“Yes,” says the painter. “She is more than an apprentice; she is the daughter of one of our most renowned gilders.”
“She?”
The painter’s eyes turn toward the gondola, and he gestures. “Yes. She is here with us. Maria!”
When I emerge from the passenger compartment I see the old gondola maker’s face make several expressions as if he does not know how to react.
“You are young,” he says finally. I feel his eyes burning on me. “Who is your father?”
“Giuseppe Bartolini, by the baker’s bridge near the rio della Sensa,” I say, gesturing in the direction of my father’s workshop.
“Ah,” he says. “That area is closed for the pestilence. It is a miracle you were able to get through here as many of our streets are closed.” If the gondola maker notices my reaction he does not show it, for his eyes are back on the lantern. “You gild lanterns?” he asks.
“I am no longer in my father’s house; I am in Master Trevisan’s studio for now. My father and I have not done gondola ornamentation before, sir,” I say. “We work on altarpieces and other panels.”
The gondola maker runs his hands across the lantern again, then returns it to its place on the hook on the gondola. “We could use your services,” he says. “For years we have worked with old Master Zuan, but unfortunately he has passed to the World to Come.”
I feel my stomach lurch. “Master Zuan! We knew him well,” I say. I find myself staring at the stones of the boat ramp.
“Maria has come to spend a year and a half with us to learn the pigments,” offers the painter.
“But it is clear to me that her skill lies in gilding, Master Trevisan. You must not use your pretty colors to lure the girl away from her true talent.”
“They say that no one wants the gold anymore,” I am bold to say.
“That may be true for those paintings that Master Trevisan makes for the churches,” says the gondola maker, “but we have constant need for gilded ornamentation on our gondolas, more so than ever before now that our noblemen want to outdo one another with their displays. With old Master Zuan gone we can hardly keep up. Perhaps you would consider doing some gilding for us? I would be most grateful.”
I do not respond but instead look to the painter. “We are busy with a commission for the orphanage,” says the painter, “but perhaps Maria would like to take some work on the side if things slow.”
“Yes. I would be honored to help you,” I say, and I feel a flicker of happiness in my heart.
Master Vianello pulls the painter into the covered area of the squero to examine a boat under construction, and the journeyman follows. It is unclear whether I am expected to follow the men, so I hesitate, standing near Trevisan’s gondola and watching the gondola maker’s sons paint lacquer on a boat’s keel. The older son carefully paints around the maple leaf emblem that forms the catanella—the mark of the Vianello boatyard—much as Master Trevisan’s signature marks each painting his own.
“Signorina.” I hear the boatman’s hissing voice at my ear. I turn to see his eyes on me. “Your man,” he says.
I feel my throat tighten. “You have found him?” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “Not yet,” he whispers back, his brown eyes growing wide. “The signori would not allow me through the canal.”
My heart sinks, but the side of the boatman’s mouth turns up in a half smile.
“But I have found another way into the quarter,” he says. “One of my colleagues at the traghetto has promised to help me… for a price.” The boatman’s eyes land on my neck. “Paid in advance.”
I resist the instinct to bring my hand to my necklace. “What assurance do I have that you are telling me the truth?” I say.
The boatman shrugs, then glances over to where Master Trevisan stands deep in conversation with the gondola maker and his sons. “That painter trusts me. Why shouldn’t you?” I see the grey lines of his teeth as a smile spreads wide and thin. “And in the meantime,” he says, “I can offer you something in return for your… deposit.”
“What is that?”
“I may not have reached your man yet,” he says, “but I have found his mother.”
“His mother?” It had not occurred to me that the battiloro’s mother might still be in the city, that I might be able to find her. My heart leaps with hope at the idea that she might have a way to reach her son.
He nods. “Your necklace,” he says. “A guarantee. An assurance that we will bring your man to you. And in the meantime,” he says, “I will tell you where you may find the signora.”
Each day brings increasing numbers of flat-bottomed barges moored at the ferry stations, waiting to carry the sick to the plague islands. The ferries move slowly, silently, back and forth between the lazzaretti, carrying the disease-struck, the recovered, the dead, the widowed, the orphaned, along with any belongings that have not been burned in the square. It has become a spectacle, a pageant for the Triumph of Death. In the sheer horror of it we have all become immune, numb to the despair.
Many of us have chosen not to look, and have secluded ourselves inside our homes, closing the battens on our shops and shuttering our windows. I spend most of my time inside the painter’s workshop, going out only on Fridays at dusk to trail the small line of vineyards that begins behind Master Trevisan’s hennery and ends at Rialto, at the monastery garden gate where I dream that one night, my battiloro will magically appear.
Today is different. I stride with purpose, following the trailing vines from the painter’s house toward Rialto, for I have an important mission. I must find the battiloro’s mother.
I have refused the boatman’s offer to bring me in the gondola, so disgusted I feel with myself for having unlatched the black cord from my neck and handed over the golden ingot to him. Instead, I walk along the northern quayside toward the washhouse where the boatman has said the battiloro’s mother spends her days.
