The Deadliest Sin

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘Then I am honoured at such an association. Come, let us adjourn to a taverna and seal the deal.’

  The well-heeled and solemn man with the thumb-ring also stepped forward. In an accent that suggested he was not Venetian, he also proposed part-funding the deal.

  ‘My name is Agnolo Rosso.’

  Zuliani was surprised that someone so formal and reserved should wish to participate in the sort of risk suggested by Baglioni, but he wasn’t worried. There was enough profit in it for at least two big partners. Besides, the trader no doubt already had a few small investors in his pocket too. He nodded at the other man, and all three strode off the bridge and towards the nearest hostelry.

  A week later, over a meal prepared by Cat’s cook, and in the presence of both Cat and his granddaughter, Katie, Zuliani expanded upon the brief report he had given on his drunken return to Ca’ Dolfin the day of the business deal.

  ‘Baglioni now has a large galley commissioned with a capacity of over a hundred and fifty tons and more than a hundred oarsmen to speed it on its way. He will be loading soon with goods for the outbound trip. Now that he has my money . . .’

  Cat gave him a sharp look, and he corrected himself.

  ‘Now he has your money and Rosso’s, he can fund the whole trip all the way to Antioch. Though when I saw him yesterday in the evening, he seemed a little nervous. It was as if he didn’t want to speak with me.’

  Katie thought that must be normal for a young man on his first big colleganza, and told Nick so.

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe so. But his captain, Saluzzo by name, behaved in the same way, avoiding me like they both had something to hide.’

  Cat ignored his caution. She was more interested in the other big investor.

  ‘This Agnolo Rosso, he is a Florentine, did you say?’

  Zuliani nodded. ‘With a name like that he has to be. And he certainly doesn’t speak Venetian.’

  ‘And he put up a matching sum to mine?’

  Again, she got a nod of agreement from Zuliani. Katie put down a sweetly honeyed chicken leg, sucked her fingers, and asked Cat what she was puzzled about.

  ‘Oh, nothing, Katie. It’s just unusual for a Florentine to get involved in a colleganza. Though I suppose that, where there’s money and a profit, they are not far behind us Venetians.’

  She plucked a grape from the large bunch on the table and popped it in her red-lipped mouth. Zuliani gulped down the last of his wine and yawned in an ostentatious way.

  ‘Time for bed for an old man like me.’

  He cast a meaningful glance at Cat, which Katie saw too. It made her laugh.

  ‘I’m not too young to know what you adults get up to when you retire early. Just don’t keep me awake by making too much noise.’

  Cat pretended to be scandalised, and chided Katie for her coarseness. But she still gave her a wink as she and Nick left the room arm in arm.

  Zuliani looked dishevelled the next morning, and his eyes were red-rimmed. It must have been a good night, but he was determined to be up early. Baglioni’s galley sailed that very morning, and he wanted to be on the quay to see it off. He explained his superstition to Cat.

  ‘See it off, and you will see it back safely. That’s what I say.’

  He grabbed a hunk of fresh bread, and hurried out, his fur-trimmed robe flapping round his legs. Katie secretly followed him at a more demure pace. The sun was just coming up over the sea where the galley was soon to go, and the morning mist turned it a rosy red. A few people stood on the quay to watch the oars dipping and swinging in rhythm as Bernardo Baglioni’s galley set off into the lagoon. Zuliani shaded his eyes against the sun, and nodded with satisfaction. An old man stood leaning on a stick only a few yards away. He commented on the trim nature of the vessel.

  ‘A good ship with a fine crew, though she looks heavy in the water.’

  Zuliani cast him a sharp glance. ‘Laden with goods to make my fortune, I hope.’

  The old man grinned, the lines on his face creasing up like crushed paper.

  ‘Mine, too. Though I dare say, looking at that fine robe of yours, you will have more at stake than I do.’

  He stuck out a hand made rough and knotted with manual labour.

  ‘Marco Baseggio, retired shipwright.’

  Zuliani took the offered hand and, squeezing it firmly, felt the calluses that years of carving wood had worked on to its surface.

