A Trial in Venice

by Roberta Rich

From the rear of the house came a series of barks. A black-domed head appeared, from which hung a pink tongue as long as a clapper. “Buon giorno,” Cesca called out. The mastiff, Pippo, shambled over, looked at her, poked his muzzle into her basket and, before Cesca could shove him away, gave the dried peaches a swipe with his tongue. Together Cesca and Pippo walked toward the farmhouse.

  The words Villa Allegra were painted on a sign hanging from a plane tree to the left of the front door. That much of the sign she could decipher. Villa of happiness. We shall see about that, she mused.

  It was midday. Her stomach gurgled for want of a meal. She glanced at the chimney, and was gratified to see smoke rising. The air was redolent with the fragrance of garlic and baking bread. With any luck, Palladio would invite her to stay for un pranzo squisito.

  There was no bell, but the door was ajar. Cesca called out, and hearing no reply, she touched the door with her fingertips. To her surprise, the solid oak door was so skilfully crafted it opened. She squinted into the interior. Pippo pushed ahead of her, waving his tail.

  Palladio sat at a huge table that took up most of the room. He was making a replica of a villa, an edifice so delicate it seemed to levitate above the table. He glanced up, evidently startled by the breeze that wafted through the open door. Then he rose, blinking, to greet her.

  “I am not disturbing you?” Cesca said.

  His shoulders were massive under his loose-fitting linen shirt, yet somewhat stooped, no doubt from his sitting at a workbench as he assembled his architectural models. “Please enter.”

  There was a cough from a corner of the room. A woman rose to her feet and came forward. She had the appearance of having been assembled by many sculptors, each with conflicting ideas about what the female form should look like. Nothing about her seemed harmonious. Her arms were too long, her legs too short, her neck too thick, her hips too narrow. Yet there was something so genial in the woman’s countenance, something so appealing in the slope of her cheeks, the tilt of her head and the scrutiny of her gaze, that Cesca took an instant liking to her. If this was Palladio’s wife, which the woman gave every sign of being, the architect cared more for balance and proportion in buildings than in the human figure.

  Palladio said, “Allegra, this is Francesca. She is living in the Villa di Padovani, caring for the Conte’s son, Matteo. Cesca, this is my wife, Allegradonna.”

  “How lovely to meet you. My husband has talked of you.”

  Allegra spoke in a mild voice that would have been better suited to a small, dainty woman. It made Cesca smile and reach for her hand. Allegra bent from the waist to clasp Cesca’s hand. She was unsteady on her feet and held Cesca’s hand as much in support as in greeting.

  Still clasping Cesca’s hand, she drew Cesca into the room. Allegra wore an ordinary brown loose-fitting dress with a linen bodice. A yellow shawl draped her shoulders. Palladio joined his wife, putting a hand on her waist. He patted away perspiration from her forehead with his handkerchief. They were oddly matched but, judging by the look of affection on Palladio’s face, well suited.

  “Will you have tea with us?” Allegra motioned Cesca to sit at the workbench.

  Palladio pushed aside the tiny doors, windows and pillars he had not yet added to his model. Then he took the wicker basket of dried peaches Cesca held out to him and set it on the tamped earth floor.

  “I do not want to interrupt your work,” Cesca said to Palladio, smiling in a way that showed her dimples to good advantage.

  “Please,” Allegradonna said. “Have the kindness to sit awhile with us. We do not receive many visitors.”

  It was not difficult to see why. Of course, all farmhouses were cluttered with masses of equipment. Cesca had been in a farmhouse only last week to barter for some eggs and found they kept the plow and a pair of oxen in the kitchen. This room was a maze of maps, papers, trowels, planes, awls, drills, lathes, mallets of all sizes, plumb lines, screws and nails. Narrow pathways had been carved in the clutter to allow passage from the stove to the table, from the table to the hearth and from the hearth to the sleeping area. Such a contrast to the vast emptiness of her villa. No wonder Palladio coveted the spacious Villa di Padovani.

  “I’ll fetch the sugar.” She walked from the room.

  When Allegra returned, she lowered herself into a chair then gripped the arms, evidently suffering a spell of dizziness. Cesca poured a mug of water from the pitcher on the table and went to her. Cesca held the mug to the woman’s lips so she could drink, Allegra’s hands were shaking so.

