The Midwife of Venice (21 page)

“Leave him with his wet nurse and tell her what the uncles have done.”

“Giovanna? If anything happens to Matteo she has promised to denounce me to the Inquisition.” Hannah paused. “I must wait for the Conte to return so I can explain.”

“Explain what? That his brothers are in league to kill his son and heir? Why would he believe you?” Jessica placed the baby on her bed and began to untie the laces of her chemise. “I do not have much time. I am meeting a patron. If I do not appear, he will think something is amiss.”

“Please, Jessica. Stay.”

“I cannot. If I do, he will come to the house.” She turned back to her dressing table. “We will decide what to do as I dress.” Using a glass pipette, she dropped a measure of fragrant oil into a paste and mixed it with a tiny silver knife. “Make yourself useful. Here—” She handed Hannah a brush of rabbit’s hair.

Dipping the brush into the mixture, Hannah began painting the creamy paste over Jessica’s face, collarbones, and décolletage, smoothing it into the hollows of her clavicles and the valley between her breasts. As Hannah
worked, her anger toward Jessica ebbed. It must have been the same for Jessica, because Hannah felt the tension leave her sister’s shoulders and face; her mouth relaxed and her eyelids seemed to grow heavy. How like Jessica to relax under the caress of Hannah’s hands. As a child, one of the few times she would sit motionless was when Hannah brushed her hair in long, steady strokes.

When she had covered Jessica’s skin, giving it a luminous cast, Jessica took the mortar back from her and poured the remaining cream into a tiny alabaster casket. “I must not waste this. I have crushed a pearl into the mixture.” Then she unfastened the bodice of the garment, shrugged it off, and let it pool around her slim legs. “Help me dress.” She grimaced. “Fetch my corset.”

Hannah retrieved it from where it had fallen off her dressing screen and held it outstretched so that Jessica could hold it up by the bodice while Hannah laced it from the back.

“Tighter, for the love of God. Shall I waddle into the theatre as thick around the middle as a milkmaid?”

“Your face is red. I dare not pull you in any more.”

“My maid has never shown me such mercy.”

Hannah pulled again, feeling her own face grow crimson from the exertion. “How is that? Can you draw breath or are you dead?”

Jessica took an experimental breath. “Not dead yet, but that is sufficient.” She tugged the corset lower on her torso, exposing the rising mounds of her breasts, nearly exposing her nipples. “Now, bring me that dress”—she gestured
to the corner of the room—“and hold it like this, over my head.” After a few moments, she was fully dressed. She turned to Hannah, thoughtful. Finally, she said, “Go to Ferrara. Take the child to them. It is the only way. You can borrow some clothes from me. Leave tomorrow.”

“I cannot. My ship sails from Venice shortly.”

“And if the Conte does not return to Venice in time?” Jessica reached for a small glass bottle with an eyedropper on the dressing table.

“I trust that he will.”

She tilted her head back and pinched a drop of belladonna into each eye. She blinked until the drops dispersed. Her pupils dilated, making her eyes even darker.

“Coming to you is the hardest thing I have ever done. Let me remain with you,” Hannah pleaded. “Then I will return Matteo, sail to Malta, and never impose on your kindness again.”

“It is just a matter of time before someone tells Jacopo that you are my sister. He knows full well where I live.”

Hannah opened her mouth to speak, but Jessica interrupted. “And how do you intend to feed the child? Have you a wet nurse who will give him suck?”

“I will feed him pap until I can return him to the palazzo.”

“The cemeteries are filled with pap-fed babies.”

“I have no choice.”

Jessica tried to smile. “Whatever comes, we will face it together, as sisters must.” She picked up Hannah’s bag containing the birthing spoons and ducats and tucked it behind the headboard of her bed. “It will be safe there,”
she said, draping a muslin cloth over it. She slipped on a pair of earrings and grabbed her evening bag, then descended the stairs and left.

