The Painter's Apprentice

by Laura Morelli

  “Gastaldo, wait.” I finally find my voice. He turns and looks at me, his eyebrows raised.

  “What about the battiloro?” I manage to say.

  “Battiloro?” The health official turns and looks at me with a confused expression.

  The gastaldo responds. “Maria’s father and cousin had another man working with them, a Saracen specialized in beating gold. He was living and working with them there in the same workshop.”

  The man looks confused for a moment and shuffles through the last few pages his leather-bound book.

  “I am sorry, signorina, but I cannot say,” says the man, looking at the paper in his hand then looking me in the eye. “According to the official record there were only two people from that house recorded with lesions and transported to the lazzaretto.”

  “I know for a fact that he was working in the studio,” the gastaldo says. “Saw him there myself before the disease began to spread. Surely he was put on the boat if the other men had lesions.”

  “I need to know what happened to him,” I say, trying to keep my voice in check but I have lurched forward to take the gastaldo’s arm for support.

  “We cannot get into the house yet,” the man says. “The street is still under a ban as they have not finished clearing out. There is still danger that people will fall ill. I am sorry, signorina, but I cannot allow you to go back home to investigate.”

  I move forward. “Surely you must be able to find out what happened to the battiloro.”

  “Can you work with the Health Office or ask the neighbors?” the gastaldo asks.

  “We have no other record of him, signorina. I can assure you, though, that if he was in that house he has gone to the lazzaretti. There is no other conclusion.”

  The last time I walked into our parish church my father and my cousin were by my side. This time, I am alone.

  In the vestry, I find the gastaldo is waiting for me. His brow is already covered in beads of sweat. His leather belt has been cinched up tight across his full abdomen. I take note that he has tried to dress himself up for the occasion.

  “Cara,” he takes my hands and squeezes them tight. “What a difficult day for you. For all of us. And for our guild.”

  “Grazie.” I nod, meeting his sincere blue eyes.

  “You must not feel slighted if few of our guild attend the funerary mass. This disease is keeping many of us at home.” He pats my hand. “My boys are coming,” he says, as if it is a consolation.

  I know this is not the only funeral mass being celebrated across Our Most Serene Republic for bodies that are not actually there. These dark celebrations are happening all over the city right now, many in this very church. As the bodies pile up in the pesthouse cemeteries, the churches around the city are lifting up prayers to heaven for the souls of the dead.

  “You came by yourself?” the gastaldo asks.

  “Master Trevisan is still away. He does not know. His wife and the journeyman accompanied me here. I was fine coming by myself, but they insisted. I suppose it is only right. They want to do something.”

  “I am glad for you that they came. Do not forget, the painter and your father are bonded by our guild after all.”

  “Yes, I know,” I say. “I am still in the midst of the arrangement.” I muster a dark grin.

  Through the open doorway from the vestry I see people begin to straggle in. I see the painter’s wife and the journeyman, the back of their heads visible in the crowd. I recognize a few other familiar faces, including the carpenter Baldi and his sons.

  “Father Filippo?”

  “He is coming,” the gastaldo says.

  I think about the grim tasks that our parish priest must carry out among the sick and dying of our quarter. Just then, he steps out of the shadows behind me, a slight man in dingy robes who looks as if he has not slept in days. “Maria,” the parish priest says. Father Filippo’s face looks dark and drawn, with great circles under his eyes. His thin hair barely covers his nearly bald head and dark shadows draw his mouth into a permanent frown. He seems to have aged a decade since the last time I saw him, just a few months ago.

  “My dear, my deepest condolences,” he says in his gravelly voice, and the sourness of his breath fills the air. “I am very sorry, signorina. You must feel at peace that they have had a Christian burial. Normally there would be many people here in the church for these services, as you know. Everyone respected your father. But these are dark times and this scourge is keeping many people away. So many of the families are affected and they are staying home, either by choice or by force.”

  I nod. “I understand. Father Filippo, can you tell me what happened to the battiloro?” The old priest is my last ray of hope.

  “The battiloro in your father’s workshop? I do not have any news. I only know about your father and young Paolo. The Sanità has required my presence at all the places where people were sick. Because your father had boils the Sanità put me under a ban as well. The doctor too. Thanks to God neither of us got sick. I have only come out of the ban this week.”

  “You did not sign for him when my father and cousin were sent to the ferries?”

  “Yes,” he says, “I signed for your battiloro, too.”

  I feel my heart drop to my stomach. “He was sick?”

  The priest shrugs. “On the day I went with the medico to examine your father and cousin their lesions were large and pustulent. You must understand that things were dire for them. And as your battiloro was present in the house with them, well… In a case like that it is automatic that anyone in the house should board the plague ferry.”

  I feel that I can hear the blood coursing through my veins, filling my ears with pounding. I do not want to imagine the scene in my father’s house, but I have no choice.

  The priest looks at me with a serious expression. “Now. Signorina Maria, before we begin the service for your father and your cousin there is one other matter to discuss.” I watch the gastaldo fidget with his hand and look nervously at the priest. He seems to be intensely interested in a crack in one of the giant scuffed stones that make up the floor.

