The Midwife of Venice (24 page)

“When all the teeth have fallen out of my head and my beard is down to my waist,” Isaac answered.

“Then, my friend, make peace with that harsh God of yours. This island will be your graveyard.”

Hector gestured for Isaac’s assistance, and Isaac cupped his hands together and bent down. Hector placed a foot in his hands and then Isaac boosted him into the saddle. Hector clapped his legs against the mare’s flanks.

“If you have a change of heart, send for me,” he said, slapping the reins. He rode away leaving a rooster-plume of dust in his wake.

The dust coated Isaac’s beard and made him cough. He had no need of this man, he thought. The Society—the whole lot of them, from the Rabbi to that Ashkenazi piece of shit—should gargle with the seed of a donkey.

He would escape the island without help from anyone.

V
ENICE WAS UNEARTHLY
quiet this morning. Everyone with relatives outside the city had long since fled as the plague barges continued to overflow with corpses. Hannah had lain in bed several hours, the gesso cracking her face, various potions melting from the heat of her body and trickling down her legs and arms.

Poor Matteo. From time to time he drew his legs up to his belly and screamed piteously, whether from the unaccustomed goat’s milk or from the gesso and smelly ointments was impossible to say.

Jessica entered the bedchamber carrying a tray of fruit.
“Livorna left for the countryside at first light,” she said. “We are quite alone.”

“I am terrified Jacopo will come and I am terrified he will not,” said Hannah, cuddling Matteo as best she could. “Niccolò’s body may have washed ashore by now. One look and anyone will know he did not die of the plague.”

Before Jessica had a chance to respond, the bell on the front door pealed with shrill insistence, shattering the silence.

Jessica rose and flew to the window. “I can see only the tops of their heads. On the other side of the Fondamenta are soldiers standing at attention wearing bright blue caps.”

Never had Hannah felt so defenceless. She pulled the bedclothes over her naked body. Morning shadows shrouded the room. She wished herself to be invisible.

Jessica said, “Should I let them in? What if I simply stay here with you? Perhaps they will give up and go away.”

“They will force their way in.” Hannah visualized the two large casement windows on the main floor. They could smash their way in with little effort. She was terrified. We are stupid to think we can fool anyone, she thought.

“Remember what Isaac used to say? ‘Without choice one must mobilize the spirit of courage,’ ” said Jessica.

Then she left the room, clutching her skirts in one hand so she would not trip on the stairs.

Hannah drew the curtains of the four-poster bed around her, leaving a small gap so she could peek out. She coughed, suffocated by her own stench. Only a single candle guttered on the bedside table. Next to her lay Matteo, a small bundle wrapped in an embroidered shawl. She drew him
close, feeling the steady beat of his heart, as delicate as a bird’s against her own.

From the entranceway below, the bell pealed again, the cord yanked by the same impatient hand, now four times in rapid succession. Hannah heard the door squeak open.

“Is this the house of Jessica Levi?” demanded a male voice. Jessica replied in words Hannah could not quite make out. The door closed. Heavy boots scuffled on the stone floor of the foyer.

As she lay in bed, hoping Matteo would not awaken, Hannah heard three sets of footsteps ascending the stairs, two heavy ones and Jessica’s light step behind. Jessica was talking too fast, which make her lisp more pronounced.

“You are imperilling your lives by coming here. Did you not see the cross painted on the door?”

The steps grew louder, and Hannah heard Jessica say, “My sister is afflicted with the plague, sir. Your plague garb will not be sufficient protection.”

They were right outside the door now. In another moment, they would enter her room. She slid her hand under the pillow, groping for the coolness of the knife, careful not to awaken Matteo. Hannah rearranged her covers to reveal the worst of her painted sores and lay waiting with half-closed eyes.

But it was not the portly Jacopo who entered through the door. This man was tall and spare, wearing a beaklike mask over his face and dressed in the attire of a plague doctor. Hannah put her fist to her mouth. Panic seized her so completely that she wanted to spring from
the bed and throw herself out the window into the canal below, but her legs had turned to stone. Around the man’s neck, resting on his coat, Hannah noticed a silver medallion. It was the Examining Magistrate from the office of the
Prosecuti
.

