Act of Faith (13 page)

‘Silly boy!’

We crossed the city in time to arrive at Signora Contarini’s house just on dusk. A footman took our capes and led us upstairs towards a hum of voices and music. We paused in a long, mirrored corridor.

‘Courage, my dear,’ said Master de Aquila.

I smiled gratefully, smoothed down my gown, and we walked together into the banquet room.

Fabulous. That’s the only word for it. Hundreds of candles glimmered in fine candelabras on every table, from sconces on every wall. A violinist played in a dark corner. People filled the room — so many people — all in rich silks of crimson and silver, all talking and laughing, until, inexplicably, they fell silent and turned, as one, to face us. My hand trembled on Master de Aquila’s arm. He bowed, so I followed with a clumsy curtsey.

‘At last!’ Signora Contarini’s voice sounded from somewhere in the crowd, and it parted to let her through.

‘Here they are,’ she said in rapid Venetian. ‘Our guests of honour.’

I knew enough of the language now to attempt a reply. ‘It is we who are honoured,
signora
.’

She clapped. ‘
Brava!
’

At that signal, the violin struck a note and everyone started talking at once. A dozen people came forward to greet us with kisses and exclamations, though Signora Contarini introduced them so quickly, and in her own language, that I could barely catch their names.

A gong sounded and everyone turned towards the table at the other end of the room. Huge vases of flowers, heavy with
nectar and fragrance, stood in a line down the centre of a damask tablecloth, where bowls of figs and apricots glistened in syrup.

Signora Contarini took Master de Aquila’s arm. ‘You will sit at my right hand.’

He bowed his head, smiling.

‘And Isabella …’ She glanced around and then motioned to a young man who stood watching a few paces away.

He was ridiculously beautiful, an ancient Roman statue come to life, with extraordinarily long eyelashes and ringlets of dark hair circling his face. He needed only a wreath of laurel and a centurion’s breastplate to complete the picture.

He stepped forward, blushing, and bowed.

‘Who is this person?’ asked Master de Aquila.

‘This is Jacopo Gabrieli. His father is one of the Council of Venice. You will meet him later. Young Jacopo has offered to escort Isabella this evening.’

Jacopo blushed again.

‘Hmm.’ Master de Aquila stared at the young man as if he were a thief in the street.

‘Come, my friend.’ Signora Contarini led my master away towards the table.

Jacopo bowed and offered me a gloved hand. I took it tentatively, not exactly sure what I was supposed to do next. I attempted a smile. So did he. Somehow, he managed to lead me to a chair, although being led is not a natural part of my disposition and I can’t say I followed gracefully. Better to admit that we walked in tandem in a line of couples to the dining table, where a footman settled me in my chair and poured the first of far too many glasses of sweet wine.

‘This is your first visit to Venice?’ Jacopo asked.

‘Yes,’ I said, and then thought I should try a little harder. ‘It’s so beautiful.’

‘I think it’s ugly.’

‘How can you say that?’

‘All cities are ugly,’ he said. ‘That’s what my father says.’ He waved to an elderly man who sat opposite us, looking bored.

‘Do you know any other cities well?’ I asked.

‘No. Only Venice. It is horrible. I prefer the country.’ He turned to his plate and began dismantling a roast pigeon with both hands.

‘I see.’

I gazed around the room. Everyone else was chatting happily to the person next to them — even Master de Aquila. Apparently that’s what one did at banquets. I tried again.

‘I used to live in the country,’ I said. ‘With my father.’

Jacopo glanced up. ‘What was his game?’ he asked.

‘Game?’

‘Boar? Deer? Wolves, perhaps, in winter?’

‘Oh, I see — no, my father didn’t hunt.’

He stared at me, incredulous. ‘Then why did you live in the country?’

‘It was lovely there.’

He grunted.

I turned my attention to my plate and listened instead to Signora Contarini’s conversation.

‘My husband left me well-provided for, as you see. I sold his business after his death and sat here in fine widowhood for a year or so. But I found that I couldn’t stop the work, that the press kept calling me. So I started a new business. If you don’t mind me saying, it’s far better than my husband’s ever was, and much more
entertaining. I print what I want. I don’t need to take on rubbish. Only the best: the finest stock, the most interesting works — yes, even if they are controversial.’

‘Too controversial for some,’ said a fat man to Master de Aquila’s right.

‘Nonsense, Pietro,’ said Signora Contarini. As she waved her hand, I noticed that tonight she wore several gold rings on each finger. ‘The world is different now.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Pietro. ‘I just heard it from Rome today. The Pope has issued a new Index of Forbidden Books.’

