A Trial in Venice

by Roberta Rich

Months ago, when they had been dallying in bed, Foscari promised that if he was successful with the moneylenders, he would give her half of whatever he could borrow. The selfish pig had managed to borrow a great deal, as was evident from his new jacket, velvet breeches and embroidered handkerchief. What an innocent goose she was not to realize a plain fact: the promises of a man with an erect member are as worthless as a sailor begging for God’s mercy on a storm-tossed sea. Once the sailor is on dry land, the tempest a distant memory, the pledge of a lifetime of devotion is forgotten.

  Foscari had given her scarcely enough to keep her and Matteo fed and warm. The price of his jacket alone would have paid for retiling the roof over the kitchen so she wouldn’t get rained on every time she boiled rice. But what did he care? Once the court case was completed and he had his order, he would toss her aside.

  She loosened the silk drawstrings and thrust her hand in the purse. Delicious. Gold coins—hard yet soft, cool yet hot. And so many of them. She did not need to hold one up to the moonlight streaming in through the window to know they were Venetian ducats. Any hesitation Cesca had about stealing melted away as the coins dropped through her fingers and into the pocket of her dressing gown. Now she could hire a servant girl from the village to help with the cooking and cleaning. She tucked his purse, considerably lighter, back under the commode and started to walk to a small room under the stairs; she could conceal the ducats behind a loose brick there. Halfway down the stairs, however, she turned and retraced her steps to the commode.

  Perhaps she was being too greedy. To be fair, Foscari had saved her that day in Constantinople when the Janissaries had marched them in disgrace toward the docks to sail back to Venice. He had shoved a handful of gold coins into the fist of the Janissary in charge. The soldier had unshackled her and Foscari then looked the other way while they melted into the crowd. Because of Foscari, they were able to escape and hide until the time was right.

  She reached under the commode and fished out his purse for the second time, and from her pocket she extracted a few ducats. Regretfully, she dropped them back into the purse.

  Foscari. The pompous old fraud. She studied his face as he slept. The silvery moonlight from the bedchamber window should have been kind to his cheeks and chin, but it was not. If only Palladio could grout, sand and plaster Foscari’s face, filling in the creases, mortaring the furrows in his forehead, chiselling off his warts, until he looked as young and handsome as the statue of Hercules in the nyphaneum. Before Palladio’s announcement that he would purchase the villa, Cesca had thought Foscari a reliable means to an end. The recollection made her feel naive.

  Palladio owning her villa? Not while there was breath in her body. But what to do? Though Cesca wished vengeance on Foscari with all her heart, a woman could not exact vengeance in the time-honoured way of males. Not for Cesca the agreeable thud of steel against bone, blood pooling on stones, intestines spilling out of bellies, the breastbone split asunder.

  Men fired cannons over the bowsprits of brigantines or shot muskets from the parapets of fortresses or duelled in an open field. Cesca’s theatre of war was the kitchen and the bed chamber. There was a delicacy to a woman’s revenge: menstrual blood in the soup, pubic hair in the bread, lice harvested from bedding and pinched into the crotch of breeches—any of these measures, along with a few incantations, would bring on fever, diphtheria, smallpox or the plague. Dried snake excrement under the pillow, the desiccated heart of a toad in the breeches, a broken knife under the bed, would cause impotence.

  Cesca walked down the hall to Matteo’s room. She climbed into bed with him and slept until late morning. When she awoke, it was cold enough to see her breath in the air. She threw on an old dress and shawl and went downstairs to start the fire. Squatting in front of the hearth, she gave the embers a puff of air with a pair of leaky bellows.

  She would pretend all was well between her and Foscari. She would continue to bathe his gouty foot with her special potion of aloes wood, oak fern, musk, sienna and honey. She would warm his brandy between her breasts. Her naughty bedchamber tricks would continue, although touching his flesh now would be as inviting as plunging her hands into a bed of stinging nettles.

