by Roberta Rich
The setting sun was a dull orange colour and so huge and flat it could have been cut from parchment. Its rays bounced off the windows of the facade. But no illumination came from the warehouse and office on the ground floor. The fondachi, where the family conducted business, was dark, the entranceway barred. No signs of life, no chatter, no maids shaking out quilts, no smell of cooking issuing from the middle and upper floors, where the family lived.
Hannah hesitated. A black wreath hung from the door. She reached for the bell cord and pulled before she had time to consider its significance. After a few moments, the door swung open and Giovanna stood facing her. She stared at Hannah for a moment, a bewildered look on her face.
“Giovanna—it is me, Hannah. Thank God someone is here.”
Giovanna studied her a moment before recognition came into her eyes.
“I need to see the Conte immediately.”
Giovanna slowly shook her head. “You may not see him. Not in this lifetime. The Conte is dead. And my mistress along with him.” She made the sign of the cross and glanced at the wreath on the door. “The plague. We received word from Ferrara yesterday.”
Hannah used to think that only the poor suffered, that rich and well-born people were sheltered from grief. Now, she knew she was mistaken. Poor Lucia had not lived to hold her son in her arms one last time.
“I am so sorry to hear that. I have brought Matteo back. He was …” She was about to launch into a stumbling explanation as to why she had the child, but she stopped herself.
“Ever since you entered this household, bad luck has befallen the family,” Giovanna said. “Master Jacopo has disappeared and I fear he is dead. A herring fisherman found Niccolò’s body last night floating face down in the lagoon. He was dead of knife wounds.” Giovanna wiped her hands on her apron.
“But the child is alive. What am I to do with him?” Hannah smoothed Matteo’s reddish hair and held him up.
Giovanna sniffed and bent over the baby. When she saw the buboes, she gave a scream and retreated back into the doorway.
“Are you mad? Get him away. He has the plague! If I catch it, who will care for my children? Get away from here!”
“Please listen to me. It is not what you think.” Taking a gulp of air, she tried to slow her breathing in spite of the bindings on her chest. “The child is healthy.”
Giovanna backed away, her hand on the door to close it. “Leave before I summon the Prosecuti,” she said.
Then Giovanna slammed the door. A moment later, Hannah heard the grating noise of the iron bolt sliding into place.
As Hannah stood there, not knowing what to do, Matteo began to whimper. She rocked him in her arms, still standing in front of the bolted door.
Had she risked everything only to see the baby cast off as an orphan? The thought of the devotional portrait in the Contessa’s bedchamber came to her, the Virgin Mary with the Christ child on her lap. She felt a stab of grief for the Contessa, who had struggled so valiantly to bring forth Matteo, only to perish of the plague.
The infant, sensing her panic, stared right at her, his brow wrinkled, as if in sympathy. He reached out a hand to touch her face. She loved him, this exotic little creature. She loved his blue eyes and fair skin, so different from the dark babies of the ghetto.
As she bent her head to kiss his cheek, Hannah realized—Matteo was not an orphan. She was his mother as truly as if she had given birth to him. Whatever happened now, she would protect him. Matteo had no one else in the world.
CHAPTER 21
ISAAC TRAMPED ALONG the waterfront, the stones digging into his callused feet. Gertrudis’s sketch was rolled up and tucked against his heart, next to his sack of silkworm cocoons. For good luck, he fingered the blue hair ribbon that held it fast. He held his head low, a biretta pulled down on his forehead. He had no desire to attract the interest of patrolling soldiers of the Grand Master, muskets over their shoulders, sniffing the air for contraband and absconding slaves.
Gertrudis’s offer of her cousin’s pirogue was heavensent. She might not have been persuaded to feign love for Joseph, few women could have managed such a feat, but she was kind and, furthermore, a gifted artist. Her likeness of Isaac was so finely done and so flattering that any woman seeing it would consider him handsome. It would be his gift to Hannah when they were reunited.
Yesterday, they had met again at the square, where Isaac was reading over a contract for a merchant with sheep pelts to sell to a ship’s captain on his way to the Levant.
