The Midwife of Venice (31 page)

Isaac’s callused palms grew slippery with sweat and he feared losing his grip and tumbling to the deck far below. His hands and legs trembled from the effort of the climb.
There was no way to be invisible. If the pirogue with the crew returned now, he would be as visible to them as the red flag of Venice fluttering above his head.

To look down made Isaac dizzy, so he kept his eyes on the cabin boy struggling against the rope that held his ankle fast. The boy tried to pull himself double by knifing up from the waist and grasping at the rope. Isaac called up, “Stay still,
figlio
. Do not thrash about.”
Figlio
. Son. The word had fallen naturally from his lips. “What is your name?” Isaac called to the boy.

“Jorge,” the boy replied, his voice so weak that Isaac could barely hear him over the cawing of the crows.

The boy pivoted toward Isaac, so he could see that blood streamed from his eyes and trickled from his mouth. If he did not reach him soon, Isaac would be risking his life for a corpse.

The boy was on the farthest reach of the yardarm, at least ten paces from the mast. Isaac clambered farther up the rigging and, when he reached the crow’s nest, heaved himself in. Secured to the railing was a bamboo cage containing a pair of black crows, land-loving birds that, when released, could be relied upon to navigate the most direct route to shore. The wind was less forceful now, although the mast continued to seesaw back and forth as though trying to rub out the sun.

“Jorge, I want you to be brave,” he called down to the boy. “We will wait for the ship to list to starboard and then you will be like a pendulum. The rope will swing you to the mast. Then I will haul you up and lift you into
the crow’s nest. Can you endure another few moments?” Isaac’s voice suddenly sounded unnaturally loud in the air. The wind had died.

“All right,” the boy said, his voice hardly audible.

He was tantalizingly near, not more than a few arm’s lengths below. Isaac waited for the wind to pick up. Nothing.

As the sun rose in the sky, Isaac thought if he could fling the rope to the boy, the boy could tie it around his torso. The rope, the mast, and the yardarm would form a perfect triangle. Isaac could then haul him up into the crow’s nest. Did the boy have the strength for such a manoeuvre?

“Jorge? Can you hear me?”

The boy made no reply. He hung limply from the rope.

There was nothing else to be done. Isaac must crawl out on the yardarm and, pulling the rope hand over hand, heave the unconscious boy into his arms. Then Isaac must hack the rope off from around the boy’s ankle. If he could creep back along the yardarm, carrying the boy over his shoulder to the mainmast, it might be accomplished. If the boy panicked and struggled, they would both crash to their deaths on the deck below.

The water was so still he could see several fathoms to the bottom. As he glanced toward the shore, he saw the pirogue, filled with sailors, cutting swiftly through the waves toward the ship. Isaac paused. They would arrive in a few moments. Why not wait and let them rescue the boy? A few more moments would not matter.

The boy moaned and Isaac saw that blood matted even his eyelashes. His bare foot, broken at the ankle and held
fast by the rope, was blue. If the rope did not come off immediately, the foot would be lost.

Isaac threw a leg over the railing of the crow’s nest, one arm around the mast, and climbed down the rigging. The pirogue bumped against the side of the ship, and Isaac heard the men scramble on board.

He kept going, afraid to look down for more than a moment at the deck crowded with dozens of sailors, some staggering from drink. Just as he arrived at the juncture of the yardarm and the mast, someone from below shouted, “Look aloft!” and he heard a chorus of voices shouting at him and cheering. It had been a long time since anyone cheered for him, or even noticed his presence. He felt strength flow into his arms and legs and he grinned. He could do this impossible feat. What happened to him afterward did not matter. What mattered was saving the boy.

