The Stargazer: The Arboretti Family Saga - Book One

by Michele Jaffe

  They were ready to come to blows by the time the boat passed through the imposing portal of the arsenal. Bianca, filled with a sense of elation completely out of place for the task ahead of her, had spent the journey trying to clear her brain of thoughts of Ian. She needed to exorcise from her mind the scent of his hair, the friction of his early morning growth of beard against her breast, the feeling of his strong thighs wrapped around her, the security of being held tight in his arms, if she was going to be able to concentrate. But it was the sight and the smell of the arsenal, its sinister fires leaping into the sky at all hours and in all weather, that really brought her back to her senses.

  Nilo made a sign to the guard on duty who lifted the heavy gate just enough for the gondola to slide through. Bianca remembered thinking on her first visit there that Dante had been completely accurate to use Venice’s arsenal as the basis for a description of hell, an observation that seemed even more true this rainy dawn. There were men moving all around, some carrying heavy rolls of newly worked cordage, others stirring the large stinking cauldrons of pitch, still others high on scaffoldings, putting the finishing touches on a hull or mast. The arsenal was the key to Venice’s imperial power, its production of a warship a day the linchpin that guaranteed Venice’s merchants free passage in the waters of the globe. Bianca’s father had once described a banquet thrown at the arsenal for a visiting dignitary that opened with the laying of a ship’s keel and, after the three thousand guests had satiated their appetites, concluded with the then finished galleon being launched. In the intervening years, the arsenal’s production capabilities had been even more streamlined, Bianca knew, with an expanded workforce and the permanent implementation of day-and-night operations. Like some sort of fiery monster, it never slept and would suffer no check to its ceaseless machinations.

  While the arsenal itself seemed only to grow and thrive, the dormitories that housed the prostitutes at the center of the complex were even more squalid and horrible than Bianca remembered. She allowed herself be led by Nilo through a doorway whose door had rotted away, down an airless corridor covered in places by water a finger deep. As they ascended the damp, rickety stairs at the far end, a pathetic wailing assailed her ears, growing louder with each step toward their goal. Pushing aside a door crudely fashioned out of shipyard scraps, Nilo let Bianca precede him into the minute, dank room he shared with his aunt.

  The only light came from a small window on the wall closest to Bianca, but unfiltered by glass or even grease-paper, it was adequate to show her a pregnant woman only slightly older than herself, gasping in pain on a rickety couch. Nilo ran to her, dragging Bianca by the hand.

  “I brought her, Aunt Marina, look, I told you she would come.”

  Bianca knelt beside her, placing one hand on the girl’s forehead and the other on the girl’s wrist.

  “Can you hear me, cara?” Bianca intoned softly, and the girl nodded. Her face was streaked where tears of pain had rolled across her dirty cheeks, and her nails digging into Bianca’s hand were no more than encrusted stubs. She was covered by a coarse sheet that might once have been white but could now aspire only to gray.

  “When did the pains start?” Bianca directed the question at Nilo but kept her eyes on Marina.

  “Yesterday,” the girl answered first, her voice strained. “Then, today, the bleeding.”

  “I came home from your palace,” Nilo was speaking quickly, “and I found her here, like this, with Donna Rosa.” Nilo gestured behind him, and for the first time Bianca noticed the cluster of older women along the far wall. “I wanted to get you earlier, but they stopped me.”

  “Didn’t want you losing your job for nothing, little one.” Donna Rosa’s voice was hoarse, but her tone was not unkind. The midwife turned to Bianca and lowered her voice. “There’s nobody can do nothing for that girl now. That babe’s wedged in there so tight, it ain’t never coming out. I seen more pregnancies than you have lived days and I know when it’s a lost cause. Only one way this thing can end, the sooner the better, God willing.”

