The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi (34 page)

Footsteps again.

A boy’s voice. “I brought it fresh from the cow’s ass just as you ordered, sir. She plopped it right onto the dish for me, obliging as you please. See, it is still steaming.”

“Good, good.”

I brought my hand to my eyelid and lifted it to get a peek at Portaleone’s remedy. As I did so, a most noxious odor filled my nostrils. The smell of ordure.

“No. No.” A cry managed to make its way through my swollen lips.

“Quiet girl. I am going to draw the poison out of those punctures.” I felt his hands grasp my hair and pull it back. Then, the heat and stench of the stuff on my forehead.

Where does strength come from? As often from fear as from courage, I wager. I grasped the quilt and, with all the force in me, threw it over his head. In the confusion, I staggered off the bed and, naked as I was, fled down the staircase.

“Catch her, boy! Catch her!” Behind me I heard Portaleone and his boy clattering down the stairs, hot in pursuit.

It certainly was not forethought that led me to seek refuge in the dining hall but more like pure accident — or fate, if you please. I was well into the room before my half-blinded eyes even recognized the familiar trestle table with all the
famiglia
arrayed along its length. In the center, my father, looking down at me like Jehovah. And beside him . . . a face I knew . . . with deep-set, compassionate eyes and a full, generous mouth. It was to that forgiving presence and not to my father’s frightened eyes that I appealed by throwing myself at his feet with a plea of, “Save me, Maestro del Medigo!”

Such a caterwaul as then went up you cannot imagine. Portaleone and his boy arrived shouting and Dorotea went into a screaming tantrum which, in turn, gave rise to name-calling and even fisticuffs, for my brothers were always ready to defend me. My father’s main concern seemed to be to cover my nakedness, which he accomplished by pulling the cloth rudely off the table and rushing around to wrap me in it.

In all that gathering only one person demonstrated concern for my well-being. Rising to his full stature, he came around the table and, pushing my father aside with a brusque “By your leave, sir,” gathered me up and carried me through that squealing mob, brushing them away like so many gnats. When we gained the
cortile
he laid me very carefully upon a bench and, drawing up a bucket of water, proceeded to wash the filth off my face, using for a rag a piece of his fine embroidered
camicia
, which he tore off as if it were an old piece of linen towel.

Now, Portaleone staggered out of the dining room all puffed up and spitting. “Whoever you are, sir, I warn you that this girl is my patient.”

In the commotion he must not have caught sight of Judah’s face. But the moment he did, all the puff went out of him and he began to gibber. “Forgive me, Maestro Leone. I did not recognize you. The girl had an encounter with bees. I was about to apply a poultice of cow ordure.”

“A tried and trusted remedy, maestro,” Judah replied in his most gracious manner. “And the very one I myself would have chosen up until a few months ago. But I have recently concocted an unguent for such emergencies and used it with success on a
bravo
or two in the Borgia circle. By good fortune there is a vial in my bag.”

The name of the papal family acted upon Maestro Portaleone more efficaciously than an emetic. His rage voided, he immediately took on a tone of placation.

“Do you wish my boy to fetch your case, honored sir?” he sniveled, in what he doubtless took to be a courtly manner.

“He will find it under the chair in the center of the table where I was sitting,” Judah replied graciously, showing no sign of impatience or disrespect. Then he turned to the boy. “It is black leather. With my initials stamped on it. J. del M.”

“This gentleman is the eminent physician and philosopher Leone del Medigo, boy,” his master instructed him. “Bow to him at once.” Which the boy did. At once.

“Look for the initials J. del M.,” Judah repeated for the boy’s benefit. Then to Portaleone he added, “The Christians may choose to call me Leone for their own ignorant reasons but I never refer to myself except by my Hebrew name, Judah. They must take me as what I am or not at all. It is the only policy to pursue with these Christian baptizers. Do you not agree, maestro?”

During this dialogue he never for a moment ceased his gentle cleansing of my wounds, and with each soft stroke my pain lessened.

Portaleone’s wounded pride had been assuaged. Now Dorotea made her entrance, dragging my father behind her. “I want that girl punished. Punished. We have been humiliated once again, mortified before our honored guest. Oh, Maestro Leone, I beg your indulgence.”

“No indulgence necessary, signora.” Judah did not even deign to look at her as he spoke. “This girl is wounded. I am a physician. My duty is clear. Unless you, sir . . .” He turned his gaze on Papa and added sternly, “Unless you object to my ministrations.”

The idea of anyone objecting to the attentions of Maestro Leone was too absurd to consider.

“Now then, I wish to have brought to me a bowl of warmed water, straight from the well, and some fresh rose petals — a good handful,” he instructed Dorotea. “And a few drops of sweet oil. Do you have that in your housewife’s cabinet?”

“Yes, Maestro Leone,” replied a newly compliant Dorotea.

“Very good. Have it brought upstairs together with clean linen. The good physician Portaleone will assist me so the rest of you can get back to your dinner.”

“But what of
your
dinner, maestro? I have prepared a beautiful pie with special birds brought from the Bosco Fontana.” Dorotea literally wrung her hands in her distress.

“I will dine with my patient when the treatment is over,” Judah announced. “Plain broth. A pasta with good cheese. And a ripe melon. If one is not to be had, a few figs chopped fine and soaked in wine and sugar. Can that be prepared in your kitchen, madonna?”

Oh, how she must have hated me at that moment. I had interrupted her dinner, stolen away her celebrated guest, and now she was being ordered around like a publican. But Judah’s authority being what it was, she dared not express her rage. She simply curtsied and went to the kitchen to transmit Judah’s orders while he lifted me like a baby and carried me up to a clean bed.