  I pat the ewe so that I may steal the ram.

  “Grazie, Francesca, you are kind.”

  “Prego. It is nothing.”

  Palladio went to the hearth, stooped to reach the kettle and poured out three mugs of tea. He placed the bowl of sugar in front of Cesca and offered her a spoon. Then he returned to building his model. How rich he must be to afford sugar.

  “We were wondering when you would pay us a visit,” said Allegra.

  “How are you getting on in the villa? Painted over those dreadful frescoes yet?” asked Palladio, looking up from affixing a series of tiny bricks to the wall of the miniature.

  When Cesca shook her head, he said, “It is the first thing I will do when the property is mine.”

  Cesca forced herself to smile. “I am only now realizing what a great deal of labour is involved in keeping the place from going to ruin.” And money. I need a great deal of money.

  “The Conte liked to hunt wild boar in our woods. He was a dear man,” said Allegra. And then, as though her store of small talk was exhausted, she struggled to her feet. “I shall retire to take a nap, if you will excuse me.”

  “It was a pleasure to meet you,” said Cesca.

  Allegra gave a slight nod and moved out the door, an embroidery hoop tucked under her arm.

  Obtaining legal title to her villa might take longer than Cesca had at first conceived, but she had discovered in herself unexpected reservoirs of patience.

  Pippo lumbered over and settled his head on his master’s knee. “Ragazzo cattivo,” Palladio said, stroking the greying muzzle. The dog stretched his neck and stared at Cesca, leaving a strand of drool on Palladio’s breeches. A crunching sound came from the mastiff’s mouth. “Spit it out,” Palladio ordered. The dog looked at the ground and averted his head. Palladio seized the mastiff’s muzzle and pried open the jaws. He reached in and extracted a tiny door, detailed in inlaid ebony and tortoiseshell. “Wicked boy. Go away. I am cross with you.”

  The dog resumed his place in the corner. Palladio wiped the door on a rag and placed it on the table. “Pippo is so old I should put him down, but my sons were so fond of him. They all rode on his back as children and learned to walk by holding on to his ears.” He looked away, fumbling with a pair of pincers to reset the door in its proper place.

  Cesca, who knew from neighbourhood gossip that Palladio had lost three sons to scarlet fever, did not wonder at the catch in his voice. “How skilled you are,” she said to change the subject, as she studied his model building. “It is probably nonsense, but someone told me the old villas were built with secret rooms that no one but the architect and the family knew of. Can this be true?”

  Palladio grinned. “If so, would I tell you?” But then he grew thoughtful. “No,” he said, “though a commendable idea. I wonder I did not think of it myself. Perhaps I shall suggest it to future clients.” He squinted at the replica of the villa as though trying to work out where he might tuck in such a room.

  If there was a greater liar in the world than Foscari, Cesca had yet to meet him. “I am no judge, but to my eye this building is perfection just as it is.” The roofline resembled the wings of a dove in flight and the arches of the portico were as graceful as a nun’s wimple.

  Palladio said, “I fashioned a similar model for the Villa di Padovani. It was made of thousands of mattoni picholini, tiny bricks. The Conte commissioned the villa as a wedding gift for his wife, Lucia. Never, during the
many months I worked on the villa, did he permit her to view the construction. When the villa was finished and at last she saw it, she burst into tears of happiness.”

  “The Conte must have been a devoted husband,” said Cesca.

  “Some would say ridiculously fond. White orchids arrived for her from Sicily once a week,” said Palladio. With a deft movement he fitted a tiny window into the opening of a wall.

  “It is on the Conte’s business I have come,” Cesca said. “I hardly know what to do. I am beside myself with worry.” She put her hand over Palladio’s and gave it a squeeze. “The Marquis petitioned the court to appoint him guardian of the estate, but it seems God has other plans. I fear for his sanity. The poor darling has been hearing voices, pacing the grounds in his nightshirt at all hours. He has forgotten the names of friends. He wears his breeches backward. He grows rigid and his breath will not come. The whites of his eyes have turned as yellow as crocus petals.” She lowered her voice. “He seems to have a profound disturbance of the mind.”