  The old woman crossed herself fervently as Bianca struggled to comprehend the import of her words. If the baby could not be removed, it would be impossible to stem Marina’s loss of blood and impossible to prevent mother and child from perishing. Knowing the vast experience of the arsenal midwives, Bianca did not doubt Donna Rosa’s diagnosis—as far as it went. There was no way for the busy midwives, most of them unlettered and unschooled, to be versed in the latest medical developments. Bianca trained her mind back to the month before her father died, when she had clandestinely attended an anatomy lecture in Padua. A famous Spanish doctor demonstrated the technique he thought had been used during difficult pregnancies by the ancient Romans, most notably on Caesar’s mother. To avoid detection, Bianca had hidden herself in a far corner of the auditorium where the sound was good but her vision of the operating table obscured. She had heard his general description of the operation, but had been able to see none of the specific demonstration. Even if she had seen it clearly it would have been only marginally helpful, since the procedure was performed on a dead corpse, not a live woman.

  Despite her rather unsteady understanding of the procedure, Bianca knew she had no choice but to attempt it. With the operation, Marina and the child stood a minimal chance of survival; without it, they had none.

  “Nilo, I will need clean water, lots of it. And some grappa.” She tossed him the purse at her waist and motioned him to hurry. As soon as the boy was out the door, Bianca hoisted her skirt and untied her garters. The thin linen bandages in her bag were designed to bind superficial wounds, not stop a hemorrhage. Under the surprised gazes of the women along the wall, Bianca removed her thick woolen stockings and then cut a wide swath from the heavy fabric of her dress. When Nilo returned, Bianca administered a large dose of grappa to the beleaguered girl, holding her head up so she would not choke on the strong liquor. She then moved to the foot of the bed, lifted the sheet, said a fervent prayer to Santa Lucinda, and set to work.

  Slightly more than an hour later, a spent Bianca was considering whether a marble monument with a pregnant woman on it or one featuring a baby would be the more appropriate sign of gratitude to the patron saints of childbirth. Marina was already holding her large, healthy baby son to her breast when Bianca tied off the last of her stitches. For years afterward, Marina would proudly display the scar on her abdomen and explain that it was no wonder her son was such a success, born as he was like Julius Caesar. But those first moments, between the hours of pain she had suffered and the intermittent doses of grappa Nilo had fed her, she was too groggy to do anything other than hold her baby tightly and repeat, “grazie, Madonna, grazie.”

  As the end of the operation had grown near, an idea had occurred to Bianca, and its appeal had increased as she had worked. It was only proper for a noblewoman to have a lady’s maid, she told herself. Surely Ian would not object to her wanting someone to help her with her toilette, to attend to her clothes, and do the myriad of other vital things that Bianca was sure a lady’s maid did but—never having had one—could not actually list. Of course, Marina would need a long spell to recover, but undoubtedly her recuperation would be faster at the Foscari palace than in the unwholesome atmosphere of the arsenal dormitories. That way Bianca could monitor her progress and make sure that both mother and baby remained healthy. Not to mention the bonus of having Nilo nearby at all times. The only problem, as she saw it, was moving the woman so soon after her operation.

  The last thing Bianca had expected was for the girl to balk at the proposal.

  “I couldn’t, ma’am. There’s only one trade I know, and it’s not being a lady’s maid. I don’t know the first thing about that.”

  “And I don’t know the first thing about having a lady’s maid, so it will be perfect. We can learn together.”

  It took Bianca nearly another hour to convince Marina that her offe
r was good and her motives pure. Among Marina’s concerns were that she would have to curtsy—“I’ve never been a very steady one on my feet”—and that she would have to eat cinnamon, which she used to like but was strictly against ever since a sailor had told her it was the Sultan’s favorite spice. Fortified with Bianca’s assurances that neither curtsies nor cinnamon eating formed regular parts of a maid’s duties, Marina allowed herself to be carried by the two gondoliers into the comfortable covered boat waiting below. Donna Rosa followed after, rasping out a steady stream of advice and admonishment. Nilo, who had been silent throughout the women’s exchange, stopped Bianca before she could leave the room.