Glancing down again, Isaac saw sailors racing to starboard. Soon men were leaning backward over the side to maximize the effect of their weight. The ship responded by broaching slightly to starboard. The boy swung toward him. Maddeningly, he still dangled out of Isaac’s reach. Isaac extended one arm, and then, gripping the mast between his legs, he stretched his body until the rope holding the boy was within his grasp. He managed to grab the rope with the tips of his fingers and then his hand. He hauled the rope toward him, the boy suspended from it. To his relief, Jorge was slight, hardly heavier than an eight-year-old. When the boy was near enough, Isaac hauled on the rope hand over
hand until the top of Jorge’s head was level with his own and he could see the fear in the boy’s eyes.

“Stay calm and do not struggle. You must climb onto my back like a baby monkey scrambles onto its mother and cling to me as I crawl down.”

The boy groaned but he did as he was told, draping himself over Isaac’s back and gripping his neck. With trembling limbs, Isaac shinnied his way down a few paces until his foot made contact with the rigging.

Applause floated up from the deck, along with the sounds of whistling and shouts of encouragement. Fresh energy coursed through Isaac’s body. With Jorge still clinging to him, he managed to right himself and climb up the mast until he reached the crow’s nest. He clambered over the rail, the boy holding on so tightly that Isaac felt nearly strangled. He reached behind to grasp the boy’s ankle. He fumbled with one hand to untie the rope, but it was so deeply buried in the boy’s flesh that Isaac could not prise apart the knot. It would have to wait until they reached the deck. The boy hung motionless, still on Isaac’s back. Fainted or dead, he could not tell. Isaac whispered the words his own mother had said to him so many years ago, “When you grow the wings of an angel,
figlio
, all things are possible. Until then, remain on the ground.” Perhaps it was his imagination, but he thought he saw a smile pass over the boy’s face.

When the boy’s narrow chest rose and fell, relief filled Isaac. He was about to begin his descent when he saw a soldier, a coil of rope draped over his shoulder, advancing up the rigging toward him.

“You are a brave man,” said the soldier, glancing at Isaac’s leg iron. “But a foolish one. Give the boy to me.” The soldier, who looked barely older than the cabin boy, took Jorge in his arms. “I am sorry, my friend. My orders are to march you to the cells of the Grand Master.”

“Take care of the boy. He is bleeding badly.”

The soldier draped Jorge over his shoulders and began his descent. Isaac looked away, unable to bear the sight of the bloody head. On the foredeck the other men watched, waiting for him to come down, waiting to watch the soldiers arrest him and throw him in the cells below the Grand Master’s palace.

Isaac would disappoint them all. He would disappoint Hannah. He would disappoint God. Never again could he live as a slave. He gazed at the water. The sea was smooth, but even a calm sea could drown a man.

The sea air had dried the sweat on his body to a carapace of salt. The ancient Hebrews salted their dead before placing them in the ground. As he looked out toward the open water, he noticed another galleon pulling in to the harbour flying the familiar flag with the winged lion on a field of red. She rode high in the water, the lateen-rigged sail on the mizzenmast half-bellied out from the wind.

If he waited a few moments, the wake of that elegant galleon would cause Isaac’s ship to heel over so that he could hurl himself from the mast and land in the water without smashing himself on the deck. He climbed atop the railing of the crow’s nest to await her approach. The soldiers below bellowed at him, ordering him to descend, but he ignored
them, watching the galleon slice through the waves, leaving a path of turbulent green foam in its wake.

When the
Balbiana
was a stone’s throw to the leeward side, Isaac released his grip on the mast, opened his arms, and jumped. For the first time since he had arrived in Malta, he felt free.

S
OME NIGHTS THE
winds blew so fiercely on the
Balbiana
that even the sailors could not keep to their feet. On those nights, Matteo lay in Hannah’s arms, her body cushioning his, so the storms could not dash him against the sides of the heaving ship. After the squalls passed, she would lie exhausted on her straw pallet, too seasick to lift a hand to push her hair out of her eyes while she vomited into a basin.

Melancholy stalked her like a phantom and held her in its clammy embrace. That Jessica’s death was her fault consumed her. The conviction that Isaac, too, was dead grew and took root in her mind. Some mornings she
could barely summon the energy to rise, so weary was she from her nightmares of Isaac’s death by starvation, drowning, or hanging. When the
Balbiana
pulled in to Valletta harbour, she was certain she would learn Isaac had been tossed into an unmarked grave and forgotten.

