Yet, even as these thoughts chased through her head, she reproached herself. The men were facing real danger. What did her personal concerns matter when compared with what Christophe and Daniel—even David and Ezekiel—were facing?
Dolce stood by the presses. Mirelle approached her.
“Dolce. Talk to me.”
“What do you want now?” Her friend averted her face. “I’ve nothing to say to you.”
Mirelle backed off and moved a chair to one of the other rooms, a room crisscrossed with laundry cord. Christophe had once explained how they’d mimicked the system of ropes his uncle had devised in Paris to dry the pages after they came off the press.
She sat down heavily, wondering what would happen after the day was over. Would Christophe send her off to Paris? When would he be able to join her? And what kind of reception would she receive from his uncle and mother? Did they even know about her? About the baby? Would she have to be the one to tell them? She shuddered at the thought.
The sound of weeping tore through her; the pang of her mother’s misery was growing unbearable. Why wasn’t Dolce comforting her? She was as complicit in this secret as Mirelle herself. Why had she denied it? Mirelle strode back into the other room.
“For the sin which we have committed before God by scheming against a fellowman,” she said, turning Dolce by the shoulder to face her. Her friend glared, stepping back. “Leave me alone.” “You are the schemer who sins that sin. I see it and God sees it. You did everything you could to divide your father and me. You used me. Used Christophe. And you won.” Mirelle’s laughter was tinged with hysteria.
“I did win,” Dolce said. A momentary twinge crossed her face. Was it shame? Guilt? But then she squared her shoulders. “I always win.”
Mirelle stepped forward again, practically nose to nose with her friend. “For the sin which we have committed before God by scheming against a fellowman,” she repeated.
Dolce turned on her heel and walked away.
The carriage pulled up alongside the narrow bell tower, a white stone edifice as tall as the cathedral, capped with a red slate roof and, at its peak, a single cross. Between arched windows, Christophe could make out the enormous bell.
It made Christophe remember a recent letter from his mother. The church bells ring out again in Paris, she’d written. Not all of them and not regularly. But after years of silent services, of huddling in corners to worship the Lord, it is a blessed sound. The church bells had been a fixture of his youth before the Terror stilled them. He hadn’t realized until now how much he’d missed them.
Two distinct groups stood at the base of the tower. Christophe recognized the two women he’d seen at the Marotti house the day they’d captured Emilio. Behind them stood a priest, several other women, and a few old men, faces bronzed by years of toiling in the sun. Facing them down was a large man with thick, blackened forearms. A cadre of noisy young men massed behind him, brandishing weapons fashioned from farm implements.
As Christophe neared, their conversation became clearer. During the months he’d lived in Italy, particularly in Ancona, he’d picked up enough Italian to get by. He might not understand every word, but he could grasp what these plainspoken peasants were saying.
“Back off,” the older woman demanded, arms crossed on her chest. “Bad enough you threatened to burn the portrait of the Madonna. Thank Our Lord and all the saints it was saved, even if it is under French guard. Now you threaten to take the cathedral bell? No and no.”
“What’s gotten into you, you old . . . ?” The next word the heavyset man used was some kind of unintelligible insult. He continued, sounding bewildered. “You were the first to say no to the French. Driving us crazy with your prayers that they wouldn’t take Ancona. But they did, and now that we want to do something about it, you say you’ll stop us.” He thought for a moment. “If it’s the church you’re defending, Cardinal Ranuzzi sent us.”
“Of course I didn’t want the French here, Desi!” she barked, forcing him backward. “But what’s one cannon—even two—going to do for us?” She turned to the priest. “Father Candelabri, the cardinal didn’t tell you to let them have the bell, did he?”
“It doesn’t matter what the cardinal said,” Morpurgo said, stepping forward. “I’m a member of Ancona’s municipal council and I’m ordering you to stop.”
Both groups turned to stare at Morpurgo. Christophe moved behind him, bayonet at the ready. The men he commanded fell into line.
