Beyond the Ghetto Gates Page 10

  Entering the cool, shadowed tavern, he reached into his pockets for the few baiocchi he had left. Having returned to Ancona still unable to pay back his gambling debts, no one would let him try his luck, not at dice and not at cards. He had to depend on Francesca’s scarce egg and vegetable money, which was barely enough for a drink. Emilio looked around, hoping someone might stand him a few. But it wasn’t yet midday. Most of Ancona was hard at work. Just as he should be, setting up Francesca’s produce stand in the marketplace. He glowered at the idea. Emilio Marotti was no farmer or huckster. Let her do it.

  The sun blinded him, and he flung his good arm up to shield his eyes. Maybe someone would buy him a coffee at the café near the harbor. He kicked moodily at rocks on the roadway, not realizing that Cardinal Ranuzzi was on the footpath until they bumped into one another.

  “Emilio!” The cardinal raised his hands to grasp Emilio’s elbows. “Are you still home? I thought you’d be back at sea.”

  Emilio pulled away, hunching his shoulders. “I’m not completely healed yet, Your Excellency. And I’ve decided the merchant marine isn’t for me.”

  “Really?” The cardinal peered into Emilio’s disgruntled face. “How strange. Unless . . . is there a tale behind that decision?”

  Emilio squirmed. In the common way of things, the cardinal would not have bothered with him. But Desi had told Emilio about his latest sermons, rants about how the unfaithful were poisoning the pure air of their Catholic harbor town. The priest, Emilio knew, was more welcoming of late to the farmers and fishermen who sat in the cathedral’s back pews, downwind from the wealthier merchants and nobles.

  But what could Ranuzzi want from him?

  “Excuse me, Excellency, I’m on my way . . .”

  The cardinal laughed genially. “I won’t scold you for not coming to church, if that’s what concerns you, my son. I leave that to your conscience. After all, your wife . . .” He spread his hands expressively.

  Emilio laughed. “She attends enough for us both, doesn’t she?”

  “One can never be too devout, of course.” The cardinal shrugged. “But she’s not my concern right now. You are. Tell me why you’re not going back to the marine.”

  Emilio wanted to say it was none of his business, but this was a man of the cloth. You couldn’t just tell a priest to bugger off. “Well—the person who hurt my arm, a Jew, accused me of theft.”

  Ranuzzi nodded, heavy jowls swinging. “A Jew, eh? Then it’s true what Roberto told me. Let me buy you a coffee and you can tell me all about it.”

  His reluctance fading, Emilio let himself be led back toward the harborside café. Why turn down a free coffee? It would be a relief to tell someone—even this nosy priest—how badly he’d been used.

  “That’s the whole story,” Emilio said an hour later, pushing his chair back. The café table was covered in coffee cups and glasses of water, crumbs of sandwiches and pastry.

  “Wait.” Cardinal Ranuzzi leaned forward. “What will you do now?”

  Emilio shrugged. “Help Francesca with the farm, I suppose, until something better comes along.”

  “That tiny farm won’t get your father’s shop back. I’d be surprised if you can do more than live hand to mouth. No wonder you’re bitter.”

  Emilio glared. Was Ranuzzi mocking him? “What’s it to you?” he grunted.

  “I can help you overcome your ill fortune.” The cardinal straightened, concern written on his face. But then his expression turned blank. He moved back, murmuring, “Wait,” under his breath.

  “Cardinal!” A fashionably dressed, portly man stepped forward, a tricorne hat tilted rakishly over his forehead. “Well met, Excellency!”

  “Bertrando Bonaria.” The priest inclined his head. “Good morning, avvocato.”

  The lawyer bowed, then looked inquisitively at Emilio.

  “This is Signor Marotti, Francesca Marotti’s husband.” The cardinal suddenly looked amused. “You interviewed Signora Marotti while investigating the prodigious portrait, did you not? Father Candelabri told me you wished poor winds and ill favor upon this good man here, as proof against the Madonna’s authenticity.” He paused, staring suggestively at Emilio’s face, which blackened as he made sense of the cardinal’s ornate words. “As you can see, however, he landed without mishap.”

  “You’re Marotti?” Bonaria rumbled.

