by Roberta Rich
The Conte inclined his head at a servant to commence carving.
Hannah could not conceive of a more repellent display—meat that had not been ritually slaughtered, vegetables cooked in the same pots that had once held meat and milk, beef glistening with butter sauce. She felt her gorge rise as she stared at the clotted cream forming a border around the pâté.
“Try a slice of the breast, Hannah. It is the most tender,” said the Conte. He motioned for the servant to place a slice on her plate.
She could not offend this man who had been so kind. She made a pretense of cutting up the meat and then helped herself to artichokes and a slice of bread. She was not the only one at the table picking at her food. Lucia, seated on her right, cut her meat into smaller and smaller pieces until each was no bigger than one of the pearls around her neck.
Lucia broke the silence that had descended upon the table. “The other night in bed, when Matteo was in your arms, I had an idea.”
“Yes, my dear?” the Conte prompted, accepting a helping of bisato su l’ara and bread.
“To thank God for sparing my life and the life of your son, I wish you to commission an artist to paint a triptych of the Madonna and Child. We will donate it to the Church of St. Samuele as an altarpiece.”
“We often do the same,” Hannah said, relieved to have something to contribute to the conversation. “To thank God for a piece of good fortune, we make a donation to one of the benevolent societies in the ghetto. Or sometimes women embroider an altar cloth for one of the synagogues.” She took a bite of artichokes. They tasted crunchy and hot in her mouth. If her stomach had not been in knots, she would have savoured the flavour of garlic.
“Lucia,” Jacopo said, “perhaps in tribute to your revered midwife, you should instead donate a silver chalice to the Scuola dei Tedeshi in the Ghetto Nuovo?” He motioned a liveried servant to give him a portion of seppie al nero, a brackish dish of squid cooked in its own ink.
A Christian donating a religious object to a synagogue was unthinkable, as he well knew. Hannah watched Jacopo devour the cuttlefish. The ink stained his tongue and teeth black. She glanced away.
Holding a silk cloth to her mouth, Lucia was overtaken by a fit of coughing. The Conte helped her to a standing position, and as she bent double gasping for breath, he patted her back between her thin shoulder blades. A servant reached for her bloodstained cloth and hid it away, discreetly slipping her a clean one. When the coughing subsided, the Conte helped Lucia to be seated once again.
The Conte leaned over his wife and quietly offered her a tidbit of meat from his plate. Lucia and the Conte seemed to enjoy that same rare quality that she and Isaac shared—happiness and contentment in each other’s company. And yet, she remembered her conversation with the Conte in the gondola the night she came to the palazzo, when he had instructed her to sacrifice the Contessa’s life if necessary. If she were to tell the Conte his brother was extorting money from her, could she rely on him to come to her aid?
After Isaac left for the Levant, Hannah had sensed his presence watching over her in the same way that she watched over him. She could summon the picture of his dark eyes alight with intelligence and his angular face, and feel comforted. Often she carried on imaginary conversations with him, asking his opinion, receiving his advice. She longed for him, but tonight, when she needed him the most, here in the midst of this noble family and their servants, she could not call him to mind.
Hannah picked up her knife and cut a slice of melon from the bucintoro. A young servant moved to replenish her wine, but she shook her head. He then offered the carafe to Jacopo and Niccolò.
She turned to the Conte and spoke in a low voice. “There is something I must discuss with you.”
“You may speak freely. We are all family here.” The Conte made an expansive gesture with his hand as Jacopo and Niccolò watched.
“I would sooner talk to you alone.”
The Conte shook his head and continued chewing on a piece of artichoke. Hannah had no choice. She would not be able to address the Conte in private.
After Niccolò finished telling a story about hunting deer and the Conte paused from discussing his latest shipment of nutmeg, she cleared her throat and said, in a voice louder than she intended, “I have lost something precious to me and of no use to anyone else. I believe I left it here when I was attending the Contessa the night of Matteo’s birth.”
The room fell silent. All eyes looked at her. It was so quiet she could hear the gurgling of Jacopo’s stomach.
Finally, the Conte broke the silence. “What are you referring to?”