  Cesca’s mind worked best when her hands were occupied. She dumped some calves’ brains—a gift from a neighbour—into the pot, with such force water splashed onto the floor. From outside the kitchen door came the squawk of a stray chicken. She glanced up to study it scrabbling among the stones in the yard—too skinny to roast, too old to lay. She ripped open a burlap sack and rooted through it until she found a cabbage the size of a man’s head. She had liberated it from a field on one of her midnight walks. She thought of Matteo. He detested cabbage as much as she did. Raw, boiled, steamed or braised in butter, cooked in a soup or stew—it made no difference. He would wrinkle his nose in his stubborn fashion and push her hand away when she held a spoonful to his lips. “No, Ama Cesca,” he would protest, clamping his lips and turning his head.

  Cesca hefted the bag of flour in her hand, just enough to make a skinflint’s loaf of bread. When she opened the sack, a rat jumped out, nearly hitting her in the face. She wrenched off her shoe and flung it, but the filthy creature scampered away unhurt.

  If Matteo were here in the kitchen instead of cavorting about outside, he would be standing on a chair next to her, prattling about dragons and ponies and getting underfoot as she cooked, poking his fingers into her ingredients and making a sticky mess of her dough, begging for a piece to make his own bread and then trying to braid it as he must have seen Hannah do when twisting ropes of dough for challah. Hannah had encouraged him to believe that the sun rose and set on him. When he did not get his own way, he pouted and flung himself about. When he was in a good mood, he was entertaining.

  Cesca placed the dough in a crockery bowl to proof then draped a cloth over it. She added kindling to the fire in the oven. The more she considered Foscari’s betrayal—there was no other word for it—the angrier she grew. Rage heated her blood like a spicy stew. As the dough rose in the bowl, she put a dry willow leaf into the oven. When it curled and turned the right shade of brown, her oven was the correct temperature for the bread.

  For the present, she could not dispense with Foscari, but a scheme began to take shape in her mind—a clever, elegant scheme. It might work, but her execution must be perfect. She slammed the cabbage onto the table and then reached for the iron cleaver hanging on the wall. Imagining it was Foscari’s head, she raised the cleaver above her head with both hands. With a blow she chopped the cabbage in two. Each half tumbled to opposite edges of the table and rocked back and forth. She slashed at the halves. A wedge of cabbage flew off the table and onto the floor.

  Cesca heard the hissing of swans from her neighbour’s property. She looked out the window. There was Foscari in his dressing gown, cane in hand as he walked across the lawn. He kicked a couple of hapless cygnets that happened to waddle in front of him, which sent them squawking, breast-flopping into the canal. A barge tied up to the dock. Foscari accepted a letter from the bargeman. Strolling back toward the villa, Foscari opened it and began to read. After a moment he smiled, refolded the letter and tucked it into the pocket of his gown.

  He pushed open the door to the kitchen and strode in. “Cesca, put down that cleaver.”

  She lowered the kitchen tool to her side.

  “I have news of the midwife,” said Foscari.

  “She is coming?” Cesca tossed the cleaver onto the table.

  Foscari leaned on his cane. “My informant tells me she has arrived in Venice. She is staying in the ghetto with her brother the moneylender. She will be here at the villa in three days.”

  Cesca nodded. “I knew Hannah would come.”

  “The credit is due to you, Cesca, for your cunningly worded letter to her.” As he bent over to kiss her, he dropped his cane. It clattered to the floor.

  She picked it up and handed it back to him. “All the pieces of our puzzle have fallen into plac
e—the boy, the blanket, the midwife.”

  “Not quite. The child cannot be trusted to say his lines.”

  “Speaking of Matteo,” said Cesca, “where is the boy?” She glanced around worriedly.

  “He’s practising on his tightrope. Pietro is with him.” Pietro was a tenant farmer’s son who had taken a liking to the child and strung up a rope between two larch trees for Matteo to use.

  Cesca peered at Foscari in alarm. “Nothing dangerous, I trust?”

  “He is fine. Much safer than riding his pony.” The rope was so high above the ground that it required either Pietro to lift him onto it, or Matteo to climb the makeshift ladder of wine barrel staves nailed to the tree trunk and hop on by himself.

  Cesca retrieved the cleaver and balanced it in one hand, wondering idly if she was strong enough to split Foscari’s skull in a single blow. “Shall I pour tea?” He nodded and watched her as she pinched a few leaves of tea, a recent present from a neighbour, into the pot then poured in water. She waved him to a chair. Better he not loom over her from his great height. She poured the tea and they sat at opposite ends of the long pine trestle table.

