by Roberta Rich
When a maid finally opened the door, Hannah said, “Tell your mistress Anni is here.” This was the nickname Jessica had given her when, as a child, Jessica could not pronounce the letter H. The young maid, no doubt suspicious of this bare-footed late-night caller wearing an ill-fitting dress, closed the door and left Hannah standing on the step while she went to speak to her mistress.
Hannah felt the eyes of dozens of homeless men and women passing by, desperate for a doorway to sleep in for the night. They stared at her: the dishevelled woman cowering there, clasping a screaming baby. Please hurry, Hannah silently prayed. She looked down and noticed a cut on her wrist that was still bleeding. In her haste she had neglected to bind it with a rag. She licked off the blood. A bloodstain the size and shape of a hummingbird marked Matteo’s blanket. She refolded it to conceal the spot. If Jessica refused to admit her, Hannah might as well surrender herself to the Prosecuti now and be executed as a witch.
Hannah’s arms ached and she transferred the now-sleeping baby from one arm to the other. Finally, when the bells of San Marco chimed signalling midnight and Hannah was about to steal away, to go God knows where, the maid returned, stared for a moment at Matteo, and ushered them into the house, up the stairs, and into a bedchamber almost as grand as the Contessa’s.
Three weeks earlier, when Hannah had seen Jessica on the Grand Canal, it had been dark, lit only by the gondolier’s lantern, which had cast deep shadows. Now Jessica sat in the glow of dozens of candles in front of a mirror while her lady’s maid arranged her hair in curls. Her dark hair was swept high off her forehead and cascaded down her neck and around her shoulders. Jessica’s skin was like the velvety skin of a peach. When Jessica was a child, Hannah had been tempted to take a nibble of one round cheek to see if juice would flow.
Jessica’s back was turned to her, her eyes fixed on her own reflection in the mirror behind her dressing table. “You have come to apologize for your rudeness? It is the only excuse for your visit I can think of.”
Hannah swallowed hard. Matteo lay still in her arms. She carefully placed her bag on the floor in front of her. Then she said, “I have no place to stay. I am asking you to give me shelter. I know I have no right to ask, but it is for a few days only.”
Jessica fussed with a tiny pot on the table in front of her for so long that Hannah thought she had not heard her. Finally she replied, “You would not understand the intricacies of a toilette. You have never taken any trouble with your appearance, other than to fling on your rumpled clothes from the night before. Do you still hang your entire wardrobe on a single hook behind your door?” She twisted her head to look over her shoulder as the maid applied a beauty mark to her back. “I would not be seen looking like you. You, with your pale face and oversized dress with the bodice pouching out.” She wriggled a shoulder to test whether the sequin was securely affixed. “Now you carry a bundle in your arms. Of what? Rags? Is this the new fashion?”
Although Jessica had hardly glanced at her, she seemed to know the minute details of Hannah’s appearance. Hannah could think of nothing to say. Her sister’s cold confidence always had a way of making her feel foolish. With one look or negligent wave of her hand, she could make Hannah feel clumsy, unable to stand straight, unsure of what to say or do.
“I know my words wounded you. I spoke cruelly, and I apologize,” Hannah said.
“I wonder that you have the audacity to ask anything of me, let alone that I take you in.” The maid, a young girl of about fifteen, teased a tress of her mistress’s dark hair, secured it with a pearl on a silk thread, and pretended not to listen. “Out of curiosity, this costume of yours—what role are you playing? A shepherdess? A penitent on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela? If so, you lack the requisite clamshell around your neck, which can be remedied. I may have one around the house I can give you the loan of.” When Hannah made no reply, Jessica said, “Oh, of course!” She clapped her hand to her forehead, careful not to disarrange her hair. “A laundress! That would explain the bundle.” She picked a stray hair from her gown.
Hannah felt a fool in spite of her growing anger. She used to change Jessica’s swaddling bands; now she had to beg her little sister, first for forgiveness, and then for shelter.
Matteo whimpered and arched his back, demanding food.
Her sister whirled about in her chair to stare. “What in God’s name was that? Have you managed to bear a child at last?”