  ‘No matter how much, or how little, you have invested, if it’s all you’ve got, it’s an awful lot. Here’s wishing us both good luck.’

  The old man nodded, and made off down the quay, relying on his stick to steady him on the cobbles.

  The months of waiting for the merchant galley to return would have been anxious ones for Zuliani, if it hadn’t been for a curious event that took place some weeks after the galley set off. Katie was seated in her room reading a work by a new Florentine poet called Dante Alighieri. Some might have thought she was reading his love poems, being a girl of no more than seventeen. But Convivio – The Banquet – was about the love of knowledge, and what is more it was written not in stuffy Latin but a local dialect of Italian. The language of the people. It is difficult to imagine how that excited Katie’s young soul. She was so engrossed in the book that she didn’t hear the visitor to Ca’ Dolfin arrive, and closet himself with Zuliani. It was only when her grandfather was leading him back out that she heard their voices echoed in the reception hall. There was an entreaty from the visitor that what he had spoken about should be kept secret. This aroused her curiosity immediately. She put her precious copy of Dante upside down on the table to preserve her place, and moved to the door of her room, which gave out on to the reception hall and the doors to the water gate. But by the time she looked, the visitor was out of the gate and in his boat. She waited until the sound of an oar slapping through the water of the Grand Canal told her that he had gone, and then dashed out to speak with Nick.

  ‘A secret. Do tell.’

  Zuliani took her arm, and they strolled back towards her room.

  ‘The trouble with telling a secret is that it’s then no longer a secret. So you end up destroying the very thing you are charged with keeping.’

  Katie tugged on his beard, which was more grey than red by this time.

  ‘But I know you can’t keep a secret long, Grandpa. So you might as well tell it to me now.’

  He laughed that deep, throaty laugh of his. They were now in Katie’s room, and he saw the book carelessly laid with its pages open facing downwards. That was bad for its spine and he picked it up. He read out a few lines from the place she had been reading, chortling as he did so.

  ‘“Since knowledge is the highest perfection of our soul, in which our supreme happiness is found, we are all by our very nature driven by the desire to attain this.” Dante Alighieri shouldn’t be the one to lecture on perfection of the soul. He was at the head of the White Guelph faction after they defeated the Ghibbelines in battle, you know, and was as greedy for power and influence as any Florentine.’

  Katie knew Nick was talking about the struggles between those who supported the Pope and those on the side of the Holy Roman Emperor. But she didn’t want to know about Dante’s allegiances. Only what the mysterious visitor had told her grandfather in secret, and she wasn’t going to be diverted by a discussion about the greed of a poet. He could see the determination in her eyes, and knew she was as stubborn as he was. He sighed heavily, knowing he would have to tell her eventually.

  ‘Very well, it will be our secret. They want me to be on the Council of Ten.’

  Katie couldn’t believe her ears. The Council of Ten had been set up after the failed coup of a couple of years back purely as a temporary measure to ensure public safety. There had been a fear that in its anxiety to avoid a concentration of power in one man, the republic had ended up with an unwieldy bureaucracy. Almost all the Doge’s decisions had to be ratified by the Great Council, which numbered around a thousand people. It was so cumbers
ome a process that it could not make decisions quickly, and the coup had almost succeeded because of this. That it had failed was mainly due to its own incompetence, and some underhand work by her grandfather. The Ten was then set up so that urgent matters could be resolved more swiftly and decisively. But the Council was still an elected body.

  ‘Won’t you have to stand for election?’

  Nick smiled enigmatically. ‘Of course, but when I was a youth I worked out a way to circumvent the convoluted system to elect the Doge. I almost made it work, too. So getting on to the Ten will be simple in comparison.’ He pulled a face. ‘Though I’m not sure I want to do it.’

  ‘Why not? You’ve always complained that the case vecchie run everything. That the old order keeps the common citizens out of the positions of power. Now you can change all that.’

  ‘I know. And that’s why I was wondering why they asked me to stand for the Council. Maybe I will just be a token commoner. And it’s only for a year, anyway.’

  ‘But you would have a turn at being the head of the Council in that year.’

