“Doesn’t it?” Mirelle closed her parasol and dug at the ground with its point. “I see.”
Daniel bit his lip. “He says he feels something different for you,” he repeated, to assuage his pang of guilt.
“How could he?” She dug deeper into the sandy soil. “He doesn’t know me, not really. And I don’t know him.”
He stared at her, his discomfort growing. If Christophe knew how she felt!
She put her hand back on his arm and they continued their stroll. Within a few turns, they were at the marketplace. Mirelle pointed out the best stalls, telling Daniel where to buy fruit, cheese, and vegetables. He bought some dates and olives, as well as a loaf of bread. Mirelle bought some early spring flowers.
“They’ll brighten our table tonight,” she said as the flower seller wrapped them in paper.
They turned once again. Daniel felt someone bang into his side. “Scusi!” came a high-pitched voice.
Dropping Mirelle’s arm, Daniel reached out to grab the child who’d bumped into them. It was Barbara, Francesca Marotti’s daughter. The young girl was breathing hard. A boy skittered to a stop before them. Recognizing Daniel, Barbara made the horned sign of the evil eye. “Ebreo,” she panted to the boy in explanation. “Diavolo.”
Mirelle stiffened. “Comportatevi bene,” she told them. “Behave yourselves.”
Barbara stuck out her tongue. “She’s probably a Jew devil herself,” she told the boy. “Let’s get out of here before they cast a spell on us.”
They scurried off.
“How in the world does she know you?” Mirelle asked.
“It’s a long story.” Daniel looked around the stalls until he located Francesca. “Here, come meet Signora Marotti. She’s the girl’s mother.”
Mirelle followed him to the stall.
“Signora Marotti,” Daniel said. “It’s good to see you again.”
Francesca looked up in surprise. Her baby was asleep, wrapped in a shawl tied at her chest. “Daniel! I thought you were long gone, with the French troops.”
“I’m stationed in Ancona,” Daniel explained. “Signora Marotti, let me introduce a neighbor of yours and a cousin of mine. Mirelle d’Ancona.”
“I bought eggs from you once,” Mirelle said. “And some artichokes.”
“I remember,” Signora Marotti said. “I was grateful for your help that day.”
Daniel wondered what they meant, but he sensed neither of them wanted to say more. “Signora Marotti was the first to see the miracle of the Mary portrait,” Daniel explained to his cousin. “General Bonaparte wanted to question her, and I was commanded to bring her to him.”
Just then, a squat, swarthy man pushed past them. Emilio Marotti.
“I need money, wife,” he growled, paying no attention to Daniel and Mirelle.
Mirelle’s fingers trembled on Daniel’s arm. He glanced at her, alarmed at her sudden pallor.
“More money?” Francesca sounded weary.
“Just give it to me,” her husband demanded, hand extended.
“Good-bye,” Daniel muttered as Signora Marotti fumbled in her pockets and dropped a handful of coins into her husband’s outstretched palm. He ushered Mirelle swiftly back to the quay, where he settled her onto a bench near the water, beside the lapping waves.
“Are you all right?” he asked. Her cheeks were still pale as milk.
“That man killed Jacopo,” she whispered faintly. “I watched through the knothole in the floor. He struck him with a cudgel. And he stabbed Papa.”
Daniel froze, the hair on the back of his neck rising. He took her fan from her limp grasp and waved her face with it, tense fingers nearly splintering the wood. I could have protected her, he thought angrily. If I had been there, I could have stopped this tragedy from happening. With fury in his heart, he remembered Marotti stretched out on the roadway after he’d tried to ambush his fellows. Daniel should have left him there to rot—or, better yet, executed him on the spot.
“Can I fetch you some water?” he said, wanting to comfort her even while he cursed his weakness. “Do you have smelling salts?”
Mirelle shook her head. “Let’s just go home,” she murmured. He leaned in to catch her words. “Back to the ghetto, where it’s safe.”