She would lie on her pallet clutching the baby while odd, unconnected thoughts made her think of Jessica. Only Matteo’s need for milk forced her from her dank quarters to Tarzi’s cabin. Often on these excursions, she glimpsed from the corner of her eye a flash of red silk or a well-shod foot or a small hand gloved in lace tatting. She would move toward it, thinking for the briefest of seconds that Jessica was on board. Then she would remember Jessica bleeding in her arms and, saddened, she would withdraw.

Would her memories always be so painful? she wondered. Or would her yearning for Jessica diminish with time? These thoughts assaulted her most strongly in the morning, when, still tired from a night of nightmares, she flung on one of Jessica’s gowns, now grown stiff with salt from the winds but still giving off her scent of jasmine.

Fortunately, life at sea agreed with Matteo. It was as though King Poseidon were his father and Amphrodite his mother. The heaving of the ship, the dull beating of the wind in the sails, the salt-laddened air, and the cry of the birds—all made him scream with laughter. He cooed from the makeshift hammock she had fashioned for him and hung from the ribs of the hull. When she raised her eyes from her pallet, she could see him waving
his hand, trying to clutch with his chubby fists at dust motes floating in the air.

Yes, she thought, she had kept Matteo alive. But he had kept her alive, too. His need to be fed, to be cuddled, to be loved was all that prevented her from abandoning hope. And so she clung to him during the interminable voyage as she grew thinner and his cheeks grew fuller and his colour brightened from grey to pink.

After a few weeks at sea, she realized Matteo watched her more intently. He released his grip on her only long enough for Hatice to give him suck. The baby’s bright eyes would follow the girls around the cabin and a look of joy would play on his countenance when, one by one, Tarzi’s girls bent over to kiss him and tickle his toes. When he had drunk his fill, Hannah would scuttle back with him to her sleeping quarters under the stairs.

As the seas grew calmer and her stomach grew more steady, it amused Hannah to fashion simple toys for him. She found a hank of rope from a coil on the deck and knotted it into the shape of a doll. With charcoal she quickly sketched a face and ears and tied on a rag with strings for an apron. She hid her face behind it, dancing it around on his chest, pretending it was a puppet. The streamers from the apron tickled his cheeks. “Hello, young man,” she would sing in a high, silly voice. “Are you a good boy? Are you eating all of your food? What did you have to break fast this morning?” When the puppet was tired it would flop on Matteo’s chest, and allow the baby to grab it and thrust it into his mouth.

At last, after nearly three months, just when Hannah had given up hope of seeing dry land ever again, she heard the cry of “Land ahoy” from the crow’s nest. She snatched Matteo out of his hammock and joined the other passengers on deck. With the baby in her arms, she leaned against the railing as the other passengers jostled her in their eagerness to glimpse the Valletta harbour. She thought of Isaac as the island grew larger. When the shores of Malta came into view, so bleak and desolate, so devoid of any grace or beauty, they looked like the scraped hide of an animal skin. The
Balbiana
would anchor here for a few days while the chandlers victualled the ship, and Hannah would go ashore to find Isaac.

Tarzi, veil whipping about her face in the afternoon breeze, approached Hannah at the rail and put an arm around her. Her friend had not missed a meal the entire voyage and had grown plump on
lokum
and
dolmasi
.

Tarzi whispered in Hannah’s ear, “I am a good she-camel after all, and you are a brilliant midwife. I am enjoying the pleasures of the marriage bed, yet my monthly courses continue.” She gave Hannah a squeeze. “Since the time of Beyazit II,” Tarzi said, “the Ottomans have been good to Jews. Ahmet is a trusted adviser of the Sultan. If you come with me to Constantinople, he will secure you a position as a midwife in the harem in the Sultan’s palace. But never mind your pebbles. The Sultan is a man who likes to reap where he has sown.”