Lodovico chuckled. "I don't disagree with you, girl. I'm becoming very fond of the boy myself. How is the annulment of that marriage of his going?"
Kat made a face; this was the one shadow on her days, for she and Marco could not wed until he had been rid of the wife-in-name-only he had taken out of a misplaced sense of honor and obligation to his benefactor, his wife's brother Petro Dorma. "Slowly. That Angelina! One moment it's a nunnery, and becoming a saint . . ."
Lodovico snorted with laughter. "Saint Puttana. I'll believe all the girls in the House of the Red Cat turned Siblings first."
Kat grinned, in spite of herself. "You shouldn't use language like that in front of me, Grandpapa. Anyway, one minute she's all set on being a saint and a martyr. The next she's screaming at poor Petro that he wants to lock her away."
"And if you didn't hate her guts you might almost feel sorry for her," said her grandfather, still amused.
Kat shook her head at him. "She was, and is, a spoiled, selfish brat. And stupid on top of it. She got herself pregnant and got poor Marco to claim it was his to save her face, and then tried to run away with her lover anyway! And she's still trying to manipulate things in her own favor, no matter what that does to people around her. And yes, I sometimes hate her. But at least I haven't taken out an assassination contract on her head."
Lodovico acknowledged the hit with a wry smile. "I was wrong that time. And Marco and Benito lived through it. Besides, if she delays any more with this annulment I wouldn't bet on you not doing just the same."
They were in a small salon just off the front hall, and thus the pounding of the great Lion-headed knocker was easily audible.
Lodovico chuckled. "He's eager, this young man of yours. Early, too."
A faint frown creased Kat's brow. That was a very forceful knocking. She'd come down to wait for Marco often enough to know he used the knocker tentatively. Maybe . . . bad news. Or good news, finally, about the annulment of his marriage to Angelina. She hastened out into the hallway.
White-haired old Giuseppe had not announced the visitor, because he was gaping at the two of them. They were . . . enormous. They loomed over Giuseppe in the way that the Church of Saint Hypatia Hagia Sophia loomed over the square outside it. Giuseppe and Kat would have been terrified, had the two blond giants not looked like two very lost little boys, crushing fur hats in their hands, hoping for a welcome.
"Pardon," said one, in Italian so atrocious that only familiarity with Erik Hakkonsen's accent enabled Kat to understand him. "But is this the dwelling of the family Montescue?"
"It is," said Kat, blinking at him. It wasn't just the accents of these—boys?—that was outlandish. It was every inch of them, clad as they were in garments like nothing she had ever seen before. Oh, in part, they resembled some sort of Norselander or Icelander; Venice saw enough of those coming in and out of their ports. But not all their garments were fur and homespun woolen. They also rejoiced in leather leggings with fringes of a kind that no Icelander had ever boasted, and there were beads and feathers braided into their hair, which was shaven on the sides, but long everywhere else. And in sheathes at their sides, each of them wore a weapon that Kat recognized. Erik Hakkonsen favored that kind of little axe or hatchet—a tomahawk, it was called.
"Ah, good." The speaker's face cleared. "And is the clan chieftain here? Chief-Lodi-Ludo—"
"Blessed Jesu, boy, don't mangle my name further!" Lodovico growled, as he limped into the hallway. "I am Lodovico Montescue, of Casa Montescue. Who the devil are you?"
Both boys drew themselves up with immense dignity.
"Gulta and Bjarni Thordarson, at your service," the speaker said, and both bowed. "Sent we were, by Clan Thordarson, a trade alliance to make. From Vinland we come, for that purpose." A corded oiled-sailcloth bundle was at the man's feet, and he used the hatchet to slice open the flax cords binding it. It opened, spilling out fine woven cloth, dyed in rich hues. Not wool; something finer, Kat thought. The weaving was done in geometric patterns like nothing she had ever seen, and when the boy bent down and pulled up a corner and handed it to her, she stroked it. And the touch—
"Grandpapa!" she cried involuntarily. "It is as soft as silk, but silk made into wool!"
"It is alpaca," said the one who had not yet spoken, diffidently. "And this is cotton."
He bent and pulled out a snowy white piece and held it to her for her inspection. She touched it as well—cotton she knew. The Egyptian and Indian cloth was shockingly expensive, so much so that only the wealthy could afford the gauzes and cambrics made from it. This was certainly cotton.
"We have these, and other things. Furs, spices. We wish a trade alliance with Clan Montescue to make," the first boy said proudly. "Carlo had said—"
At first, Kat wasn't sure she heard him correctly. "Pardon—who?" she managed.
The boy knitted his brows in puzzlement. "You know him not? Carlo, of Clan Montescue? Is he not here? But he had said—"
And that was when all hell broke loose.
* * *
Marco walked in at just that moment, which complicated matters further. Kat was weeping, Lodovico shaking the poor Vinlander boy in a way that would have made his teeth rattle had he not been as big as he was, and yelling at the top of his lungs, while the other boy looked utterly bewildered. Somehow Marco managed to separate Lodovico from his victim, get them all herded into a quiet room, and (relatively) calmed down.
With Marco's prompting—while Kat clung numbly to his hand—the boys managed to piece together part, at least, of what had happened to her father.
His vessel had been taken by pirates, who had, in turn, sold him to some strange Vinlander tribe in the south of the continent. He had escaped, or been rescued, by some other tribe—the boys were rather vague as to which, or how it had happened—and they in their turn had traded him up the coast until he came into the hands of the Thordarsons.
Now, they had had to pay a great deal for Carlo Montescue, and by their custom and law, he apparently discovered that he couldn't just find a ship and come home. No, he had to earn his freedom; until then, he was what they called a "thrall." Not exactly a slave, but certainly not free, and branded as such by the iron ring around his neck. The boys were very matter-of-fact about it, and although Kat could have wept even harder with vexation, the part of her that was a Venetian trader to the core could see their point.
At any rate, it soon was proved that Carlo was going to earn his freedom in record time, for exactly that reason. Records. Record-keeping and accounting, at which, apparently, the Vinlanders were shockingly bad.
Lodovico grunted at that. "So not all that cursing I did when he was a boy was entirely wasted."
Evidently not. "Our clan-folk have holdings down on the valley of the Mother of Rivers, as well as trading posts at Where-Waters-Meet upon the eastern coast," the first boy—Gulta, that was—said proudly. "Carlo made our profits to rise like a swan in flight! It was he who said that a trading mission to Europe and Venice and perhaps the silk houses of Constantinople might pay a very rich dividend. And we sent him home to await us and prepare the way, while we gathered goods and chose who to go."
"But he never arrived." The loss in her grandfather's face made Kat gulp down her own tears. If she began crying, he might not be able to hold himself together.