The Harem Midwife

by Roberta Rich

  Foscari was right. Her stomach was not accustomed to such richness. She had to be careful. She looked at Foscari, who had settled back in his chair.

  “And what are you doing on board, Foscari?”

  He swallowed a bite of cheese. “It is rather a long story, but I think it will interest you. Years ago, I had a friend in Venice, the Conte Paolo di Padovani. As boys, we were inseparable. We hunted, we fished, we fought gangs on the bridges. Later, when we came of age, we visited the whores in Castello. Paolo once saved my life when I was drunk and set upon by robbers. I saved him from drowning in a canal. We were closer than brothers. When we grew up, he took over his father’s trading company and ships. I became ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the Venetian embassy in Constantinople. Three years ago, on a visit to Venice, I learned of Paolo’s death. I was heartbroken.”

  Cesca was trying to listen and not snatch more food, but the lovely cream sauce was enticing; the meats would soon grow cold. “What has all of this to do with me?”

  “Once I learned my friend and his wife were dead, I felt I owed it to their memory to find out if their child was alive. If the child lived, then it was only right that he should inherit his father’s fortune. Otherwise, because Paolo’s brothers were believed dead, that lovely big estate would go to a distant relative or to some dreary monastery. I went to Paolo’s palazzo on the Grand Canal. It was deserted except for the deaf old caretaker and a nursemaid, a peasant woman named Giovanna who had been with the family for ages. She told me the Conte and Contessa were dead but confirmed that the Contessa had given birth to a son before the plague claimed her and Paolo. The last time the maid saw the child, he was covered in buboes and was in the arms of a Jewish midwife. Giovanna ordered the midwife and the pox-ridden child away. She was sure the child must have died and the midwife along with him.”

  What on earth could any of this rubbish have to do with her? She wished he would fall silent so she could savour the grouper and the beef. There was a hard slab of pecorino hiding behind the jug of wine. Her hand crept forward as he droned on.

  “I went to the Jewish ghetto, I talked to the shopkeepers, the moneylenders, the rabbi, and the neighbours. It is amazing how a few scudi in the right hands can loosen tongues. Before I knew it, the pieces of the story fit together as neatly as a puzzle.” He paused. “The Jewish midwife was Hannah Levy.”

  Cesca’s hand froze. She set the lovely wedge of cheese back on the platter. Hannah Levy. Isaac’s wife. Yes, of course.

  “This midwife sailed to Malta to redeem her husband, who had been taken slave on a ship sailing to the Levant. Apparently, the Conte’s son survived the plague, as did Hannah, and the child sailed with her. Neither she nor her husband have been heard of since.”

  “Hannah. Leon’s brother’s wife.”

  “Clever girl,” said Foscari. He twisted off a wing from the squab and took a few bites. “Delicious, but full of lead shot.” He spit a mouthful onto the floor. “The rabbi in Venice told me that Hannah’s husband, Isaac, had a brother in Rome who was a moneylender. I visited Leon on the pretext of borrowing money. That, my dear, is when I first set eyes on your lovely face. You served Leon and me tea in his study when I signed the promissory note for my loan. How gracefully you handed us each a slice of seedcake. Leon told me about his brother in Constantinople, how he was married to the best midwife Venice had ever known, and how, despite years of unfruitfulness, their union had been blessed—seemingly by a miracle—with a beautiful copper-haired child they called Matteo. Alas, a few days after Leon told me this story, he died. When I heard the news, I went to his funeral to console his widow, Grazia—and that’s when I saw you for the second time.”

  “You must have loved your friend the Conte very much to go to such pains.” Cesca coughed, a fish bone caught in her throat.

  “I did, and that is why I was most interested in the papers you liberated from Leon’s study.” The corners of his mouth twitched. “Imagine my amazement when I followed you”—he tapped his nose, making a hollow ring—“and watched you purchase a ship’s passage to the very city where I was headed.”

  When Foscari first approached her on the deck, Cesca had feared he meant to demand a share of her ducats or he would turn her over to the authorities for theft of Leon’s documents. Now she realized he had a use for her, something more than a quick fumble and grope in the berth of this cabin.