39
MARCH 15
Emilio stood in the shaded archway of Ancona’s municipality, waiting for the councilmen to finish their morning meeting. The sun shone brightly on the street, crowded with horses, carts, and carriages. This open spot was almost too public for what he had in mind. But on the other hand, he thought, who would suspect me here?
He was dressed in a French uniform stolen from the barracks by the harbor. The French spent so much time parading or flirting with Italian women that they forgot to post a guard on their own quarters. Or else, Emilio thought with a smirk, they believed they were invulnerable in the city they had conquered. Well, he was about to show them different.
He was still bitter over the Madonna portrait. The moment he proposed burning the painting, the cardinal had forbidden him to return to the Catholic Fellowship. Ever. And no one—not even Desi—had defended him. He remembered the horror on their faces, the black condemnation. Well, he’d show them, too! What had they done, after all, since attacking the Jews? Not a damned thing. Yet they refused to consider the one good idea anyone had come up with. They were all cowards! Yellow-bellied cowards!
The uniform was too big on him. He’d brought it home to Francesca to fix. He remembered the fear in her eyes when he’d thrown it at her.
“Where did you get this?” she asked in a horrified whisper, looking toward the children’s room.
“Never mind where I got it. I have to wear it.” He didn’t need her annoying him right now. He had enough of that outside his home. “And don’t tell anyone about it. Capisci?”
“Believe me,” she muttered, spreading the uniform out on her legs, “I won’t tell a soul.”
It had taken longer than he liked for her to fix the uniform. She’d refused to work on it during the day, refused to work on it until the children slept at night. And as he’d watched her sew by candlelight, she had driven him mad with questions: What are you going to do with it? What if they catch you? Who else knows? Is this a plot of the Catholic Fellowship? Don’t you care about us? Don’t you care about yourself?
“Shut up and sew,” had been his answer every time. Or, on the nights when she was particularly exasperating: “What are you looking for—a belt in the eye? Just get on with it.”
But Francesca had done a good job, he thought now as he stood in the puddles of darkness made by the city hall’s arched entrance. He kept the French soldier’s shako cap low over his forehead. No one walking in or out of the building gave him a second glance.
He wished he’d been able to steal a French saber or a musket, but the dagger tucked in his boot, with its comforting bite, would have to do.
Echoing footfalls grew nearer. He’d watched the same spot for a week now, so he knew the council left for their midday meal just as the church bell chimed twelve. He moved deeper into the shadows of the long hallway.
Someone pushed open the doors and they emerged, mouths flapping, arms waving in emphasis. Emilio knew his target: the Jew who’d slashed him with his sword, the wealthy one whose home they’d tried to ransack. And there he was—at the back of the group, talking with a tall, skeletal man.
Emilio slipped his stiletto from his boot. He waited, holding his breath. Then, when the Jew was two steps away, he rushed up and plunged the dagger in his side.
The Jew screamed. The skinny man shouted. The others whirled, shock on all their faces. Rather than running past them, Emilio moved swiftly backward through the heavy doors into the municipal building. He’d practiced how to escape—through the hallways and out through a door to a secluded garden. From there he could head to the hills.
He’d already left food and bedding in a cave a few miles south of the city. He would be safe there for the ni
ght while they looked for the murderer. Since the man was just a damned Jew, he told himself, no one would really care. And since Emilio was wearing a French uniform, no one would connect him to the murder. But best to be out of the way for a day or two, just in case. Emilio grinned as he thought how the resulting uproar would drive a wedge between the cursed Jews and the French. He’d wreck their damned alliance.
He sped through the corridors, the shouting receding as he ran.
Emilio came home a day later to a frantic Francesca. She was kneeling in their backyard shrine to Mary, rosary beads sliding through her fingers in time with her moving lips. Barbara and the baby were with her.
“Papa!” Barbara jumped up, running into his outstretched arms.
Francesca rose slowly to her feet. “Where have you been?”
He pushed his daughter away and thrust the baby at her. “Take him for a walk,” he ordered. He pulled a few coins from his pocket. “Buy some sweets. Don’t come home for a while.”
