by Roberta Rich
Before they reached the main entrance hall, Hannah returned the Conte’s cloak to him, feeling lighter with it off her shoulders. A servant woman greeted them, her dark hair clinging to her face with perspiration and her apron stained with blood.
“Hannah, this is our midwife, Giovanna.”
Hannah smiled and nodded, but the woman did not acknowledge her greeting.
“Giovanna, this is Hannah. Take her to the Contessa. Not a word to anyone. She has come to assist,” said the Conte. “Any change during my absence?”
“I think you must summon a priest, sir,” Giovanna said, speaking with downcast eyes.
Hannah backed toward the door. A priest would know from her red scarf and modest dress that she was a Jewess. If a priest arrived, she must leave, or her arrest would follow as surely as blood trickled downhill.
To her relief, the Conte replied, “We will wait to see what Hannah can do for her.” He must have sensed Hannah’s nervousness, for he turned to her and said, “Do not worry. You shall have your chance. Now go quickly.”
Giovanna curtsied to the Conte, and then led Hannah up a wide staircase, the stone walls radiating damp. Accustomed to the enclosed, rickety staircases of the ghetto, Hannah felt dizzy at this expanse of stone. She stopped mid-flight and clutched the cold balustrade. To regain her equilibrium, she looked down, and saw in an alcove below two men drinking at a table, a flask of wine between them, a spaniel lolling at their feet. One was the brother Jacopo, flushed from his walk home in the night air. The other, she surmised, was Niccolò, the youngest brother. He was handsome, with curly dark hair and the rumpled look of a man recently risen from bed.
Jacopo took a pair of ivory dice in his hands, blew on them for luck, and then cast them onto the table. Hannah moved slightly and her leather sandals made a squeak on the marble staircase, and Niccolò glanced up, giving her a mocking salute with his glass.
Nothing in this palazzo seemed familiar or safe. She felt the way a small animal must feel in a field surrounded by predators. Too much space and nowhere to hide. The Conte must have experienced the same sense of discomfort in her humble loghetto with its damp walls and smoky brazier as she did now amongst the silk-tasselled curtains, gleaming silver, and coffered ceilings of his palazzo.
Up the stairs she continued, feeling the chill of the stone radiate through the soles of her sandals, putting her thoughts of the two men out of her mind. Of one thing she was certain—the Contessa would be like any other woman, with sharing bones, a belly, and a matrix.
Hannah had heard that Christians filled their grand palaces as well as their churches with images of the human figure. And sure enough, at the landing at the top of the stairs appeared a fresco in brilliant colours depicting two women washing the feet of Christ. Hannah gathered her skirts and walked with her head down. The Torah forbade the worshipping of graven images. She thought of her beautiful shul in the ghetto, with a carved wooden pulpit for the Rabbi to deliver his sermons, a gilded Holy Ark to hold the Torah, and a filigreed screen to separate the main floor of the men’s section from the women’s gallery above. It seemed austere by contrast to this palace.
She followed Giovanna’s ample behind down a hallway covered with a carpet patterned in ruby and emerald and topaz. The moon shining through the high clerestory windows cast rhomboid shadows on the jewel colours.
As she walked down the hallway, Hannah did not need Giovanna to direct her to the Contessa’s bedchamber. The woman’s screams drew her to a room so large that at first she could locate the bed only by the screams issuing from it. She paused in the doorway, dazzled. There seemed more gold in the room than could be found in King Solomon’s mines. Moonlight shining through the front and back windows, and light from lamps and candles, filled the bedchamber. Light was everywhere, dancing in gilded looking-glasses, mirrors, and bronzes. Even the terrazzo floor, glass smooth and fashioned of coloured stone embedded with semi-precious gems, glowed. Adorning the windows were curtains of silk taffeta woven with a gold brocade weft forming loops to catch the moonlight.
Above the bed hung a small devotional painting of Madonna and child. The Madonna, wearing a gown of lapis lazuli blue, offered him a breast with a look of rapture on her smooth face. For Christians, it was a tender scene, but Hannah felt her stomach contract in revulsion. Only God could make another human being. It was wickedness to attempt to emulate Him by creating graven images. If only she could ask Giovanna to remove it and in its place substitute her shadai of hammered silver. Hannah looked away and placed her bag on a chair.
