They'd found a place to stable Turk, then gone down a street, worked up their courage, and entered into one of those broad vaulted portals – wide and high enough for three or four horsemen to ride abreast – and entered the courtyard of one of those buildings. This yard was only some ten by twenty paces, and hemmed in on all sides by the four-story-high walls of the building, which were painted a merry yellow so that what sun did enter the yard cast a symbolic golden radiance on all. The court itself was stuffed with people displaying spices, metal goods, jewels, books, fabric, wine, wax, dried fish, hats, boots, gloves, weapons, and porcelain, frequently standing cheek-to-cheek and talking directly into each other's ears. One whole side of the courtyard, then, gave way to a line of open-sided vaults: an arcade a couple of steps above courtyard level, separated from the courtyard only by a row of stout pillars, and tucked in underneath the actual house. In each vault a grave man in good clothes sat at a mighty desk, or banca, with several immense Books, strapped, buckled, and padlocked shut when not in use; an inkwell; quills; and on the floor next to him, a black chest all wrapped about with bronze or iron straps, hinges, chains, and locks of a weight and quality normally seen on arsenal-gates. Sometimes bales and casks of goods were mounded up next to him. More often, the stuff was piled out in the courtyard. Sixty or eighty feet above, stout beams projected from the tops of dormers, thrusting pulleys out over the yard, and by means of ropes through those pulleys, laborers hoisted the goods up for storage in the cavernous attics.