Gertrudis sat on the stump, her skirts pulled up to reveal a trim ankle, and waited until Isaac was finished and had pocketed the merchant’s five scudi. “So,” she said, “I will speak quickly. I can see you have a long line of impatient customers.” She was jesting. The square was deserted. The market had closed for the day and the vendors were drinking up their profits at the tavern. “My cousin’s skiff will be waiting for you on the beach tomorrow evening. You are a fool, but a loyal one, and I like that in a man. I will reward your loyalty.” She spoke without rancour, as though she were discussing the terms of a contract. “The skiff is old but seaworthy. When you reach the ship, give it a good push to shore. The tides will carry it back to the beach, where my cousin will reclaim it.”
To board a vessel anchored far out in the harbour without a skiff was impossible. Isaac was a strong swimmer, but the ships were too far to reach. Neither was it possible to board a ship at dock. Too many stevedores were loading and unloading cargo: oranges, dates, wine, and bark from Sardinia. From Romania alum, lead, and pilgrims’ robes. The sweating men, tumplines marking their foreheads, staggered to and fro under their immense burdens. Weaving between the porters, crashing into them, were sailors lurching back to their ships, stupid with drink, whores clinging to their arms. No one could escape detection in such a crowd.
So although Isaac was relieved she had not withdrawn the offer of her cousin’s skiff, he sighed with regret as any man would who had gazed on her blue eyes and fair skin.
Isaac continued to walk in the direction of her cousin’s boat. The evening was hot, even though the sun had now set; sweat flowed in rivulets down his back and between his buttocks. The moon, suspended like a pearl over the harbour, seemed oddly ripe and female on this island of muskets and swords and battle-ready men eager to use them. The wrights had caulked the decks of a bertone newly arrived from Genoa, judging by the flag flying on her foremast, and from the hull the faint odour of pine pitch and wood shavings wafted over him.
The seagulls overhead, fatigued by the heat, had ceased their insistent screeching and perched, wings folded, on the yardarms of a Turkish caramusal from Constantinople and on a fregate from Genoa. By decree of the Grand Master, guards searched every ship before it cast off, poking and jabbing long poles tipped with iron-clawed instruments into the cargo hold, under decking, and into the nooks and crannies behind ladders and beneath stairs. Any hapless stowaway lucky enough to have found his way aboard would have to be careful not to yelp at the thrust of the grappling hook.
Farther out from shore, at the very entrance to the harbour where the cliffs were at their highest, Isaac saw the Provveditore, a high-sided galleon drifting at anchor. She would serve his purposes well. By squinting, he could make out the welcome sight of the flag of Venice, a golden-winged lion on a field of red, rippling from the foremast in the silvery light of the moon. The galleon was a beauty, with a beamy hull and sails reefed in, neatly awaiting her departure. From the way she rode high and proud in the waves, she was not carrying a full cargo. Plenty of room in the hold for a man who was not afraid of a few rats nibbling his toes, or the jab of a hook.
It was much too far for him to swim. If he rowed out in Gertrudis’s skiff with the moonlight to guide him, he could haul himself hand over hand up the anchor line and fling himself, nimble as a monkey, over the side. He could creep past the sailor on watch and, provided he did not stumble over the windlass and anchor line, find a snug hidey-hole before dawn broke and all
hands surged on deck.
He merely had to find the skiff and oars and be on his way. He quickened his pace toward the cove, several hundred paces south of the harbour, trotting in spite of the feet-cutting stones.
Finally, he reached the cove, as flat and regularly shaped as half a pie. The water glinted, reflecting the pewter light of the moon. The shoreline was bare except for its decaying pine stumps. The trees had long since been harvested for ships’ masts. The starkness of the cove made it possible to see for some distance in all directions.
Near a piece of driftwood on the far side of the bay was a small skiff floating just where Gertrudis had promised it would be. Isaac walked toward it, his dismay growing with every step. Half-submerged in the water, the pirogue was the length of a tall man, stove in at the helm, missing a board in the stern. Isaac picked out a pebble from between his toes and left the sack containing the cocoons and Gertrudis’s portrait of him above the high-tide mark.