  “What is it?” I say. I study his eyes.

  “Your father... Before he was taken to the lazzaretto... Well.” He clears his throat and struggles to find the words. “Your father left something with us before he boarded the ferry for the Lazzaretto Vecchio. I have been holding it for you.” From his vestment pocket, the priest produces a piece of parchment rolled up and tied with a green silk ribbon. “I suppose we could describe it to you at some length, but you are capable of reading your father’s words yourself,” the priest says.

  I unfurl the small piece of parchment, searching their eyes for clues to what lies inside. Immediately I recognize my cousin’s neat handwriting.

  I, Giuseppe Bartolini, suffering from the pestilence, do hereby entrust my soul to God and to the Holy Spirit. Should I not survive the grip of the Hand of Death, I leave my gilding workshop and all of its contents to my nephew Paolo, who is as able and capable as any son to run it as I and my father and his father before him have done. I entrust my daughter Maria in marriage to Pascal Grissoni, the son of Grissoni the Elder in San Marco, whom she will join in holy union and who has already agreed that in lieu of a dowry, to have her work alongside him in his workshop as any able partner, my daughter now having become skilled with colored pigments. My nephew has already witnessed and agreed to this arrangement and it has been approved by the master of our guild. If my nephew does not survive the pestilence, then my gilding workshop shall be sold and the proceeds used as a dowry for my daughter Maria.

  Recorded by Paolo Bartolini on the Feast of Saint Anthony

  And witnessed by Father Filippo of Madonna dell’Orto and Aureo dalla Stava, gastaldo of the painter’s guild

  “Pascal Grissoni.” My hands falter and the paper drifts like a leaf and lands with a
swoosh on the stone floor. I feel my hands press together as if trying to wring the life out of them.

  The bells ring in the church tower, a sound I’ve heard all my life that now somehow sounds sad and distant.

  “Father.” The deacon appears in the doorway and looks expectantly at the priest, the gastaldo, and myself. Behind him the acolytes press together in the doorway, nothing more than innocent faces and white robes with open sleeves. The deacon gestures for us to follow him through the door and into the church.

  “It is time.”

  Chapter 39

  The boatman seems to have lost the ability to speak, and for that I am grateful. He swirls the water with his oar and looks out onto the horizon, the breeze lifting fine strands of greasy hair. I feel his eyes on me but I ignore him. Since the funerary mass I feel numb, and he seems to sense it.

  I manage to stay composed until I see my aunt in the convent visitors’ parlor. Then I fall apart.

  Between the iron bars of the convent grille, my aunt grips my fingers. A beautiful, intricate rosary with tiny beads of red glass hangs from her thumb and forefinger. I lace my fingers through the iron bars and grasp her delicate fingers in mine.

  For a while neither of us says a word. Then, she lifts her head and makes the sign of the cross.

  “I am sorry for you, zia,” I say. “I cannot imagine what it must feel like to lose a child. It is not the natural order of things.”

  She nods. “And my brother, your father.”

  “And the battiloro.” It comes out as barely a whisper.

  She pauses. “Your man?”

  I nod. “He was put on the ferry with the others. I was not sure, but Father Filippo confirmed it.”

  “Oh my dear.” Her fingers squeeze my hand and I feel the hard little beads of glass against my palm.

  She lifts her head and attempts to brighten. “Your father was very proud of you,” she says. “God rest his soul.”

  I shrug.

  “He would not have worked so hard to keep you in his studio, to make a plan for you to stay there, if he was not,” she says. She wipes her eyes and looks at me in the face.

  “The funeral mass was a comfort,” I tell her. “I wish you could have been there.”

  “We have had services for them here; you might imagine,” she says. “Maria, our confessor tells me that the Sanità has come to your father’s house. Everything that was left has been pulled out of the house and put on the pyre: the furniture, the curtains, the bedding, everything in your mother’s trousseau. I am sorry. It could not be helped.”

  I nod, and clench my throat to try to stop the tears from coming. I have already seen my father’s house bereft of its contents. The trousseau is the least of my worries. I have hardly had time to sew anything in past years. I have only been focused on working the gold.

  “There is nowhere I can go to see the bodies, where I can pay tribute.”

  My aunt’s head falls, and she, too, wipes her eyes.

  “We will continue to have masses for them here,” she says. “Their souls will be lifted up in song and prayer for all eternity, as it will be written in our book,” she says.

  We sit in silence for a while, contemplating the gravity of it all.

  “In his testament, my father betrothed me to Pascal Grissoni.” My voice hardly rises above a whisper.

  She sits back and looks at me, her eyebrows raised in surprise. “Oh my. And this is a good thing?”

  I can only shrug, for I have no words.

  “Oh my dear. I am sorry,” she says, and sighs. “Even when a father loves his daughter as your father did, sometimes there is no accounting for a father’s choice.”

  “It is not that he is not a suitable husband,” I say. “He is more than I might have hoped for, more than anyone might hope for. It is just...” The words fail me again. “Pascal Grissoni is coming with his father to visit me any day now,” I say. “The painter’s wife has told me to prepare myself. Without my father it will be up to me and our gastaldo to set the arrangements.”

