Daughters of the Silk Road: A beautiful and epic novel of family, love and the secrets of a Ming Vase

by Debbie Rix

  ‘We are trying to sleep. Please leave us alone.’

  The woman didn’t move. ‘How did you come to be here?’ she asked. ‘There’s nothing wrong with either of you. You must have made some terrible enemies.’

  ‘There has been a mistake,’ said Maria. ‘But I’m sure it will be rectified and with luck we will be leaving soon.’

  ‘Ha! Don’t bank on it,’ said the woman. ‘I’ve been here forty days. I had the pestilence, but it’s gone now and I’m off to the Nuovo tomorrow. But there’s many who don’t manage it. I’ve seen over a hundred people die while I’ve been here.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ said Maria.

  ‘Do you know what they do with them?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Maria.

  ‘When they die?’

  Maria shook her head.

  ‘They throw them in a pit – out there in the garden – there’s no burial for ’em. No priest comes near. Hell and damnation, that’s all they can hope for.’

  ‘I’m sure you must be mistaken,’ said Maria.

  ‘I’ll show you if you like? Before I leave tomorrow – if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘No,’ said Maria. ‘Thank you. Now please, leave us, we need to get some sleep.’

  ‘You’ve got some nice clothes,’ said the woman, eyeing Maria’s bags that lay at the end of the bed.

  ‘We really don’t have much with us,’ said Maria, pulling the bags closer to her. ‘Just some spare underclothes.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said the woman as she shuffled back to her bed.

  Unable to sleep, Maria lay with her hand clutching at their belongings. She had no real interest in whether the woman stole her clothes, or even some of their food. But she was in terror of someone stealing the vase. It was their talisman, their only protection. If they lost the vase, they themselves would be lost.

  Earlier that morning, Maria had discovered that there was a loose stone in the wall near their bed. She had pulled it aside quietly and found a void behind. Maria waited until the old woman had finally fallen asleep and was snoring loudly, her dress pulled up over her naked body. She then began to chip as quietly as possible at the wall. She removed a second stone, and then a third. At last, she had a space large enough in which to hide the vase. She took it out of the bag, still wrapped in her father’s blanket. She held the blanket to her face and inhaled the heady scent of wool mixed with leather from his chair. She placed the blanket back in the bag and then pushed the vase into the void. She put the little bag of money she had taken from her father’s desk in there too before carefully replacing the stones. They were not quite as flush with the wall as they had been, which worried her. Someone might be clever enough to work out that they had been moved. She took an old wooden chair that sat in the corner of the ward and silently moved it in front of the hiding place.

  Exhausted, she closed her eyes and fell into a deep sleep.

  She woke in the night and was instantly alert. Perhaps it was the light of the full moon gleaming brightly through the high barred window, or the scuffling sound as the old woman from the far end of the ward crouched beneath their bed, rummaging amongst their belongings.

  ‘What are you doing there?’ demanded Maria.

  The woman leapt back, clutching a piece of cheese in her grubby fist, stolen from Alfreda’s picnic. ‘I’m hungry,’ the woman whined. ‘I’ve not eaten for days, and you’ve got all that food.’

  ‘Take it and go,’ said Maria. ‘But do not think you can steal from us again. I shall be watching you.’

  The woman took her prize and retreated to her bed, where she stowed it at the foot beneath her foul sheet.

  Her heart pounding, Maria lay watchful and wide awake for the rest of the night. She was grateful that she had hidden the vase, but fearful that the woman may have seen her. Slowly, as the moon descended, the few birds that survived on Poveglia began their morning chorus. A blackbird took up its position on a tall chestnut tree just outside her window. He broke into a song – so beautiful, so full of longing, that Maria lay for a few moments, her eyes closed, imagining herself in Peter’s arms, as her father smiled down upon them.

  She must have slept for a few minutes, or perhaps longer. When she woke again she looked up at the soft blue sky, glimpsed through the bars of the high window.