The Magistrate’s black overcoat, which extended to his feet, glistened with animal grease to repel the contagion. A wide-brimmed black hat drawn down over his brow did not permit a patch of skin on neck or head to be exposed. The long beaked mask covered the upper part of his face. In the dim light, his eyes seemed without irises. The man turned toward the bed, seeing Hannah for the first time.

“Look at her. Now do you believe me?” said Jessica. “As you can see, she is not long for this world. She deserves quiet and peace.”

The Magistrate ignored Jessica and approached the bed, stopping several paces away. Hannah then saw Jacopo at the threshold with a handkerchief pressed to his nose and mouth. With a long cane, the Magistrate thrust aside the bed curtains, took up the candlestick on the night table, and held it aloft. Raising a corner of her coverlet with his cane, he peered at her legs and belly, and then at the child who lay motionless next to her.

It was impossible to say what age the Magistrate was. His shoulders were stooped. He was old, perhaps forty or forty-five years. Hannah’s skin prickled in the cold draft from the window and she shivered. This man would not waste time and public money on trials. Executions of the
Prosecuti
were secret, hurried affairs that happened in the dark of night. The Magistrate could order her killed immediately if he wished.

“I have come to investigate the murder of Niccolò di Padovani and the charges of witchcraft against you, Hannah Levi,” he said. “I am Magistrate Marco Zoccoli.” The Magistrate stared at her with sightless eyes, the enormous beak of his mask poised as if to strike. Then he turned to Jessica. “And,” he added, “I am also here to consider charges against you.”

Dear God, not Jessica, too, Hannah thought.

“For what offence?” Jessica asked.

“As an accomplice.”

“Accomplice? No one here has committed a crime.”

“Accomplice,” the Magistrate said, “for offering Hannah Levi shelter.”

From the doorway, Jacopo said, “And for kidnapping my nephew and murdering my brother Niccolò.” A handkerchief still held to his face, he was wearing a jacket the colour of crushed cherries. “It would be my pleasure to watch you both dangle from the
strappado.”

He stared closely at Hannah for a moment and noted the child at her side. Then he tucked his handkerchief away and clapped his hands. “A virtuoso performance, ladies.” Giving a mock salute to Hannah, he said, “The cross on the door was a brilliant touch. But we are not fools.”

Jessica said, “This is no hoax, sir.”

“I have my jacinth ring to protect me against the pestilence, if you are telling the truth.” Jacopo held up his hand
to show a heavy gold ring set with a reddish-orange stone on his thumb. “And”—he drew a matchlock pistol from his breeches and pointed it in her direction—“I have this efficient instrument at my disposal should you be lying. I have practised shooting melons off the parapet of ca’ di Padovani and I can assure you it is accurate.”

“Put that away,” the Magistrate ordered. “It falls to me to decide who is guilty and to mete out punishment.”

Jacopo shrugged and tucked the pistol into the waistband of his breeches. He waved a hand back and forth in front of his face. “God in heaven, pull the drapes and fling open the windows. The stench is unbearable.”

“The light hurts her poor eyes,” said Jessica.

“Well, the stink of it hurts mine. This woman is not only the murderer of my brother and the kidnapper of my nephew, but also a witch.”

The Magistrate still stood a few paces back from the bed. As the moments passed, Hannah felt the carefully applied buboes on her armpits and neck begin to melt in the heat of the room. Her sweat was beginning to seep through the bed linen and make her itch.

“She looks like a plague victim—a white, almost greenish complexion, blackened eyes and teeth,” said the Magistrate.

“Rubbish,” Jacopo said. “It is nothing more than the crude paint of a bad actress.”

At that instant, Hannah moaned and bit down on the partridge egg tucked in her cheek. Blood trickled out of her mouth and down her chin, staining her pillow.