Her words came out in a rush. “My birthing spoons. They are of great assistance to me in helping babies and their mothers.” She wished she could spring up and stand by the door, ready to run if Jacopo pounced on her, but she forced herself to remain still. The faces around the table looked blankly at her. “They are like this.” She reached into the bowl of risotto and withdrew two silver serving spoons. She arranged them on the table in the shape of the letter X. “With a small hinge to hold them together.” She blushed to discuss the details of so intimate an object at the table. Jacopo added to her discomfort by pretending not to understand, thus forcing her to describe their function in detail.
The Conte speared a piece of meat from the platter in front of him. “An important instrument for a woman in your profession.” He looked at his wife. “Lucia? Have you any idea what Hannah is talking about?”
Lucia shook her head. Of course she would not know. She had been unconscious when Hannah used them.
Hannah glanced at Jacopo, who was now white with anger.
“This really is too much. Are you accusing a member of the di Padovani family of taking something of yours? You accept our hospitality and then make this allegation?”
“No, of course not. It is nothing like that. I did not mean to give offence,” Hannah stammered. “It is just that I thought I had them in my bag when I left the palazzo the night of Matteo’s birth, but then when I reached the gondola, they were gone. Perhaps I dropped them.”
The Conte snapped his fingers. “Fetch Giovanna,” he said to one of the servants. “Do not worry, my dear,” he said to Hannah. “If they are here, we will find them.”
Jacopo rose to his feet.
“Do not trouble yourself, Jacopo.” The Conte signalled his brother to sit. “This is why we have servants.” His tone was that of an adult speaking to a child.
A few moments later Giovanna entered the room, a servant trailing behind her. She was wiping her hands on her apron. The bodice of her dress had been hastily laced. Good, thought Hannah, she has been nursing Matteo. No wonder the child is thriving. He would never obtain sufficient nourishment from poor Lucia.
Jacopo addressed Giovanna. “A problem has arisen. The midwife claims she has misplaced her birthing spoons. Find them, will you?”
Giovanna glanced at Jacopo. “I am not sure where they are, sir. The last time I saw them—”
Jacopo interrupted. “I hope you did not take them, Giovanna?”
“I did not. I think you know that.” Giovanna shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, refusing to meet the Conte’s gaze. “The last time I saw them, Master Jacopo had them.”
“That is ridiculous, Giovanna,” Jacopo said. “What possible use would I have for such an apparatus?”
“That is enough!” the Conte said. “Jacopo, go with Giovanna. Find this birthing device and bring it here. Good God, man, what earthly use is it to you?”
Jacopo stomped out of the dining room, his mouth set in a thin line, Giovanna behind him. Hannah wondered what would transpire between the two of them when they were out of the Conte’s earshot.
Lucia shook her head, clearly embarrassed. “I cannot imagine what is going on, can you?”
“Yes, I can. All too well,” said the Conte.
“An innocent misunderstanding,” said Niccolò, taking a sip of wine. “Nothing more, I’m sure.”
An ashen-faced Giovanna returned a few minutes later with Jacopo by her side. She held the spoons wrapped in a cloth and lifted a corner to show the Conte. The spoons were still caked with mucus and blood from the birth. The Conte gestured for her to give them to Hannah, who dropped them into her bag, which had been resting at her feet. They fell with a clunk on top of her ducats. Relief flooded her. She now had the spoons and the ducats. If she could keep both, she would sail to Malta and arrive in time to rescue Isaac. The Conte had lifted a great weight from her shoulders.
The Conte said, “Giovanna, you may go.” She left the room, her eyes downcast, her expression sullen. They finished the meal in silence.
A new servant entered the dining room and whispered something into the Conte’s ear. The Conte nodded and got to his feet.
“Our plans have changed, we must leave now. The tides are propitious. Our boat is packed and ready. We will be gone a few days or perhaps a few weeks, depending on the health of Lucia’s father. Jacopo, Niccolò, I expect to return to a peaceful household. Is that understood?”
Both brothers nodded.
Surely, Jacopo would not try to take away her ducats now, Hannah thought.
