The Midwife of Venice (32 page)

“We will speak of my future plans tonight when I return to the ship.” I must know whether I still have a husband, Hannah thought, before I can think of the future.

Tarzi glanced down at Matteo. “Leave him with me while you go off to search for your Isaac.”

Hannah shook her head. If Isaac was alive, he must meet Matteo. She must know his reaction to the child that fate had thrust in her arms. And if she had to make a choice between Isaac and Matteo? She refused to think about it. If she returned without Isaac, Hannah would tell Tarzi that her husband was dead, no matter what the truth. God forgive me, Hannah thought, but I would prefer to be a widow than to know Isaac no longer loves me.

A light film of perspiration formed on Hannah’s upper lip. Tarzi mopped her face with a cloth.

“I wish you the best. This has been a terrible voyage for you. You have borne it bravely.”

“My son would not have survived without your help. I owe you a debt I can never repay,” said Hannah.

Two sailors turned the crank of the windlass and, with a groan and much straining of the hawsers, lowered the anchor. The
Balbiana
drifted leeward until the anchor hit the bottom of the sea. The hawsers tightened, the ship resisted and then shuddered to a halt. A couple of nimble young boys climbed up the rigging, took in the sails from the mainmast and mizzen, and reefed them tightly.

Hannah shaded her eyes, surveying the other ships in the crowded harbour. The masts of a ship from the Levant beat back and forth against the sky, blinding her one moment, leaving her in shadow the next. Most were not elegant galleons like the
Balbiana
, but beamy vessels, three-masted affairs with two decks and plenty of room for cargo and passengers.

A tender pulled alongside to take passengers to shore. Hannah pushed her way to the front of the crowd and handed Matteo and her linen bag to an oarsman who stood up to receive them. Then she climbed down the rope ladder, which slapped against the hull of the ship. She settled on a bench as the rest of the passengers crowded in. Next to her, a sailor so young he had only a fuzzy down on his cheeks was peering through a spyglass at the other ships.

Their tender skimmed through the water, the oarsmen as full of longing for solid ground as the passengers. A few minutes later, she gave a start and almost dropped Matteo when the tender bumped the Valletta dock. The others clambered off, delirious with joy to be standing on a surface that did not pitch and roll. Many fell to the ground and kissed it. A young local man caught the bowline and secured it on a cleat on the dock, and offered his hand to help Hannah disembark.

When she asked him where she should begin her search for a captive named Isaac Levi, he replied, “Ask for him in the main square, at the slave auction. Sooner or later all slaves end up there.”

Hannah took a horse cart to the square and elbowed her way through the crowd of men watching the buying and selling of slaves.

The ground refused to stay steady under her feet. It seemed to pitch and roll as vigorously as the deck of the
Balbiana
. The crowd pressed in too closely around her, and she felt herself fighting for breath. Lined up on the platform were several men in shackles—Turks, Nubians, and Moors,
all of them thin and dull-eyed. Isaac could not be one of these men so wasted in body and spirit that they appeared indifferent to the voice of the auctioneer and the searing heat of the morning sun. She overheard two spectators standing next to her talking of a slave who had leaped into the sea to escape the auctioneer’s gavel. Understandable, she thought. I might have done the same.

The guards, whips in hand, led in more slaves, blinking in the sudden light, shackled together in a dispirited coffle. Would she even recognize Isaac if he was among them? She craned her neck, shifting Matteo to the other arm. Near the back was a bearded man wearing a tattered shirt. He was the only one in the group who seemed to have some spirit left in him. His shoulders were thrust back, his chin held high as though daring the guards to lay their whips on him. She rubbed her eyes with the tail of Matteo’s swaddling cloth and looked again. Tall and still handsome; thinner, yes, but with black eyes and a strong jaw. Relief flooded over her.

It was Isaac. He was alive.

She screamed, “Isaac! Isaac!”

The people in the crowd turned and stared at her. Isaac did not turn in her direction. She was too far away. He could not hear her.