In the corner was an elaborate child’s crib identical to the Contessa’s bed but on a smaller scale. May it be filled soon, Hannah thought. The screams drew her to the woman on a bed supporting a canopy on four pillars.
There lay the Contessa, so pale she was almost translucent. Around the bed was a ring of salt to protect mother and child from the Evil Eye. No doubt this was Giovanna’s contribution, and a useful one against Lilith, the slayer of newborns. Hannah wished her amulet, the shadai, was in her hands and not in her bag on the chair. When the contractions started, Lilith heard the screams and hovered close to savour the scent of blood. The more protracted the delivery, the bolder she grew. Humble loghetto or palazzo, it made no difference. Lilith was no respecter of social class.
Hannah took Contessa Lucia’s hand, her fingers as cool and waxy as candles. Her blue eyes were swollen and her hair matted with sweat. Her cheeks were too flushed, her eyes too bright. Had it not been for her coughing and a thin blue vein throbbing on her forehead, Hannah would have thought her dead.
She said, “Contessa, I am Hannah. I’ve come to help you give birth to your baby. Can you hear me?” Hannah felt the rustle of the wings as she bent over the bed and thought she saw the rosary dangling from the headboard shift in response. She murmured a swift prayer.
Putting her arms around the Contessa, Hannah pulled her up into a sitting position to make it easier for her to cough. Her shoulder blades cut into Hannah’s arms. Blood dotted the handkerchief Lucia held to her mouth.
“You must listen to me. I know it is difficult. You have laboured long and hard without result. I must examine you.” Hannah studied her patient’s face. It was as Hannah had feared: the Conte had waited too long to summon her. If only he had fetched her at dawn, before Lucia had lost so much strength, there might have been some hope. Now, it was well after midnight and the Contessa looked too weak to push out a mewling kitten, much less a baby.
Lucia peered at her through half-closed lids, as though trying through her pain to work out who Hannah was. “Do I know you?”
“Your husband fetched me. I am a midwife. I have come to help you.”
A few moments passed, and Lucia blinked, seeing what must have looked like an apparition in a blue cioppà, shawl and head scarf. “Hannah, yes. All the women speak of you.” She tried to smile. “They say you work miracles. That is what I require.”
And what I require as well, thought Hannah, but she said, “One must not rely on miracles.”
Now that the coughing fit had passed, Hannah lowered the Contessa into a supine position and pulled back the covers sodden with sweat and blood.
“I will be gentle, but I must feel your belly and see if the child is in the correct position.”
“Hand me my rosary.”
Hannah was about to reply that it was forbidden for Jews to touch the religious objects of Christians, but she stopped herself. God would make an exception. To give comfort, to hand a rosary to a dying woman, would be a mitzvah, not a violation of either the Mishrat or the Papal Edict. Hannah took the rosary from the headboard and handed it to Lucia. The beads felt warmer and more lifelike than Lucia’s fingers. Lucia held them to her lips and kissed them.
“You are a Jewess?”
“From the Ghetto Nuovo.”
“Thank you, Hannah, for having the courage to come. Whatever becomes of me or my baby, I am grateful to you.” Then she lay still and her eyelids drifted closed
. “You touched my beads as though handing me a serpent.”
“So you noticed? Good for you. There is life in you yet.” Hannah smoothed the damp hair off Lucia’s forehead. She turned to Giovanna, who was wiping her hands on her apron. “How far apart are her pains?”
“Only a few pater nostrums apart for the past three hours. She started two days ago, but she has made no progress. Now she is exhausted and has lost a lot of blood, as you can see. I have told her she must push. But she is too feeble.” Giovanna studied Hannah for a moment, taking in the red scarf and dark hair, and then said, “You know as well as I do that it is forbidden for Jews to deliver Christian babies. What if, God forbid, the child requires immediate baptism?”
“Then you can provide that service.”
“As I have for all the other babies born to her,” Giovanna said, her broad face set in a frown.
