Shylock's Daughter: A Novel of Love in Venice (27 page)

But slitting a gullet is not enough for this rogue. He must have humiliation as well as death—and so he draws the fat heart out of this Pantalone's breast and all the bloody entrails from his belly.

This spurting show of blood inflames the other peasants, who fall upon the closest revelers in a fury—stabbing at their eyes, necks, gullets, like men possessed.

Will and I cower behind the hedge, hiding our eyes, wishing not to see this display of cruelty and yet perversely wishing also to see it. I peek between my fingers to behold one peasant stuffing chicken feathers in a reveler's wounds, another stabbing at the eyes of a Zanni he presumes a Jew.

“See how the eye's vile jelly drips,” says Will. “A universe, an ocean, is in those eyes when they behold the world, yet how like dew or nothing are they when a poniard pierces them. We are made of dust and water, dreams and tears. We can cross the ocean, prove the world a globe, yet not contain the beast beneath the skin. What a piece of work is man: how noble in bearing, how like a god in reason, yet how treacherous and mean against his fellow.”

“Let them all kill each other,” I say in disgust, “only spare the babe.”

“Aye,” says Will. “Somehow we must find it before these villains do.”

“Come!” I say, taking Will's cold hand and sneaking through the snow in stocking feet.

B
ACK, THEN, TO THE
villa we creep, entering by a stairway near the scullery and up a flight of secret servants' stairs.

“There must be access to the mistress's apartments somehow through the servants' wings,” says Will. “Have faith, keep climbing.”

What choice have I but to keep the faith—in equal danger whether in the present or the past. “My fate is in your hands,” I mutter to that benevolent heavenly mother who guides my footsteps through the world. I feel cold marble on my bare soles and keep climbing.

Up a stair, along a narrow hall, and up another stair we go. It is dark, with flickering candles placed at lengthy intervals along the wall. Will snatches a taper from a wall sconce and bears it like a brand; we march forward in the darkness, haloed in the light of one sputtering candle. My skirt rustles; my frigid feet pad along the floor, silk stockings long since in tatters. My breath comes short, for I am breathing shallowly out of fear. Remembering my craft, my study of yoga and dance, I take deep breaths to ease my fear and encourage Will to do the same.

“Fear and faith cannot coexist,” I whisper to Will, “nor can fear and deep breathing.”

I hear him start to breathe like an apt pupil—and just at that very moment I hear a baby cry.

“Listen!” I whisper to Will.

“'Tis the babe,” Will whispers back.

We run along the hall, following the baby's cry. It leads us to a chamber, regally appointed with carved chests and a canopied bed hung with cloth of gold. There, in a corner of the room, in a carved walnut cradle with a golden quilt, lies the baby lion cub, little Judah. Signora Del Banco herself rocks the cradle.

She looks up at us, her face transfixed by terror.

“Go!” she commands. “You jeopardize his life!”

“Alas, Madam, 'tis you who do so—remaining here,” says Will.

“Where can I go?” says the
signora
in despair.

“Why, back to Venice and the protection of the doge,” I say.

“Montebello was my haven,” says the
signora
.

“No more,” say I with true sadness, for if Belmont is gone, then is there any place of safety on this earth? And at that very moment, who should appear with raised pitchforks and hoes but three
contadini
from the
signora
's own estate, screaming that
gli Ebrei
have cursed the harvests, bringing early frost, snow and ice, hard upon a summer and an autumn of plague and pestilence.

“The child!” screams the
signora
. “Spare the child!”

“We mean to baptize him a Christian,” shouts one peasant, rushing toward the cradle. Whereupon Will unsheaths a purloined poniard, picked up amidst the carnage, and, before I even see a flash of steel, unseams the villain from his nave to his chops. Blood spurts even over the baby in his golden quilt and I make haste to snatch the bloodied little one whilst Will holds our attackers at bay.

Again it is my fate to stand back and watch the men fight. Will can hold his own with one fierce
contadino
while I cower in a corner with my baby lion, plotting our escape. The other eludes him and runs to take revenge, plunging his shiny dagger deep into Signora Del Banco's gold-encrusted stomacher.