‘I have heard no such thing,’ said the
signora
.

‘I’m afraid it is true enough,’ said Pietro. ‘You will be informed officially, no doubt, since several of your guest’s publications are on the list.’

‘Mine?’ Master de Aquila gasped. ‘Which books?’

‘Professor Hawkins’s
Discourse on Liberty
, amongst others.’ He bowed his head slightly in my direction.

‘How dare they?’ Signora Contarini flushed a deep red. ‘It’s outrageous.’

‘We will not speak of it now,’ Master de Aquila said quietly. His face, in contrast, was pale.

Signora Contarini drew a deep breath. ‘You are right,’ she said. ‘It is no topic for friendly conversation.’ She shouted to a man at the other end of the table. ‘Hey, tell us a joke.’

The evening wore on through six more courses, a few pathetic exchanges of pleasantries with the thunderously stupid Jacopo, and palpable anger in Signora Contarini’s face.

At last, Jacopo and his father bowed and excused themselves. They had a long journey to their
palazzo
in the Marches, they explained. Signora Contarini farewelled them graciously and
returned to her seat, plopping down with a sigh, then turned to Master de Aquila.

‘You are pensive, my friend.’

Master de Aquila started. ‘I was thinking.’

‘Obviously.’

His gaze shifted from her face to mine. ‘It’s time you were married, Isabella,’ he said.

I stared at him. ‘What on earth makes you say that?’

‘I am remiss. You should not be fussing about after an old man.’

‘There is plenty of time for all that,’ said Signora Contarini. ‘Isabella can afford to wait.’

‘For what?’ asked Master de Aquila.

I wondered the same thing.

‘For her equal.’

I bowed my head, not sure whether to be pleased or embarrassed. I decided I was pleased — so long as nobody suddenly decided to marry me off to Jacopo.

Signora Contarini clapped her hands. The party fell silent.

‘Thank you for gracing us with your presence,’ she announced. Then she whispered to me, ‘They will not leave until they have drunk every drop of my wine.’

But not even the most enthusiastic guest could ignore her dismissal and, one by one, they took their leave. Only Pietro remained, at the
signora
’s insistence. As soon as the door closed behind the last couple, Signora Contarini threw a red woollen shawl around her bare shoulders and wriggled her feet out of her silk slippers. Then she exploded.

‘What are they thinking, those idiots in Rome? A new Index! Can they not see that the world has changed?’

‘That is exactly what they fear,’ said Master de Aquila.

‘Dolts! Imbeciles!’ she shouted. ‘How dare they ban your books? What century do they think we are living in?’

‘The news is worse than I wanted to announce in public,’ said Pietro. ‘They are burning books in great bonfires in the Vatican.’

‘What does that mean?’ I asked.

‘It means,’ said Pietro, ‘that you must not go anywhere near Rome. The Inquisition has already arrested some of our colleagues there. All over Italy, in fact. The best printers in Florence have fled to France.’

An anxious glance passed between my master and me. He shifted a little in his seat.

‘It will come to nothing, you’ll see,’ he said.

Signora Contarini patted his hand.

‘You’ve lived in the safety of Amsterdam too long, sir,’ Pietro said. ‘You’ve forgotten how powerful a grip the Church fathers have on our lives.’

‘Believe me, that is something I can never forget,’ my master said. ‘But no power in the world can stop our presses, or stop people reading our books.’

‘Perhaps not,’ Pietro replied. ‘But they can try.’

‘But on what grounds?’ I asked. ‘
Discourse on Liberty
is already printed. If they ban it now, that’s one thing, but surely it’s not a crime to have printed it before it was banned. That makes no sense at all.’

Signora Contarini turned her face to me. ‘They don’t dwell on such niceties, my dear. Even the bravest person will admit to almost anything after a spell in the dungeon and the threat of the stake.’

I felt my chest tighten.

Master de Aquila’s eyes were on me. ‘What is it, child?’

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘You’re not frightened of some demented priests on the other side of Italy?’

‘Of course not,’ I said. But my voice didn’t sound very convincing.

‘You are in no danger, Isabella.’ Signora Contarini’s voice was kind but I couldn’t look into her eyes.

‘I’d do anything to avoid the stake, too,’ I whispered. ‘I’ve seen a man die for his beliefs.’

They were silent, so I went on. ‘You’ve heard of William Ward?’ They shook their heads.

‘He was a friend of my father. He was a Catholic priest. In England, everything is the opposite of here, and it’s illegal to be Catholic.’