He waded into the sea, the salt stinging his feet. He gripped the boat by the gunwales and rocked it back and forth. Grabbing a frayed rope slimy with algae from the bottom of the boat, he wrapped it around his waist and dragged the craft the few paces toward shore. He heard the whooshing water rushing through the missing ribs of the hull. The skiff landed on the beach with a splintering noise. An oar lay on the sand. Isaac glanced around the cove for something to bail out the water, but there was nothing but rocks and seaweed. Then he remembered: his portrait.
Hannah would have to be content with the gift of himself instead of his sketch. Untying the ribbon from around the charcoal sketch, he made a funnel of the canvas. As he bailed the water from the bottom of the boat, he watched his likeness bleed and dissolve, leaving behind a ghostly outline.
Isaac wrestled the boat hull-side up to inspect the bottom. More water poured onto the beach; a couple of minnows floundered on the sand and curled into quivering crescents. Isaac groaned. Gertrudis could not think this piece of waterlogged flotsam would stay afloat long enough to get him out to the Provveditore. This must be her revenge for his failure to respond to her charms.
Isaac scooped up the minnows and, without bothering to rinse off the sand, lifted his head to the sky and swallowed them. He turned his attention back to the boat. Maybe it could be repaired, though the bottom was encrusted with barnacles and seaweed. Isaac took a sharp rock and prised off a few of the barnacles, sucking out the salty contents of each one. Someone had once, long ago, caulked the hull with oakum but had done a poor job of it. Bits of the stuff had fallen from between the boards and now floated on top, wriggling like dirty white worms. In its present state, the skiff was as seaworthy as the rib cage of a dead cow.
Just as he was about to rip up his portrait to stuff between the boards, he heard voices and the sound of tromping footsteps east of the cove. He looked up to see two soldiers from the Grand Master’s office wearing breeches of unbleached muslin and sash belts, and with muskets slung over their shoulders. They walked toward him between the tree stumps.
Isaac lifted the side of the boat and crawled under. It stank of stagnant water, sodden wood, and dead fish. Sharp rocks dug into his backside. Isaac lay there, breathing as quietly as possible in the salt-thick air, waiting for the men to leave. But the footsteps came nearer, boots scraping along the stony beach.
“Here, Luigi,” said a slurred voice. One of the soldiers slumped onto the hull of the skiff, which took his weight with a creak of protest. “Have some wine. She will be along any moment.”
“Are you sure?” asked the other soldier.
“Ever know a whore to refuse drink or a few scudi?”
The boat hull sagged under the weight of the first man and then the weight of both soldiers. Isaac worried that at any moment, the wood might splinter.
Soon he heard the sound of a woman giggling, and a voice calling out, “Hullo?”
“Here she comes. Let us save a swallow of wine. Do not drink it all.”
The one called Luigi said to his companion, “Go take a walk.”
Isaac felt the ribs of the skiff creak with relief as one soldier stood up and walked away.
“Come here, my darling. Let us see what you have under that pretty frock of yours.”
Isaac curled into a ball under the boat, his hands over his ears, while the whore coaxed Luigi to greater and greater pleasure. The boat trembled with their exertions, and Isaac was sure that the writhing couple would crash through the rotten hull on top of him. But by some miracle the boards held, and after much pleading with Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and St. Ursula, Luigi let out a cry and rolled off the hull, landing with a thud on the sand.
Through a crack in the slats, Isaac could make out the dark beach, although the moon had slipped behind a cloud. There was the flicker of a fire several brachia down the beach and the smell of fish drifted over to him. He could almost hear Gertrudis laughing to herself as she witnessed his humiliation.
The second soldier returned and slapped the strumpet on her rump, loudly anticipating his turn. He positioned her on the hull.
King of the Universe, Isaac thought, these gentiles fuck like feral cats. Soon Isaac’s ears rang from the moaning and high keening sounds that issued from above his head. It was as though the second soldier were being tortured by the Chief Inquisitor instead of being serviced by a strumpet.