  “You wished me ill?” Emilio half rose from his seat, fists clenched. Ranuzzi put a hand out, stopping Emilio. “Gently, my friend,” he said. “It was a philosophical discussion, nothing more. Bonaria bears you no actual ill will. Do you, avvocato?”

  “Of course not, Excellency,” Bonaria hastened to agree. “I wish you both good day—and especially good fortune to you, signore.” He scuttled away as quickly as his heavy body allowed.

  The cardinal laughed quietly, templing his fingers. “Well, that proves what I suspected. You’re a man swift to act, are you not, Emilio?”

  “I won’t put up with slurs against me, if that’s what you mean. Or against my family.”

  “And what about your city? Do you care as much for Ancona as you do about your wife and children—about yourself?”

  Emilio couldn’t understand what the priest was getting at. Tired of whatever game he was playing, he started to stand once more. “Whatever you say, Excellency. I’m off.”

  “Wait!” The cardinal raised a hand. “Listen for a moment. I need men who’ll rise quickly to a challenge. You could be one of them.”

  Emilio’s brow furrowed. “What’s it pay?”

  “Not a salary—but in time, I promise you reward.”

  “What kind of reward?”

  “I can’t explain. You’d need to trust me. But enough to buy that shop you want.”

  Emilio tilted his head, considering. What could this priest have in mind? It sounded like loot of some kind. Emilio knew the church was riddled with crooked clergymen. But for a priest to openly sanction theft? Impossible. “Tell me more,” he finally said.

  Ranuzzi nodded, cautiously noting who was in the other café seats before continuing. “You know that the miracle of the Madonna brought many Christians back to the fold—not just here, but throughout Italy.”

  “So?” Emilio kept his face expressionless. Hell’s teeth, the priest wasn’t trying to drive him back to the faith after all, was he? He had more than enough of that at home.

  “The pope is reluctant to interpret the signs. But several of us realize the truth and aren’t afraid to act. The Madonna has signaled us to take up arms against the godless French—to do what we can to harass and harm them.” The cardinal leaned forward. “And not just the French. Also the Jews, who curry favor with the invaders by stockpiling arms to attack the honest Catholics of Ancona.”

  The cardinal kept his voice low. “You hate the Jews as much as I do. I remember when they refused your father more time on his loan. He lost his shop and your family never recovered. Now another Jew hurt your arm and had you thrown out of the merchant marine. No wonder you’ve no love for them. Join us and you’ll be well cared for.”

  “Join you? Who are you?”

  “We call ourselves the Catholic Fellowship, the guardians of the one true faith in Italy. We recognize that if we don’t protect ourselves, the French won’t hesitate to endanger our immortal souls by denying us our faith, just as they’ve imperiled their own Catholics.”

  “Guardians of the one true faith.” Emilio snorted. “And how are you guarding this faith?”

  The cardinal shifted even closer to him. “By being patriots. By troubling the enemy wherever we can.”

  Emilio pursed his lips. He might not be a devout Catholic—he left that to his eternally praying wife—but he certainly would like to chase the damn French from the country. And he wouldn’t mind getting even with the Jews, too.

  “The trick you tried to pull off against that Jew merchant—that’s just the type of thinking we need. Join us, Emilio, and I promise you won’t regret it. What do you sa
y?”

  Emilio met the cardinal’s extended grasp and shook firmly. “I’ll join you. And I won’t let you down.”

  15

  FEBRUARY 1, 1797 ANCONA

  Papa argued with Mama about wasting time, but in the end Mama prevailed, and the entire family went to the tailor for new spring clothes. The shop was a dark, quiet refuge in the middle of the busiest part of the ghetto. The tiny room at the front of the store couldn’t accommodate them all, so Jacopo and Mirelle mounted the steep wooden staircase to the second floor, where Balsamo the tailor lived with his wife, her sister, and his three young children. It was hard to imagine so many people fitting in the cramped room, yet it served Balsamo’s family as living, eating, and sleeping quarters.

  When Mama called for Jacopo, Mirelle came halfway down the stairs with him. Papa was standing in his shirtsleeves while the tailor took some final measurements.

  “Can you hurry?” Papa asked, fidgeting. “If I’m away too long, my men might slack off—and it’s our busiest season. You know what they say in Proverbs: ‘Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep and the idle soul shall suffer hunger.’”