  He took her hand to his lips and bowed deeply with all the solemnity of his thirteen years. “Thank you, mistress,” he said in a trembling voice, and turned his face away so Bianca could not see his tears. Not knowing what he did, he accepted the sleeve she proffered to wipe his face on and then drew back in embarrassment.

  “Come on.” Bianca smiled down at him. “We don’t want to miss our boat.”

  The weather had worsened into a proper storm while they were inside, the rain now coming in sheets rather than drops. Bianca paused to search the heavy gray sky for any sign that the tempest might subside. As she stood looking to the west for a break in the clouds, the ground began to tremble. Then the whole sky lit up as if Jove’s entire stock of lightning bolts had been let loose. She heard a massive, deafening boom, saw a bright flash, and everything suddenly went black.

  Chapter Twelve

  So accustomed was Ian to the nightmares in his head, that it took him a moment to realize that the shouts and rapid footfalls he heard were coming from somewhere outside the room. Seeing the unfamiliar bedhangings, he became even more disoriented, but the events of the previous night came flowing back to him and he felt a marvelous sense of satisfaction. He reached out to give Bianca one last caress before investigating the source of the uproar outside the door, but her place in the bed was vacant.

  “Bianca?” he demanded of the empty room, and again, more stridently, “Bianca?”

  Undoubtedly she had some hand in the din, which was growing louder by the moment. Probably part of her plan to drive him mad, lull him into a deep sleep, then rouse him hours later with mayhem. Before Ian had time to contrive a way to stop her, there was a loud pounding on the door, and then Giorgio burst in.

  Though Giorgio was five years Ian’s senior, they had grown up together, albeit in different parts of the palace, giving their relationship a deeper and more relaxed quality than that of most masters and servants. Giorgio was the only person who could tease Ian without risking life or limb, and he took advantage of that privilege that morning as he shook his head at his master in amusement.

  “You’ll be wanting these, I reckon. Strangest thing ever, but I found them in the library.”

  Ian snatched his clothes of the night before from Giorgio’s hand and started dressing. “What the devil is going on out there?”

  Giorgio’s amusement gave way to seriousness. “Your warehouse at the arsenal blew around six this morning, fire and debris everywhere. It’s not quite as bad as 1563, but only because half the place was already flooded by the rain. Tristan sent a messenger over a quarter of an hour ago, and your brother is already on his way. Would have woken you sooner if I could have found you, instead of just your clothes.” Giorgio’s mock reproach earned him Ian’s most cutting glare, which he brushed aside. “Your uncles are waiting for you in the gondola.”

  “And Bianca? Where is she?”

  “Seems to me you would know more about that than I would. All I can tell you is that one of the boats is missing, and the two night men with it.”

  Ian’s jaw tightened, then relaxed. If she had been trying to escape, surely she would not have taken his servants with her. Unless it was another of her elaborate plots. That woman was capable of anything, he reminded himself grimly, but only half believed it. Could he have been duped by feigned innocence? Was she that accomplished? His unpleasant reveries were interrupted by a loud exclamation from Giorgio.

  “Hi-ho, look here. Might be the key to your mystery.”

  The Foscari topaz slipped into his hand as Ian took the note from the table. At least whatever else she was, she was not a jewel thief. Ian was surprised that his fingers were not more steady as he moved into the doorway for light to read by, that her absence affected him so deeply. In the space of a minute Ian’s face showed first relief, then rage, then fear. How dare she leave, he demanded silently; how dare she do anything to endanger herself.

  “Damnation,” he shouted, angry at himself for his treacherous thoughts, and stormed out the door past Giorgio.