  He burst out laughing. ‘It’s only for a month, and I would be one of three equal leaders. And the leaders have to stay out of society for the whole month to avoid the risk of being exposed to bribery.’

  Katie grinned. ‘Oh dear, a month in Granny Cat’s company. What a burden.’

  He punched her arm playfully. ‘You always win the argument with your impeccable logic. You’re right – I should do it. But I hope Baglioni’s ship returns before I’m the co-leader. I would hate to be in purdah and miss our triumph.’

  As it turned out, the ship came back much sooner than Zuliani had expected, even before the election. News of its arrival brought members of the colleganza down to the quay, along with the idle onlookers who liked to see what wonders a trading vessel had brought with it. Everyone peered anxiously at the galley until the sly smile on the face of the captain, who stood at the stern, told the story. The trip had been a success, and had been made in record time, too. Zuliani missed the galley’s unexpected arrival because he was busy pressing palms at a gathering at the palace of the grandiose Tron family.

  Unused to such exalted company, Zuliani had recruited Cat Dolfin into accompanying him. She was a member of that social élite formed by the case vecchie, and so was at ease with the Trons. And all the others who attended the gathering – the Tiepolos, the Dandolos and the Gradenigos. In the presence of such silken opulence, and expensively clad men and women, Zuliani nervously tweaked the collar of his stiff new jaqueta. Cat smiled at him indulgently at first, but slapped his hand away when he began to pull at the arse of his new hose.

  ‘Don’t go behaving like some common labourer just to prove a point,’ she warned him through her gritted teeth, ‘or you’ll never be elected.’

  ‘If I have to wear this gear all the time, I don’t think I want to be on the council,’ Zuliani growled. ‘Who’s that over there?’

  Cat looked over to where Zuliani was pointing. A small group of young men, fashionably attired in silk brocade, were bunched around a much older man. The object of their admiration, not to say sycophancy, had a lined, long face and an imperious Roman nose. Cat thought he was probably over sixty, and his expensive clothes spoke of wealth and power.

  ‘I don’t know, but that’s Domenico Valier standing next to him. He’s my nephew, and as weak as his uncle – my husband – was. I can soon get out of him who the old man is.’

  Zuliani almost restrained her, but she was across the room, smiling and touching sleeves courteously and at the same time intimately in a way he was incapable of. He didn’t like her talking to the Valiers. It reminded him of his failure to capture Cat for himself. They had been lovers forty years ago, but then Zuliani had fled Venice under a cloud, leaving Cat pregnant. She had been forced to marry Pasquale Valier, who had brought up Zuliani’s child – a son – as his own. Though it had all been his fault, Zuliani still resented Valier having taken his place, even though the man was now long dead. He deliberately turned away from Cat as she moved closer to her nephew, and began to press palms with others in the grand chamber. He decided that, if he pretended he was a trader selling a colleganza to gullible men with money, he could win the inbred case vecchie members over to his side. After rubbing shoulders with Kubilai Khan, getting on to the Council of Ten shouldn’t be all that hard. Just as he was tiring of his task, Cat Dolfin returned to his side. She bussed his cheek.

  ‘You have been doing well without me, I see.’

  He shrugged his weary shoulders, but still grinned wolfishly.

  ‘It would seem I have what it takes to be a politician, after all.’ He paused. ‘So who was he?’

  She looked at him archly. ‘Who?’

  ‘You know who. The old man with the big nose.’

  She ran a finger down the front of his new silk doublet. ‘Are you jealous? You know what they say about the size of a man’s nose reflecting the dimensions of his other organ.’

  Zuliani quickly looked around, hoping no one had heard Cat. He wondered if this was what the conversation was like all the time amongst the old aristocracy. Cat laughed at his discomfiture.

  ‘Never mind. Your . . . nose . . . is quite big enough for me.’

  ‘Caterina!’

  She cast her eyes up to the ceiling high above their heads to signify her delight at his impatience.

  ‘Very well. To business, if you insist. The old man is Antonio Perruzzi himself.’

  Zuliani’s eyes widened. ‘Of . . .?’

  ‘Of Perruzzi’s bank. In fact, you could say he is the bank, to which, they say, the English king is so indebted that if he paid off what he owes it would bankrupt his whole kingdom.’

