I pray every day for my husband to come back safely. On that day, after all the years of waiting, I will begin to live the life I was meant to live. Pray with me, Grazia.
Your loving sister, Penina dei Rossi, at Ferrara, July 20, 1525.
TO THE FAMILY OF JUDAH DEL MEDIGO AT ROMA
Greetings from Portugal, dear sister, brother, and nephew!
Already this land is a second home to me. In every great city we enter, there come Jews and Gentiles too, men and women, great and small, so worshipful of my master that he must warn them continually not to kiss his hand, since that honor is reserved to the King, and my master does not wish to steal glory from any man.
This King of Portugal is a real Christian; he loves all the Jews. But unfortunately we have a powerful enemy at court, a certain Don Miguel who seeks to alienate my master from King John. Night and day he whispers in the King’s ear that our party is come to restore the Marrano conversos to the faith of the Jews. But the King loves us. Of that there can be no doubt. Two days ago he invited our party to celebrate a joy day with him in the open air. When we arrived, there were many guests sitting upon the railing of the loggia watching the dancing below. And the King called to one of his officers, “Drive away the men who are sitting between the arches . . .” (Mind you, they were great lords, every one.) “And arrange for the Jewish ambassador and his party to have seats.” Does that not bespeak his love and respect for my prince? Still, we are in the midst of suspicion here.
The King, a very forthright man, spoke plainly what was on his mind. “His Majesty hears,” the interpreter informed us, “that Prince David has come to restore the Marranos to the Jewish religion and that the Marranos pray with him and read in his books night and day and that he has made of the house I gave him a synagogue for the use of these Marranos and that they all kiss his hand and bow to him. I am pleased that he has come to help me, but listen to this: he is ruining my kingdom with his presence.”
Whereupon my master, now very angry at these slanders, said to the King, “How can your heart harbor such ill suspicions of me, I who come here in God’s service to do a meritorious deed? Have you forgotten, sire, that I too am the son of a king, a king of the seed of David, son of Jesse?”
And the King bowed his head in shame and tried to pacify my master with good words. But Prince David was no longer satisfied with words. He had come for firearms and weapons and help against the Turk, he said. From here he proposed to go into Germany to make the same request of the Holy Roman Emperor, whose hatred of the Turks was beyond question. The barb hit home. The King promised to supply us with eight ships and four thousand large and small firearms to use against the infidels. And all he exacted in return was the master’s promise to tell the Jews not to kiss his hand.
Rejoice. Sing Hosannahs. The land of Ishmael will return to Israel. The Word of the Prophet will come to pass.
Your brother in Jehovah,
(signed) Jehiel dei Rossi at Almeida, Portugal.
August 23, 1525.
TO GRAZIA DEI ROSSI DEL MEDIGO AT ROMA
Beloved sister and brother:
Today my master, Prince David Reubeni, has gone off to work his wonders in Germany and who do you think he has left behind to sail the King’s eight ships to the Holy Land? My proud answer is that I, your brother, have been deputized to lead this historic armada. Yes, the master has named me captain of his flotilla with eight ships under my command carrying four thousand firearms for the destruction of the Turk.
Dear sister and brother, I will yet make you proud. All my life I have been wandering in a desert of confusion as barren of hope as the lost tribes of Israel. At last like them, after forty years of wandering and waiting, I am let into the Promised Land. Finally I know why I was put on earth. My entire being sings in ecstasy. Lazzarelli spoke the truth: We are all gods if only we would act like gods.
Your brother (signed with the initial “J.”) at Tavira.
October 18, 1525.
TO GRAZIA DEI ROSSI DEL MEDIGO AT ROMA
Dear sister:
Four months in this stinking port and still no sign of my promised ships. But I do not lose hope nor must you. The King is a man of honor, I am certain he will fulfill his promises. Meanwhile I seem to have taken the place of Prince David in the hearts of our people. They call on me to make peace between them when they are in dispute and wherever I go they listen to my voice. I begin to believe that God has decreed this delay so that I can perform His work among these people. Be assured that whatever task He asks of me, I am willing to perform it.
