Chapter 83: Alexandria, Queen of The East

The two watchtowers slipped past on either side of the galley, close enough for Vito to see the soldiers stationed on top. All of them watched the six foreign ships like some stray dog that had the bad manners to wander into his yard.

Then the harbor appeared before them, and a boat came out from the near quay to meet La Contessa.

It came under oars, low and quick, heading straight for them with confidence, with two men standing out inside it. One carried an accounts book under his arm, had a reed pen tucked behind one ear, and kept a coil of measuring cord at his feet.

The other was talking even from far away, pouring out a string of titles in half Italian and half Arabic. He had some grand pride that didn’t quite match his station.

The first man climbed aboard, found a dry piece of planking, and opened his accounts book.

Vito met him with the grin that had talked its way past men considerably more important than a harbor clerk.

He greeted them in Arabic. "Vitale Barozzi, out of Candia. Six ships, and a cargo full of things your Sultan’s merchants will be fighting over before the week’s out. Tell me your name, friend, I like knowing who to thank when a day goes this smoothly."

The inspector raised a brow, but even then he didn’t reply to the words. Through the dragoman, the professional interpreter, he asked only the ship’s name.

Vito shrugged in exasperation and returned to his Italian. "Try this one, then."

He nodded toward the dragoman, and warmed his voice another degree. "I once talked a blind old Doge into backing a cadet nobody in Venezia had ever heard of. Surely a customs man can’t be harder than that."

The dragoman repeated it with genuine pleasure, spreading both arms as though the story needed room to breathe.

The inspector’s pen continued to write. He asked for the second hull’s name instead.

Vito let the grin disappear and got on with the business. This man answered to his accounts only, and ten years spent reading dangerous rooms had taught Vito to recognize a locked door when he saw one.

La Contessa, Zorzi, and Zustignana passed quickly enough, counted for crew and oar-benches and cleared with only a few strokes of the pen.

The three naves took longer.

La Rosa’s grain, wine, and wool. Moresina’s honey, wax, and cotton. La Serena’s cheese.

Then, beneath it on the manifest, one line where the inspector’s pen finally stopped.

He whispered shortly to the dragoman, so flat and clipped that it felt like a complaint about the routine work.

The dragoman proclaimed, one hand to his chest. "The learned inspector of His Excellency’s customs house inquires, with the deepest curiosity ever shown by a servant of the Sultan toward a Venetian manifest, what manner of liquor this might be, seeing that no ship before yours has ever thought it worthy of declaration."

Vito caught the difference between the two versions, how some few flat words had somehow become a small speech. He kept his thoughts on that matter off his face.

"Distillate spirits, amico. Wine boiled down until it forgets how to behave."

He reached for the barrel lashed near the rail.

"Easier to show a man than explain it."

He poured a measure into the cap of his flask and held it out.

The inspector took it without ceremony and drank it as though it were watered wine at his own table. Then he coughed hard enough to bring a tear to one eye, and his pen was nearly throwed into the waters.

He said one more short thing to the dragoman.

"His Excellency’s inspector finds it, sufficient."

The dragoman translated, delighted, stretching the moment for every coin it might be worth.

The accounts book closed a breath later, and a wax stamp went onto the page before the ink could even dry.

The Egyptian boat pulled away as calmly as it had arrived.

Then one more boat crossed toward them, and the man climbing out of it was obvious enough to recognize.

He was fatter than any countrymen Vito had met since leaving the lagoon. His collar was open two buttons farther than propriety allowed, and sweat covered him in a way that had clearly ceased to trouble him years ago, though it had never shown the same mercy.

He wiped his brow with a cloth already too wet to be much use and grinned anyway.

"Bertuccio Malipiero."

He told the name as though he were bringing good news. "God’s furnace this city, pardon my state. Welcome to Alexandria, Ser Barozzi."

"Vito’s fine, I answer to considerably worse aboard my own ships."

He grinned back, easy and warm from the first word. "Tell me plainly, amico. Now that the Sultan’s man has had his taste of us, what happens next?"

"Now, Ser Vito, my office earns its keep."

Bertuccio wiped his brow again, still cheerful about the whole business. "What Venezia owes on top of that, and how smoothly this whole season goes for you afterward, that part is mine to decide. By treaty and by long habit both."

He let that sit for a moment, still smiling, while his eyes stayed on Vito.

Vito had spent a decade reading that sort of pause on that sort of face, back when guessing wrong could cost a man considerably more than coin. He didn’t keep Bertuccio waiting.

"A season of easy mornings is worth paying for in advance, I’ve always thought."

He put a pouch of Venetian grossi into Bertuccio’s hand, slowly.

"Consider that the first of several, amico, so long as you keep my ships moving instead of letting them sit."

Bertuccio’s fingers closed around the pouch, and his sweating face lit up.

"Now that is a countrymen I can work with."

He said, weighing it once in his palm, "Half the captains who come through here want to argue about it for an hour first, as though I’m not going to take it regardless."

Vito laughed and put a bottle into his hand as well, one of La Serena’s own, still faintly warm from the hold.

"For the nights the grossi don’t quite cover, amico."

Bertuccio turned it over, read whatever passed for a label, and laughed himself, low and pleased.

"Ser Vito, I like you already, and I haven’t even had my supper."

He waved the fleet onward toward the smaller stretch of harbor beyond his shoulder.

The gate into the fondaco stood open beneath a stone arch worn pale and smooth by more hands than Vito could have counted.

Beyond it spread a pier large enough for all six ships at once. Warehouses stood behind it with their shutters thrown wide to the day, and walls above the roofline, an enclosure for the entire quarter.

Gulls flew between the moored ships, and beyond the warehouse roofs a call to prayer was already rising over the whole compound, strange and clear against the harbor sounds.

Ropes went out from every ship with orders to tie up, and hired workers plus the fondaco’s resident staff moved in together, bringing the ships through the last few lengths and seeing them home.

Within the hour, all six were berthed along the same stretch of stone, safe behind walls.

Vito left the soldiers and workers aboard for the moment, with a short order to the sergeant. Not a soul was to go wandering into a city none of them had ever seen until the fondaco itself had shown them where trouble usually began.

"Toffolo, Orso. With me."

Orso arrived grumbling, his arms folded across a chest built for rougher work than whatever was waiting ahead. "Cazzo, Barozzi. Are we here to talk business, or am I just along to look large while some clerk decides whether he likes the shape of your face?"

"Both, amico. You’re remarkably good at both."

Toffolo hadn’t stopped moving since the gangplank went down. He bounced on his heels, with none of Orso’s dread anywhere to be found. "A whole consul, Ser Barozzi! Do you suppose he keeps his own guard? His own kitchen? Do you think he’s ever met the Sultan himself, face to face?"

Vito stopped him before he could get any farther.

"Save some of that for the man himself, ragazzo."

Bertuccio appeared again before either of them could argue, wiping his brow for the second time and waving the three of them over.

"This way."

He was already walking. "The consul’s office isn’t much farther. He’s been waiting on you since the news reached him, and I’d hate to be the man who kept him waiting too."

The four of them fell into step together, Toffolo firing off another round of questions as they walked through the gate.

Orso followed a step behind with his arms folded, making his opinion of the errand obvious.

Ahead of them, beyond a row of warehouse fronts and a chapel wall still warm from the sun, the fondaco’s main building waited.

Behind its door sat a consul who knew exactly how many ships had just sailed into his harbor.