The Birth of Venus

by Sarah Dunant

  “What do you mean?”

  She glanced around. “I think your husband—”

  “No . . . oh, God, no! Cristoforo doesn’t know. How could he know? It’s impossible. No one knows but you and me.”

  “And you don’t believe your brother didn’t guess?” she said angrily. “That day when he came upon you in the chapel?”

  “I think he suspected, but there was no time when he could have told Cristoforo. I watched them every minute they were together. He didn’t tell him. I know. And they haven’t seen each other since because Tomaso is still missing.” She stared at me, then dropped her eyes to her feet. “Isn’t he?” As I said it I felt panic like vomit rise up in my throat. “Oh, sweet Jesus. If you are right . . . if it was a trap—”

  “Look, I don’t think anything anymore. All I know is that unless we get home we will be discovered for certain.”

  I could feel the fear in her. She was not used to being wrong, my Erila, and this was not the time to falter. “Listen to me,” I said fiercely. “I am glad you did it. Glad. Do you understand? Don’t worry.” It was my turn now to reassure her. “I am well. Let us go now.”

  We walked rapidly, retracing our steps so that the darkness clothed us both for most of the journey. If we were being followed, surely we would have known. The baby was still now, though the exertion had taken its toll and I could feel a slow grinding ache at the bottom of my womb. All around us we could hear shouting. To the south of the cathedral we came across a phalanx of youths, armed and raucous, heading toward the cathedral square. Erila pulled me fast back into the shadows as they passed. With the dawn would come Palm Sunday Mass in the cathedral, and while Savonarola himself could not preach, one of his disciples was due to take the pulpit. In a city where gambling would soon be back on the streets, I would not have taken a wager on his getting as far as the sermon.

  As we moved back into the street I felt a stabbing deep in the lower half of my back and I let out a fast breath of pain. Erila turned and I saw my own panic reflected in her eyes. “It’s all right. It’s all right,” I said, trying to laugh but not managing the right sound. “It’s just cramp.”

  “Dear God,” I heard her mutter.

  I took her hand and squeezed it hard. “I told you, I am fine. We have made a pact, this baby and I. It will not be born into a city ruled by Savonarola. And he is not gone yet. Come. We are not far now, though maybe we could walk a little slower.”

  THE HOUSE WAS IN SILENT DARKNESS. WE SLIPPED IN THROUGH THE servants’ door and up the stairs. My husband’s door was closed. I was so weary I could barely undress myself. Erila helped me, then laid herself down in her clothes on a pallet by the door. I know she was worried about the pains. She took some drops from her mother’s medicine pouch and gave them to me. Before I fell asleep I put my hands over my belly, but where once the hillock had been riding high, almost up to my rib cage, now the baby had moved down in my womb, its body pressing heavily on my bladder. By the calculations on the calendar it was not due for three weeks yet, by which time both wet nurse and midwife would be installed.

  “Be patient, little one,” I whispered. “It’s only a short wait now. We will have both city and home ready for you.”

  And the baby, in obedience to our pledge, let me sleep.

  Forty-four

  WHEN I WOKE, ERILA WAS GONE AND THE HOUSE WAS QUIET. I felt heavy with sleep. Her potion had done me well. I lay for a moment trying to work out the time of day from the light around me. It must be afternoon already and everyone at siesta. The grinding in my stomach was back, as if someone was raking the bottom of my womb with a scrubbing brush.

  I got myself to the door and called out for her. No answer. I pulled on a robe and made my way slowly downstairs. The kitchens and servants’ quarters were all empty. Close to the pantry was a small storeroom where they kept the sacks of flour and hung the cured meats. As I passed by it I heard a humming noise. Inside, the cook’s elder daughter was sitting on the floor with a mound of what looked like raisins in front of her, counting them off into small piles, then popping one in her mouth. Sturdier than her sister, she had survived the plague but her mind was less developed than her body and there was a certain vacancy about her. By her age I was reciting Dante and Greek verbs, though such skills were of little use now.