Yours in the service of our Lord. (signed “J.”)
TO GRAZIA DEI ROSSI DEL MEDIGO AT ROMA
Beloved sister:
The worst has come to pass. Only a miracle of haste and generosity can save me now.
How this came to be, there is no time to tell. It is enough for you to know that I am held here under house arrest by the magistrate of the town in ransom of five hundred golden ducats. Find this money for me, Grazia. Get it to me quickly before they hand me over to the King’s Great Inquisitor. Once the churchmen get their hands on me, I am doomed. They burn Marranos every day here for crimes less serious than the one of which I am accused.
My life is in your hands, trusted sister. Do not throw it away through dilatoriness. Hurry! Hurry! Each day brings me closer to the pyre. At night in dreams I can feel the flames licking my toes. The agony. The terror. Save me, sister, for God’s sake.
(signed) Jehiel dei Rossi at Tavira.
June 3, 1526.
53
The morning we received Jehiel’s desperate plea for help, Judah took up my brother’s cause. He was packed up and on his way to Portugal before the sun set. No matter that he considered Jehiel an irresponsible fool. He was our fool and needed help.
With Judah’s departure for Portugal a cloud of despondency settled over me. The sensible part of me told myself that Jehiel was an agile cat who always leapt to safety at the last moment. Another more insistent voice whispered that my brother Jehiel had finally exhausted his credit with Fortuna and that this time nothing could save him. Days I sat by the window waiting for news of his fate. Nights I dreamed him on the rack screaming, the torturer towering over his broken body.
God knows where these unhealthy fantasies might have led me had not Madonna Isabella reappeared in my life. Whether or not she knew of my situation I had no way of knowing. How she found my whereabouts in Roma is another mystery. These people have ways of finding out things. All I can report to you is that one afternoon a servant appeared at my door commanding me — there is no other word for the tone of that summons — to present myself at the Palazzo Colonna in the Piazza S.S. Apostoli the next morning. Years had elapsed since the woman last laid eyes on me. Yet the possibility that I might be unable or even unwilling to materialize at the snap of her fingers was not even suggested. Then again, Madonna Isabella has never seen the need to consider the personal feelings of anyone below the rank of duke.
Mind you, she did rise from her dais and come forward to greet me when I was ushered into her presence. And she did hold out her arms, but whether to embrace me or to observe me more closely, I could not know.
“Time has been good to you, Grazia,” she crooned, looking into my eyes in that way she has of making you feel that she cares for no one else in the world. “Your waist is as small as it was the first day I laid my eyes on you. Do you remember?”
Did I remember? Who could forget such a terrifying moment?
“And now you are famous, celebrated throughout Europe. Why, I have heard you referred to as Boccaccio’s daughter. Come closer. Let me look at you. It has been too long.”
As she spoke she reached down for a pair of spectacles that hung between her breasts on a gold chain, and put them up to her eyes to see me better. “Hardly a wrinkle.” She pinched my cheek softly. “The flesh still firm as a
young girl’s.” She sighed. “Would that I could say the same for myself.”
I assured her that she had not changed any more than I had. But we both knew this to be a lie. What I saw before me was an old woman, very fat, with gray hairs sprouting out of her balzo, a protruding belly which no dressmaker’s art could disguise, and a set of fingers puffed up like pastry balls.
Seeing Madonna Isabella, whom I had known as a slim girl with a step as light as a nymph’s, sunk so far into decay, I felt a welling up behind my eyeballs and the next moment I was dissolved in a saltwater bath.
“Grazia, what is it, my dear?” She put her hand on my shoulder, a sure sign that she was truly moved.
Between sobs I told her of Jehiel’s misfortunes at the court of the King of Portugal and of my fears for his life.
“Maestro Vitale always was a wild one,” she observed. “There seems to be one such in every family. And they are the ones we cherish the most . . .”