  She pauses. “But does Pascal Grissoni know about your... situation?” She looks down at my stomach.

  I shake my head again. “That is the problem, zia.”

  “Nor Master Trevisan and his wife?”

  I shake my head again more vigorously, hoping that she cannot see my cheeks go aflame.

  “Thanks be to God,” she says, pushing back against the chair. My aunt grips the bars with both hands. “Listen to me. There is more than one solution to this problem. I have already told you. You must come here and join us. If God has spared you, then there must be a reason for it. Before this man comes to take your hand, you must announce your intention to take your vows. You tell no one about your situation, do you hear me? We will take care of you and your baby better than anyone outside of these walls. Think about it, Maria. It is the solution to everything. Now, more than ever before, you must know it is the right thing to do.”

  “Bene,” says Antonella, glancing over her shoulder at me, “I hear that that overblown painter is coming for you after all.”

  She stirs a pot of rice over the fire. In a small wooden cradle tucked under the kitchen window, the painter’s baby daughter sleeps fitfully.

  I do not answer right away, not wanting to engage Antonella on this topic. I take a bite of a small piece of bread and chew silently, but she persists.

  “I suppose he was lured by youth and beauty if not by dowry,” she says, her voice tinged with thinly veiled envy.

  I shrug as if brushing her hand from my shoulder. “It is not decided.”

  “Boatman says that he got word the painter will arrive with his father tomorrow in their fine boat,” she says. “They are coming for you.”

  My heart begins to leap in my chest. “I do not put much trust in what comes out of the boatman’s mouth,” I say. “I am afraid that he is inclined to indict me.” The words come out even though I don’t mean for them to.

  “I would not worry about the boatman,” Antonella says. “I do not expect he will be here much longer.” She pauses. “Nor I.”

  I stop chewing. “You are leaving?”

  “Shhh.” Antonella glances quickly at the baby’s cradle, and then at the back stairway. “I do not think it is a secret that the painter owes both of us,” she says, wiping her hands on a rag and coming to stand next to me. She lowers her voice. “We are working on a way to make sure we get what is due to us before we leave. Once we do, we will not be here one day longer.” She presses her index finger on the tabletop. “Boatman believes he has found a way. But don’t tell anyone. I know your secret,” she says, swiping her rag toward my stomach, “and now you know mine.”

  For a few moments we remain in the silence. I am left to consider the gilded box on Trevisan’s mantel.

  Antonella returns to her boiling pot and inserts the long wooden spoon. Then I hear her speak again but she does not turn to face me this time.

  “And what shall you say to that painter when he comes?”

  When Pascal Grissoni comes, I must tell him the truth. I will never tell Antonella this, of course, but I know in my heart it is what I must do.

  There is not much time left. I can feel it. Marrying Pascal Grissoni and passing off the child as his is no longer a possibility. It is too late for that. The medico at the Health Office said it himself. I am near my time.

  I watch the carpenter and his sons lift the heavy gilded and painted panels, now wrapped in swaths of canvas and paper, and carry them gingerly to the cargo skiff waiting at the painter’s boat landing. The finished pieces are finally leaving the painter’s workshop and will soon make their way to the great altar of Santa Maria delle Vergini.

  Perhaps there is a way to explain it all, I think, watching the carpenter’s young son careen under the weight of a great wooden panel. Pascal Grissoni seems a man
who can see reason. Would he find it within himself to take pity on me or at least understand my circumstance? Would he still want me for a wife in spite of it all?

  If I am realistic, I know that he is likely to reject me outright, but the truth is that I want more than anything to work with my hands. Going with Pascal Grissoni seems a more viable way to do that than committing myself to the convent. And if he says no, then perhaps I will have found a way back to my father’s workshop on my own, which, if I am honest with myself, is what I want more than anything else.

  And so, when Pascal Grissoni and his father come to ask for my hand, I will say yes.

  And then, when I can find a moment alone with him, I must tell him the truth, for better or for worse.

  In the meantime, I must make sure that the servants remain silent long enough for me to do what is necessary. Long enough for me to hide the gilded box containing Donata’s dowry from the boatman’s reach. And long enough for me to find the right words to say to Pascal Grissoni that will secure a future for myself and my baby.

  At nightfall, I wait for the house to grow silent before extinguishing the lanterns in the painter’s studio. Antonella has already retired to the upper floor. I no longer hear the pattering feet of the painter’s young son on the ceiling above my head. The baby’s warble and her mother’s soothing voice have long fallen silent.

  I grasp the handle of the single lantern with its wick still aflame, and set it down on the mantelpiece above the hearth. The gilded box with its raised figures comes to life, glistening in the candlelight. With both hands, I remove it from the mantel and set it on one of Master Trevisan’s worktables. I fish the key from the drawer where I have seen the painter store it. I turn the key in the lock and open the velvet-lined lid. Inside, Donata Trevisan’s dowry is all there, more gold leaf than I would ever need in a lifetime. I run my hands over the nearly weightless sheaves stacked in small, neat books of vellum inside the box. Then I close and lock it again.