  “Tancia?” I made her jump. She covered the raisins hastily with her skirts. “Where is your father?”

  “My father? . . . He is gone to fight the war.”

  “What war?”

  “The war against the monk,” she said, and she made it sound like great sport.

  “What about the other servants?”

  She shrugged. We had only ever spoken a few words, she and I, and she seemed frightened of me now. With my hair undone and my huge belly I must have been a wild sight. “Answer me. Is there nobody here?”

  “The master said everyone could go,” she said loudly. “But I was not allowed.”

  “And did my slave go too?”

  She looked at me blankly.

  “The black woman,” I said impatiently. “Erila. Did she go too?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And as she said it, the first rush of pain hit me: a belt of metal around my lower abdomen, squeezing so tightly it felt like my insides might burst out onto the floor. “Aah!” It so knocked the breath out of me that I had to hold the side of the door to steady myself. The spasm lasted maybe ten or fifteen seconds, then released. Not now. Oh, God, please not now. I am not ready.

  As I came up for air she was staring at my stomach. “The baby is big, mistress.”

  “Yes. Yes, it is. Tancia, listen to me.” I made my words clear and slow. “I need you to do something for me. I need you to take a note across the city to my mother’s house near Piazza Sant’ Ambrogio. Do you understand?”

  She stared at me, then gave a little laugh. “I cannot, mistress. I don’t know where it is, and the master said the others could go to see the war but I had to stay here.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Please God, if I am to go into labor, at least give me Erila. Don’t leave me alone in the house with a halfwit girl. It couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. It was too early. I was just exhausted and scared. I would go back to bed and sleep again. When I woke the house would be alive again and I would be fine.

  I climbed the stairs carefully. As I reached the first floor I heard a noise, the scrape of a chair or a shutter banging on its hinges? It was coming from Cristoforo’s gallery. I walked carefully along the corridor, my hands cupped under my belly for support, and pushed open the door.

  Inside, an early spring sun was sending a wash of golden light across the tiles and over the statues. The body of the discus thrower glowed in its warmth.

  “Good morning, wife.”

  It was my turn to be shaken now. I turned to find him sitting at the other end of the room, a book on his lap, the statue of Bacchus, in drunken languor, half falling off his plinth behind him.

  “Cristoforo. You scared me! What is happening? Where is everyone?”

  “They are gone to witness history. As you were once so eager to do. The mob broke up the service at the cathedral this morning. The Dominicans fled back to San Marco and are besieged there now in their monastery.”

  “Dear God. And Savonarola?”

  “Is inside. There is a warrant for his arrest from the Signoria. It is only a matter of time.”

  So it was indeed ending now. I felt the grinding in my womb again. This baby, it would seem, had a head for politics. Surely it was my husband’s child after all.

  “And Erila? Is she gone to watch too?”

  “Erila? Don’t tell me your trusted Erila has left you. I thought she was always by your side—wherever you go.” He paused. I realized too late what the words meant. “You slept late, Alessandra? You must have been up in the night. What could have prompted that?”

  “I . . . I am tired, Cristoforo, and I think the baby’s coming may be soo
ner than we thought.”

  “In which case you should go back to bed.”

  There was no mistaking it now, the blank cold politeness. When had it first appeared? Had he been this different when he came back with the news of the painter’s release? Had I been so relieved that despite Erila’s warnings I had not paid enough attention to his manner?

  “Is there news of Tomaso?” I said.

  “What makes you ask?”

  “I . . . I was just praying that he was found.”

  He looked away from me at the statues. If the discus thrower had not been so concentrated on his work, one might almost have thought he was listening. “You know it is said that great artists can only tell the truth in their work. Do you agree with that, Alessandra?”

  “I—I don’t know. I suppose so, yes.”

  “And would you say that a baby is God’s work of art?”

  “Surely.”