The slight quiver of her lips told me she was speaking from her own painful experience. But, being Madonna Isabella, she would not allow herself to dwell overlong in the unfamiliar haunts of sisterhood. However, she did commiserate — in her way.
“Your brother’s fate is in God’s hands now, Grazia,” she advised me. “There is nothing we can do to help him. But there is an elixir vitae for your melancholy. To act, to do, to read, to write, to busy oneself with work, these are Nepenthe’s remedy for your disease. Perhaps you should enter our service. As you know, we have always felt a certain closeness to you, especially now with your honorable husband so far away. Besides . . .” She leaned over, dropping the royal rhetoric in the descent. “It doesn’t do for a woman to stay locked up with only a child for company. It rots the brain. How old is your son now?”
“Ten years,” I replied.
“You must bring him to us one day. We will be pleased to audience him,” she announced, back to being the alta donna again. Have I mentioned the whimsicality of this woman?
“So it is settled then. You will attend us on Mondays and Wednesdays. We can surely find something for you to do.”
She may have lost her figure and her smooth complexion, I thought to myself, but she has kept her arrogance intact. Nonetheless, I did agree to the proposal. To turn her down twice in one lifetime was courting catastrophe.
After that I waited on the lady in her borrowed palace twice each week. The subject of my brother’s incarceration was never raised between us again, but from time to time as I bent over my writing table I felt the light touch of her hand on my shoulder and I did find those occasional touches comforting in the weeks of waiting for news from Judah, especially so since Madama is not a great one for touching, particularly those of the lower orders.
The previous year had been a tumultuous one for Italy. The French army was decimated at Pavia and King Francis himself taken to a Spanish prison where he languished for almost a year before his mother, Louise, was able to negotiate the terms of his release with the Emperor.
While these momentous events played out on the world stage my attention was riveted on Portugal. Living with the realization that as each week passed, my brother’s folly and carelessness were drawing him closer to disaster, the misfortunes of kings and emperors hardly touched my mind. But every day in Madama’s service I was pulled back into the great world of affairs, like it or not.
Normally a robust woman, she developed a permanent headache on the day she first heard rumors that Georg Frundsberg, an obscure Swabian feudatory of the Emperor’s, had gathered up a force of German soldiers, called landsknechts, and was preparing to cross the Alps into Italy to teach the Pope respect for his feudal lord, Emperor Charles V.
Remember that traditionally the Marchese owed his feudal loyalty to the Emperor. At the same time, he held a contract as a mercenary captain in the opposing army, the Pope’s army. Each day, I witnessed the tremendous exertion of will with which Madonna Isabella banished her worry over this intractable problem from her mind and, instead, bent that marvelous instrument to what she believed to be its proper function: devising ways to keep Mantova balanced on the high wire of neutrality, above the fray.
Out of sorts with her principal secretary, she now insisted that all her voluminous communications must be composed in my immaculate hand. Not surprisingly, my two days of service per week extended to four, then five. Before long I found myself spending more time at the Palazzo Colonna than in my own house under the Portico d’Ottavia.
Thus enmeshed in Madama’s feverish maneuvers to shore up her state and her house, I barely had time to supervise my own little household, and as a result hardly noticed that Zaira had ceased to appear with her laundry cart. Even when the maid brought it to my attention, I took the dereliction as one of Zaira’s vagaries and told myself that her life, as she had reminded me more than once, was her own business.
Then one day when Zaira’s affairs were the farthest thing from my mind, I was interrupted at my desk in the Palazzo Colonna by a caller. I could tell by the distaste with which the flunkey pronounced the word “caller” that this surprise visitor did not live up to his standard. “Just the type a Jewess would drag in,” I could almost hear him say to himself as he announced my guest. It is always the underlings who cling fastest to snobbery.
Now this mysterious guest appears. He is someone I have never seen. Medium height. Swarthy. Corsican, perhaps, with Herculean shoulders and very big feet. Scruffy to be sure but with a most engaging smile.
“Forgive the intrusion, madonna.” He removes his cap respectfully.
I forgive him at once and inquire his business.
“A delicate matter, concerning my friend Dido.” He seems actually embarrassed. “She has taken herself to the Hospital of San Giacomo.”
“San Giacomo?” I cannot believe what I am hearing.
“Last week she went blind. I reached my hand out to help her and she hounded me out of the house. Then, while I was out, she hired a litter and took herself to that pesthole of a hospice at Santa Maria Nuova. It took me until today to find her. She is lying in a long room with fifty other prostitutes on a straw pallet drenched with piss. Oh, madonna, if you ever loved her, get her out of that sewer.”
“What must I do?”
“All that is needed is a doctor’s permission and a place where she will be cared for, a haven . . .”
The haven I could and would supply. The doctor’s permit was not so easy to come by. Judah could have written such a document handily. But Judah was somewhere between Italy and Portugal. And my brother Gershom was hibernating in the Ferrarese countryside.
Considering who else I could enlist in Zaira’s cause, I thought at once of Madonna Isabella. She was the most powerful person I knew and she sat in a suite of rooms less than a hundred steps from me.
Without even asking the page at the door to announce my presence, I pushed my way into the little sitting room that served as her dressing room and, begging her pardon most humbly, requested her help in a matter of life and death.
What I presented was a colored version of Zaira and her affairs. Zaira’s story, after all, was not a matter of my authorship and I felt no shame in tailoring the tale to the lady’s taste. Throughout my recital I referred to Zaira as my nurse, painting her as a woman of uncommon virtue with whom life had dealt harshly (all true), and managed to abridge certain details such as the fact that Zaira had been blinded by the French disease and was now dying of that affliction. Eyes ruined by years of embroidering in bad light seemed a much more appealing detail. Mind you, knowing Madonna’s fascination with celebrated personages, I did cobble up as tasty a dish as I could out of Zaira’s servitude to Imperia and Messer Agostino Chigi. Chigi was dead. How could gossip hurt him now?
I must have done a fine job of sweetening my tale, for when I came to Zaira’s present pathetic condition Madama, her eyes quite misty, volunteered her interest. “We ar
e touched by the story of this unfortunate widow, Grazia, and would help her if we could. But how? Shall we send our steward?” She rejected that idea with a nod of her head. “No. What is needed is a man of authority and presence. I have it. My kinsman Lord Pirro of Bozzuolo is in Roma at this moment conferring with the Holy Father. Soldiers know how to accomplish these things, do you not agree?”
In my many weeks in her service this was the first mention I had heard of Lord Pirro. Now she simply let the name fall at my feet like a rose.
“Yes, Lord Pirro is definitely the one to take care of this matter,” she went on. “I will send for him at once. And you must go home and make a room ready to receive the invalid. Lord Pirro will bring her to you before this day is out. You can depend upon it.” Then she added, “One can always depend upon Lord Pirro, Grazia.”
The litter that brought Zaira out of the hospice arrived at the Portico d’Ottavia long after you were asleep. Just as well. The bundle of bones under the dirty blanket was not a sight I would wish you to see. When I bent over to lift the black veil that covered her face, Lord Pirro reached out to hold me back.
“Believe me, Grazia, it is better if you do not look,” he warned. But I thrust aside the restraining arm, drew back the veil, and saw what words can barely describe . . . wide, staring eyes sunken into what once had been a face but was now a mass of running sores oozing pus and blood. Almost imperceptibly, the mouth moved. Simply a back-and-forth sawing of the jaws. No sound. But enough to tell me she wished to speak.
I felt for her hand under the blanket, not even bothering to brush off the army of fleas that attacked my arm when it reached into their stronghold. Mindless of the vermin, I began to stroke her arm and to murmur words of which I have no recollection. And after a while she began to respond with sounds even more incoherent than mine, mutterings and mumblings interlaced with bits of prayer played against a constant iteration of my name . . . “Grazia. Grazia. Grazia.” And finally, a sentence: “Thank God you came to me, my little Graziella.” Mark me. No one wants to die alone.
The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi Page 60