“But why? What are you going to do?” Barbara stepped out of reach of his fists.
“Take the money and go,” he repeated, more harshly this time.
She snatched the coins, put the baby on her hip, and disappeared.
Emilio grabbed Francesca by the arm and pulled her into the house. He’d been waiting for this moment ever since his blade hit bone in the Jew’s body. After the riots in the ghetto, he’d been too injured to enjoy his blood lust, but not this time.
“Take off your clothes,” he barked, his voice rasping in his throat. “Get on the bed. Now.”
“He’s not dead, you know.” Francesca sat up as soon as she judged it safe, slid out of bed, pulled on her clothes, and picked the sheets off the floor. Emilio still lay prone, breathing heavily, the whorls of dark hair matting his chest slick with sweat.
“He’s not dead? Who’s not dead?” He opened one eye and glared at her.
Francesca flinched, sheets and blankets cradled in her arms. Had he decided to pretend he’d had nothing to do with the near-murder of the Jew from the ghetto? “David Morpurgo, the city councilman,” she said. “The Jew.”
“He’s not dead?” Emilio looked at her blankly. “Of course he’s dead. I thrust the stiletto deep, felt bone. How can he still be alive?”
She threw the bedclothes down at his feet and stood before him, arms crossed over her chest. It was worth chancing a few bruises to know the truth. “You admit it?”
Emilio swung his legs onto the floor, reaching for his breeches. “What if I do?”
Francesca drew in a shallow breath, quelling the desire to rip his face apart with her fingernails. She knew he felt wronged by everything he claimed the Jews had done to him, to his father—but how could he be so vicious? Her piety slipped away as she contemplated his smug smile. Putting a hand on her chest to slow the dangerous thudding of her heart, she was swept with guilt at her disloyalty, her fury. She forced herself to speak softly, deliberately. “If you care about us, our safety, you should leave. You endanger us all.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Emilio, still shirtless, a grimy bandage wrapped around his old wound, strode barefoot across the floor and out the bedroom door. Francesca heard him rustling in the kitchen, doubtless looking for a bottle of grappa. She heard the rub of a cork being pulled, the splash of liquid in a cup. She winced at his loud “aaah” as he drank deep.
She followed him, leaned against the doorjamb. “Lamb of God,” she whispered, keeping the prayer low, “who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.”
“Praying, are you?” He drank again and glowered dangerously. “Make me something to eat. How are you so sure the godforsaken Jew isn’t dead?”
She moved swiftly past him and took a skillet out of the cabinet. “I can fry some eggs.”
He nodded, pouring another drink. “The Jew?”
“Alive. And they know it wasn’t a Frenchman who tried to kill him.”
Emilio frowned. She imagined him thinking, So that part of the plan didn’t work.
As she cooked, she reminded herself of her wedding vows. She was stuck with this man, no matter what he did—and God and the priests instructed her to be a helpmeet to him. “They haven’t come looking for you yet,” she told him, “but your name is definitely being mentioned. Desi said you should probably leave Ancona for a while.”
She put the plate of food on the table, along with some slices of day-old bread and a crock of soft cheese. He took the bottle and cup with him, sat down, and tore the bread into two pieces with a grunt. She leaned against the doorjamb again. Go, she willed him. You do none of us any good here. She chastised herself for wishing him dead rather than simply gone, but the thought kept resurfacing, no matter how hard she tried to suppress it. She wasn’t willing to hand him over to the French or the city council, but if they took him without it being her doing . . .
She stopped herself, lips moving as she mouthed the prayer she had memorized as a child: Most loving God, regard my prayer and free my heart from the temptation of evil thoughts.
He wolfed down the food and gulped his third cup of grappa. His face was scrunched in concentration, eyes moodily fixed on the glass.
“Are you going to go?” her fear prodded her to ask. “They’ll hang you if they find you. Remember what General Bonaparte said.”
“Where would you have me go?” he asked, his face surly. “Why do they care about that Jew bastard, anyway? And why in the name of Satan is he still alive?”