“A member of Ancona’s council, Jew?” Desi jeered. “With the cursed French at your back? Why should anyone listen?”
“Because, like it or not, I’ve the authority to stop you.” “Authority given you by the enemy,” Desi sneered. “Traitor! Collaborator! Jew!”
Ezekiel had remained behind the line of soldiers, but now he moved to stand beside his brother. “We insist that you leave the cathedral grounds,” he said. “And we’ve brought these soldiers to make certain you do.”
“What do you care, anyway?” someone else called up from the pack of men behind Desi. “You’re Jews. What does it matter to you if we remove the bell?”
“It matters,” Morpurgo said. “The cathedral is one of the import-ant”—Christophe thought the next word must mean landmarks—“of the city, and the bell tower and bell are part of that. For that reason alone, we are here to defend it.”
“For that reason alone?” Desi scoffed. “All you Jews care about are your own people, your own greed. The French are probably paying you to stop us. And while you stand here, defending a cathedral bell, you’ve no idea what’s happening in your homes.”
David’s mouth twisted. “Don’t we? You’d be surprised, blacksmith.”
Daniel came around the corner, still calling out to the Jews of the ghetto to remain inside—and stopped short. Francesca stood huddled in the center of a small cul-de-sac, ineffectively shielding her face and body from stones pelted by a group of teenage boys from the upper windows of the local yeshiva.
“Go away!” one of them shouted.
“Come to watch us die?” another shrieked, letting a rock fly. “Vai al diavolo!” His missile smashed into Francesca’s chest, making her stumble.
“Stop!” Daniel bellowed up at them, stepping in front of the now-weeping woman. Seeing Daniel’s raised musket, several boys ducked their heads back inside. Windows slammed shut. But a few didn’t scare so easily.
“What’s she doing here?” one cried out. “Don’t think we don’t know who she is!”
“I don’t mean any harm,” Francesca quavered, looking around the shield of Daniel’s body.
“Don’t you?” cried another. “You and that fake portrait of the so-called Virgin Mother! You and that husband of yours!”
“It’s not fake,” Francesca shouted, crying out as another rock hit her forearm.
“Stop!” Daniel pulled her more securely behind him, then pointed his musket toward the open windows. “You’re the pride of your yeshiva, aren’t you—attacking a defenseless woman?” he called up to the boys in Yiddish. “Heldish mentshn! Such brave young men!”
“Get her out of here!” the boy who threw the rock retorted, waving a fist.
Daniel turned to Francesca, who was tying a handkerchief around her arm to stem the trickle of blood. “What did I tell you?” he rebuked her. “Didn’t I say it was too dangerous to be here?”
She shrank back against the stucco wall.
Daniel looked around. “And now it’s too dangerous for you to leave. Let’s find a place where you’ll be safe.” His eyes lit upon the synagogue building. “Come.”
“There?” Francesca shook her head. “I can’t go there.”
Daniel reached for her arm. “I haven’t time for this. You’ll be safe there.”
As they entered, she looked around, wide-eyed. The room was long and narrow, the ark and windows supported by pillars gilded in gold paint. Chairs were covered in red velvet; glistening wood pews lined the sides of the room. Chand
eliers of bronze hung from the ceiling, filled with fresh candles.
Daniel led her up the stairs to the women’s balcony.
“The cardinal is right,” Francesca murmured. “You Jews are wealthy beyond belief.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Daniel told her. “Think of your own cathedral. Are you rich because your church is adorned with gold and silver?” She looked unconvinced, but said nothing as Daniel deposited her in the balcony.
“Stay here and pray,” he instructed. “I’ll come get you when it’s all over.”
60
Roberto scowled as the cardinal addressed the men. Ranuzzi had mustered dozens of them, equipped with daggers, muskets stolen from the French, even a few pistols. They passed bottles of grappa around for courage. Roberto grabbed one from the man standing next to him and took a long slug.
“The Jews are a disease,” the cardinal was saying. “A blight on our city. They have not changed from the days of Christ, when they delivered Our Lord for execution. Judases all. Trust me, they’ve collected their thirty pieces of silver—and then some.”