She falls backward onto the floor, groaning, her face as curiously serene in death as Lilli Persson's is in life, her blood slowly beginning to seep through the gold embroidery and beads beneath her heart. “Farewell, sweet mother,” I mutter whilst Will dispatches her murderer with a swift stab to the eyehole. “Would I could kill Kit Marlowe thus,” he hisses.

I hold my tongue from moralizing about the deaths of poets, knowing that a man as tender of heart as Will must have a straw opponent in his mind to murder ere he can slay even his own would-be assassin.

Three dead men and one woman decorate the glistening marble floors with the crimson frescoes of their blood before we take off for the stables, with the babe, to reclaim our horses.

“Oh, this out-Kyd's Kyd!” shouts Will, still mad from murder and in a sort of high hysteria.

In the stables, there is riot and misrule. Horses rear up and neigh under the moon as if they knew their owners' fates. They stamp their feet, they snort, they seem to smell the bloodshed. With a sort of harness of silk ribbons torn from my Innamorata's gown, I tie the precious baby to my breast once more. I put Harlequin's soft cap with its dangling hare's tail upon the little head for cover, while Harlequin himself saddles our horses and makes ready to depart. Oh, I am sad at Signora Del Banco's death, but gladder than glad to have the little boy again!

And once again we are off, with the babe in tow and without even a bladder of goat's milk to stave off the little lion's hunger. I think for one daft moment of a story I heard once, in another life, of a woman somewhat past the age for bearing whose breasts began to give milk just because a babe suckled at them. Such marvels are known on earth if not in heaven. Could such a miracle happen to me? I wonder. For I know that a mother always thinks like a mother, no matter what her age, and that the care of the baby always comes before the hairbreadth 'scape.

“Onward!” cries my Harlequin as our horses set their hooves once more along the mountain path that leads down from the villa.

It is bright moonlight still, bright enough for the moon to lead our way, and we can see the hills—rounded as little mounds of cream, stuck with candy trees—as we descend. But as we go lower into the hills a mist, or
nebbia
, seems to envelop us, as if to protect us from our pursuers. The air becomes suddenly warmer and the fog comes in so close that we can see nothing either to the right or to the left of us as we descend the steep path. We know that somewhere beyond the mist are our pursuers, and just immediately off the road—to which we carefully keep, guiding our horses—is the steepest of drops. Even though we cannot see the cliff, we know it is there, and however much we are drawn to it (death in such a manner sometimes seems simpler than the life of disastrous chances we lead), our instinct to protect the baby overcomes even the cliff's siren song.

Down we go in mist. The mist turns from gray to pinkish and clings about our shoulders. It rises from the ground like a creature seeking to take shape out of chaos and become incarnate; it seems to have a life of its own. Was it summoned by a witch to shield us?

Abruptly I look down at my finger and see that I still wear the magic ring with the hair knot. “Thanks be to Arlecchina,” I mutter to my amulet. And no sooner are those words loosed from my throat than a clap of thunder breaks and the whole sky is illuminated by a jagged flash, painting its neon z's across the air. The baby squalls, Will's horse rears up, and the heavens begin to pour with rain and hailstones. We bend our heads under the sky's assault and rein our horses in.

Each time the lightning comes, we can see the little hillocks lit up from behind, the wind-whipped olives and poplars, cherry and apple trees, seeming to cling to the hillsides, as if they were in danger of being blown away. We know we cannot stop in any
contadino
's house, bearing the babe as we do, so we press on in the storm, bedraggled in our costumes and soaked to the skin, praying that the baby will not take a chill and die.

The rain and hailstorm are brutal; we slog on down the mountain. Suddenly, in a burst of bluish lightning, Will sees a sort of barn or shed clinging to a curve of a hill below us. We make for it, as our only hope. Dismounting, entering, shaking off the rain, we find a kind of barn or stable filled with farm animals of every description taking shelter from the storm. Cows and goats, pigs, and even chickens jostle on the straw floor in the darkness, and they are not a little alarmed by our entry, horses and all. Nonetheless, we claim our part of this place.

Aha, I think, if I can milk one of these goats, the babe can live another day. Thus Will and I set about peeling off our soaked clothes, hanging them up to dry while our eyes adjust to the darkness, and we begin to think of how to commandeer a goat and milk it into the baby's mouth.