Suddenly there was the sound of splintering and the hull nearly gave way, tumbling the soldier and his whore, still joined together, onto the jagged rocks. With moist sounds, they uncoupled and, bare-arsed, charged yelping to the sea.
Isaac hoisted up the boat and rolled out from underneath it. Just as he was about to make good his escape, the three returned, laughing and passing a bottle back and forth. Before they could see him, Isaac scuttled crab-like several paces along the beach until he found a boulder to crouch behind. He hunkered there so long his right calf muscle began to spasm. He massaged it, and his leg relaxed. He thought of Gertrudis. How satisfying it would be to wring her lovely, long neck. He forced himself to put this thought aside. His fury would keep.
Isaac looked around the cove. The only skiff was Gertrudis’s, now abandoned by the soldiers and their putà, who, he could see, were ambling down the beach, heading into town. He had no choice. He ran back to the collapsed skiff. He found the portrait of himself trampled by the soldiers and slammed it against his thigh to remove the sand.
The Provveditore would be casting off at dawn. He worked frantically. There was no cover, no welcoming thickets of brush, not even a stand of spindly poplars where he could drag the boat while he worked on it. He tore the sketch into strips and, making a compound of sand, seaweed, and bark from the pine stumps, bound together the pirogue, now more like a raft than a skiff. After a few hours, he was ready to haul it into the water. It wobbled unsteadily. Some water leaked in, but it did not sink. Perhaps it would suffice. Isaac glanced out into the harbour, where the high-decked galleon bobbed on its anchor line, so close but so out of reach, a couple of pine-pitch torches burning from her bow.
The sky grew dark with rain clouds. Soon it began to pour. Wind blew the sand so hard that his mouth was gritty with it. Waves in the harbour swelled as high as the walls of St. Elmo. The moon was nowhere to be seen; it would be only about two hours before first light. Should he risk setting off in this leaky vessel? The words of the philosopher Maimonides rang in his head: The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision. And besides, what choice had he?
As he worried how he could sneak aboard under the watchful eyes of the sentries, an idea occurred to him. Isaac scooped up in his arms a pile of dried seaweed and twigs and tossed them into the bow of the boat, the only place likely to remain dry. When the boat was halfway into the water, he snatched up the oars on the shore and jumped in. He began to row, the muscles of his back heaving with the effort. At first the boat went in circles, but when he slowed down and concentrated on rowing with equal strength on both oars, it followed the course he set to
ward the Provveditore. He struggled for what seemed like hours, making slow progress. To the east, the sun was beginning to make its presence known, casting red light on the water. Dawn was beginning to break. Soon it was light enough to see the crew on the yardarm, setting the sails. How could he steal on board undetected?
Then he heard a sound that filled him with dismay—the clanking, groaning sound of the windlass. The crew of the Provveditore were weighing anchor, preparing to cast off. He was too late.
CHAPTER 22
HANNAH CLUNG TO the deck railing of the Balbiana, dressed as a Christian in one of Jessica’s gowns of blue silk. It was the only one she had been able to find in Jessica’s cassone that was modestly cut. The dress gave off her sister’s familiar scent of lemon and bergamot. It made Hannah want to weep.
After leaving the di Padovani palazzo under cover of night, she had stolen back to Jessica’s house. She had thrust into a trunk clothes, her birthing spoons and ducats, and packed food. Of the two hundred ducats the Conte had given her, she had about one hundred and fifty ducats left after she paid her passage to Malta and bought provisions for the trip. Whether this would be sufficient for Isaac’s ransom she had no idea.
If only it had been possible to bring the goat onto the ship. She didn’t know how she would feed Matteo on this long voyage, which would take two or three months depending on the winds. But she had had no time to grieve or to think, only to act. At dawn she found a gondolier who, for a sum substantial enough to ensure his discretion, transported her and Matteo to the docks for the sailing of the Balbiana. They were the last to leave the port of Venice. By order of the Council of Ten, the city was now in quarantine.