“The child is why I am here, Jessica. I come because I have no one else but you to turn to for help.” Hannah was unable to keep her voice steady.
“You despise me and think I am immoral, and now you want my help?”
Jessica waved the maid out of the room and closed the door. She rose from her dressing table and bent over for a look at the baby, lifting the coverlet out of the way. Matteo waved a foot at Jessica. Reddish-blond wisps clung to his head; his eyes were shockingly blue.
“Are you mad? Have you lain with a gentile? This is a Christian child.”
“He is a Christian, but he is not mine.”
Matteo was crying, loudly now, his face red with fury. He waved his fists in the air.
“Was your need for a child so great that you stole him?” Jessica leaned closer to Hannah to be heard over Matteo’s screams.
“He is in danger,” Hannah said. “His uncle was trying to kill him. I need stay only a few days until his parents return.”
“You dare to bring this child to my house? You risk my life!” She peered at the tiny form screaming in Hannah’s arms. “Holy Mother, can you not shut him up? My neighbours will think I am castrating a cat.”
Hannah said, “This is the newly born di Padovani infant.”
“Sweet Jesus, not just any Christian child but a noble one. I know the family well—two of the sons anyway.”
“His uncle was going to murder him in the ghetto and place the blame on me. The whole of the ghetto would have suffered the consequences. Does that not mean anything to you?”
“I am no longer a Jew,” Jessica said. “Fortune has smiled on me. I have prospered. I have my pretty house, my patrons. I work hard and am skilful at what I do. I have a wonderful plan for amassing my fortune, but now you show up with a screaming brat to spoil it all.”
As Jessica strode to the window, she tripped on Hannah’s bag, which clinked. She paused. “And what is it you carry in that ratty sack of yours?” Before Hannah could stop her, Jessica reached in and drew out the unclean birthing spoons. “My God! What are these filthy things?”
Hannah felt the blood rise in her cheeks. She replied, “A tool of my trade. Birthing spoons.” Seeing her sister’s disgust, Hannah explained their purpose in more detail than required.
Jessica gave a shudder and dropped them back into the bag. “You should have been born a man,” Jessica said. “You remind me of Papa. Remember his tiny pincers for picking up gemstones?”
Hannah nodded in acknowledgment. Matteo had given up hope of food and fallen silent. Hannah placed him on Jessica’s velvet canopied bed, trying not to imagine the acts that had taken place on the red coverlet.
The memory flooded back of Matteo on the shochet’s table with Niccolò standing above him. “I saved this child from his uncle. Niccolò had the baby in the ghetto abattoir and was holding a knife to his neck.” Her lower lip began to tremble. “I killed him, Jessica. I killed a man. I kept stabbing him with the shochet’s knife. Once I began, I could not stop. Then I dragged him to the canal and dumped his body. Maybe that makes me a witch—but what else could I have done?” She unwrapped Matteo and showed her sister the stain over the embroidered crest. “This is Niccolò’s blood.”
Jessica said, “Holy Mother of God.”
Matteo began to cry again. Fat, round tears dripped down his cheeks and he held out his arms to Jessica to be comforted.
“Do not cry, my son.” The words seemed to fall naturally from her lips. “You will be fine.” She wiped his tears away with the hem of her skirt. As Jessica
bent over him, rearranging his blanket to bind him more snugly, Matteo grabbed her finger and clung to it. Jessica’s face softened.
“You are no witch,” she said, looking up at Hannah. “You are my sister.” Jessica watched as Matteo tugged her finger into his mouth. “These two brothers are well known to my colleagues. Mine is as gossip-filled a profession as yours. Niccolò is—was—hot-blooded, always getting into fights. He was easily influenced by the older one. Both are gamblers and have, no doubt, borrowed heavily from the moneylenders in the ghetto. Now it is Jacopo you need to fear. You can wager that he will not give up until you and this child are dead.”
Hannah told her how Jacopo had demanded her two hundred ducats in exchange for the birthing spoons, and how she had managed to escape with her payment stashed in the bottom of her bag.
“The bastard, taking advantage of your desperation. These noble sons are all the same. Vain and reckless. No doubt he owes everyone from his cobbler to his valet.”