For a Jew to have Christian foes was dangerous. She would have to handle this midwife with care. Hannah went to the washbasin beside the bed, wrung out a wet cloth, and placed it on the Contessa’s forehead.
“To give birth is hard work, is it not?”
Lucia nodded as Hannah palpated the Contessa’s stomach. Hannah did not like what her hands told her. Not sure how much Lucia was capable of understanding, Hannah said, “The head is twisted and is stuck in the womb. I must try to move it.” Lucia opened her eyes and gave Hannah a look of incomprehension.
“Imagine this, if you will: I am trying to push you out of that window.” She gestured with her chin to the narrow casement window adjacent to the bed, through which could be seen a silver beam of moonlight. “I could come up behind you, give you a firm shove, and you would splash into the canal below quick as a wink. That is the way it is if the infant’s head is well positioned. But imagine this: You are at the window, standing crookedly to one side, or hanging on to the window ledge with your hand. Even a great shove would be of no use. If the babe lies wrongly, strong pains and pushing will be of no avail.”
Lucia’s eyes drooped shut again; it was unlikely she had heard a word.
Hannah continued, as much to visualize the difficulty for herself as to explain it to the Contessa. “But suppose I clasped you by the shoulders and moved you to the middle of the window and then stood outside on the window ledge and with an instrument drew you out.”
“Such a thing is possible?” Lucia’s voice was barely audible.
So she had been listening. “Before I can answer that question, I must place my two fingers inside your sheath. I will do it now, while you are between your pangs.”
Hannah drew the candles on the side table closer. She groped in her linen bag, pushing to one side the silver birthing spoons, extracting a vial of almond oil. Holding her hands over the flame of the candle, she poured a spoonful of the oil on her palms and rubbed them together to warm them.
Too exhausted to plead modesty, Lucia remained still as Hannah reached down, hugged one of Lucia’s legs against her, and braced the other against a large pillow. She pushed Lucia’s nightdress up to her waist, trying not to wince at the sight of apple red blood pooling on the sheets between her legs. Giovanna could not render any assistance, but at least she should have changed the bed linen. The Contessa’s belly was high and full, but otherwise she appeared emaciated. Her limbs were thin, as though the baby had greedily seized all nourishment, sparing none for Lucia. Hannah ran her hands over the taut mound, trying to ascertain whether the head had descended into the birth canal. The infant’s buttocks were high above Lucia’s umbilicus. Hannah put her hand between Lucia’s legs.
“I need to feel your womb to see if it is locked shut or opened.” She hoped to feel the soft and flexible opening of the mouth of the womb and the top of the infant’s head, but knew this was unlikely given what she had felt from the belly. If she managed to touch the baby’s head, she would move her two fingers like a compass over it to see if it was descending straight. It was always a wonderful sensation to touch the head and feel the flutter of a tiny pulse in the skull.
“Don’t push. It is not time for that.” Unnecessary words. Lucia’s faint panting indicated there was little chance she would have the strength to bear down.
It was as she had feared. The head was not in position. It remained above the pelvic bones, deep within the womb, difficult to feel, impossible to manipulate. Her birthing spoons could be of no help unless the head progressed farther into the birth passage.
Dear God, she must fight her growing sense of panic, her urge to flee before the woman died in her arms. Never had she attended a weaker mother. Never had she seen a case where a tragic outcome was so certain. Hannah felt her own breath quicken and her heartbeat increase. She withdrew her fingers from between the Contessa’s thighs and wiped them on a clean cloth.
She considered the Conte’s admonition to save the child above all. Since Lucia was so near death, would it not be better to slice through her belly now and extract the baby before it smothered? To save the child would ensure the Conte’s gratitude. But could Hannah cut open a woman who had tried through her pain to smile at her, a woman who had even made a feeble jest?
“I want you to breathe as deeply as you can. Deeply and slowly. Then we’ll see what can be done to get this obstinate baby out of your belly.”
The Contessa’s head lolled back, her face as white as the damp rectangle of pillow framing it.
Hannah pressed her fingers to the Contessa’s wrist and, after searching, felt a pulse faint as a thrush’s heartbeat. “God come to my aid and guide my hands,” she murmured in Yiddish.