  Only the part about his eyes turning yellow was true—caused no doubt by the brandy he sipped from dawn to dusk. On and on Cesca prattled, reciting the symptoms of peach kernel poisoning as they flowed through her mind as swiftly as water over a miller’s wheel. “I worry about Matteo. He is such a darling. The very image of his mother, as you say. But unless a guardian is appointed soon, his estate will be forfeited to the monks.” She recounted the judge’s stubbornness, his insistence on hearing testimony from Hannah and seeing the boy. “Without his patrimony what will become of him? The woman who was raising him, Hannah, is unsuitable.”

  “I am sorry to hear this.”

  “You were a good friend of the Conte’s?”

  “I admired him a great deal.”

  “He would have wanted his son to have what is rightfully his.”

  “I was delighted to have a chance to see Matteo at the villa last month. The Contessa would have been proud at how fine-looking he is.”

  “Yet Foscari in his present state…” Cesca said. “If only I knew a trustworthy man to take on the responsibility.”

  “Another relative, perhaps?” asked Palladio.

  “You have put your finger on the problem. There are none. What is needed is an honourable man, a friend of the family’s, someone mature…” Cesca stirred more sugar into her mug. “I wonder if you might be persuaded.”

  Palladio looked taken aback. “There must be someone else. I am ill-suited to the task. I am also preoccupied with this.” He waved a hand to encompass his model. “The Villa Cressi must begin next month. All my time must be devoted to it.”

  Cesca dabbed her eyes with a corner of her handkerchief, careful not to displace the stain of mulberry juice blushing her cheeks. “You were a friend of the Conte’s. He trusted you.”

  “You need someone with a head for commerce,” Palladio said, picking up a tiny brass bracket designed to secure the roof and twiddling it between thumb and forefinger. “Many noblemen of a certain age suffer from episodes of clouded judgment. Maybe it is the result of noble families intermarrying for generations. The blood grows thin.” He patted her knee. “I’m certain Foscari will be as straight as a plumb line soon.”

  “The doctors tell me he is dying,” said Cesca. Or soon will be. “I beg you to do it for the memory of your dear friend the Conte. It is an undertaking that requires a worthy man such as you.”

  “I would be a poor guardian.”

  Cesca tapped her chin in order to appear pensive. “You already intend to purchase the villa. This way you would have the pleasure of it with none of the expense. The estate would pay for the repairs.” Another thought struck her. “And the frescoes. You could do as you liked with them.” While it saddened her to think of her beloved castellana obliterated by a coat of whitewash, it could be scrubbed away after Palladio’s death.

  Palladio glanced up from attaching the brass bracket. “The duty of the guardian is to preserve the estate for his ward. The fate of the frescoes will be Matteo’s to decide when he comes of age.”

  “I will help. I have a good head for figures. I learned from my father, who managed a large estate outside Rome.” It could have been true, she thought in her own defence.

  “I arranged with Foscari to buy the villa because—” Palladio lowered his voice “—I wish it for my wife, who, as you might have guessed, is ill. She was a maid servant at the villa many years ago before we married. How wonderful it would be for her to spend her last days as its castellana. With a dressmaker from Venice to make her fine gowns, a house full of servants and a kitchen to manage, she will be happy in her final days.” He shook his head. “No, you must find someone else. I simply wish to purchase the villa, not manage such a complex enterprise as the di Padovani fortune.”

  “There is no one else. Will you at least attend the trial so that you may see for yourself that Foscari has taken leave of his senses?”

  “I cannot promise even that. Allegra needs me here.”

  Cesca allowed a pained look to cross her face. “Foscari, to put it bluntly, is quite deranged. He plans to substitute some street waif for Matteo. I cannot answer for what will happen to the boy if Foscari succeeds in his mad scheme.”

  Palladio stood and paced the length of the room. “Why would he do such a thing?”

  Cesca lowered her voice. “To tell you the truth, I think this boy, Lucca, might be his natural son.” The lie had sprung full blown to her lips, as so many of her clever lies did, but on reflection, perhaps it was true. Foscari did seem unch­aracteris­tically fond of Lucca. In the orchard one afternoon, she had seen them playing Hunt the Slipper, which had struck her as odd, since Foscari always professed to dislike children. “I have sent Matteo away for his own protection.”