“I regret involving you.”
Jessica picked up Matteo and held him to her shoulder, jiggling him for comfort. “Who else could you have gone to? Neither of us has acted as we should. We have taken turns inflicting deep wounds on each other. Sometimes I have played the tethered bull; sometimes you have. One thing is certain: we have both suffered.”
“What should I do?” Hannah asked.
“Return the baby,” said Jessica. “Now, before it is too late. Sneak him back into the palazzo.”
“But I cannot. The Conte and the Contessa are in Ferrara.”
“Leave him with his wet nurse and tell her what the uncles have done.”
“Giovanna? If anything happens to Matteo she has promised to denounce me to the Inquisition.” Hannah paused. “I must wait for the Conte to return so I can explain.”
“Explain what? That his brothers are in league to kill his son and heir? Why would he believe you?” Jessica placed the baby on her bed and began to untie the laces of her chemise. “I do not have much time. I am meeting a patron. If I do not appear, he will think something is amiss.”
“Please, Jessica. Stay.”
“I cannot. If I do, he will come to the house.” She turned back to her dressing table. “We will decide what to do as I dress.” Using a glass pipette, she dropped a measure of fragrant oil into a paste and mixed it with a tiny silver knife. “Make yourself useful. Here—” She handed Hannah a brush of rabbit’s hair.
Dipping the brush into the mixture, Hannah began painting the creamy paste over Jessica’s face, collarbones, and décolletage, smoothing it into the hollows of her clavicles and the valley between her breasts. As Hannah worked, her anger toward Jessica ebbed. It must have been the same for Jessica, because Hannah felt the tension leave her sister’s shoulders and face; her mouth relaxed and her eyelids seemed to grow heavy. How like Jessica to relax under the caress of Hannah’s hands. As a child, one of the few times she would sit motionless was when Hannah brushed her hair in long, steady strokes.
When she had covered Jessica’s skin, giving it a luminous cast, Jessica took the mortar back from her and poured the remaining cream into a tiny alabaster casket. “I must not waste this. I have crushed a pearl into the mixture.” Then she unfastened the bodice of the garment, shrugged it off, and let it pool around her slim legs. “Help me dress.” She grimaced. “Fetch my corset.”
Hannah retrieved it from where it had fallen off her dressing screen and held it outstretched so that Jessica could hold it up by the bodice while Hannah laced it from the back.
“Tighter, for the love of God. Shall I waddle into the theatre as thick around the middle as a milkmaid?”
“Your face is red. I dare not pull you in any more.”
“My maid has never shown me such mercy.”
Hannah pulled again, feeling her own face grow crimson from the exertion. “How is that? Can you draw breath or are you dead?”
Jessica took an experimental breath. “Not dead yet, but that is sufficient.” She tugged the corset lower on her torso, exposing the rising mounds of her breasts, nearly exposing her nipples. “Now, bring me that dress”—she gestured to the corner of the room—“and hold it like this, over my head.” After a few moments, she was fully dressed. She turned to Hannah, thoughtful. Finally, she said, “Go to Ferrara. Take the child to them. It is the only way. You can borrow some clothes from me. Leave tomorrow.”
“I cannot. My ship sails from Venice shortly.”
“And if the Conte does not return to Venice in time?” Jessica reached for a small glass bottle with an eyedropper on the dressing table.
“I trust that he will.”
She tilted her head back and pinched a drop of belladonna into each eye. She blinked until the drops dispersed. Her pupils dilated, making her eyes even darker.
“Coming to you is the hardest thing I have ever done. Let me remain with you,” Hannah pleaded. “Then I will return Matteo, sail to Malta, and never impose on your kindness again.”
“It is just a matter of time before someone tells Jacopo that you are my sister. He knows full well where I live.”
Hannah opened her mouth to speak, but Jessica interrupted. “And how do you intend to feed the child? Have you a wet nurse who will give him suck?”
“I will feed him pap until I can return him to the palazzo.”
“The cemeteries are filled with pap-fed babies.”
“I have no choice.”
