The Agent's Share

Seville, 1476. Raffaele Vivaldi works in the counting room of Ilario da Pieve on the street of the Genoese. By articles signed in October 1475, Ilario holds two parts in three of the house while Raffaele holds one and keeps the accounts for the western routes. His first entry in the great book is four thousand maravedís lent to a shipmaster fitting out for Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. The money is at the lender's risk until the ship comes home. Castile and Portugal are at war, and guard boats search every hull on the river. The house also holds a part in the Guinea trade at Lisbon, which can only wait. In Genoa, Bianchina Vivaldi, Raffaele's sister, wears the iron keys and writes to ask what sugar of Madeira costs. She sends two hundred lire to Lisbon for the next crop. At home, the Doria account grows by sixteen lire every month, with no line drawn under it.

The Agent's Share continues The Remaking of the House, a family saga that follows the Vivaldi across the centuries as the center of the Western world moves from the Levant and the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.