  “What is it you want of me?”

  “To arrive at an agreement for our mutual benefit.” He patted her hand. “Together, my dear, we will save a Christian boy from the heretic Jews and, at the same time, we shall line our pockets with riches.”

  All Cesca yearned for were her hundred ducats. She had earned them by putting up with Leon all those years. Foscari could fling himself off the Aphrodite for all she cared. She had no need of a partner. “I already have a plan, which will require all of my cunning.”

  Foscari rose and stood behind her chair. “Don’t refuse me.”

  She stiffened, afraid he would sweep a dish or serving platter out of reach, but instead he massaged her shoulders, working his fingers under the neckline of her dress.

  “We are alike, you and I.” He took the pins from her hair and let it fall down her back, combing through it with his fingers. “You can relax and be yourself with me, my dear.”

  Cesca almost laughed. Be herself? Left to her own devices, she would devour every morsel of food in this cabin, then steal every ducat in that little trunk she spied stowed under his berth.

  “Just listen to what I have in mind. The Levys are Jews, living in a neighbourhood inhabited by other Jews. I would be conspicuous if I were to go there and make off with the child. You, on the other hand, if I am not mistaken, will be playing the role of Isaac’s beloved sister-in-law, Grazia, which I am sure you will do admirably. Once in their house, you will confirm the child’s identity and find the proof we need to establish that he is indeed the son of my dearly departed and very wealthy friend Conte Paolo di Padovani. Then, you will bring the child to me.”

  She needed nothing from Foscari except a bit of food to sustain her until they reached the port of Constantinople. “No,” she said. Cesca licked the grease off her fingers and, reaching down, wiped her hands on her petticoats. “Unlike you, I do not have any highborn friends to fish me out of trouble should I get caught. I shall stick to my own plan.”

  Cesca had eaten so much she felt like a snake that had swallowed an entire donkey. She leaned back in her chair, wishing she was alone so she could loosen her stays. Slowly the terrible lassitude that hunger produces was leaving her. She was growing stronger. Her will had returned. Her hands, which had been so dry that when she pinched the tops, the skin stayed in peaks, were now becoming pliant and soft.

  “A good strategist alters her tactics to accommodate new situations, just as a good sailor reefs in his sails in response to strong winds. You shall be handsomely rewarded for your assistance. My dear friend the Conte was rich as Croesus. He owned a palazzo on the Grand Canal, warehouses bursting with goods from the Levant. He possessed a villa on the Brenta River that brought an income of several thousand ducats a year. He also owned two merchant ships that sailed the Eastern Mediterranean transporting spices and silk from the Levant.”

  Foscari picked a blond hair off the shoulder of her velvet dress. “Imagine—life in Venice! As legal guardian of the boy, I shall reside in the family palazzo on the Grand Canal. Attend splendid parties. Entertain nobles and merchant princes. For you, silken gowns and ropes of pearls.”

  Cesca said, “To live in luxury, then to have it snatched away when the boy comes of age and can legally manage his own affairs? Is that not worse than not having riches at all?”

  “Good heavens, Francesca. Children are such delicate creatures. Anything can happen to them.”

  It was the first time he had called her by her full name, and in his mouth it sounded like a caress.

  “I cannot help you,” she said. “I hope you understa
nd.”

  “I am afraid that it is you who fails to understand,” said Foscari. “You see, I know how Leon died. You, my dear, killed him.”

  CHAPTER 9

  District of Eminönü Constantinople

  WHEN HANNAH ARRIVED home in the Imperial carriage, Isaac was standing at the gate, wearing the same look of greeting he wore when she returned from the mikvah once a month, cleansed and ready for him.

  He helped her down the steps of the carriage, unfastened her veil, and kissed her. The red carnations growing in a clay jardinière at the entrance to their home gave off a spicy fragrance. “You are tired, my ketzele. Come inside. Tell me what was so important at the palace.”