Jessica tried to smile. “Whatever comes, we will face it together, as sisters must.” She picked up Hannah’s bag containing the birthing spoons and ducats and tucked it behind the headboard of her bed. “It will be safe there,” she said, draping a muslin cloth over it. She slipped on a pair of earrings and grabbed her evening bag, then descended the stairs and left.
From the open bedroom window, Hannah observed Jessica making her way slowly along the Fondamenta, her heels so high that the gondolier had to steady her as she stepped on board. Jessica looked up at Hannah in the window and, after blowing a kiss, settled herself in the felze.
It was acqua alta. Hannah watched as boats competed for space in the narrow canal, churning up a tumult of crosscurrents. Some of the overloaded boats could not pass under the bridges. When the tide was low, some could not budge because their hulls were stuck fast on the silt and debris of the canal bottom.
And then, as Jessica’s boat glided away from the dock, Hannah saw something that made her breath catch. A barge lumbered past with bodies stacked so high that it could barely pass under the bridge. Hannah smelled the decay of bloated bodies bursting from the pressure of their own juices. The boughs of rosemary and juniper covering them did little to mask the stink. She pressed a hand to her nose. During the last epidemic many Venetians had fled to the mainland, but armed peasants who feared contagion had beaten them and driven them back to Venice. She needed to get to Malta now, before the plague made travel impossible. It was likely that tomorrow the servants would flee to the countryside, terrified. Apart from Hannah, her sister, and the baby, the house would be empty. She need survive only another few days and then she would board the Balbiana.
She stood at the window gazing out onto the street until the moon rose full and high over the canal. Every creak in the floorboards, the voice of every passing pedestrian, and every splash from the canal made her stiffen.
What would kill them first? Jacopo, who by asking a few questions about town would surely discover that the Jewish midwife was the sister of the beautiful courtesan who lived on the Fondamenta della Sensa? Or the pestilence?
Matteo was sleeping on Jessica’s bed, breathing softly, bubbles of saliva collecting in the corners of his mouth, eyelashes brushing his cheeks, tiny hands crossed under the coverlet. The two of them were safe for the present, but Jessica was right. Without a wet nurse Hannah could not keep Matteo alive. Pap-fed babies filled the cemeteries.
CHAPTER 15
ON THE FLOOR of Joseph’s sail-making workshop, Isaac sat buried in a pile of
canvas. With a curved needle, he was sewing telltales onto a square sail, the long, narrow strips of fabric tangling around his hand. A leather patch strapped to his palm allowed him to drive the needle through the canvas without piercing himself.
Isaac looked up at the sound of light footsteps entering through the front door. It was Gertrudis. Tall and fair, she entered the shop, bringing with her the smell of fresh-baked bread in a basket swinging from her arm. Her hair was bound with a ribbon; she had smudges of blue, brown, and black paint on her dress and a dot of white on her temples, as though she had thrust her hair back from her forehead with a paint-wet hand.
He was so entwined in the sail, he had to wiggle his toes to restore feeling to his legs so that he could rise to his feet. She gazed around the shop, squinting for a moment, her eyes not adjusted from the bright sun on the street outside. She had a familiar-looking letter in her hand. Her eyes settled on Isaac.
In a mellifluous voice, she asked, “Where might I find Joseph?”
“He is down at the docks, victualling a ship. Can I be of assistance?” Isaac asked.
She tossed the letter on top of the tangle of canvas. “You can tell him to stop sending me letters.”
He had not had a good look at her before. Now he could see she was not young, thirty perhaps, but still pretty, with blue eyes and a mouth as sweetly curved as an archer’s bow. The longer he scrutinized her, the more his heart sank. Assunta was right. Joseph was the god Tantalus, reaching for a bunch of grapes too far above his head.
“You are the Good Samaritan who donated five scudi to Sister Assunta to buy me?” Isaac asked.
“I am, for all the good it did you.”
“Nonetheless, you have my thanks.” Isaac picked up the letter and gently swatted it against the crumpled sail to remove the dust that was coating it. “May I?” he said, indicating the letter.
Gertrudis nodded.
The letter had not been opened. The red sealing wax flaked and particles dropped onto the canvas. He unfolded it and made a show of reading the familiar words.