From the open bedroom window, Hannah observed Jessica making her way slowly along the Fondamenta, her heels so high that the gondolier had to steady her as she stepped on board. Jessica looked up at Hannah in the window and, after blowing a kiss, settled herself in the
felze
.

It was
acqua alta
. Hannah watched as boats competed for space in the narrow canal, churning up a tumult of crosscurrents. Some of the overloaded boats could not pass under the bridges. When the tide was low, some could not budge because their hulls were stuck fast on the silt and debris of the canal bottom.

And then, as Jessica’s boat glided away from the dock, Hannah saw something that made her breath catch. A barge lumbered past with bodies stacked so high that it could barely pass under the bridge. Hannah smelled the decay of bloated bodies bursting from the pressure of their own juices. The boughs of rosemary and juniper covering them did little to mask the stink. She pressed a hand to her nose. During the last epidemic many Venetians had fled to the mainland, but armed peasants who feared contagion had beaten them and driven them back to Venice. She needed to get to Malta now, before the plague made travel impossible. It was likely that tomorrow the servants would flee to the countryside, terrified. Apart from Hannah, her sister, and the baby, the house would be empty. She need survive only another few days and then she would board the
Balbiana
.

She stood at the window gazing out onto the street until the moon rose full and high over the canal. Every creak in the floorboards, the voice of every passing pedestrian, and every splash from the canal made her stiffen.

What would kill them first? Jacopo, who by asking a few questions about town would surely discover that the Jewish midwife was the sister of the beautiful courtesan who lived on the Fondamenta della Sensa? Or the pestilence?

Matteo was sleeping on Jessica’s bed, breathing softly, bubbles of saliva collecting in the corners of his mouth, eyelashes brushing his cheeks, tiny hands crossed under the coverlet. The two of them were safe for the present, but Jessica was right. Without a wet nurse Hannah could not keep Matteo alive. Pap-fed babies filled the cemeteries.

O
N THE FLOOR
of Joseph’s sail-making workshop, Isaac sat buried in a pile of canvas. With a curved needle, he was sewing telltales onto a square sail, the long, narrow strips of fabric tangling around his hand. A leather patch strapped to his palm allowed him to drive the needle through the canvas without piercing himself.

Isaac looked up at the sound of light footsteps entering through the front door. It was Gertrudis. Tall and fair, she entered the shop, bringing with her the smell of fresh-baked bread in a basket swinging from her arm. Her hair was bound with a ribbon; she had smudges of blue, brown,
and black paint on her dress and a dot of white on her temples, as though she had thrust her hair back from her forehead with a paint-wet hand.

He was so entwined in the sail, he had to wiggle his toes to restore feeling to his legs so that he could rise to his feet. She gazed around the shop, squinting for a moment, her eyes not adjusted from the bright sun on the street outside. She had a familiar-looking letter in her hand. Her eyes settled on Isaac.

In a mellifluous voice, she asked, “Where might I find Joseph?”

“He is down at the docks, victualling a ship. Can I be of assistance?” Isaac asked.

She tossed the letter on top of the tangle of canvas. “You can tell him to stop sending me letters.”

He had not had a good look at her before. Now he could see she was not young, thirty perhaps, but still pretty, with blue eyes and a mouth as sweetly curved as an archer’s bow. The longer he scrutinized her, the more his heart sank. Assunta was right. Joseph was the god Tantalus, reaching for a bunch of grapes too far above his head.

“You are the Good Samaritan who donated five
scudi
to Sister Assunta to buy me?” Isaac asked.

“I am, for all the good it did you.”

“Nonetheless, you have my thanks.” Isaac picked up the letter and gently swatted it against the crumpled sail to remove the dust that was coating it. “May I?” he said, indicating the letter.

Gertrudis nodded.

The letter had not been opened. The red sealing wax flaked and particles dropped onto the canvas. He unfolded it and made a show of reading the familiar words.

“It looks like a very fine letter to me. See how neat and evenly spaced the writing? And the angels above could not have fashioned smoother parchment.”