  “Stay still, then. ‘A man cannot spin and reel at the same time,’” Balsamo countered. “That’s from Proverbs, too.”

  Smiling, Mirelle tucked that saying away for another time. “Say good-bye to me before you leave, Papa,” she called.

  Balsamo’s sister-in-law, Fresca, sat upstairs with them, carefully stitching a sleeve. Not wanting to disturb her, Mirelle wandered to the high window that looked out on Via Astagna. Kneeling on a window seat, she watched as dozens of people passed by—apprentices hurrying on errands, housewives with their shopping baskets, children rolling hoops on the cobbles. Two shopkeepers lounged in their shop doorways, laughing and talking. As she perched there, Mirelle drifted back into yet another daydream of her dance with the Frenchman in Venice. She’d tucked the memory away, like the secret he’d requested. She hadn’t wanted to share its sweetness with Dolce, but of course her friend had pried every detail out of her, sighing over its romance.

  The sound of footsteps running up the stairs made her turn and stand. Papa came into the room. “Mirelle, come give me a kiss good—”

  A burst of noise interrupted him. Shouting. A scream. Then another, piercing the morning air.

  They froze, confused, as the shouting grew louder.

  “ . . . all the Jews’ fault!”

  “Bonaparte will kill us all!”

  “The Jews brought the French here!”

  “Find the weapons they’ve hidden!”

  “Kill them! Kill the Jews!”

  Simone reached the window with three long strides. Heart pounding in her throat, Mirelle followed close behind.

  She gasped, horrified. On the pavement, where the young children had been playing, bodies sprawled flat in pools of blood. One boy cried for his mother, clutching a maimed hand. Fallen groceries rolled over the roadway into the gutters. A woman bent over a child, shielding him, as men beat her from behind with cudgels. One of the storekeepers slumped in his doorway, his hand holding a torn chest, a bloody knife on the doorstep beside him. The other was gone.

  “Kill the Jews!” The shout was clear now. “French lovers! Bonaparte sympathizers!”

  A piercing shriek rose from the floor below. Mirelle, transfixed and dizzy, recognized her mother’s scream.

  Papa jerked both her and Fresca away from the window. “A hiding place, signorina! Hurry!”

  Fresca flung open a tall cabinet in the back of the room, which held a large clothing press. Papa pushed Mirelle, face first, beneath it. She could just fit in the space between its elevated legs.

  “Stay there!” Papa demanded. “Don’t move!”

  The press stood directly on the floor. Mirelle put an eye to a knothole in the wooden slats and the room below swam into view. Her heart thumped with fear. Men on the first floor, three of them, beat Jacopo with staves, the thudding blows echoing. The tailor sagged against the wall, a trickle of blood running from mouth to chin, the top of his skull bashed in. Mama, dress torn, kneeled in a corner of the room, begging with the rioters to spare her son’s life.

  Mirelle heard a rushing in her ears. The scene beneath her blurred, growing distant.

  Her vision sharpened as her father burst into the room, wildly waving a fire iron. She gulped back a scream. Papa barely made it through the door before someone plunged a dagger in his stomach. Groaning, he staggered over to Jacopo, who was lying flat on the floor. Mama screamed again.

  One of the attackers grabbed her from behind. “Shut your Jew mouth!”

  The rasping of her own breath was loud in Mirelle’s ears. She tried to stifle the noise. Covering her mouth didn’t help. Time slowed; the dreadful world beneath her swerved out of focus. She bit her lip, tasting blood, hoping the pain would stop her from fainting. Jacopo and Papa lay lifeless on the floor. A hulking man pulled at Mama’s skirts. A shout from outside distracted him; he stopped what he was doing, pushed Mama to her knees, pulled a knife from his stocking top, and held it to her throat. She spat at him. He knocked her on her back and straddled her waist. One of Mama’s hands frantically pinned her skirts together, the other grabbed at the man’s blade. Blood ran from her palm down her arm. Mirelle willed herself not to cry out.

  “Let’s go!” someone called. “There are more Jews to kill!”