The treatment, like many of Judah’s treatments, was simple but exceedingly painstaking. When he had settled me down, he explained what he was about to do. First, he would remove the stingers one by one with a fine needle and apply a special unguent to the punctures to relieve my distress and to close up the little wounds.

“It will take time and it will hurt some,” he warned. “But not more than you can bear, I promise.”

He took from his bag a strange-looking piece of glass, framed in silver. It would magnify the wounds and help him to guide his needle, he told me. Then he went about his work, with me peering up at him from between my swollen eyelids. It was difficult and somewhat painful to open them, but the look in his eyes — those deep-set orbs of weariness, wisdom, and pity — was something I could not get enough of.

Occasionally the needle refused to do its work. When that happened, he would lay it aside, lean down, place his warm lips over the puncture, and suck the stinger out with his own breath.

I found myself imagining that those kind eyes and that soft mouth were the eyes and mouth of my father and that he was the one caring for me, not the great physician. But this man was not my papa much as I might wish it so. This man was a stranger. How fortunate his children were, I remember thinking, to have such a man for a father.

When the treatment was done dinner was brought. Judah fed me the soup himself, spoonful by spoonful with a smallish silver spoon he took from his bag. And then while I munched on the soft melon he had requested, we talked. To be accurate, he talked. He was in Mantova, he explained, at the invitation of the young Marchesana, who had requested him not for his talents as a physician but as a scholar.

“She has a manuscript half Hebrew, half Greek, called
The Sanidrin
, which she believes to be very ancient, and she wishes me to verify it since she herself is not at home in Hebrew.”

“But you are, sir?”

“I was born in Greece and studied the ancient tongue as a child. Then in Padova the Latinists trained me in Latin and the rabbis in Hebrew,” he answered. “Aramaic, I taught myself. And I do not know a word of French. Now why does that make you look sad?”

“Oh, I am not —” I stopped myself in the midst of the lie. He who had been so candid with me deserved the courtesy of a truthful reply. “I am envious, sir, of your opportunities and of your accomplishments. It is my heart’s desire to master these tongues that you speak of and to unlock the mysteries that I know reside in the great books.”

“Not to mention the delights,” he added.

“Those too,” I admitted. “But I do have enough Latin to read Virgil and” — here, I bent to whisper the forbidden tongue — “a little French, which I taught myself.”

“You
are
a wicked girl,” he remarked, and it took a moment for me to note the twinkle in his eyes that gave away the rebuke as a jest.

Made bold by his good humor, I ventured to ask, “If you do stay here to study the Marchesana’s manuscript, would you . . .” I felt bolder saying it than I had riding atop the elephant or during any of my less admirable exploits. “Would you teach me, sir? I do so long to learn.”

His reply was not encouraging. Much as he would have enjoyed tutoring such an eager mind, he said, his work on the manuscript was almost finished. All that remained was to inform his client that her document was spurious and that there was no record of any Hebrew text named
The Sanidrin
. Even now he was making preparations to journey to Firenze, where he had been appointed a member of the Platonic Academy by the son of the late and most lamented Lorenzo dei Medici, known as
il magnifico
.

“When the magnificent Lorenzo died, his son Piero dissolved the Platonic Academy,” he explained. “But now Piero has had second thoughts and is about to reconstitute the charmed circle in an effort to emulate his revered father.

“Firenze is a place where I have been very happy,” he added, speaking to me all the while as if to an equal and not being in any way condescending. “Besides, after the Medici, I find the Gonzagas more than a little . . .”

“Whimsical?” I inquired as he searched for a word. “Changeable? False?”

“Exactly,” he agreed, smiling. “But then you know them at first hand, I hear.”

“My true feeling, sir, is that they are a pack of pigs and whores wallowing in
lusso
and ready to sell themselves to the first corner with a handful of ducats in his pocket.”

“They have disappointed you, then?” he asked lightly.

That mild question unleashed a flood that carried everything with it, facts, fantasies, and feelings, all in a rush — my infatuation with Lord Pirro, my betrayal by him and Madonna Isabella, the
casa dei catecumeni
, Careruccia, the chess set, the Game of Ships, every detail except one. What caused me to lower the veil over the Bosco Fontana? Modesty? Shame? Or was it a subtle transformation of my feelings for the listener? As I led him pell-mell through my life and felt the warmth of his gaze and the soft pressure of his hand on my arm, he slowly became more and more a man to me and less a god. And I became less a child and more a woman with a woman’s jealousy of her heart’s secrets.

23

T
hree days were all it took for Judah to cure me of the ill effects of my misadventure at the Gonzaga stud. The day after he extracted the stingers, he returned with a little pot of stuff to soothe and hide the blemishes as they healed. The day after that he came again to roust me out of bed and escort me on a stroll to the Pusterla Gate. A walk in the fresh air was the treatment that day — nothing more.

“Invalids make their own diseases,” he explained as he conducted me homeward. “Bedsores, swellings, blood clots, and wheezing all come from recuperating in a prone position.” When he repeated this to Dorotea, she was not impressed.

The following day he examined my little wounds with extreme care and announced me beyond his powers to help, since I was cured. The good news made me unaccountably sad, which I chose to attribute to fear of the punishment I was sure to suffer now that I was well enough to bear it.

As if to confirm my fears, the afternoon of the day I was pronounced well, I received an instruction to wait upon my father in his
studiolo
.

“Grazia . . . my dear little Grazia . . . I have been searching for you all the afternoon. Come in. Come in.”

Too astonished by this reception even to think, I stepped in obediently and stood before him.

“Sit down,” he invited me with a smile. A smile. Almost as if he approved of me. “Now then, tell me, what are your thoughts about marriage?”

“Marriage?”

“Marriage.”

“Well I . . . I understand, honored padre, that I must banish all such thoughts from my mind since I have disgraced myself much too far ever to hope for —”