The Midwife of Venice (26 page)

His foot struck something as he made his way to the door, and he looked down. On the floor sat a basket heaped with several cocoons, as white and fragile as quail eggs. He tore his eyes from the boughs and swung his satchel from his shoulder. The worms she could keep and God bless her. He would thrust the cocoons into his satchel and take his leave.

Just as he bent to drop several into his bag, a voice called from the door, “Delightful, are they not?”

Isaac whirled around, his hand freezing in mid-air. Sister Assunta strode in, a mulberry branch in her arms. Her wimple was askew, the skirts of her habit rucked up around her knees.

“I heard you clanking in with that leg iron of yours. Come to steal my worms, have you?” She pivoted her torso so she could see beyond her wimple. “Surprised they have survived? As you can see, with God’s guidance, the eggs have hatched. Now I have a frenzy of worms all demanding
to be fed.” She set the mulberry on the floor and positioned a few worms on its limbs. “I have picked till my arms ache, but these creatures give me no peace.”

Isaac sensed a new liveliness about the Sister, a new sense of purpose. She seemed younger, more vibrant. She held herself straighter, swung her arms about, striding through the kitchen shooing the chickens outside, and surveying the worms like a visiting general reviewing troops on parade.

“Left in your care, they would not have hatched. You are a merchant. What do you know of silkworms?”

“You are full of surprises, Sister. When I left my eggs with you, you were contemptuous of the notion of silk. Wool was good enough for everyone on the island, nobleman or peasant, I recall you saying. You flung a sheepskin at my head to illustrate your point.”

“Are we so rich at St. Ursula’s that I can squander the opportunity to convert scrubby trees into gold ducats to buy food to feed the poor?”

If she had the grace to feel abashed at the abrupt reversal of her opinion, she concealed it. “Sister Caterina, one of the novices, told me a story that convinced me these insects are an opportunity sent by God to make our convent prosper.”

“I have no time to hear it.” He sidled toward the basket of cocoons on the floor. “I must be on my way.” He set his satchel next to it.

“Sit,” she said to Isaac, as though speaking to a dog.

Isaac took a seat on the plank bench. He must leave now if he was going to have time to get to the
Provveditore
before she sailed.

“I will prepare lemon balm tea and you shall hear my plan.”

“Please do not trouble yourself.”

She took a kettle hanging from the arc-shaped bail in the hearth and poured hot water into two mugs, which she plunked on the table. She sat across from him, but kept shifting to see the worms. When one dropped to the floor, she sprang up with a cluck of sympathy and replaced it on a bough.

“Many hundreds of years ago,” Sister Assunta began, “the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, jealous of the Chinese domination of the silk industry, sent two monks to China to discover the secrets of the industry. The monks studied the hatching of the eggs, the formation of the chrysalis.” She paused, obviously proud of her use of that word, for him to acknowledge that he understood. “The chrysalis is a marvel of nature, hard and tough. The monks did their job well and, without a soul suspecting, returned to Constantinople with a number of eggs concealed in their walking staves. In this way they conveyed their cargo from China and introduced silk to the west.” She slapped the table so hard their mugs bounced. “Good trick, eh?”

She kept speaking before Isaac could interrupt.

“God spoke to me in a dream. He wants me to turn St. Ursula’s into a workshop for the making of silk thread. It is a simple process from start to finish, but it requires a large workforce, which, with God’s assistance, I have.”

Isaac watched the rooster pecking scraps in the corner. To watch a woman, particularly one as large as Sister Assunta, quivering with excitement embarrassed him. Isaac preferred
Assunta’s former cantankerousness to this newfound earnestness. “Sister, allow me to speak. You have done me a great service, but now I must collect my cocoons and be off.”

“To where? Do not tell me you have been ransomed?” She studied him for a moment and then a knowing look came into her eyes. “Oh, I understand. You have plans to stow away on some ship. They will toss you overboard like the piss in yesterday’s piss-pot before you are out of the harbour.”