  The man on top of Mama jumped off, nicking her cheek with his knife. He slammed her ribs with his boot and she rolled into a ball, groaning. Then he and the other rioters stampeded from the tailor’s shop, knocking bolts of cloth to the floor as they went. One draped itself over Jacopo’s mutilated body.

  Mirelle, heart pounding, watched them leave. The cries from the street battered her ears. Should she go down? But Papa told her to stay.

  Then he was moving, groaning. Mama crawled to him and collapsed against his side. With a backward kick, Mirelle flung open the cabinet door and ran downstairs to them both.

  Hours later, after the rioters cleared the streets and the sounds of horror had changed to wails of pain and mourning, the Morpurgos’ servants appeared at the tailor’s shop with a cart. As they carried Mirelle’s father and mother out to it, Mama screamed at them, hysterically insisting that they take Jacopo’s body—but Mirelle’s dead brother was left behind.

  Mirelle stumbled alongside the cart. The walk was a blur. They passed the ghetto gates. They were closed, unusual for the middle of the day. A large chain and padlock were thrust through the ironwork. Dazed, Mirelle fixed her gaze on the heavy chains, staring as they passed. A chill stole up her back; something was wrong with the gate. Try as she did through her shock and fear, however, she couldn’t make herself understand what.

  A night later she sat up, thoughts of her brother assailing her. Her father lay in his bed, groaning in pain. Mirelle knew Mama sat next to him, her own injuries stubbornly untended. The night was pitch black, the air still thick with smoke from the fires that had been set throughout the ghetto—fires that rekindled in one corner even as they were extinguished in another.

  Mirelle, her eyes wide, was haunted by the vision of the lock and chain at the gate. She shook her head. What was different? Then she realized it. The padlock had been dangling on the ghetto side. The Jews had locked themselves behind the gates of the ghetto, preferring its imprisonment to the violent embrace of their Gentile neighbors.

  PART TWO

  FEBRUARY 1797

  16

  FEBRUARY 1, 1797

  They brought him home to Francesca with a gaping wound in his side.

  “What in the world happened?” she cried as the men placed him gingerly on the bed. “Emilio, what happened?”

  He grunted in pain, not answering.

  Desi, sooty forearms covered with blood, cried, “Send the girl for the doctor!”

  “Barbara!” Francesca screeched, wringing her hands. “Barbara, come here!”

  The girl peered in the doorway. “What happened?”
“Run!” Francesca shouted. “Get Doctor Poratti!”

  Her husband’s open wound was seeping blood onto the sheets and floor. “I’ll get some linen,” she said, voice trembling. “Roberto, can you haul some water up from the well?”

  She pulled a sheet from the clothespress at the bottom of the bed and started tearing it into strips. Roberto, whose face was splashed with blood and tears, hurried from the room. She heard him grunting as he turned the stubborn handle, winching up a bucket of water.

  As he hefted it inside, she seized the bucket, poured it into her soup cauldron, and swung the cauldron onto the fire. When it was hot, she dipped several of the fresh bandages in the water and brought them, still dripping, into the bedroom.

  Emilio tossed and turned, muttering with pain. Francesca bit her lip and began praying the first words that came to mind: “We bless You, Lord, who has heard our prayer and commanded deliverances for our friend and Your servant, who has been under Your afflicting hand . . . ”

  She took one of the soaking cloths and pressed it against the wound to stem the bleeding. The moment she grazed his skin, Emilio roared out.

  “May he not only live,” Francesca continued loudly, “but declare the works of the Lord!”

  “Shut up!” Emilio screamed, edging away from the compress. “Francesca, leave me be!”

  She reared back as though he had struck her. “Emilio, you need the Lord’s help to heal your wounds!”

  She held the cloth against his side again. He groaned as it blossomed with deep red stains. She let it drop in a wet heap on the floor, took up another, and pressed it tighter against the wound. He tried to push her away, but his hands were feeble. His lack of strength frightened her more than the bleeding gash.

  “Desi,” she said to the blacksmith, who leaned weakly against the wall. “Tell me what happened!”

  “It was the cursed Jews,” he started, but just then Barbara panted into the room, the doctor close behind.

  “Please step aside, Signora Marotti,” the doctor said, opening his black physician’s case. “Someone—Roberto—take her outside.”