Have you ever milked a goat in darkness and tried to aim the stream into a crying baby's mouth? Ah—there should be medals on earth for such a feat! But, alas, keeping babies alive is deemed such a small achievement compared to killing assassins, warriors, Turks, or even
contadini
who are bent on killing us! The world values bloodshed above giving life—else why would women be honored less than men? Yet I know, when I hit the target of the baby's mouth in the dark, that I have accomplished a feat that causes all the angels in heaven to choir in unison. Thus together, Will and I feed our little Judah, whereupon, huddled like puppies, we three drift off to sleep.

Dreams take me for a while—I am so tired. And my dreams are fretful. Antonia is in my dreams, and her father, the Ur-WASP, a man of my own class and caste whom I married, thinking he would bring me safety, whereupon he conspired with my own brother to steal both my inheritance and my child. I wake up with a jolt, thinking of that other life, my heart pounding in terror. It seems I have been dropped into this world, as if I have slipped through a crack in time, and elsewhere, back in not-yet-existent New York and Los Angeles in the not-yet-existent 1980s, a whole world goes on without me—as if indeed I were dead and nobody knew or cared. Yet,
do
New York and L.A. really exist if I am here in 1592? Can both times exist simultaneously—parallel universes, time flowing forward in one and backward in another, and I the only wanderer, the only vagabond who can pass between them?

“My love,” says Will, “what startles you?” The animals low and shift on their straw pallets; the smell of rain, of barnyard, of manure and sodden clothes and uncleaned baby, is nearly overpowering.

“Why so pensive?” asks my lover, this sweet man who can both unseam an enemy and feed a baby, his head filled with poems through it all.

“My daughter,” I say. “I had a daughter once—nay, I have a daughter still, though in another country…” Out of deep superstition, I do not finish the last sentence of the quote—“and besides, the wench is dead.” Will does not ask for the particulars, as though he knows I cannot tell them.

“I, too, have a daughter,” says he. “Nay, two daughters, one a twin. They are as dear to me as all my sonnets, all my poems, my few paltry plays, e'en Kit Marlowe's fame…I miss them, too, and sorely.”

“And your son?”

“A man's son is so much a part of his own self that it seems somehow Hamnet is here with me e'en now. This baby could be my Hamnet. No, more than that—Hamnet is within my heart, my flesh, my bone. When I kill, he kills. When I love, he loves. When I rage, he rages…Sleep now, gentle Jessica, for only sleep knits up the raveled sleeve of care.”

And so we curl toward each other in sleep, but before we do, Will reaches out to stroke my breasts, my hair, my quim.

“No loathsome canker lives in this sweet bud,” he says, opening the rose between my thighs, bedewing it with his honeyed tongue. Before long, we have been led by our fierce blood into a fierce coupling. “Jessica,” he cries, plunging into my depths with his soul's saber, “let me come home.” And he slides into my center with all the passion of the gleaming knife for the dark sheath.

Whether it is the presence of the animals, the babe, the sense that he will lose me soon, or all the bloodshed we have witnessed, he is like a bedlamite tonight, mad-eyed, raving, snatching this last lovemaking as if it were his ultimate chance to couple on this earth. My mind is mad with lines of his own verse, unwritten now, yet seeded in the embryo of time, for times as yet unborn. The pen, the penis, the rosebud of the quim, bear the poem even as they do the babe. The muse is, after all, no virgin, but a Venus seeking her Adonis. Both are breathing here, here in this manger amongst the beasts of the field.

I am torn betwixt elation and sadness, ecstasy and despair. I feel Will's hardness within me, knowing that never again shall I find my mate, my husband out of time; and I almost want to die here, now, with him, rather than be parted ever.

The animals low and moo, grunt and breathe, as though they were part of our sensual act. I can feel their breath upon me as well as my lover's even as we embrace and roll apart, embrace and, at long last, sleep.

My dreams this night are kind, as they can sometimes be even in the midst of dire emergencies.

I am home again, on Park Avenue, in that same childhood apartment with the birds on the ceiling of my room. But this time my mother is alive and well and she is waltzing gaily with my ten-year-old Antonia. Together they are reciting Sonnet Nineteen, alternating lines, leaping and dancing. I hear the lines of the sonnet echo in my head as perfectly as if I were waking: