The Midwife of Venice (27 page)

The gondola pitched and rolled, broadsided by the wake of a flat-bottomed barge laden with produce. Goat’s milk splashed on her satin slippers; she did not bother to shift her feet from the puddle.

On the Grand Canal the gondola docked between the familiar green-and-gold mooring posts of the ca’ di Padovani. Matteo fussed as the gondolier held him in one arm and, with the other, helped Hannah over the gunwales of the boat. When she was standing on the Fondamenta, the gondolier handed her the baby and the milk, his gaze lingering on Hannah’s embroidered waistcoat and the
biretta
pulled low over her eyes.

She said,
“Grazie, signore
. Do not wait for me. I will make my own way home.”

She handed him a gold ducat, hoping that it was enough to buy his silence, and that the
Prosecuti
would not learn of his passenger, the slender page carrying a well-turned-out Christian baby to his breast.

“Prego,”
he said. A few feet away, a young boar nosed in some garbage. Before casting off, the gondolier lifted his oar out of the
forcòlo
and jabbed the boar in the hindquarters. It lumbered off. Replacing the oar in the oarlock, he called out,
“Buona fortuna,”
and pushed away from shore.

For a few moments, Hannah lingered in front of the palazzo. If the Conte and Contessa were not at home, she had no notion of what she would do with Matteo.

When the gondola was out of sight, she turned, Matteo in one arm, her bag in the other, and said, “Wait until your mama sees you. How delighted she will be.” When Matteo gurgled and cooed, a tear dropped from Hannah’s cheek and rolled into the fat creases of his neck. His painted buboes and his horrible smell did not prevent her from nuzzling her face into his woolly blanket. “How am I going
to explain your appearance to the Conte?” If only she had had the time to wash him.

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.

I
SAAC 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.