struck in Florence and those minted in Genoa, ducats from Venice, coins from Marseilles, and other Catalan coins, reales from Valencia and Mallorca, the gros from Montpellier, coins from the eastern Pyrenees, and the ones minted in Jaca that are usually found in Lerida.”
“Holy Mother of God!” Arnau exclaimed when the Moor had finished the list.
“You need to be able to recognize them all,” Guillem insisted.
Arnau looked up and down the line of coins several times. He sighed.
“Are there any more?” he asked, peering up at Guillem.
“Yes, lots. But these are the most common ones.”
“How are they changed?”
This time it was the Moor’s turn to sigh. “That’s more complicated.” Arnau encouraged him to go on. “Well, to do that we use the standard currencies: pounds and marks for large sums, shillings and pence for smaller ones.” Arnau nodded at this: he had always talked in shillings and pence, whatever the coins he had been using, although they were usually the same. “If you are given a coin, you need to calculate its value according to these standard currencies, then do the same for the currency you have to change it to.”
Arnau struggled to keep up with his explanations. “How do I know what the values are?”
“They are fixed periodically on the Barcelona exchange, at the Consulate of the Sea. You need to go there regularly to check the official rate of exchange.”
“Does it vary then?” Arnau shook his head. He did not know any of these different currencies, had no idea how to exchange one for another, and on top of that, their values changed!
“Constantly,” the Moor told him. “And you have to know the variations. That’s how a money changer makes his money. One of the most important parts of his business is to buy and sell currency.”
“To buy money?”
“Yes, buying ... or selling money. Buying silver with gold, or the other way round, juggling all the various sorts of currency there are, and doing it here in Barcelona if the rate of exchange is good, or elsewhere if it is better there.”
Arnau threw up his hands in despair.
“It’s quite easy, in fact,” Guillem insisted. “Look: in Catalonia it’s the king who determines the parity between the gold florin and the silver croat. He has set it at thirteen to one: a gold florin is worth thirteen silver croats. But in Florence, Venice, or Alexandria, they don’t care what the king says, and to them, the gold in a florin is not worth thirteen times the silver there is in a croat. Here, the king sets the rate for political reasons; there, they weigh the gold and silver and set their own exchange rate. In other words, if you save silver croats and sell them abroad, you will get more gold than you would here in Catalonia for the same coins. Then if you bring the gold back here, you will still get thirteen croats for each gold florin.”
“Why doesn’t everyone do that then?” Arnau objected.
“Everyone who can does. But someone who has only ten or a hundred croats does not bother. The people who do are the ones who have many other people prepared to deposit their ten or hundred croats with them.” The two men looked at each other. “And that is us,” the Moor concluded, spreading his palms.
Some time later, when Arnau was already becoming skilled in recognizing the different currencies and understanding how to exchange them, Guillem started to explain the trade routes and the goods bought and sold along them.
“Nowadays the main one,” he said, “is the route from Crete to Cyprus, from there to Beirut, and from there to Damascus or Alexandria ... although the pope has forbidden trade with Alexandria.”
“So how is it done?” asked Arnau, playing with the abacus in front of him.
“With money, of course. You buy a pardon.”
Arnau remembered the explanation he had heard in the royal quarries about how the royal dockyards were being paid for.
“And do we trade only around the Mediterranean?”
“No. We trade with everyone. With Castille, with France and Flanders, although you are right, it is mostly around the Mediterranean. The difference is the kind of goods we trade. We buy cloth in France, England, and Flanders, especially expensive materials: wool from Toulouse, Bruges, Malines, Dieste, or Vilages, although we sell them Catalan linen too. We also buy copper and tin goods. In the Orient, in Syria and Egypt, we buy spices ...”
“Pepper,” said Arnau.
“Yes, pepper. When people talk about the spice trade to you, they also mean wax, sugar, and even elephant tusks. If they talk of fine spices, then they are referring to what you commonly imagine them to be: cinnamon, cloves, pepper, nutmeg, and so on ...”
“Did you say wax? Do we import wax then? How can it be that we import wax when the other day you told me we export honey?”
“That’s how it is,” the moor interrupted. “We export honey but import wax. We have too much honey, but the churches use a lot of wax.” Arnau recalled the first
At that moment, a client came in. Arnau and Guillem fell silent. The man sat opposite them and, after an exchange of greetings, deposited a sizable sum of money with them. Guillem was pleased: he did not know the client, which was a good sign, as it meant they were beginning not to have to depend on Hasdai’s clients. Arnau dealt with him in a professional way, counting out the coins and verifying their authenticity—although for good measure he passed them one by one to Guillem. Then he wrote down the sum deposited in his ledger. Guillem watched him write. Arnau had improved: his efforts were bearing fruit. The Puig family’s tutor had taught him the