  * * *

  A cloud blew in from the lagoon, its shape swirling and changing. Was it a snake, its scales mirrored in the high cirrus cloud? The form changed with the high winds; it grew a leg, then two, floating down from its body. She heard the rustle of trees in the unseen garden below as the wind gusted suddenly. The cloud continued its journey past her window until she saw now that it had metamorphosed into something quite different. Her hand scrabbled at the rough-hewn stone wall. She eased a section out and laid it silently on the floor; there stood the vase hidden in a small niche. Her fingers touched the dragon that snaked its way around the centre and she looked again at the cloud. The head – for there was indeed a head now – gazed down at her with benevolent eyes, before a sudden gust of wind blew it onwards and out of her eyeline. The dragon had been looking down on her…

  Chapter Twelve

  Rescue

  Confined to the Lazaretto Nuovo, Andrea was in a state of utter desolation. Surrounded by a motley crew of recovering patients, he was unable to rid himself of the realisation that he had made a terrible mistake – firstly by setting the plan in motion, and secondly, by not accompanying Maria to the Lazaretto Vecchio, however terrifying a prospect that was. His fear of death now seemed pathetic and pitiful compared to the lost opportunity of remaining with Maria and proving how much he loved her. The family’s goods had been sent over the morning after he had been deposited and were now ‘airing’ in a large warehouse on the island. Andrea had been allotted a bed on one of the wards for recovering patients. It was not full. There were approximately fifty beds, but less than half were inhabited. Clearly, not everyone made it to the Lazaretto Nuovo. The hospital generally appeared to be quite well run; food was provided once a day and the sheets on which he slept appeared tolerably clean. There were quite a number of staff living and working there – the warehouseman, guards, two nurses – and a doctor had made a visit earlier that morning; he had been brought over by boat from the mainland, but had left by the afternoon.

  Andrea thought constantly of Maria and wondered if she ever thought of him at all. He was permitted to exercise in the hospital gardens and went there most days. They were not well kept, but there were some large trees, a patch of scrubby grass and even a few flowers near the hospital building. One morning, as he went for his daily walk, he encountered an old man tending to a rose bush, deadheading the spent flowers and cutting back long trailing branches.

  ‘Have you been here long?’ Andrea asked the old man.

  ‘Nigh on twenty years,’ said the man.

  ‘Really! All that time, here?’ Andrea was amazed.

  ‘I was a patient on the Vecchio during the last bad bout of pestilence. I was sent here to recover and never left. It suits me here. I’ve got no family of my own.’

  ‘Do they have a boat here?’ asked Andrea as casually as he could.

  ‘No,’ said the old man firmly. ‘So don’t you be getting any ideas of leaving.’

  ‘No, no I wasn’t,’ said Andrea hurriedly.

  ‘You must wait till the boatman comes. The doctors will tell you when you can go back.’

  ‘Yes, of course they will.’

  He wandered off, battling his way through the woodland, until he came upon patch of scrubby grass that led down to the shoreline. He was now at the back of the hospital and as he gazed out to sea, he realised he could see the other island that housed the Lazaretto Vecchio. The islands were nearly a mile apart, but the hospital was still visible. He could see a faint trace of smoke drifting up from the chimney on the roof. So a fire had been lit. A guard walked towards him. ‘Don’t get any ideas,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’
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  ‘Of swimming off. If you go that way you’ll only land up on the plague island. And trust me, you don’t want to go there. If you go in the other direction, you’re miles from anywhere. No one has ever managed to swim away from here. A few have tried, but they’ve all drowned.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ said Andrea hastily. ‘I can’t swim anyway… Never have been able to.’

  The guard walked off saying, ‘Just mind you don’t try it. The water’s treacherous here.’

  It was laughable… Even the idea of Andrea trying to swim away. He recalled his uncle guffawing at him when he first arrived in Venice as a young boy, sent by his father to be apprenticed.

  ‘You can’t swim?’ his uncle had said. ‘How do you expect to be a fisherman if you can’t swim?’

  He cuffed the child around the head and went back to his nets.