“Sister—” On the pretext of bending over to shoo away a hen, Isaac nudged several of the cocoons from the basket into his satchel, which lay open on the floor.

“Isaac, for a Jew, you are a worthy man. I am fond of you. I will not let you risk yourself like this any more than I would let you risk these worms that I carried in a pouch around my neck to keep warm.”

“I must go.” Isaac rose and slung the satchel onto his back, then started in the direction of the door.

Assunta blocked his path. “If you wish to risk your own welfare on some stinking ship, that is your affair, but you will hand over those cocoons in your satchel first.”

If he simply ran off, she would summon the soldiers and have him arrested. The Knights would have him beaten until his back was raw, and then he would be left to starve in the dungeon below the Grand Master’s palace.

“Let us discuss this as reasonable people,” Isaac said.

“There is nothing to discuss,” Assunta said.

“With the greatest of respect, Sister, you are mistaken. With Jews, there is always something to discuss.” The next
morning, the
Provveditore
would be casting off, her sails filling with wind, her anchor raised, her beamy stern growing smaller as she disappeared toward the horizon. “You want to commence a workshop? You are like the fool who sells the lionskin before he has killed the beast. Who will buy your beautiful silk thread to weave into draperies and dress material? You need expertise. And what of markets? The ignorant dogs who live here? They would use your silk to wipe their behinds or muck out their pigsties.”

“I am listening,” she said.

“I have contacts among the weavers in Venice.” A lie, but the nod of her head showed she believed him. “Sell me your thread, all you can produce, and I will sell it to the artisans of Venice to weave printed silk and velvet.” For all he knew, it might even work. “So …” He cleared his throat. “I will take the cocoons. The worms shall stay here to feed your enterprise.”

“How do I know,” Assunta said, “that you will fulfill your end of the bargain? You could vanish, never to be seen again.”

“So could you. Then where would I buy my thread?” The longer he spoke, improvising as he went, the more he realized he had hit upon a brilliant idea. “You can produce thread at lower cost here than in the workshops in Venice, or even in Bellagio. Your costs will be low. Your nuns receive God’s love as their wages.”

Her broad face relaxed. “Before you leave we will embrace to seal our bargain.”

Isaac was pleased to have her agreement but wary of touching her. A man did not touch a woman to whom he
was not related. But Assunta was not a woman. To realize that, one only had to look at her huge feet. He hugged her, saying, “Shalom, Sister. Live well and prosper.”

“And you. Take care of yourself. I look forward to our long and prosperous union.”

He slung his satchel over his back. “A more formidable trading partner than you, I could not imagine.” That at least was the truth. Then Isaac raced through the kitchen, through the cloisters where nuns were walking, their rosaries swaying at their waists, toward the harbour.

If, may God be listening, Isaac had the good fortune to be reunited with Hannah, hold her in his arms, and make love to her, he would summon up the image of Assunta just as she had appeared to him this evening in the convent kitchen—muscular arms folded over her wide chest, thick legs spread apart, and jaws clenched. Among Jews, it was well known that the chances of conceiving a male child were enhanced if the husband delayed his moment of climax and waited for his wife to reach fulfillment first. This vision of Assunta would ensure the conception of a son.

He shoved this fanciful thought from his mind as he heard the bell tower in the square chime eight times. Gertrudis and her skiff awaited him. He raced toward the cove.

H
ANNAH KNELT DOWN
and took Jessica in her arms, brushing the hair out of her eyes. Blood seeped into Hannah’s lap and pooled on the floor. The pistol shot filled the main floor with the smell of gunpowder and smoke so thick Hannah choked, and her eyes streamed with tears so that she could barely make out the figure of Jacopo disappearing down the Fondamenta.

“Take me up to the
altanà,”
Jessica said. “Then follow the soldiers and chase after that bastard. I have a pistol in the table next to my bed.”