“Thirty!” called one of the men. “More like three hundred! I’ve seen the mansion of the Jew councilman. You’ve seen it too, Roberto. Tell them!”
Roberto nodded, thinking back to that dreadful day. “The man drowns in silver,” he snarled. “Every inch of the place is marble, every wall thick with artwork, servants crawling in every corner. That’s where our money has gone—to the Jews. They’ve grown fat on our misery.”
“And this Jew and his brother rule over us now.” Ranuzzi sneered. “Should we stand for this? Nonbelievers, traitors to true Italians, who will someday tell us that we can’t worship in our churches? Collaborators with the French, who’ve stripped their entire nation of its Catholic ways? Do you want the same done here?”
“What are we waiting for?” one of the men asked, taking another swig of grappa. “Enough blather! Let’s move!”
“Father Candelabri, isn’t it?” Christophe asked the priest through Morpurgo, who translated for him. Father Candelabri nodded. “Did the cardinal instruct these men to take the bell?”
Morpurgo glared at him, appalled. “Don’t ask him that!”
The men’s grumbling diminished as they leaned in to hear the priest’s answer.
Candelabri’s lips thinned. “I may be severely punished for not obeying my superior, but he is wrong in this instance,” he said in uneasy French.
“What do you mean?” Desi cried. “Speak Italian, Father!”
The priest looked at Christophe, eyebrows rising.
“Go ahead,” Christophe said. “I’ll tell you when I don’t understand.”
“Plainly then—yes, the cardinal said the men could take the bell—”
A roar of victory erupted from the men’s throats, countered by shrill shouts of protest from the other group.
“And just as plainly,” the priest shouted above the tumult, “I forbid it!”
“What?” Desi shrieked. “You can’t!”
The old woman stepped up, raising her arms for silence. Christophe noticed with surprise how swiftly she subdued both sides.
“Desi, you should be ashamed,” she scolded. “Think how often you heard the church bell ring—when it was time for school and prayers, at your confirmation, and for every wedding and funeral in the city. How can you think of robbing Ancona of it?”
“If the French have their way, they’ll still it soon enough,” Desi argued. “They’ll forbid us the cathedral, deny us the worship of Our Lord. Father! Ask this French soldier if he can still kneel in prayer at Notre Dame—or at any other church in Paris.”
Christophe felt the weight of their collective gaze. How had this conversation swerved into such a dangerous philosophical debate? He shouldn’t allow these insurgents to bandy words with him. “This is neither the time nor place for religious questions,” he said to the priest, who translated with a frown.
“Isn’t it?” Desi demanded. “Where better than here and now?”
“My son,” the priest told him. “I won’t stand by and watch blood being shed—no, nor sacred property turned to an instrument of war.”
“Leave the bell where it is today,” David said. “I promise the council will discuss whether or not we should forge a cannon to defend our city after the French leave.”
“After the French—do what?” Desi turned to Christophe. “Are you leaving, Frenchman?”
Christophe knew they would still be leaving a force behind in the city, but if these men thought they were leaving, it might help their cause. The Italians stared at him, waiting.
As time ticked by in the dusty, still air of the synagogue, Francesca grew increasingly perturbed. Fiona’s mother had taken the baby but said she couldn’t tend Mario for more than a couple of hours. “I have my own family to care for,” she’d said. “Especially if the rumors are true and there’s more trouble.”
“I’ll be home soon,” Francesca replied. “Before the girls return from school.”
But the hour grew late. Fiona’s mother had probably handed the baby over to Barbara, grumbling about broken promises. Would Barbara venture out with Mario to find her mother? What am I doing here? Why did I go running to Daniel with news of the attack?