‘Ridiculous,’ said the
signora
.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘English or Italian, Puritans or Catholics — you die just the same.’

Master de Aquila nodded sadly. ‘It’s true.’

‘They arrested Father Ward just after midsummer — four years ago now, I suppose. My father said we must go to bear witness. He hated the thought of his friend dying alone, or amongst a hostile crowd. I thought it would be heroic and noble, like Joan of Arc. But it wasn’t. There was just fear and screaming. First they hanged him, until he was nearly dead.’ I gulped a breath. ‘Then they took him down and slit —’

Master de Aquila took my hand. ‘We are in no danger here, Isabella.’

But in the days that followed, news came of more arrests in Rome and elsewhere; of printers and authors and even priests who vanished in the night; of more books burned in city squares and workshops closed down.

‘We should go home, to Amsterdam,’ Willem urged one afternoon. ‘The further from Rome, the better.’

‘We are safe here,’ Master de Aquila assured him. ‘In the Ghetto.’

‘But they burn printers at the stake in Italy. They don’t like Protestants much, either, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘Nonsense, boy. Your imagination is running wild.’ But he said it as if his mind were on other matters.

The knock on the door was so faint I barely heard it. A messenger boy with bare, grubby feet stood in the street outside — a letter in one hand, and his other hand stretched out for money. I fumbled in my purse for a few coins and shut the door against the sea mist. I took the letter up to Master de Aquila, who was in his room fussing over the Egyptian chapter of
The Sum of All Knowledge
.

He checked the handwriting on the letter and ripped off the seal quickly. I sat down to wait, in case he wanted me to write a reply, and watched as his eyes scanned the pages.

‘It cannot be!’ His face turned as pale as paper and he sank into a chair as if he’d been struck.

I jumped up. ‘What is it?’

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘It simply cannot be true.’

I took the letter from his hand. My master groaned aloud. It was from Paul in Amsterdam, scribbled in haste. He urged us to return
at once. The workshop had been stormed at night by a gang of men — nobody knew who they were — and had burned to the ground. Paul wrote that he had rushed to put out the fire, but the flames were too fierce. The paper stock, the press — all of it was gone.

My master snatched the letter from my hand. ‘Al-Qasim! What happened to Al-Qasim?’

‘Paul doesn’t say. Of course, he wouldn’t even know Al-Qasim was there.’

‘O Almighty One, what have I done?’

‘Perhaps he ran away.’

‘They took him.’ He crumpled the letter into a tight ball and flung it against the wall. ‘They snatched Al-Qasim and burned the workshop, and I was not there to stop them.’

‘Who?’

‘I prayed it would not come to this.’ My master couldn’t see me, didn’t hear me. He beat his face with his hands, tore at his hair.

He paced from door to fireplace, knocked over the chair and then glared at it, as if it had somehow forced itself into his path. I followed him, murmuring the nothings you say when people are too shocked to make sense. At last I took his hands, tried to calm him.

‘You’ve done nothing wrong,’ I said.

He pushed me away. ‘I should never have left Amsterdam. They would not have dared —’

‘Who?’ I shouted it into his face.

He stopped his pacing for a second and stared at me as if he’d never seen me before in his life.

‘The Inquisition.’

My entire body became ice. I dropped his hands and he turned away, moaning.

‘But … Master,’ I whispered, not wanting to say the name out
loud, ‘there’s no Inquisition in Amsterdam, surely? They don’t even like Catholics there.’

‘They must be Spaniards,’ he said. ‘Italians. It doesn’t matter. Willem was right. The Inquisition goes wherever it wants; it is no respecter of international borders.’

‘That’s not what you said last week.’

‘I was only trying to steady your nerves.’

‘It might not be the Inquisition,’ I said. ‘You don’t know that. Perhaps it was just a gang of thieves. Perhaps they knocked over a lamp, and the fire spread, and Al-Qasim got out through the attic window and —’

He wasn’t listening. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘They follow you wherever you go, they hunt you down. They slip into the city at night. They bribe and blackmail. People will denounce you in order to save their own lives. The priests find you — they will always find you — and take you back to their own courts and put you on trial. They find out things under torture that you didn’t know yourself. You have no friends, no lawyers; no arguments will save you. Then, finally, the great trial, the auto de fé, where they pass sentence and pray for you to be forgiven sins you haven’t committed — then feed you to the flames before you have a chance to appeal.’

‘You don’t know that — it’s just rumours.’

He laughed, a weird, deep laugh that was almost a groan. ‘I know it only too well, Isabella.’

