares.

Wherever they traded in the city, the two families would do business as one. It was a fraterna in everything except the entry.

The Constantinople houses of the colleganza walked the wharf, thumped the planking, and considered the route to Soldaia fine. They had only one request, priority of whatever the voyage brought home.

The cousins were not done, though. It seems one advised Zeno, one owed his courts a favor, and the household’s silver was bound to Zeno with more knots than rigging. The eldest asked which side the Barozzini would take if the podestà and the Doge ever disagreed.

Vito said he would side with whoever was paying for dinner, then asked who that might be. Caterina answered seriously that the Barozzini stood with the Republic and traded fairly with everyone in it, and the dry cousin wrote that down.

The married couple remained in the compound, and the news arrived in the courtyard with the bread, which was coarse and dear. The Greeks were starving, the Latin garrison was short-handed, and the palace stewards had begun offering plate and relics in exchange for iron and cloth.

According to the brokers, Henry held the regency with an army in Thrace and too few knights. The Bulgarians raided the plain and held the western shore of the Black Sea, cutting the grain route and leaving the city to live on whatever ships could bring.

Laskaris was pressing across the straits, and the barons were quarrelling over whether to crown Henry. Of Baldwin, the household knew only that no ransom had been answered and that the quarter whispered there was no one left to ransom.

Zeno’s courts judged every quarrel among his people, his councilors advised him, and his edicts went up on the church door beneath a seal he applied himself.

He answered Venezia’s letters when he pleased, while Patriarch Morosini’s court held sway alongside his own, and the Pisans nearby, who had hated this shore since before the sack, kept an eye on both.

Vito asked little and listened to everything.

On the sixth evening, a bell rang at the green door, followed by boots crossing the passage. The porter brought a leaf to Caterina while the officer who had carried it waited outside in Zeno’s livery.

She broke the seal with her thumbnail, and the wax cracked like a small bone, then she read the leaf formally, each title laid down like a stone. "Marino Zeno, podestà of the Venetians in this city, by the grace of God and the will of the Republic, invites Vitale Barozzi and Caterina Contarini to wait upon him at his house tomorrow morning."

No one at supper looked surprised.

Zeno had asked for them, for whatever reason one could imagine.