The Conte placed a hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “I apologize for what transpired this evening. I thank you for coming. A servant will see you home after we leave.” He offered his arm to Lucia. “Come, my dear. Are you ready?”
Hannah grabbed her bag and followed the couple to the main entranceway leading to the canal, where their gondola bobbed at its mooring lines. The servants heaved valises onto the boat. She would probably never see either of them again, or their beautiful son.
“I thank you for everything,” she said to the Conte.
“You will visit us again when you return from Malta?”
“Yes,” said Hannah, but in her heart she doubted she would. “I have a favour to ask. I would like to bid a last farewell to Matteo.”
“Of course. Just go upstairs,” said Lucia. “He is in his cradle in my bedchamber.” Lucia touched Hannah on the cheek. “I think you are as fond of Matteo as I am.”
“He is a lovely babe,” Hannah replied.
The Contessa kissed her on the cheek. “Go to our son. Give him a kiss, and have a safe voyage to Malta.”
“May you live and be well,” said Hannah.
She stood on the dock and waved as the couple got on the boat and the gondolier cast off from the mooring pole and moved away. It would be a long trip on water and then another three days overland. Perhaps they were wise to leave Matteo safe at home.
When Hannah walked back inside the palazzo, the brothers were nowhere to be seen. She clutched her bag close to her chest and heard the reassuring clinking of her ducats. From the dining room, she heard the clatter of silver and plates as the servants cleared the table.
She hurried up the stairs, remembering how timidly she had approached them the night of Matteo’s birth. This time, she placed one foot after another firmly in the middle of each stair. At the top, she proceeded along the corridor to Lucia’s bedchamber at the end of the hall. The heavy carpets muffled her footsteps. Entering the room, Hannah glanced toward Lucia’s empty bed, which was as clean and neatly made as if the Contessa had not struggled on it for two days and a night to give birth. A fresh coverlet of red silk draped the bed and a matching silk curtain fell from the canopy.
She tiptoed toward the cradle draped with a padiglione woven in the di Padovani colours. This would be her final goodbye to a child she had brought into the world. Already the thought of never seeing him again pained her. Better she should quit this palazzo now, but she could not without one last look at him. The window was open, she noticed. Too much air would not benefit the baby. She pulled it closed. Then, carefully stepping over the protective circle of salt, she pushed the curtains aside and bent down, ready to plant a kiss on Matteo’s cheek.
The cradle was empty.
CHAPTER 12
IN THE PAST WEEK Isaac’s fortunes had, if not soared—for how could anyone describe the eating of mouldy bread and half-rotten fish as soaring?—at least improved. He now had victuals, shelter, and an occupation of sorts. He slept in Joseph’s stable at night, next to wagons and carts and horses that munched their hay all night relentlessly. And if the rats nibbled his toes before he was finally able to sink into the arms of Morpheus, what of it? That could happen anywhere, even in Venice. At least he was not eating the leather from his own shoes.
As part of the bargain, Isaac had convinced Joseph that he, Isaac, could earn more money writing letters in the square than he could rowing on a slave galley. So Isaac became a scribe. Two-thirds of his meagre fees, whether paid in coin or in kind, went straight into Joseph’s greasy pocket; the other third went to Isaac. But—and this was the important part of the deal—if he could win the heart of the widow Gertrudis for Joseph, Isaac would be granted his freedom. Everything depended on his persuasive tongue and his nimble mind.
On Friday, which was market day, and again on Monday and Thursday, Isaac sat on his fleshless behind in the main square. No matter how he shifted on the ground, it was painful. He wrote letters and drafted contracts for the honest citizens of Valletta, who were, for the most part, innocent of the written word. Most could not even recognize their own names written in dust on the side of a wagon. But the astonishing transactions they engaged in! The pig had a firm grip on the Christian imagination. Last week, one of his customers, a farmer from Gozo, directed Isaac to pen a letter to his wife instructing her to give his favourite sow a brisk going-over with a twig brush while he was away. In the course of the past week, Isaac had drafted several contracts for the purchase and sale of sows. He had copied out recipes for head cheese, roast suckling pig, and a stew called trumpo made of pig snout and rutabaga. The very thought of such a dish made him bilious.