Clasping Matteo tightly in one arm, Hannah mounted the stairs of the auction platform. She clutched the stair rail because her legs, accustomed to the heaving of the ship, threatened to give out from underneath her. One of the guards grabbed her arm and tried to restrain her. He said
something to her, but the words did not register and she shook him off.

“Please stop the sale!” Turning to the auctioneer, she said, “I have that man’s ransom!” She pointed to Isaac.

Isaac looked around, trying to determine where the voice was coming from, and then, seeing her, his face dissolved in a look of amazed delight. She tried to climb the last few stairs toward him before the guards yanked her back.

“You may not interrupt the sale,
signora
. This man is not for purchase. We are simply guarding him until his owner comes to reclaim his property. Soldiers fished him out of the harbour this morning trying to escape.” The auctioneer spoke a coarse dialect that she could barely comprehend, but his meaning was clear from the scowl on his face.

“My husband is no one’s property!”

“You will have to take that matter up with Joseph. Here he comes now.”

She was so close to Isaac now, just a few paces away, and yet the distance between them seemed great. She would not pause to look at him, not until he was safely delivered from his captors.

The burly, squat man known as Joseph lumbered up to the auctioneer’s platform, pushing past Hannah. “Hand him over,” he said to the auctioneer. “I know how to treat runaways. There is a galley leaving tomorrow that needs oarsmen. Good riddance to him.”

He turned around to face the woman on the steps below him. Hannah reached forward and put a hand on Joseph’s arm. “He is my husband. I will buy him from you.”

“Not on your life. He has caused me too much trouble already. I will not reward him by selling him to you. I have other plans for him.”

“He has caused me a great deal of trouble, too,” Hannah said. “This is his nature. Would you not rather be rid of him for a good price?”

“I want him to die slowly and painfully on a galley.”

“So you would cheat yourself of ready cash for the pleasure of seeing him suffer? Surely you are wiser than that. Pause to consider, sir. Would you drink poison and expect your enemy to die?”

Isaac called down, “Hannah!”

A murmur rose from the crowd.

“Do you hear?” said Joseph. “Now that he has seen you, his torment will be all the more painful.”

How to deal with this lout? Hannah wanted to throw her purse with all her ducats in the man’s face, grab Isaac, and run—but she said, “What will the galley captain give you for him? I will match his price and then some.”

Joseph scowled and was about to reply when a couple of men from the crowd started heckling him. “The lady needs a father for that child in her arms, Joseph. Be a gentleman.” Others joined in with similar remarks, until they were united in a chorus of disapproval.

“Give me ten ducats,” said Joseph. “Even the worst husband is worth that much.”

She still had one hundred and fifty ducats remaining after paying her passage on the
Balbiana
, but she would be damned if she would give this creature a
scudi
more than
necessary. “You have used him harshly, sir. Look how scrawny he has become. When he left Venice he was handsome and had all his teeth.”

“He can still fill your bed, madam, and provide you with a brother for that brat in your arms.”

“Offer him no more than two!” a voice called up to her.

Hannah looked down to see a corpulent nun in a brown habit, a white dog tucked under her arm.

Joseph responded, “Give me five ducats and he is yours.”

Hannah reached into her bag, found the purse of ducats, and fished out five. She tossed him the coins before he could change his mind. He caught them deftly and thrust them into his breeches.

The guards unlocked the manacles around Isaac’s neck and wrists, which fell away with a clank. Isaac shuffled unsteadily along the platform toward Hannah. Together they started slowly down the few steps to the ground.

All the things she had meant to say to him, all the speeches she had rehearsed on the many nights when she could not sleep for craving him, all the words of love she had saved up for his ears … not a word could she remember.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, she stood, simply drinking in the sight of him. Isaac turned to her, his dark eyes luminescent with joy. He was grinning so broadly she could see he did still have all his teeth, still strong and white after all the deprivations he must have endured.

He said, “So you
are
real. I was afraid you might be one of those visions I have from too little food and water.”

They walked over to the quiet corner of the square under the olive tree where he had sat penning letters so many times, and he helped her to sit on the log and then took a seat beside her. He leaned forward and drew back a corner of the blanket.