  Once inside, Hannah kicked off her shoes and thrust her feet into felt slippers. Isaac led her upstairs. It was late, and Matteo was sound asleep. She threw a cloth over the parrot cage to keep the night draft away, then shrugged off her tunic and trousers and let her nightgown drift over her head. The silk was cool and smooth on her body. Isaac had ordered the nightdress from Venice. It was an absurd garment, impractical and feminine, a frothy confection trimmed with seed pearls. Hannah wore it on those twelve nights of the month—after the completion of her courses, after she had been to the mikvah—when the law permitted them to couple. Other nights, when it was forbidden, she donned a plain muslin gown worn thin from many washings.

  Isaac took her hairbrush off the cassone and began to brush Hannah’s hair with long, even strokes. Her muscles loosened and her eyes closed. How like Isaac to know what would relax her. They had been married fourteen years now, and still he petted and fussed over her like a bridegroom. Isaac, like the Sultan, would be incapable of performing with another woman. Hannah was certain of it. Why would he desire another woman when their lovemaking was such an exquisite exchange of pleasure?

  “Matteo went to sleep without difficulty?” Hannah asked. She spoke casually, hoping to forestall his questions about her visit to the palace, which she knew would come soon.

  “He refused to go to bed, so I lulled him to sleep by telling him for the thousandth time the story of my enslavement on Malta—the suffering and deprivation, how I had to eat unkosher food. He loved that part and wrinkled up his nose in the most adorable way. Then I told him how I sat in the square and wrote letters for illiterate farmers and how I rescued the cabin boy from the rigging of a ship.”

  This was Isaac’s way of reassuring her that he was capable of looking after Matteo when she was out working as a midwife. “And then how I rescued you?” Hannah added.

  “That is the part he enjoys best.” Isaac put down the hairbrush, took some almond oil from Hannah’s linen bag, and rubbed his ankles with it. It had been more than two years since his enslavement and Isaac still found his skin tender where the shackles had carved angry red bracelets into his flesh. He could not wrap the straps of sandals around the tender skin because the lightest pressure was painful. When he walked on the rough cobblestones of the street in the felt slippers she had made for him, Hannah noticed a slight … not a limp, but a tentativeness, as though he were walking on hot coals. But he never complained.

  “Maybe Matteo is too young for such violent tales, Isaac. He has an overheated imagination, which you do nothing to discourage.” She often wondered whether it was Isaac’s stories that excited the child’s nightmares. Would it not be better to tell the folktales of Nasreddin, the gentle old teacher who dispensed commonsense advice from the back of his little donkey? Or let the child tire himself out pretending to be a tightrope walker on the low rope Isaac had strung for him in the garden between two mulberry trees?

  “The stories had the desired effect. He fell asleep with his blanket under his cheek.” There was no need to ask Isaac which blanket. It was the one from Venice with his birth father’s crest embroidered in gold thread. It was made of wool finer than anything attainable in Constantinople. She should have destroyed the blanket, which had grown worn and frayed, but Matteo loved it. Besides, it was never out of his grasp long enough for Hannah to fling it into the fire. Though Matteo was too young to understand this, the blanket was the only thing he had in his possession from the family he was born into.

  “He has a desire to know about the past—his own and mine,” Isaac said, picking up her hairbrush again. “And someday when he is older, we must tell him the truth about his family.”

  It was a discussion they had had many times.

  Hannah said, “As far as Matteo is concerned, you are his father and I am his mother.” Her worst fear was that someday, someone would arrive on their doorstep, a long-forgotten relative perhaps. This person would knock and announce, I will take the boy now.

  Isaac took the teapot off the brazier in the corner. He poured two cups of steaming black liquid into glasses and handed her one. Tea was costly but they were not yet so short of money that they could not afford their nightly glass together.

  “So tell me. What happened at the palace tonight?”

  He wanted a full account of the events. Her stomach filled with dread. What would she say?