“Save my poor mistress,” Giovanna said. “You’ll never get this baby out alive. Use the crochet.”
Hannah motioned for Giovanna to be quiet, hoping that Lucia was too dazed for the words to penetrate. The crochet was a sharp hook used to gouge a hole in the anterior fontanel of the infant’s head so that a midwife could insert her fingers through the fractured skull and pull, thus extracting the dead fetus. No. If she was to use any instrument, it would be her iron knife. Kill the mother, save the child. If she went against the Conte’s orders and saved the Contessa by using the crotchet, she could expect neither protection from the law nor her fee. Better to have Giovanna out of the room.
“Please, go and fetch fresh linen. Let us see what can be done to make her more comfortable.” Giovanna’s only skill would be to dismember the fetus. Was it any wonder Lucia had suffered so many unsuccessful confinements?
After Giovanna left, Hannah realized she had not asked if the waters had broken. She lifted up the covers and patted the bed linen. There was blood, but no water from the matrix. She grabbed her bag on the chair, took out the iron knife, and concealed it under Lucia’s pillow. It would be at the ready if she had to slice open the belly.
Lucia’s eyes opened and she whispered, “Am I going to die? It would be just punishment for my sins. What is the purpose of my life if I cannot give my husband an heir?” With those words her head drooped to one side and she appeared lifeless.
What possible sins could this coughing, feverish woman be guilty of? Hannah kissed her on the forehead. The smell of burning tallow mingled with blood and flux.
“You are tired and discouraged, but it is too soon to surrender hope.” If by some miracle the Contessa survived, this would be her last confinement. At her age the sinews and ligaments of the womb were tough and did not willingly give way.
“Is the child alive? I have not felt movement for some time,” Lucia said, but before Hannah could answer, her eyes closed and she grimaced as her belly hardened and she twisted with pain. The spasm lasted for several moments, and then, spent, she collapsed back against the pillows.
“Whether the child is alive, I cannot say until I put my ear to your belly.”
If she did not hear a heartbeat, she would reach for the crochet, dismember the child, and extract it limb by limb from the Contessa’s body. Then perhaps the Contessa would have a chance. On the other hand, if the baby was alive, she must slice
Lucia open, grope about amid the flooding blood, and scoop out the child before it died.
She picked up the Contessa’s hand and held it to her cheek while Lucia endured another spasm. When the belly relaxed, Hannah pressed her ear against it, listening for the flutter of the baby’s heartbeat. She held still and waited. Moving her head lower, below the umbilicus, she listened again. Nothing. Next she tried a location higher up, just below one breast. She listened again. Yes, perhaps there was a faint beat. She did not trust her ears. Was it her imagination? No, there it was again, the muted heartbeat of a small being. But it was so slow and so faint. The child was dying. The Contessa was dying. Hannah had no time to vacillate.
She must open Lucia’s belly, reach in, and fish out the slippery child. But could she bring herself to gut the Contessa like the shochet slaughters the spring lamb before Pesach? If she could perform this horrific deed, the two hundred ducats would be hers, and Isaac returned to her side. Of what importance was the life of a Christian woman to her? The Conte would approve; the Contessa had given her permission. God would forgive.
But could Hannah forgive herself?
She slid the knife out from under Lucia’s pillow. Tipping a drop of almond oil from her vial onto the blade, Hannah rotated the knife from side to side to distribute a coating over the surface. Then from her bag, she removed a whetstone, poured a drop of oil on it, and in quick, circular motions honed the blade. The knife made a rasping noise on the stone. Hannah checked Lucia’s face to see if she had heard, but Lucia remained motionless, unresponsive.
Hannah placed two fingers against Lucia’s neck but could not locate a pulse. She reached over to a small table next to the bed and took up a silver-backed looking-glass. She held it to the Contessa’s lips. No reassuring moisture clouded the glass. Lucia was dead. There was no reason to delay. Taking up the bottle again she oiled the mound of belly. With the tip of the knife she drew an imaginary line in the oil from above the umbilicus to the sharing bones of the pelvis. Then she raised the knife.