  “I wish I could help, Francesca. But I want to be by Allegra’s side during her illness. I am in the middle of several projects. I have no aptitude for managing such an estate. You must find someone else.”

  Cesca thought it would be easy to gaff him, net him and then haul him into her boat, but Palladio was proving an obstinate fish to land. The trial, when Judge Abarbanel would decide guardianship, was fast approaching. She had no choice but to continue with Foscari.

  CHAPTER 18

  Jewish Ghetto,

  Venice

  HANNAH TWISTED HER wedding band, now worn on her right hand as befitted a Bride of Christ. She recalled the day she and Isaac had stood under the huppah and he placed it on her left hand. How fortunate Isaac could not see her in this cumbersome nun’s habit, the hem heavy with mud and her face hollow eyed from anxiety. As she walked along the familiar streets toward the ghetto, dodging the herky-jerky carts on cobblestones and ignoring the shouts of hawkers, the cries of beggars and the screams of seagulls circling overhead, she ached for him. He would know how to navigate these treacherous shoals between Cesca’s duplicity and Foscari’s demands.

  The iron-rimmed wheels of the porter’s cart resonated like rocks tumbled together in a barrel on the cobblestones. The tide was high. Hannah held up her skirts to keep them from getting soaked in water washing over the slippery cobblestones. More than ever she hated the nun’s habit. Everywhere Hannah went, gentiles asked her to dispense blessings. She had to bow her head and genuflect when she passed every church. Children plucked at her skirts, begging for bread; old women smiled and nodded to her, crossing themselves, making her feel like a swindler. If you knew I was a Jew, she wanted to say, you would not treat me with such reverence.

  As Hannah and the porter proceeded toward the Fondamenta di Ghetto Nuovo, she put both hands around her middle, giving her belly a gentle squeeze. The baby had not moved in days. Was the infant as fatigued as she was? Could an unborn child be tired from swimming through the dim waters of the womb? Or was it something more serious? She tried not to think of all the stillbirths she had delivered or, more worrisome, the cramping and bloody discharge that had swept away the baby last year before it had a chance to take on human form.
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  Forgetting for a moment she was wearing a nun’s habit, Hannah said “Buon giorno” to Vicente. The gatekeeper was applying goose grease to keep the iron bolt free of rust. Without recognition, he nodded and waved her through the oaken portals.

  As Hannah entered the ghetto, the strange world of the Christians—the world of worshipping paintings and statues and secreting away the fingers of long-dead saints and splinters from the True Cross in reliquaries—fell away. The square looked as it had when she was here last. This morning the ghetto was noisy with the language of commerce and bargaining—the hand gestures, the exaggerated shrugs, the cries of dismay and delight, the theatrical lamentations of outrage and feigned heartbreak. Jewellers bargained for gems; farmers from the Terra Firma negotiated loans to get them through the wheat planting season. Noble ladies pawned their jewels to satisfy gambling debts.

  This was the familiar world of Asher and Tzipporah, of Hannah’s former neighbours, friends and the many children she had delivered over the years who were now young scholars in the yeshiva or betrothed in marriage. This was the world that, by insisting she must have Matteo, she placed in peril.

  Under the sotoportego, squeezed between two other moneylenders, sat Asher, a loupe in his eye, squinting at something in front of him. She waited for his customer to depart, a muscular man, a farrier by the look of his heavy leather apron. Then she approached her brother.

  “Why are you here dressed like that?” he whispered. “Change out of that habit at once.”

  I am in need of love and comfort, she wanted to say. “I need a place to stay while I search for Matteo.”

  “We can’t talk here.”

  Hannah slipped into a shadowy corner and shrugged out of the habit, wimple and cornette. Underneath was her cioppà. She returned to Asher, who was packing up his scales, his loupe, his tweezers and pincers, plus a hefty bag of assorted candlesticks and silverware, judging by the clank they made as he hoisted the sack over his shoulder. “Come upstairs. The boys are having their lessons in the Rabbi’s study. Our place will be quiet. No one will see you.” They climbed the stairs together. Once in his apartment, Asher motioned Hannah to sit.