  “In which case might it not be possible to detect a lie in a baby?”

  I could feel my skin going cold and clammy. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said, and I heard the slight waver in my voice.

  “No?” he paused. “Your brother is safe.”

  “Oh! Thank God for that. How is he?”

  “He is . . . changed. I think that would be the right word.”

  “Did they . . .”

  “Did they what? Wring the truth out of him? It is always so hard to tell with Tomaso. Sometimes he lies more credibly than he tells the truth. About all manner of things.”

  I swallowed. “Perhaps it is best to remember that before you believe everything he says,” I said softly.

  “Perhaps. Or it could be that his facility with such things runs in the Cecchi family.”

  I stared at him. “I have never lied to you, Cristoforo.”

  “Really?” He held my look. “Am I the father of your child?”

  I took a breath. There was no going back now. “I don’t know.”

  He held my eye for a moment, then put down his book and got to his feet. “Well, thank you at least for your honesty.”

  “Cristoforo—it’s not what you think.”

  “I think nothing,” he said coldly. “Our bargain was a child. The conditions, as I recall, were more about discretion than fidelity. The fault was with the marriage. I should have learned from your mother’s past. Now you must excuse me. I have business to attend to.”

  “What do you mean, my mother’s past?” But he was already up and moving toward the door. “No. Don’t go, Cristoforo, please. This is not the truth either.” I stopped. What could I say to him? What words could possibly tell of the fondness as well as the hardship. “You must know that we have felt—” From deep inside I felt the belt start to tighten again, faster this time. I would need all my breath for the pain now. “Ah . . . the baby . . . please, I beg you stay . . . just until Erila returns. I can’t do it alone.”

  He looked at me. Maybe he simply saw another lie. Or maybe my body, which had been so distasteful to him even when it was intact, now offered only the prospect of woman’s gore and blood.

  “I will send someone,” he said, and turned on his heel and walked out.

  As the door closed behind him the pain roared in, a ring of steel muscle biting into pulp. I thought of the snake in the garden, whispering into Eve’s ear; then, after she had succumbed, I imagined it curling itself around her abdomen and squeezing and squeezing until a misshapen fetus slithered out of her. And thus were sin and agony born together. This time it bent me double and I had to brace myself against Bacchus’ stone flesh until the spasm passed. It was longer, deeper. I counted twenty, then thirty. Only at thirty-five did it start to dull and subside. If the baby was keeping to his side of the bargain, Savonarola must surely be taken already.

  Of course I had heard stories of labor. What pregnant woman after Eve has not? I knew that it starts with a series of increasing waves of rhythmic pain, as the entrance to the womb stretches open to allow the baby out, but that if I used my breath and held my nerve I might find a way to ride them, assuming they did not last forever. Then would come the turn, when the baby’s head began to force itself through, at which point all one could do was push and pray that God had given you a body that would not rip into pieces, as had happened to my aunt and my mother before me.

  But I would not think of them now. First I had to get to my room. I was halfway across the landing when the next contraction hit. I was ready for it this time. I grabbed hold of the stone balustrade and tried to count my way through it, my breath forced out of me in a series of low moans. The pain rose, peaked, held, then started to ebb away. You can do this, I thought. You can do this. Still, my cries must have been louder than I realized because below me I spotted Tancia in the corner of the courtyard, staring up at me, eyes wide with fright.

  “Tancia, I—”

  I never finished the sentence. As I got myself upright I suddenly felt the most terrible urge to urinate. I tried desperately to hold on to my bowels, but the pressure was too great. We both heard the crack—like the snap of a whip against a wall—as something in me opened and suddenly the stone floor beneath me was awash with bloody water. There seemed gallons of it; gushing out of me, pouring like a waterfall down my legs and across the landing till it dripped down into the courtyard below. Tancia gave a shriek of panic and disappeared.