  Hannah slipped off her nightdress and lay on the bed. “Not a confinement. Just some business with Mustafa,” she said. Before he could question her further, she tried to change the subject. “Have I ever mentioned I often have dreams about babies? I find them in the wall niches of our house where the old owner used to store his turbans. I open a drawer and there is a baby staring up at me. Babies appear in the garden roosting in the mulberries, flattening their branches. I trip over babies on the floor when I get up in the night to check on Matteo. I find them swimming happily in the water in the stifling pots. Babies emerge from our silk cocoons like pupae. I swaddle and wrap and wash them all. I no sooner put one to breast than ten more appear.”

  Isaac laughed. “How fruitful you are in your dreams.”

  It was a jest, meant kindly, but in the most important aspect of her life, Hannah had not been fruitful. Her failure to conceive was a subject they trod around like a boulder in the middle of a road. After so many years of marriage, it seemed unlikely she would ever be pregnant.

  “What do you dream of, Isaac?” Hannah asked.

  “You,” he said, and kissed the small of her back.

  Hannah burrowed her face into the goose-feather pillow.

  Isaac retrieved the bahnkes from the cupboard near the window. He heated the cups with a candle, inserting the flame and waiting until the cup began to smoke and turn sooty from the flame. Cradling each glass with a towel, Isaac applied them, one by one, to her back, waiting for her response—a grunt of pain if too hot or a sigh of contentment if just right. He always did this when she returned from the palace. It was as though he wanted to dispel all of the accumulated tension from her body. When he finished, there were seven glass globes spreading warmth and drawing out the pain from her back. She must look like one of those strange animals from New Spain that carried their young on their backs. The glasses tinkled against each other in rhythm to her breathing.

  Their heat drew out her exhaustion. She wanted to savour the moment, to feel the tension seep out of her and luxuriate in her husband’s attention. But she knew that at any moment, she would have to fend off Isaac’s questions.

  “Something must have happened tonight to make you so on edge.”

  Because she could not hide anything from him, Hannah said nothing.

  “I worry about you, Hannah. Your work at the harem is all well and good, but if something goes wrong …? A difficult travail, a baby born with a club foot or born blind. When tragedy strikes, people always blame the one closest to hand.”

  Bending her leg and taking her foot in his hands, Isaac began to rub, using his thumbs to press into her arch and between her toes. “Why did Mustafa send for you?”

  Isaac was not one to let a subject rest. She was going to have to tell him.

  “I’ve done something you will not approve of,” Hannah said.

  “I was afraid of that.” He let go of her foot.

 
“Mustafa asked me to verify the virginity of a young Circassian slave. She is to be a gift from the Valide to the Sultan to tempt her royal son away from Safiye. The palace needs heirs.” Hannah fell silent remembering the sight of Leah, her sheared head and narrow green eyes, and her animal posture on the window ledge. Then, after Mustafa’s departure, her tears and the rush of words.

  “And? Did the girl pass the test?” Isaac walked his fingers up and down the backs of her thighs.

  If she could not trust Isaac, there was no one in the world she could trust. “I lied,” Hannah said. She lifted her head from the pillow, turned to meet her husband’s gaze.

  His hands stopped abruptly. “You lied to the Valide?”

  “She’s a Jewish girl, Isaac. One of us. The nomads slaughtered her mother and father before her eyes and then took her captive.” The bahnkes cups pulled at her flesh. “I … I told the Valide the girl was intact.”

  “But she was not?”

  “She was not,” Hannah said.

  Isaac’s dark eyes looked at her, first puzzled, then angry. “How could you do this? Do you realize what the Valide will do when she discovers the truth? You’ve put the whole family in jeopardy.” As though to busy himself, Isaac rose from the bed and tended to a candle that had gone out near the brazier. He relit it from a fire ember, but a breeze from the window extinguished it again, leaving a gamey stink in the room.

  “If I had not lied, Mustafa would have sold her to one of the brothel-keepers down by the port.”

  “Which would have been none of your concern. The world is full of helpless creatures you cannot save,” Isaac said. “Hannah, tell me this is one of your jests.”

  “I had no choice.” She could see his face, drained of all its lightness and good humour. “Because I cannot save everyone, does that mean I should save no one?” Hannah asked. “Does the Talmud not say, ‘If not me, then who? If not now, then when?’”