Magistrate Zoccoli recoiled. “Good Lord, if this is an
act, she should be on stage at the Teatro Orsini.” He looked at Matteo sleeping in Hannah’s arms. “Is the child similarly stricken?”

Jessica nodded.

The Magistrate glanced in Jacopo’s direction. “Sir, you claim this baby is your brother’s child? I will ask you to identify him.” He nodded to Jessica. “Hold up the child so we can see it.”

Jessica went to the bed, slid Matteo from Hannah’s arms, and held him up. Matteo had a whitish pallor and his limbs twitched. Although free of the plague, he was in truth suffering without the rich, copious milk of Giovanna. The sores and scabs that Jessica had painted on him looked gruesomely real.

“Can you say that this child is, without a doubt, your nephew?”

Jacopo replied, “He is my own flesh and blood.”

The Magistrate said, “This infant is so covered in buboes, I cannot tell if it is human or animal. How can you be so certain he is your nephew?”

“By his reddish hair. He takes after his mother, the Contessa,” said Jacopo.

“The child is my sister’s,” Jessica blurted out, “born weeks ago after a long and difficult travail.”

Jessica sounded so convincing that for a moment Hannah’s heart leapt. Would the Magistrate believe this?

“You know full well that is a lie,” Jacopo said.

Jessica adjusted the bodice of her dress, tugging it a finger’s width lower. “Hannah has been staying with me since
she was stricken. She had no one else to look after her and her child. Her husband is in Malta.”

“You know it is against the law for a Jew to live outside the ghetto,” said the Magistrate.

Jessica tucked Matteo under the covers. “You are right, sir. She should have obtained official permission, but we are in a desperate situation, as you can see. She will be dead soon enough. As will the infant.” Jessica squeezed Hannah’s fingers and a smear of cream mixed with goat excrement came off in her palm. Quickly, she rubbed her hand over the silk coverlet. “I beg you, sir, let them die in peace.”

“They are liars, the pair of them!” Jacopo said.

“If this Jewess is indeed the child’s mother, it will be easy enough to tell.” The Magistrate fingered the medallion around his neck. “Remove his swaddling bands. If he is circumcised, then I will accept that the child is hers. That will be the end of the matter.”

Jessica bent over the child and began slowly to unwind the swaddling bands, which fell away in yellow-and-black mottled strips.

Hannah wanted to throw herself across the child’s body. Soon they would see Matteo’s hooded penis. What if she rose from the bed and charged them with the knife? But there were two of them. They would seize the knife from her and kill her in less time than it takes a pack of wolves to hamstring a doe. As Jessica reached down to lift the child, Hannah quickly untied the cord around her neck and pressed the
shadai
onto Matteo.
When Jessica held him up for inspection, the amulet in the shape of a baby’s hand gleamed against the rise and fall of his small chest.

“What is that?” asked the Magistrate.

“The Jews call this a
shadai,”
said Jessica. “It is an amulet to hang over the cradle to protect a newborn, for all the good it has done him.” She lifted the amulet and dangled it between her fingers. “Such a custom is widespread among Jews.”

The Magistrate bent forward to study the Hebrew letters on the
shadai
, but the appalling stench of feces repelled him and discouraged closer inspection.

The Magistrate recoiled and said, “No one would hang such an abomination around the neck of a Christian child.” He shook his head. “I see no need to proceed further. Unwrapping him any further will only unleash the vapours of the pestilence.”

“Nonsense,” Jacopo said. “She is a midwife, not a mother. My brother and I brought her from the ghetto to deliver the child. That amulet is the Jewess’s charm—proof that she is a practitioner of the dark arts. She no more gave birth to the baby than I did.”

Hannah watched through half-closed eyes as Jacopo turned pale, realizing what he had just said.

The Magistrate’s next words left Jacopo in no doubt of his error. “You fetched her from the ghetto to assist at your sister-in-law’s birth? You know such an attendance is against the law.” In a voice made strangely hollow by the mask, he continued, “When you seek justice from me, sir,
you must come with clean hands. Perhaps I should charge you and the Conte with breaking the law that prohibits Jews from giving medical assistance to Christians.”