  He took a sip. “Is there any brandy?” He held his mug up and waved it. “This tea is bitter.”

  “It is too early for brandy.” But she went to fetch the jug and portioned out some into his mug.

  “Hannah is coming! How delightfully everything is working out.” Foscari began to hum a sprightly peasant tune he must have heard in the village. The Marquis seemed as content with the world as a dog with two cocks.

  What use was it to Cesca that Hannah was on her way? Her arrival would bring Cesca no closer to having the villa. She pushed herself to her feet and picked up her cleaver once more. Thwack! Thwack! More tiny pieces of cabbage to join the growing pile. Frustration rose up, and before she could stop herself, she said, “I had a visit from Palladio. He told me you were selling him my villa.” She had not meant to speak of it, but the words shot out of her mouth like a molten lead ball out of a musket.

  Foscari stopped humming. From the twitching of his jaw muscle she knew he was trying to think of a plausible lie.

  “With his own lips.” Talk your way out of this, you rat-faced son-of-a-whore.

  “Palladio?” said Foscari. “An excellent fellow. Very gifted. A genius. He told you that? I cannot think why. Yes, he and I had some vague discussions when I bumped into him in Venice. But I thought his interest was feigned. He wanted an excuse to visit the place—inspect his handiwork, see how the foundations and the roof were holding up. That kind of thing. You know what architects are like. He struck me as a bit of a fusspot, truth be told.” When he was nervous, Foscari had the unattractive habit of stretching his upper lip over his front teeth.

  “Why would an esteemed gentleman like Palladio need an excuse to pay a social call?”

  “Or perhaps—” a sly look came over his face “—he has heard rumours of your beauty and wanted to see for himself.”

  “You are talking nonsense.”

  “How suspicious you are. It was a brief chat, Cesca, which I had for your benefit. Nothing more. He will be useful to you in restoring the villa to its former glory. Hire him! Who knows better than Palladio how repairs should proceed?”

  A hand on her hip, Cesca stood listening while Foscari’s silver nose moved up and down as he bunched and unbunched his cheeks. It was rather like watching a rat trying to nose its way through a small chink in the wainscoting.

  “I cultivated Palladio for your sake, my dove,” said Foscari, growing more confident. “I hinted I might sell him the villa at a favourable price because of his…” Foscari paused, lowering his voice. “Special knowledge of secret rooms that do not appear in the original drawings.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Foscari said, “All these old villas along the Brenta were built with a strong room no one knew about except the architect and the workers, all of whom were sworn to secrecy.”

  Cesca said, “I have been through this place a thousand times, inspecting every corner.” Looking for items of value I might sell to buy food for me and Matteo because you have given me so little money.

  “How do you suppose rich and noble families hang on to their gold and gems? Through carelessness? I assure you not. Every villa has a clandestine room that contains an iron-clad strongbox and heavy oaken cupboards with padlocks as sturdy as anvils.”

  Foscari had a nimble tongue.

  He fingered the amulet at his throat. “When the plague arrives in the Veneto, would you rather stay in Venice and burn wormwood, juniper, ox horn, sulphur and lavender in your hearth to repel the disease or flee to the country?”

  Sciocchezza! I don’t believe a word coming out of your mouth.

  “The rich need access to their money in the country just as much as in the city.” He cleared his throat. “And when their creditors grow impatient and insist on inspecting the strongboxes in Venice? Or,” he said, warming to the subject, “poor relatives come calling with greedy hands outstretched?”

  “I don’t believe a word.” And yet…suppose he was telling the truth and there was a hidden room with a forgotten cache of gold? “Let us put an end to this argument.” She rapped the wooden board with her cleaver, then scraped the onions and cabbage into the steaming pot of calves’ brains. “Today, in fact right this instant, you march down to the notary’s office in the village. Instruct him to draw up a paper promising to transfer the villa to me after you are named guardian.” And if you do not, I will hide Matteo so well that not even a pack of hunting hounds can find him. Hidden he will remain until I see a nice, fresh piece of parchment with my name at the top and your signature and seal at the bottom.