  Andrea knew then that he would never be a fisherman. He had no interest in anything to do with the sea. He despised fish, and loathed his uncle. He was appalled at the prospect of spending his life trawling for fish, cleaning them, gutting them. He was a boy with ambition. He was interested in study, in science, mathematics and philosophy. He should have been born to a man like Niccolò dei Conti – a man of learning and imagination – who could see his potential. Not for the first time, he felt a kind of fury that he had been born to the wrong family. He deserved to live with Niccolò and Maria. They were his destiny, he was sure of it.

  But now, standing and staring at the island where the woman he loved languished, he wished most fervently that he could swim. If he were able to reach Maria and show her how much he cared, she would be bound to love him.

  * * *

  Peter and Niccolò had arranged to meet in the late afternoon at the cantina near the Rialto. The sun was setting, creating a dark amber glow that reflected off the water of the Grand Canal, and the market stalls were beginning to pack up their produce for the day. Peter was keen to introduce Niccolò to someone who could help them.

  ‘Giovanni is a friend of mine. He’s a merchant too; and he is in love with Polisena.’

  ‘I intend to marry her,’ said Giovanni firmly to Niccolò.

  The older man smiled faintly.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Peter impatiently. ‘We don’t have time to hear about your love for Polisena. We are here to plan how to rescue Maria and Daniele.’ He spoke quickly and quietly, anxious not to be overheard.

  ‘Yes, of course, Peter,’ said Giovanni hurriedly. ‘Forgive me, sir. But Peter helped me so much – in my pursuit of Polisena – I would do anything for him.’

  ‘Good,’ said Niccolò. ‘I believe that he is about to ask for that favour to be returned.’

  It was obviously impossible to hire a boatman to simply take them to the island and rescue Maria and Daniele. Poveglia was well known as the Plague Island, and no boatman would deliberately flout the law and take people there. Not only would they risk imprisonment, but they were too fearful of what they would catch if they went ashore. The only solution was for Peter and Niccolò to row their own boat out into the lagoon.

  ‘I have a gondola moored at our house,’ said Niccolò. ‘We can use that. But it will take at least two men to row the boat that distance. I am not as strong as I once was, and I fear that we need some help.’

  ‘Then I am your man,’ said Giovanni immediately.

  ‘It is not without risk, my friend,’ said Peter. ‘What we are doing is illegal. And the boat is not large. It is just a normal domestic gondola. The sea can get rough out there in the lagoon.’

  ‘My friend,’ said Giovanni to Peter, ‘you have helped me to visit Polisena for the last four months, and she has finally agreed to run away with me. I owe you my entire happiness. How on earth could I desert you now?’

  ‘It will be complicated when we get there too,’ said Peter. ‘We do not know what we will find, or where Maria and Daniele are being held. Maria may well be on the other island – the Lazaretto Nuovo. I am pretty sure that their servant Andrea is there, but we will have to see when we arrive. I do not know how the patients are guarded either. We must be prepared for anything. And we must go tonight. We cannot risk leaving them for a day longer than we need to. They have already endured two weeks in that terrible place.’

  The three men took a small stock of provisions and armed themselves with two daggers and a sword. They walked along the back streets until they arrived at the lane that led down to the Rio dei Greci. As they passed the high walls of the convent of San Zaccaria, Giovanni blew a kiss to his beloved Polisena. At the bottom of the lane, a barrier had been erected, preventing anyone from getting round to the front of Niccolò’s house via the jetty that protruded into the canal. Giovanni lifted Peter up and he jumped over the barrier before deftly leaping onto the jetty and from there onto the dei Conti gondola. He unhooked the ropes fore and aft and pushed the gondola off, sailing it down the canal in the moonlight. Niccolò and Giovanni then walked swiftly back up the lane and down onto the Riva degli Schiavoni. As soon as they saw Peter, they leapt aboard the gondola and together Giovanni and Peter fell into a rhythmic motion, rowing the gondola out into the moonlit lagoon.