“A child? How did you come by him?”

Matteo squirmed in her arms.

“Isaac,” Hannah said as his eyes fixed on the baby, “I have brought you a son.”

“My God, our last night. Did we conceive him then?”

Since Isaac had been away for nearly a year, of course he would assume the child was his. Perhaps it was wisest to let him or she might lose him a second time. But a marriage based on a lie has no more substance than a house built on sand. She took a deep breath.

“I saved his life, but, no, I did not give birth to him.”

“Then who are his parents?” Isaac asked.

“His mother and father are dead.”

Isaac looked as though he wanted to ask another question, but Hannah interrupted him.

“I am not his mother. I could never be unfaithful to you.”

He waited for more.

“Isaac, I have so much to tell you, so much to explain, but before I do, tell me that you will take this child as your own.”

Isaac looked pensive for a moment. “How did he survive the journey?”

“By fate and God’s intervention.”

Isaac fingered the
shadai
hanging from its red cord on Matteo’s neck. “He is a Jewish child?”

“As you will see the first time you view him without his swaddling bands, he is a gentile.” She paused. “But we can raise him as we wish. We will make him ours. We shall have him circumcised. We shall immerse ourselves in water, the three of us. Here in Valletta, if you wish, before we depart.” Her voice was firm. “He has no one else in the world except us.”

He was staring at her with an expression of amazement, whether because of her words or because of the vigour behind them, she did not know. She forced herself to stop talking, willing him to say the words she wanted to hear.

At last, Isaac spoke. “We have longed for a son, you and I. Perhaps God at last has heard our prayers.” He looked at the child and laughed with delight as Matteo grabbed his thumb and sucked on it. “He is beautiful.”

He took Matteo from her arms and untied his lace cap, revealing curly wisps of hair. He cupped the child’s head in one hand, smoothing the reddish hair off his forehead with the other. Isaac’s eyes filled.

“I will raise him as my own. He will be my own son, as though from my own flesh.”

Hannah felt herself relax, the air reaching deep into her lungs, the first full breath in a long time.

“But how did you come to have this child?”

“I will tell you the whole story later,” Hannah said. “There is no hurry.” She reached into the linen bag at her feet. “There is something else.” She took out the purse of ducats and showed them to Isaac. “You married me without a dowry, but I have one now. What we do not
have to pay over to the Knights for your ransom will go to starting a new life for us.”

Isaac said, “The Knights will free me for fifty ducats. I have caused them nothing but headaches since I arrived.”

“The same Isaac. Everywhere you go, a pain in the
tuchas.”

Isaac tore his eyes from Matteo and looked at her. “You are not the only one with a treasure.” He passed Matteo to her and then untied a pouch from around his neck and showed her the contents: twenty or so hard white cocoons, smoother and slightly larger than a robin’s eggs.

“What are they?”

“Silkworm cocoons from healthy stock. Something to help us make a new life.” Isaac closed the bag and placed it around his neck. “Silk is beloved everywhere—except,” he said with a laugh, “on this barren island. Although that may change. The stout nun who spoke to you at the slave auction? Sister Assunta is my new business partner, God help me.”

“The Rabbi said you would be dead before I reached you,” Hannah said.

“And the Society for the Release of Captives offered me my freedom months ago if I signed a divorce. But without you, what was the point of freedom?” He released one hand from the child to caress her face. “And here you are. No longer my little ghetto mouse.”

Hannah placed her hand on Isaac’s. “We cannot return to Venice.”

“So where shall we start this new ducat-filled life of ours?” Isaac asked.

“Wherever babies are born.” With her birthing spoons to coax out babies who had grown too contented in their mother’s wombs, she could make her way anywhere in the world.

“You are a bringer forth of life, my Hannah.”

“You are talking blasphemy. Only God can do that.” She leaned against him, feeling the heat of his body along her side. She had been so long without him.

“You ask where I wish to go,” she said. “The Ottomans treat Jews well. In Constantinople we could own any kind of business, not just second-hand clothing or moneylending as in Venice. We could buy land, live in any quarter of the city, work at anything we pleased.”