“Jessica, try not to talk.” To chase after Jacopo would be reckless. He would shoot her as well, and then who
would care for Matteo? Hannah took a handful of her petticoat, tore off a strip, and pressed it into the wound in Jessica’s chest. It did little to staunch the flow of blood, and soon the material had turned into a sodden red ball. “Do not die, Jessica,” Hannah said. But her sister was losing blood so quickly. “I love you, Jessica.”

Jessica murmured, her eyes drifting closed, “You know I always loved you, Hannah, even when I did not. Do you understand?” She struggled to breathe.

“Yes, it is the same for me,” said Hannah.

“Let me go, Hannah,” she whispered. “It is too late for me. Take Matteo and run. This is your chance. Take it while the soldiers are off chasing Jacopo.”

“I cannot leave you alone.” Hannah’s tears fell on her sister’s cheeks. She rocked Jessica just as she had rocked her as a child when she was unable to sleep. She held Jessica until the last breath left her sister’s body and she became limp in Hannah’s arms.

After so many years of estrangement, she had reunited with her sister only to lose her again. It was too painful to think of.

Jessica felt so light. Hannah should wash her, wrap her body in a shroud, and bury her before sundown. She should sit
shiva
—but all she could think about was that Jessica’s death was her fault. Jacopo may have pulled the trigger on the pistol, but if Hannah had sought refuge elsewhere, Jessica would still be upstairs laughing and applying her sequins and hanging on to the bedpost as her maid laced her up in her silk gown.

Hannah could not think what to do now except sit on the floor with Jessica’s head in her lap, stroking the dark curls away from her face as the heat left her sister’s body. She would have sat there for hours, but from upstairs came the sound of Matteo’s cries. There was no time. Jessica would understand. She passed a hand over her sister’s face, closing her eyelids. Hannah would have to grieve for Jessica later.

From outside she heard the shouting of more soldiers and the clomp of their boots as they raced down the Fondamenta. They would arrive at the door in a matter of moments.

She ran upstairs to Jessica’s bedchamber and grabbed the page costume from her
cassone
. Hurriedly, she stuffed her hair under a green
biretta
and bound her breasts. When she emerged several minutes later from behind Jessica’s dressing screen and looked at herself in the cheval glass, her hand flew to her mouth. In the reflection she saw a black-eyed boy with a pale oval face. There was a freedom in not being female, in not being Jewish, and in no longer being a little ghetto mouse.

There was no time to wash Matteo. The ointment and buboes still covered his face. Taking him in her arms, she wrapped him well, draping his face with the receiving blanket. Then she grabbed a flagon of goat’s milk from the bedside table, and her bag containing her ducats and her birthing spoons, and slipped down the back staircase to the canal below, moving as fast as her satin-slippery legs would carry her.

She hailed a passing gondolier and stepped on board. The man gave her a puzzled look, which at first she interpreted
to mean he had penetrated her disguise. On reflection, she realized he was confounded by the sight of a young page with a bundle in his arms, out on the canals at dusk.

As the gondola moved smoothly through the refuse-filled waters of the Rio della Sensa, Hannah drew the curtains of the
felze
around her. Her movements woke Matteo, who was locked in her arms as snugly as a baby is locked under his mother’s sharing bones. She had saved Matteo, but now he had saved her. Without him, she would have been paralyzed by her grief and remained in the larder with Jessica’s head on her lap until the soldiers came for her. It was foolish to think of now, but Hannah hoped that Jessica had at least once enjoyed the same pleasure in coupling as she had with Isaac. Hannah had wanted to ask but could not bring herself to. Now it was too late.

Reaching under Matteo’s blanket, she stroked his cheek, murmuring, “You are a handsome boy, Matteo. Will you remember me when you have grown into a fine man, with all the advantages your parents can provide?” In answer, he snatched her finger and jammed it between his lips, mouthing it with his hard pink gums. “No, of course you will not.” She started to croon, under her breath, an old Hebrew lullaby, but stopped after a couple of verses, her voice breaking. It was a lullaby she used to sing to Jessica when she was a baby.