  Francesco, Roberto, and Ian spent the first half of the trip to the arsenal in silence. No trace of the rancor of the previous evening remained, but each was too preoccupied with his own thoughts to attempt a conversation. When Giorgio had woken Francesco and Roberto, he had brought with him news not only of the explosion but also of the two sets of clothes carelessly discarded on the library floor. Although they were bursting with the desire to congratulate Ian on his fine about-face, they knew he had other, weightier matters on his mind. This explosion meant not only a loss of merchandise, but also possibly a tremendous loss of business. The Arboretti were one of only two trading enterprises granted the privilege of selling and storing munitions in Venice. A large-scale investigation would have to be undertaken to determine whether their privilege should be continued and especially whether foul play was involved in the explosion. All their current and future business transactions would come under intense official scrutiny. While the Arboretti themselves had nothing to fear from such an investigation, some of those with whom they dealt would welcome nothing less than the inquisitive eyes of the law on their books and would even withdraw from a profitable deal rather than submit to an audit. At this moment his uncles would have sworn that Ian, ever the efficient man of business, was calculating ways to minimize the potential losses brought on by the explosion, until he began to mutter aloud.

  “I hope she is alive so I can wring her neck,” was the clearest sample they received of his train of thought.

  “Very sound, very practical,” Roberto concurred, nodding vigorously.

  “You are, no doubt, speaking of Bianca.” Francesco tried to keep the amusement from his voice. “What devilish deeds can we fault her for now? Did she set her league of demons upon you last night?”

  Ian suddenly saw a possibility and pounced on it. “How long does it take to deliver a baby?”

  This unexpected line of inquiry rendered them speechless, but only momentarily. “Anywhere from two hours to two days. It would depend on the circumstances. Why the sudden interest in childbirth?” Roberto regarded him quizzically.

  The grim expression on Ian’s face was augmented by his dire tone. “Three hours ago your precious Bianca left the palazzo to deliver a baby. At the arsenal. Chances are that she is still there. Although what her chances are of still being alive, I cannot say.”

  The patter of rain against the cabin of the gondola had stopped, and nothing interrupted the dark silence that fell over the boat until they neared the arsenal. When they were still out of visual range, they began to hear the loud cacophony that always accompanied a crisis, a mixture of men shouting orders, babies wailing, people running, machinery being moved or dismantled, buildings collapsing.

  The gondoliers expertly wove their way through the crush of boats at the entrance of the arsenal, pulling up before the Church of Santa Maria, attached to the arsenal gates, where a makeshift hospital had been set up in the loggia. Roberto and Francesco disembarked from the gondola there, having decided that they could be of the greatest help in a medical capacity, while Ian surveyed the scene. A portion of the nuns who lived there were frantically trying to accommodate the swarms of wounded arriving by foot, wagon, cart, and even on the bac
ks of others. The rest of the Sisters of Santa Maria were reporting to a small figure in the midst of the fray who was quickly issuing orders. Ian was shaking his head wondering how this little barefoot person had come to assume so much power, when he did a double take. Nothing about the bare feet, tattered dress, soot-darkened hair, and bandaged head looked like Bianca, but in a flash Ian knew it had to be her. His intuition was confirmed when, seeing Francesco and Roberto approaching from the boat, she left her post and ran toward them.

  “Thank God you are here!” Bianca was tempted to throw her arms around their necks and kiss them, but time was too precious. “The official arsenal doctor and staff were the first of my patients, and only one nurse had minor enough injuries to do any work. Most of the people coming in now have burns, but there are some broken bones. So far, we have had no casualties.”

  Roberto touched the bandage on her head, and Bianca winced visibly. “Are you sure you should not be lying down?”

  “Yes.” Bianca began to nod her head, winced again, and went on. “It’s not very serious. I was just temporarily knocked unconscious when, um, something fell off a building onto me.”

  “What exactly?”

  “The facade.” She rushed on. “But Nilo revived me after only a few minutes, and as you can see I am fine, and we really have no time to talk.”

  The three of them hurriedly made their way back to the temporary hospital while she was speaking, and Bianca introduced them to the others who were assisting her. As Ian watched, Francesco and Roberto disappeared from view into the chaotic press of people on the church porch, but he could still make out Bianca.