  Zuliani frowned.

  ‘What’s he doing in Venice?’

  Cat took his arm and led him out of the chamber.

  ‘Doing what he always does, no doubt. Making more money.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s what we Venetians do best. What do you think we expected of the money invested in Bagnioli’s colleganza?’

  Cat waved a deprecatory hand, as if the money she had loaned Zuliani was of no consequence. But despite her gesture, he knew the loan was important. The Dolfin family, of which Caterina was the last living representative bearing that name, was no longer wealthy. Of course she should have been a Valier after her marriage – and had been for a number of years – but on Pasquale’s death, she had returned to her own illustrious name. Zuliani had pondered asking her to marry him and take his name for herself and their granddaughter, but so far had been afraid to broach the subject. A Dolfin was always a Dolfin, even if this one was his lover too.

  As the day was still warm and the sun bright, they began to walk along the quay from Ca’ Tron towards the Arsenale. It was then that Zuliani spotted the galley, which was unloading on the quayside.

  ‘It’s Baglioni’s vessel, and it looks as though he has returned with a hold full of goods.’

  He rubbed his hands briskly, and gave Cat a pleading look. She sighed at being abandoned, but was resigned to Zuliani’s natural instincts.

  ‘Go on. Go and find out how much Baglioni has earned for us.’

  Zuliani grinned his thanks and, leaving Cat stranded on the quay, he pushed through the crowd, which had gathered to gawp. He was soon at the gangplank of the galley, carefully noting the bundles of silk that were being offloaded. Making a mental calculation as to the return on his – on Cat’s – investment, he cast around for Baglioni. There was no sign of him, but he spotted Saluzzo, the ship’s captain, hanging from the rigging. Zuliani called out to him, and the man looked round. His face clouded over a little when he saw Zuliani on the dock. But then Saluzzo soon put a cheerful grin back on his face, and nimbly dropped on to the deck of the galley. He strode over to the gangplank, meeting Zuliani on the quay before he could set foot on the ship. He shook his hand vigorously.

  ‘A good trip, master, with a well-bought stock of silks and
cotton to sell on to the German traders. You will profit well by it.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it, Saluzzo.’ He looked around the quay. ‘Where is Baglioni?’

  Saluzzo looked around too, as if he expected to see the trader on the dock, though his eyes said otherwise. He shrugged.

  ‘He was here a moment ago.’

  Zuliani wondered if Baglioni’s absence was a sign the trader planned to short-change him over his deal. It certainly looked as if the man was avoiding him, and perhaps in the process of falsifying his records. But then, just as his suspicions were mounting, he heard Baglioni’s voice behind him.

  ‘Messer . . . Zuliani?’

  He turned to be met by the beaming face of a successful trader, who was eager to share his good fortune. And it seemed he had divined Zuliani’s real name.

  ‘It is Niccolo Zuliani, is it not? You should have told me who you were when we made the contract instead of hiding behind Dolfin money. I would have been proud to have Messer Zuliani as my partner.’

  Despite wishing to keep his identity a secret, Zuliani was flattered by Baglioni’s effusiveness. He didn’t think at the time to wonder who had revealed his identity.

  ‘Please. I am an old man, whose glory days are in his past.’

  ‘Never! You have shown you can still spot a good business proposition when you see one, if I may say so. I will prepare the accounts in a few days when the silks and other cloths are sold on the German market. But now, I am afraid you must excuse me.’

  Zuliani could tell that, though Baglioni was engaging him in conversation, his eyes were elsewhere. He watched as the young man strode across the quay, his posture betraying his nervousness. Then he saw why. The solid figure of Marco Tron stood in the shadows of the buildings that bordered the quay. Baglioni hurried over to him, shook his hand, and they both disappeared inside the building behind them. His actions left Zuliani wondering if the Tron family had invested secretly in the colleganza, too.

  ‘Big money demands full attention.’

  Zuliani turned, and saw that the owner of the voice was the old man who had put his life-savings into the colleganza. He struggled for a moment to remember the man’s name, but then it came.