Business arrangements that men had previously sealed with a handshake and a bottle of malmsey wine were now codified in Isaac’s meticulous script, writing so tiny that Isaac himself could not read it, even after the ink had dried. But neither could anyone else. This did not prevent his customers from nodding solemnly over Isaac’s parchment and swearing they had never gazed upon a finer hand. The remainder of the week Isaac laboured for Joseph, sizing canvas and sewing sails.
So three days a week, in the square, installed under an olive tree, a plank across his knees for a desk, Isaac dealt with hearty men reeking of cow shit. Some were generous and thanked him with gifts of potatoes, carrots, and even figs. One man for whom Isaac had written a marriage contract presented him with a not-too-badly-worn pair of breeches.
Isaac recited to his customers what was to become a well-honed speech. “This parchment does not come easily to me,” he would say. “The Knights in Valletta—may carbuncles cover their asses—refused me paper, so by my own industry I have converted a sheepskin to parchment. I provide a full broadsheet for the verbose, a quarto for the moderately loquacious, and an octavo, an eighth of a sheet, for the succinct. For the inarticulate, I offer odds and ends made from scraps of the hind legs.” He would then wave the various sizes of parchment in front the customer’s nose. Sometimes Isaac would add, “Let my bleeding hands be your incentive to brevity.”
The church bells rang out at noon. It was the appointed hour. Soon Joseph would appear standing over him, blotting out the sun, to collect the letter that would shoot Cupid’s arrow squarely into Gertrudis’s heart. Better to be a purveyor of love potions, like the crones in the market, Isaac thought. Why had he laboured over—no, agonized over—his composition when he could more easily have concocted a stew of bat guano, toad’s wart, and fennel, and enjoyed just as great a chance of success?
Isaac had glimpsed Gertrudis several times from a distance as she hurried through the street, sketch paper under her arm, the hungry eyes of every man upon her. His heart sank every time he watched her graceful form picking its way through the idlers in front of the tavern. On several occasions, on her way to the shop of the apothecary
who compounded her paint pigments and provided her with linseed oil, she looked across the square at Isaac and smiled.
Oh, Joseph, Isaac thought, you are flying too close to the sun and you will crash to the earth, taking me with you. You are a man who does not desire what is within your grasp, and longs only for what you cannot attain. The island is full of stout peasant girls who would keep you warm in the winter and shade you in the summer.
Isaac remembered that yearning for love, that hunger that could be satisfied by only one woman. But here in Malta he had come to realize that his belly was a more insistent organ than his prick.
His dreams left him in no doubt of that. The same dream had come to him every night since he was taken prisoner months ago. Hannah stood before him dressed in a white camisole, her nipples pushing through the thin fabric, dark hair cascading around her shoulders. She implored him to make love to her. When he embraced her, her arms stretched longer and longer until they entwined him in a vinous embrace, binding his limbs to his torso. When he sucked her nipples, they became clusters of grapes. When he ran his hands over her belly, it turned into a ripe melon. When he kissed her, her lips became persimmons. Entering her was like severing a moist fig in two. During his waking hours, it was the thought of Hannah’s baked kugel, which was like eating a cloud, that made him grow tumescent.
Last night when he dreamt of Hannah, she was wearing the blue robes of the Madonna in the painting of the Annunciation he had seen through the church doors of St. Zaccaria. She spoke to him, whispering words of love. When he awoke, Hannah’s dream words were fresh in his mind, and he feverishly transcribed them. When he reread what he’d written, he knew that this was the love letter that would melt ice, never mind the female heart.
Now, as he set up in the square, Isaac tried to wash away the memory of the dream. He bit into a lump of bread he had tucked in his shirt. Afraid of breaking off a tooth, he crumbled it with his fingers and sucked the crumbs until they were soft enough to swallow. The letter, securely tucked under the waistband of his new breeches, crinkled and stabbed at his belly. As he arranged his writing material—ink, quill, and parchment—he glanced around, hoping to catch sight of Hector, the local agent for the Society for the Release of Captives and the man who held his fate in his hands.