Yet what else could she have done? Her husband’s hatred of Jews had polluted his soul. If only his father had not lost his fortune to a Jewish moneylender, squandering Emilio’s inheritance. If Emilio had not tried to cheat the Jewish merchant in Venice, wounding his arm. If the cardinal had not convinced him to join the Catholic Fellowship, given him absolution to kill and maim. If the wealthy Jewish merchant who’d wounded him had not been such an attractive target—yet somehow survived Emilio’s stabbing attack. If it hadn’t been a Jew—Daniel himself—who’d captured Emilio and plunged them all into the intrigue of the stolen Madonna. And a Frenchman, Daniel’s friend, who’d dispatched her husband to the fires of hell.
Francesca closed her eyes, remembering everything that had brought them to this moment. How could her husband not hate the Jews after everything that had happened to him? And yet—how could Mother Mary excuse him from the destruction he’d wrought, the sin of murder and pain, even upon unbelievers?
Francesca felt a qualm, wondering what the priests would think of her sitting in this house of infamy, this place of worship of the people who’d crowned Christ with thorns and bedeviled him on the road to crucifixion. She pulled her string of rosary beads from her pocket. Mother Mary, protect my soul from evil and guide me to do right, she thought, beginning to pray.
But as the minutes passed, her prayers echoed menacingly within these foreign walls. What am I doing? Francesca asked herself. She couldn’t pray to the Madonna here.
Daniel returned to the ghetto’s entranceway. “I’ve instructed them to remain inside, Captain,” he told Bossard.
“Good. Stay close, Isidore, so you can translate.”
“Captain!” one of the men ran up. “They’re on their way!”
Daniel heard a determined tramp of feet. He took a deep breath, his weapon at the ready.
Mirelle wiped her tears with the flat of her palms. She struggled to breathe. She wouldn’t stay here in the printshop, not if neither Mama nor Dolce would speak with her.
And then she felt it—a sudden tug low in her stomach. She crept into a back room, behind a screen, and, wrestling with her clothes, peered down into her undergarments. Blood. Why was there blood? It’s not possible, she told herself. I’m not bleeding, I’m pregnant. I have Christophe’s baby inside me. Blood, how can there be blood?
Again the familiar ache in her gut. Eve’s curse, that monthly visitor, which so often drove her to curl up in a tight ball under the covers.
Why was there blood? The answer was irrefutable. Because there is no baby, said a voice inside her. You’re late, not pregnant.
For a moment, Mirelle clung to the feelings that had sustained her for the past weeks—You and Christophe are meant to be
, you and Christophe are having a child together, there it is, the proof of your union, growing inside of you. She stared at her undergarments, trying to make sense of it, but the red stain remained.
No baby. There was no baby. She felt a pang, her heart breaking, as she thought of the tiny being that had only existed in her mind. It had felt so real, growing inside her, forcing her to give up everything she’d ever known. All for nothing—a phantom, a mistake of timing. A mathematical anomaly. How could her body have betrayed her so? She stood there, staring blankly at the spot ruining her linen. Perhaps ruining her life yet again.
Pulling herself back together, she crept back to her mother. “Mama . . .”
Her mother turned away. “Leave me alone,” she hissed. “You’re dead to me.”
Mirelle felt sick. How could she have been so wrong? Wrong about so much—even loving Christophe, the man who would soon be her husband. But they’d confessed their lovemaking and she still had to marry him. Would he be angry when she told him she wasn’t pregnant? She felt panic at the thought that he might cast her aside, leaving her ruined and alone. And if she did marry him? What would Christophe’s mother think of her, penniless and destitute? Didn’t she already have reason enough to despise her—an unmarried woman who wasn’t even carrying her son’s child? Mirelle urgently wanted to return to her room, to bathe and change. Before she confessed to Christophe. Before David returned and denied her the door.
But it would be fatal to stroll openly into the ghetto now, while riot raged in the streets. She paced the room. How could she find her way back to the Morpurgo house undetected?
The image of Jewish gravestones on the hillside overlooking Ancona popped into her head. She remembered the day she had snuck out to visit Jacopo’s grave, back when the entire Jewish community had locked themselves inside the ghetto for their own safety.
Beyond the Ghetto Gates Page 35