From the stone embankment, I take in the sweeping view of the marsh reeds, the lagoon, and the sea beyond. On the horizon, the masts of several galleys stand like sentinels, their sails furled. The lagoon sparkles with the shimmering reflection of the sun, casting twinkling lights across the crests of the waves. The briny air pulls wisps of hair from my braid and whips them across my cheek. The vista is beautiful, and as long as you keep your head turned in this direction you could ignore, for a moment, the looming silhouettes of the plague islands beyond.
I turn down an alley that leads into the market, where the bustling vegetable sellers hawk their wares. The normally busy square is deserted, and a chill creeps up from the small of my back. Only a small mouse lopes through the market stalls, following a path through a crack that zigzags its way between the cobblestones. As I pass, it leaps to the gutter where the walls meet the street, then disappears into a small hole in the façade of a butcher’s shop with its dark wooden doors battened shut.
Beneath the great archways a few blocks away from the market, women have gathered to wash. Three rows of large copper and wooden basins stand so that some two dozen washerwomen might labor over them simultaneously. In one corner, a man with soot-stained cheeks tends a fire under a great copper cauldron, the vapors rising into the spring air. Across the vaulted space another cauldron hisses with steam rising from it. A pile of white linens sits on the stones beside it, waiting for the boil to roll across the surface.
I approach a small, hunched woman wringing out linen over a large pot of water. Her hair is stuck to her head and the side of her face, the upper part of her back crooked over in a painful-looking hump. “Signora. I am looking for a Saracen washerwoman. Can you help me?”
“Qua,” she says, opening her mouth to reveal a single tooth on the bottom row. Her face resembles a shriveled apple, and she cocks her head to one side to indicate a direction on the opposite side of the space. I follow the direction of her head and s
ee a tall black woman with linen swaths wrapped around her head. She leans over a drying board and rubs a piece of cloth with strong, steady strokes.
“Signora?” I approach her tentatively. “You are the mother of Cristiano the battiloro?”
For a moment she suspends her scrubbing on the metal. The woman turns her head and looks at me with wide-set eyes the color of coal. Then she nods cautiously. “Yes. Why do you ask?”
“I am Maria Bartolini. Your son is our battiloro. He works in the studio of my father, the gilder.”
She wipes her hands on a rag hanging from a metal hook on the stone wall. “Yes, he told me that he was going to live with the indoradòr.” Her brow furrows and her black eyes meet mine. “You have news of my son?” she asks.
“Actually I was hoping that you would be the one with news.”
“I have not seen him in weeks,” she says. “I cannot get through to the house. Where is he?”
“I can only believe that he is still there,” I say. “I have also been gone from my father’s studio for a long time now. I have not received word from him. The pestilence has come to the neighborhood, so I have not been able to go home.”
Her eyes grow wider. “Dio,” she says. “I hope it has not gotten worse. I have tried to reach him myself, but I cannot go farther than San Giobbe.” Her soft accent rolls off her tongue like a song from a distant land.
“I have no reason to believe that they are in danger,” I say, trying to sound convincing. “It’s just that... I have not been able to receive any messages from them in some time because of it and, well, I am eager for news from my family.”
The tall woman nods and resumes scrubbing the linen garment, rubbing it down on the board with her able hands. “Let me think,” she says. “He came to tell me of his new location some time ago; I don’t remember exactly when. It was just beginning to turn cold. He told me that the old man who taught him his trade had died, and that an indoradòr—your father, I suppose—had taken him in.” Her eyes brighten. “He was happy with the arrangement, it seemed to me.”
“We all were, yes,” I say. I cannot help but feel the smile cross my lips. “Your son is very skilled with the gold.”
She nods, then her eyes turn to slits. “You are no longer living with your father? You have married then.”
“No,” I blush and look down at the wet stones under my shoes. “I am working as an apprentice to a painter in San Marco. I am no longer in my father’s house. Unfortunately. What is your name?”
“Zenobia.”
“How long have you been in Venice?” I ask.
The woman takes a large cake of lye soap from a table against the wall and drops it into a cauldron holding water the color of the canal. Small bubbles emerge across the surface. Even though it is a cool day, beads of sweat dot her forehead. She wipes her brow with the back of her forearm. “Too many years to count,” she says. “I was small.”
“Cristiano says that you left the home where he was born, that he went to work for Master Zuan when he was still very little.”
She shakes the water off her hands. They are large and calloused, with stains of ash and lye. “I raised my baby in a boarding house down the calle with some others like us who were brought here on the galleys.” She gestures toward the shadows of a nearby alley. “But as soon as he was old enough to do things for himself, I arranged for him to be apprenticed. In his sixth or seventh year, I think. And it was the best thing for him. He deserved a better life than the one I could give him, living in a crowded room with all those people,” she says, going back to beating the garment on the board, then she stares out into the alley behind the laundry.