“Do not pretend you are illiterate. I have seen you scrivening in the square. It is not the quality of the penmanship or the composition that irks me. I do not fancy Joseph and I do not want his letters. Convey that message to him for me.” She turned toward the door, but seemed reluctant to leave.

How could he stir the ember of desire in Gertrudis’s heart? If he could only move her to give the man a second glance, Joseph would set him free and he would steal aboard the next ship for Venice.

“Joseph admires you as he admires no one else in the world. You will never find such a man as him. Do not throw away a chance for happiness.”

“And who do you think you are,” she demanded, “to offer such misguided advice so freely?”

He kicked aside a mountain of canvas and bowed as best he could. “Just another poor slave washed ashore on this island.” He had been about to say
on this miserable shore
but thought better of it. She was Maltese and must love her birthplace as much as he loved Venice. “Isaac Levi, at your service.”

“You look half-starved.” She reached into the rush basket she carried over her arm and handed him a loaf
of bread. “I wager Joseph is not as generous in sharing his victuals as he is in tossing about words of love.”

Isaac took the bread gratefully and tore off a hunk with his teeth. The loaf was fresh and fragrant, still warm from the bakery.

She studied him as he ate. “You are Venetian, are you not? You make our poor Maltese dialect sound almost elegant.”

He nodded, chewing slowly to make the bread last.

She glanced at his prayer shawl. “You are a Jew?”

Isaac nodded again.

Gertrudis bunched up her long skirt and cast about for a place to sit. She saw a stool in the corner, hooked a foot around it, and dragged it toward her. “This letter is the product of your bleeding hands, is it not?” Gertrudis gestured toward the letter, which Isaac had placed on the sails.

“I penned it, yes. Joseph’s handwriting is not the best because his eyesight is failing him. But the composition is entirely his. A bit florid, but heartfelt, I assure you.” He regretted his lies before they were out of his mouth. Someday God would punish him. Right now he needed Gertrudis’s help. He read her the letter.

“Joseph could no more scribe this letter than could one of my pigs. The sentiments expressed are beautiful. Coming from another man I might find them welcome.”

She eyed Isaac with such frankness that he was shamed by his own duplicity. Then she stood and rummaged in a heap of debris in the corner of the workshop. She fished out a scrap of canvas and smoothed it out over a pine
board she found lying on the floor and placed on her lap. Then she stared at Isaac for so long, and without the least reticence, that it was as though he was an object rather than a man. She held up her thumb and forefinger, measuring the proportions of his face.

“You have an interesting countenance.”

He felt his face grow hot. He concentrated on eating the bread.

She propped the door open with a stone from the street and sun flooded into the shop. From her bag, she took out a black-smudged scrap of linen and unrolled it. She retrieved a piece of willow-wood charcoal and began to sketch.

Isaac had seen artists sketch before. Tintoretto’s workshop was just outside the gates of the ghetto on the Fondamenta della Sensa. It was common on hot days to see apprentices squatting on the sidewalk, roughing out drawings of biblical scenes on stretched canvas. But never had Isaac seen anyone, never mind a woman, sketch with such sure, rapid strokes.

So absorbed was she in her task that her hand flew over the canvas. From time to time, she paused and scrubbed at her drawing with the scrap of linen. She peered intently from him to her canvas and back again, as though watching a ball being tossed back and forth.

Isaac did not know where to look, so great was his embarrassment. He continued jabbing at the canvas sail with his needle. “There is no sense in drawing a half-starved slave. Joseph is a handsome man with strong features. He is the one you want to draw, not me.” He strained to see the sketch, but she moved it out of reach.

“I would rather sketch a toad.”

She worked for a few minutes more and then turned the drawing around so he could see the charcoal outline. He saw his own long, serious face—dark eyes with pronounced eyelids, cheeks hollowed out by hunger, a sensual mouth that he did not recognize as his own, and a beard covering his square jaw. In her drawing, Isaac bore an unsettling resemblance to an altarpiece he had glimpsed through the open door of a church in Venice. It was a portrait of a majestic Moses receiving the commandments.