  How I got myself back to my room I don’t recall. The next wave was so fierce it brought tears to my eyes. It had me on my knees, my hands on the edge of the bed. The pain was everywhere, in my loins, in my back, in my head. It and I were one, fused, blocking out thought, blocking out everything. This time the peak lasted forever. I tried to breathe but each gasp came out sharp and shallow, and by the time the steel mouth started to relax its grip I could hear myself crying with fear.

  I sat upright and forced myself to start thinking. Once in my life I had seen the sea, a beach near Pisa where my father’s cloth ships came in to dock. I must have been very young because all I remember is an infinite horizon and the sound of the waves, and how each wave had a life of its own, a muscle rippling and flexing, rising from the belly of the ocean till it flipped over and crashed down into foaming surf that drained away over the whispering sands. My father told me that day how as a young man he had once been in a shipwreck near the coast and how, as he swam for dear life to shore, he had learned to use the waves, lifting himself on top of each and moving with it, but how when he missed one it tumbled him under, making him swallow water until he feared he would drown.

  I knew now that I too was swimming for my life. Only in this sea the waves were pain, each one fiercer than the last, and that my only hope was to ride them in to shore or I too would go under and drown. As the next wave grew, far out to sea, I closed my eyes and imagined myself growing and rising with it. . . .

  “Alessandra.”

  The voice came from somewhere a long, long way off. But I could not listen to it now or I would be sucked under the water.

  “Hold on, child. Get down on all fours.” Closer now, louder, commanding. “Down. It will help.”

  I took a risk and listened. As my hands hit the floor I felt her palms push down low into my back, a deep firm pressure. The wave was peaking, cresting. “Breathe,” the voice said. “Breathe: in . . . out . . . that’s it; good girl. And again: in . . . out . . .”

  I heard a low moan, which must have been my own voice as the white surf hurtled toward the beach and then slowly broke and ebbed away. And as I looked up at her I saw the fear and pride mixed in her eyes and knew I was going to be all right. My mother was come.

  I fell half against her. “I—”

  “Don’t waste your energy. How long between the contractions?”

  I shook my head. “Four, five minutes maybe, but they are coming quicker.”

  She held me as best she could as she pulled pillows off the bed and laid them on the floor so I could rest against them. “Listen to me,” she said quietly. “Erila is gone for the midwife
, but she and the rest of the city are on the streets. They will follow, but this bit you must do yourself. Is there no one else in the house?”

  “Tancia, the cook’s daughter.”

  “I will get her.”

  “No! Don’t leave me!”

  But she was gone already, out on the landing, her voice huge and commanding as a church bell. While the girl might ignore me, she would not ignore my mother. As she came back the pain hit again. This time she was with me from the start, using her hands as a power force on the bottom of my back to massage and spread the steel band as it squeezed into me.

  “Alessandra, listen to me,” she ordered. “You must find a way to absorb the pain. Think of Our Lord’s agony on the cross. Be with Him, and Christ will help you bear it.”

  But I had sinned too much for Christ to help me now. This was my punishment, and it would go on forever. “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can.” Her voice was almost angry now. “Concentrate. See the marriage chest in front of you. Find a face or a figure there and keep focused on it as you breathe. Come, child, use that great mind of yours to hook into the pain. Now breathe.”

  When I fell back onto the pillows afterward I saw Tancia at the door, eyes wide with horror. As my mother barked instructions to her I felt a sudden fury even stronger than my fear, and I heard my voice start to yelp and curse, as if I was somehow possessed. Both of them broke off and stared at me. I think Tancia would have run again if my mother hadn’t slammed the door first.

  “Do you want to push? Is that what you feel?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” I snapped. “What happens next? How do I do this?”

  Amid my terror she surprised me, her face breaking into a smile. “The same way you made the baby. Just do what your body tells you. God and nature will do the rest.”

  And then, suddenly, it changed. Out of my exhaustion rose the most overwhelming need to push, to force it out of me. I tried to pull myself up but I couldn’t make it.

  “Ooh, it’s coming, I can feel it.”