“I would like to see him more, to spend time with my boy, but he must make a living to eat and so must I. And so we only see one another now and again when we have food and money to share, or to take time on a Sunday when he comes to the pensión.” She shrugs. “Of course I want to see him. He belongs to me.”
I feel a smile grow across my face. “You should feel proud, Signora Zenobia, for your son has done well,” I say. “He has made a name for himself among the indoradòri in our guild.”
“So he has told me.”
“For years my father and I used the products of his work when he was working with the old battiloro down the street. He became known for his skills in beating the gold, both within our guild and through our circle of patrons. That is why my father brought him into our workshop as soon as the old battiloro died. And he became part of our household, with my father, my cousin, and myself. Above all he knows his trade.” I find myself talking excitedly.
The woman stops what she is doing and stands to face me. I see the smooth skin of her neck, as black as the night sky. “Let me ask you something,” she says. “Why are you trying to find Cristiano now?”
“I thought you might be able to help me. I am trying to find a way to see him or at least get a message to him from someone I trust.” I think of the boatman and shudder. “Cristiano needs to know...” I hesitate, but only for a moment, then I meet her gaze. I look into the deep pools of her eyes. “...that I am carrying his child.”
Chapter 29
The painter’s workshop glitters. The great panels of our altarpiece are propped against the walls. Everywhere there is gold, and I feel my heart lighten.
The last panel that needs to be gilded lies on the worktable in front of me. I have torn off the last vellum pages of the last book of gold leaf from my father’s workshop. One by one, I apply the leaves across the surface of the bole, overlapping them carefully up to the outlined figures where Trevisan and his journeyman will fill in with the pigments. Trevisan has reserved several sections for me to practice my new skills on the rocks and trees in the background.
When my hand tires of laying the gold leaf, I pick up a small agate stone and begin to make light strokes over the areas where I have laid the gold leaf. The brilliant gold begins to take on a rich texture and in some areas, the red-clay bole underneath begins to show.
I think about the box I have hidden on a shelf under my worktable, the one I have been making for my father. It is not as beautiful as the box on the painter’s mantelpiece, I judge, but for a first attempt, it is passing. I am happy with the way the alloy has emulated the brilliance of pure gold. To the untrained eye, it looks like gold. I have hidden it away under my worktable, placing a cloth over it until I see my father. I feel a bit ashamed of it, and do not want Master Trevisan to see.
The painter and his journeyman have gone to work on their commission at the scuola, the one that does not require gold. The boatman has taken the painter’s wife and children to visit family in Dorsoduro. Antonella and I are left alone in the painter’s house.
Antonella ambles about the workshop, idly dusting the surfaces of the tables and shelves, ignoring other areas where there are layers of dust. For a half-hour, she has moved sluggishly around the room, appearing to wipe surfaces but mostly airing her complaints to me about the painter’s wife. “And a woman like that, with two babies already and another one coming...” She stops and turns to me. “She needs more help, and I have told her that on more than one occasion. But she is being cheap. Do you not agree?”
I hesitate. “I cannot comment,” I say, “for I do not know what it is like to have the responsibilities of Signora Trevisan.” Immediately I cringe and wish I could take it back.
“You will know soon enough unless you do something about it,” she says, waving a rag at my stomach.
My face feels hot. “The painter and his wife have been more than generous with me.”
Antonella makes a loud huff, a sarcastic sound. “Ah, but that is the irony of it,” she says. “You have the idea that you are one of them, but the signora trusts me,” Antonella says, pressing her thumb to her chest. “I have made sure of that. It’s you she distrusts.”
“Why are you so bitter?” I ask.
“Have you spoken with Master Trevisan or the signora about it?” I ask.
“More than once,” she says. “Signora says that my salary is the normal rate for house servants. And now with number three coming soon...” She shakes her head. “I would find another position if I could, but they are difficult to come by.”
“And the boatman feels the same?” I ask, not certain that I want to broach the subject.
She runs her fingertips over the freshly gilded surface of the panel on the table. “Boatman and the painter have a... complicated arrangement,” she says. “It has to do with the apprentice who was here before you.”
“What happened to him?” I feel curious to see if Antonella’s story aligns with the one the painter’s journeyman has shared. Antonella props her broom against the wall and drags a stool over to the table where I am working. She heaves herself onto the stool.
“He was an odd sort of fellow. Quiet. Did not say much.” She gestures to my worktable, where the old apprentice’s things remain cluttered under the table along with the new box I have made for my father. She wags her finger as if to emphasize a point. “I knew there was something more than what appeared on the surface. It was hard to put a finger on it, but I had a feeling about him.”
“Were you correct?”
She nods. “It turns out that he was smuggling. He was helping a group of men who were running boats back and forth to Chioggia. They were bringing in raw silk hidden in grain sacks, working it in one of the warehouses in Rialto. Then they were reselling it outside of the silk workers’ and silk merchants’ guilds. They made a small fortune.” Her black eyes go wide and shiny.
The Painter's Apprentice Page 19