Francesca shuddered. How is it that the Lord God and all his angels saddled me with such a creature? “I don’t know how he survived,” she told him. “But you won’t, if you don’t leave.”
That was when his face changed. All the bravado left it and it caved, crumpled. She watched, horrified, as he dissolved into tears.
“Why didn’t it work?” he asked, looking up at her piteously. “It was the perfect plan. The Jew would be dead, the French blamed. Why didn’t it work?”
Her anger toward him melted. She sat next to him and put a hand on his knee. In an instant, he was on the floor at her feet, his head in her lap. She rubbed his thick black hair as if he were a naughty child. But he was no child.
After a few moments, she pushed his head up and stood. “I’ll pack your things,” she said. “Sleep in the mountains for a while. I’ll get word to you when it’s safe to come home.”
40
MARCH 16
“Ring the bell,” Christophe said, stepping back from the ornately carved villa entrance.
Daniel pulled the cord. The ringing sounded deep within the mansion, making Christophe remember the last time he was there: the evening of the salon, when Morpurgo had proposed to Mirelle. Christophe knew Mirelle had not accepted the wealthy man yet, but surely she would soon. Especially now that he had survived this attempt on his life. If Christophe hadn’t been ordered by the garrison captain to make this visit of condolence . . .
A servant led them to a room where other well-wishers were gathered. Dolce flitted in and out, greeting newcomers and ushering small groups into her father’s chambers. The moment she stepped into the room, she was surrounded by fawning young men, one after another whispering words of comfort and support into her inclined ear. Christophe glowered. It felt like being summoned to a royal audience, something no patriotic Frenchman would warm to. Refreshments were set out on a sideboard—pastries and fruit. Dolce’s face lit up upon seeing Daniel. She stood for several minutes, talking earnestly to him. She truly seemed to favor him. Why couldn’t Daniel see it?
Just last week, Christophe had chided his friend as they worked together in the printshop. “You’ll never have such a chance again.
She’s the most beautiful Jewess in town, isn’t she? Not to mention the wealthiest.”
“She’s not serious,” Daniel retorted. “I’m just new here, a foreigner and a soldier, a shiny new toy. She’ll tire of me in a month.”
Christophe wondered if his friend were right. He a
dmired Daniel’s resilience in the face of such temptation. Would he have had the same fortitude? He thought not. But perhaps, he mused, watching Dolce lightly rap his friend’s knuckles with her fan, she was just amusing herself.
He helped himself to a custard tart and a glass of Madeira. Just as he swallowed the last morsel, Dolce disengaged herself from Daniel and approached him.
“I’m surprised to see you,” she said softly. “Would you spare me a moment?”
“Of course, signorina.” He put down the plate and glass and followed her.
She led him into a smaller salon, one with sky-blue walls and a frieze of plaster swans.
“This is my favorite sitting room,” she told him. She settled herself on a peach-colored divan, gracefully straightening her skirts.
“Your father is well?” “He will be,” Dolce said. “The wound would have been deeper if he hadn’t been wearing a corset. The knife struck one of the whalebone struts. I trust you won’t mention that, however. He would not like it known that his vanity saved his life.”
Christophe couldn’t help but snort. “A corset?”
Dolce laughed. “I should not have told you. But you’ll keep his secret, won’t you?”
Christophe half bowed. “As my lady commands,” he said gallantly.
“Good.” Dolce shifted on the divan, leaning forward. “Now, tell me. What’s happening between you and Mirelle? Are you the reason she still hasn’t accepted my father’s proposal?”
Christophe tried to hide his surprise. “I haven’t spoken to her since your salon. It’s clear that we’re not a good match, no matter what we feel.”
“But you love her.” Dolce clasped her hands in her lap. “Don’t you?”
Christophe stared. What had Mirelle confided? Why was Dolce asking? “And if I do?”
“It’s wonderful.” Dolce’s white teeth shone like ivory against pink lips as she beamed at him. “The chance meeting in Venice—reuniting here. So romantic!”
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