He bent down, picked up the chair from where it had crashed onto the floor, and lowered himself into it as if all the strength had gone from his body.

‘We lived in Córdoba — many years ago. My father was a map-maker, too. Did you know that? Just like Al-Qasim. He was working on a great map of the world, in all its glory. He had been
painting it for six years. Very intricate work, making maps. I have not the patience for it myself, but I loved to watch him. I was just a boy, then. For every inch of drawing there was a month, maybe more, of studying, research, talking to sailors and navigators, reading everything from the ancient Greeks to a captain’s mildewed sea journal. He was very particular, my father.’

I smiled to myself. Being particular ran in the family.

Master de Aquila went on. ‘One day, the Inquisition came to our door. They were strangely polite, waited in the hallway while my father packed a few clothes and books into a satchel. Then they took him away. We heard nothing for months. The Inquisitors came again to the house, once or twice, to go through his papers. They wouldn’t tell us anything. My mother cried, and they wouldn’t even speak to her.’

‘What did you do?’

‘What could we do? We prayed. We weren’t allowed to be Jewish, not in Spain. My father’s father had been forced to convert to Christianity. But the Inquisition said that we were still Jews underneath. That, at least, was the truth. We are always somewhere in between. That was my father’s crime. That, and making maps.

‘They announced there was to be a great auto de fé, where dozens of people were to be interrogated and tried for heresy. You could buy a ticket, and later go to watch them burn. A grand occasion, it was. People came from all over. There were minstrels and a supper afterwards.’

‘Did you see it?’ My voice faltered.

He shook his head. ‘A letter came — someone had smuggled it out from the prison for him. My father knew then that he would die. He sent me away, to Amsterdam, so that the Inquisition could
not find me. But they have found me now, it would seem, after all these years.’

‘They will not find you,’ I said.

I kneeled at his feet, as I had so often, and gazed up at his face. There were tears in his eyes.

‘I was a fool to think I had escaped,’ he said softly. ‘An old fool.’

‘Hush, now.’

‘I have sinned against the Church myself, as you know. I have printed books banned by the Pope. I thought Amsterdam was safe. But they have burned it all. Everything I own.’

‘Not all, Master,’ I said. I scrabbled on the floor for the scrunched-up letter and spread it out on my knee to read it again. ‘Paul says here that not everything burned. Oh …’ I hesitated.

‘Read it out,’ said Master de Aquila.

‘He says … he says he climbed through the window into your library to try to save your treasures …’

‘And?’

‘And they were gone. The cabinet of precious books. The Torah of Seville. They were stolen.’

‘At least those did not burn,’ he said. ‘No matter where they are, they still exist. That is something.’

‘We have
The Sum of All Knowledge
,’ I reminded him. ‘And the Hebrew Bible. We can go home to Amsterdam and start all over again, or stay here in Venice, just the three of us. The
signora
will give us work, I’m sure.’

‘How long will it be, do you think, before they seek me here?’ His voice trembled. ‘When did Paul write?’

I checked the date on the letter. ‘Five weeks ago.’

‘Men can ride faster than the mail carriages.’ He sighed. ‘In that case, they could already be here, in the city, tonight, looking for me.’

‘No, Master, surely not.’

‘I will not hide,’ he said, a sudden spark of resolution in his eyes. ‘I will not flee from them again.’ He slapped his hand hard against the arm of the chair. ‘Promise me this, child, if I am arrested —’

‘I won’t let anyone hurt you,’ I said confidently.

‘If I am taken,’ he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken, ‘promise me you will conceal the manuscripts. Bury
The Sum of All Knowledge
where no one can find it until I am dead. Perhaps, by then, one of my colleagues will be brave enough or stupid enough to print it.’

‘You worry too much,’ I said. ‘In the morning, we will make arrangements to return to Amsterdam, and then you will see that no one is chasing you, and Al-Qasim is alive and hiding in someone else’s attic.’

‘Isabella,’ he said, in the voice he used only when I wasn’t paying attention, ‘promise me what I ask of you.’

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I promise. And I also promise that I will not let any harm come to you.’

‘When you forget to be scared, Isabella, you are a formidable force.’ He touched my hand briefly, gently.

If only I had held onto it, then; if only I’d grasped his hand tightly and never let go.

‘Master,’ I said instead, ‘your father’s map …’

He stared at me, then nodded slowly. ‘Yes, Isabella, I carried it with me from Córdoba.’

‘Was it hidden in the attic with Al-Qasim?’

He closed his eyes. ‘That’s enough now. I’m weary. I need to think.’