  “Anything to put your mind at rest, my dove.” He stood up and reached for her. “You have the brains of a man in the head of a woman. This must be why I adore you so.”

  “You are the most charming of men.” Cesca wound her arms around Foscari’s neck, feeling the leathery touch of his cheek, trying not to inhale the fusty scent of his skin. For the present, she was bound to him as tightly as a goshawk is tethered to a falconer’s wrist. Unless she could find another falconer.

  CHAPTER 10

  Villa di Padovani,

  San Lorenzo, the Veneto

  FOSCARI’S SCREAMS of rage and Matteo’s hysterical weeping rang from the library. There was the sound of boots as Matteo stomped down the hallway and raced out the front door before he slammed it so hard one of the precious panes shattered. Cesca wanted to run after him, grab him by the shoulders and shake him so fiercely his teeth rattled.

  Foscari chased after him, pausing only long enough to wave Matteo’s blanket under Cesca’s nose. She knew what was coming. Foscari would lay the blame on her for this latest tantrum, like a cat depositing a limp rat at its mistress’s feet.

  “I fault you for this outburst, Cesca. You have spoiled the boy beyond all reason. I have tried everything—gentle coaxing, bribery, threats, beating him with this.” He brandished a willow switch then flung it to the floor, where it scuttled along the marble and bounced to a halt in the corner. “He is as obstinate as a donkey. He shakes his head at every question I put to him, lips pursed. Just now he screamed at me that he would tell the judge I am a bad man who steals innocent little boys from their mothers. Nothing I say has the slightest effect. I have had many talks with him and each time I have emerged the loser in this battle of wills.” Foscari drove a fist into his palm. “A rude child no bigger than a flower pot stands between me and the richest fortune in Venice.”

  Cesca was not unsympathetic. Matteo could be difficult.

  “He says he will tell the judge he never saw the blanket before and that I stole it off a washerwoman’s clothesline.” Foscari was spitting with anger. “He shouts epithets at me. He throws his toys out of the window, expensive toys that I brought him from the finest toymaker in Venice. Why does he thwart me at every turn?”

  “Shall I try to reason with him
?”

  “And why do you undermine my authority by coddling him, preparing special dishes and exclaiming over every scraped knee and bruise? Coaxing him to sleep by singing to him?” he sputtered, his face purpled with rage.

  Matteo would not sleep, and without sleep he was impossibly irritable the next day. Cesca spent hours singing to him at night and telling him stories, but he refused to settle down. When he finally fell asleep, he would awaken an hour or so later and thrash about, demanding water, his bed linen soaked with sweat. It was all very discouraging. And exhausting. Most annoying of all, even after his long absence from Hannah Matteo still called for her in the most pitiful manner. “Let me try.”

  “It would do no good,” said Foscari. “The child must be choleric. If by tomorrow he is not better behaved, I shall summon the local surgeon, Tagliacozzi, who will no doubt diagnose the boy as suffering from an abundance of yellow bile. He will bleed Matteo with one of those nasty-looking fleams.”

  Bleed him? Cesca tried to push from her mind the vision of a lancet with the curved hook inserted into Matteo’s arm, probing for a vein; the basin catching the droplets of his blood. The boy writhing on the bed in fear and pain.

  “Do not look so upset. Tagliacozzi is a graduate of the University of Bologna. If Matteo still does not improve, he will apply leeches. That should put the whole thing right.”

  “The boy is fond of me. And sometimes I can make him behave.” Cesca suspected Matteo loved her only because there was no one else. Every child, even a sturdy little dumpling like Matteo, needed love. She herself needed love, for heaven’s sake. When she was rich and had the villa securely in her name, she would find it.

  “You deceive yourself.” Foscari gave a bark of laughter. “It is that Jewess he loves. He blames us both for her loss.”

  “All he must say is that the blanket is his?”

  “Which he will not do.”

  This is what it came down to: her happiness rested on the tractability of one small, insignificant, annoyingly stubborn child. Without Matteo, Foscari could not obtain his order. The villa would not be transferred to her. Cesca would spend the rest of her life grieving, like a swan for its dead mate, for terrazzo floors, Murano glass and her beloved castellana.