  It was a still night, at the end of September. The autumn storms had not yet rolled up from the Adriatic. As they rowed out, past the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore, the sea became rougher, the waves breaking over the prow of the gondola. The dolphin attached to the prow dipped and bowed in the waves as the two men rowed firmly on. Niccolò looked back at the city. They were making slow progress. At this rate, they would take many hours to reach the island.

  * * *

  Andrea lay wide-awake in his bed, the moonlight streaming in through the window. He had been unable to sleep and all around him men dozed, snuffling and snoring. One of the three women in his ward moaned slightly. He had come to a decision that afternoon. He must try to get to Maria, however fearful he might be of the sea, and of the plague. She was across the water from him; he could see the island from the window near his bed, and it tormented him to think of her imprisoned there, with no one to protect her but her pathetic brother. He could not swim across to her, so a boat was the only possible answer. The gardener had told him there were no boats on the island, but Andrea was convinced that there must be some form of transport. How else could they collect provisions?

  He slipped out of bed and, holding his boots in his hand, padded along the ward. He paused at the door to check that all was quiet before running down the stairs. Once outside, he put on his boots and went in search of a boat. He had explored the gardens that day, but had not completed a full circuit of the island’s shoreline. The warehouse guards were normally patrolling during the day, making a thorough reconnaissance impossible, but he was certain that they would be asleep now, or at least dozing, and not expecting any visitors.

  By the light of the moon, and moving as silently as possible, he walked down onto the rough, stony beach intending to search the island’s shoreline for some kind of boat. Jagged rocks and stones cut through the soft leather soles of his boots, causing him to cry out. He considered removing the boots and walking in the water, but the stones continued into the sea. It would be as painful in the water as out of it. He came upon a large matted mass of bull rushes that barred his way. He had to walk inland twenty feet or so, to avoid them. As he did so, he caught sight of a strange shape in the midst of the rushes. He walked towards it and touched it. It was a canvas cover of some kind, and as he pulled it aside, revealed a small rowboat. His heart began to beat loudly. He had never rowed a boat alone in the open sea before and had no idea if he was capable, but Maria’s beautiful face rose up before him, filling him with determination and courage. He pulled the boat out of the rushes and dragged it onto the beach. Then he pushed the boat out into the water, raced after it and jumped aboard.

  It was harder to row than he had expected. As he pulled at the oars, the little boat remained steadfastly in the same position. In fact, the tide began to draw him further back i
n towards the shore. Amid a sense of rising panic, Andrea dug the oars deep into the water and pulled back fiercely. The boat moved imperceptibly out to sea. Little by little, he got further away from the island. He looked around, frantically searching for the Lazaretto Vecchio, but he had become disoriented and could not see it. He realised that it must be on the other side of the island. He would have to row round, hugging the shoreline all the way. As he rounded the island’s northern tip, the hospital island loomed up in the moonlight. He set his boat towards it and began to row.

  * * *

  Peter and Giovanni were making good progress towards the island in the gondola.

  ‘Not long now my friends,’ said Niccolò. ‘Shall I take over from one of you for the last section?’ he asked.

  ‘No, sir. We are fine; you stay there and keep your strength. God knows how we will get them out of there once we arrive,’ said Peter.

  They spotted the jetty in the moonlight and set their gondola in that direction. It rocked up against the stone steps and Giovanni deftly leapt ashore and tied the gondola fore and aft. The moon was still hanging low in the sky, but there was a pale apricot glow on the horizon.

  ‘We must be quick,’ said Niccolò. ‘Daylight will be upon us before we know it.’

  The three moved silently towards the hospital and pushed at the door. It was unlocked. Inside the hall, they paused. They heard a faint snoring to their left. Peter crept after the noise and spotted the old maid asleep on her little cot bed in the kitchen, the remains of a fire in the grate. He held his finger to his mouth and gestured to the others to creep upstairs. On the first floor Peter and Giovanni each inspected a ward, searching for Maria and Daniele. They met again on the landing and shook their heads. The three went up to the top floor and Peter, alone, began to search the long ward. The old woman near the door woke suddenly, and sat up in bed.