Beyond the Ghetto Gates Page 11

  Emilio’s cousin seized her arm to lead her to the yard.

  “There’s water boiling on the fire, Dottore,” she said over her shoulder.

  “You’re a good wife, my dear. Take the girl, too, would you, Roberto? Desi, you stay. I may need you to hold him down.”

  The baby began to wail. Francesca slipped from Roberto’s grasp and went into the children’s room. She sat down on the rocking chair and put him on her breast. “Help me, Lady,” she whispered, thinking of the peace she’d felt every time the Madonna rested her gaze upon her in the cathedral.

  “Mama?” Barbara stood at the foot of the chair. “What happened?” Calm, calm, Francesca told herself. “I don’t know, Barbara. We’ll find out soon.”

  Emilio’s free-flowing curses in the next room made her stiffen. She took another deep breath.

  Little Mario’s cries rose to meet his father’s. Francesca gathered the baby up and took him out into the cold air, rocking him against her. He settled down, whimpering.

  Roberto was slumped on the bench under the magnolia tree. Francesca sat beside him. “Roberto, if someone doesn’t tell me what happened, I’ll go mad.”

  The boy—he was still a boy, even if he’d recently sprouted dark hair on his chin and under his nose—looked at her with wide, tragic eyes. “It was horrible,” he muttered. “Horrible.”

  “Horrible? What was horrible?”

  Another earth-shattering cry came from the cottage, followed by a whimper of such pitiful intensity that Francesca half rose.

  Desi emerged, face white under the dirt. “The doctor is giving him syrup of poppies now that he’s tended to the wound.”

  A moment later, the doctor came out. “Don’t disturb him,” he instructed Francesca. “Sleep is his best remedy right now. I’ll return in the morning to change the bandage. Don’t touch it! It may seep a little, but unless you see a river of blood, he’s fine. I know you, Francesca, you won’t panic at some red spotting. Don’t send for me unless he spikes a fever. I can’t tell who else was foolish enough to get hurt in this idiotic brawl. I’ve already been called for in a dozen places.”

  “You might want to stop at the cathedral first, Dottore,” Desi said. “The cardinal . . . ”

  “Of course our blessed man of peace is the first to strike a blow.” The doctor shook his head. “Fools, all of you—you and your so-called Catholic Fellowship.” With that, he stuck his hat on his head and strode away.

  For two full days, Emilio slept, waking only fitfully to sip barley water and swallow a few mouthfuls of food. Francesca was too busy to pay attention to the gossip that floated up from the harbor and marketplace.

  On the third day, he’d recovered enough to tell her his side of the story.

  “They’re saying people were killed in the riots,” she said. She didn’t want to ask, but she needed to know. Breathing deeply, she added, “Children, too. Tell me you didn’t kill anyone.”

  Emilio shrugged. “The cardinal planned it, told us where to go. He sent me and the boys to the tailor’s shop. Gave us absolution beforehand, said whatever we did was for Christ’s sake.”

  Francesca cringed.

  He put a hand on his wound and grimaced. “It still hurts. Fucking hell. The cardinal told us what to do. So what if we hurried a few Jews to burn in hellfire forever? They were heading there anyway.” He scowled. “After the tailor’s, we moved on. I knew where I wanted to go: the house of the richest Jew in the ghetto. You should see this villa!” He stopped and cleared his throat. “Are you sure the doctor said I can’t have anything to drink? Not even some wine in water?”

  “He said no. You risk infection.”

  “Damned doctor. Hurt me worse than the bastard who stabbed me. Worse even than when I cut my hand in Venice. Bring me some of that disgusting barley water, then.”

  Francesca hurried to the kitchen and came out with a pitcher and a cup. She poured him the drink, then sat back down. She had to hear the rest, had to know.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “Like I said, you should have seen this place. How a Jew is allowed to live this way . . .” He shook his head in disbelief. “It was like a noble’s house, crammed with statues and paintings. Rich trinkets scattered about. No sign of the family, so I started scooping up my share when a man suddenly burst in yelling. A whole gang of servants were right behind, all armed. The cardinal told us the Jews were hoarding arms to help the invading Frenchies, and when they came in waving those swords, I knew he was right. They’re traitors, I tell you. They deserved everything we gave them.” He took another swig of barley water. “Every single one of them had a sword. But had no idea how to use them. I couldn’t help myself. Laughed. Shouldn’t have. The first man—the rich Jew himself, I wager, he was certainly dressed rich enough—slashed my side. I fell. If the others hadn’t crowded around me, pushed him back, he would have killed me. Worse luck, I had to leave all the loot—and so did Desi and Roberto, to help me home. Bastards.” He cursed. “The Fellowship will make it up to us, though.”

  “The Fellowship?” Francesca twisted her hands in her lap. “Is this what you’ve been up to, all those nights I thought you were doing good works? Planning an attack on the Jews?”

  “On the Jews and the French. The French are almost here, Francesca. Someone must stop them. Your Mary painting hasn’t kept them from conquering city after city, has it? They’re on their way here—with the Jews in league, plotting to help them seize Ancona.”

  “How dare you say anything about Our Lady?” she burst out. “How do we know why she looks down upon us? Who are you to say she has failed?”

  Emilio’s eyes were alight with malice. “Cardinal Ranuzzi says she’s encouraging us to take up arms. That’s why he organized the Catholic Fellowship. Not to sit around and fret, not to cower behind the walls of our church—but to do good works, real good works, the kind they erect statues for, write songs about. Patriotic works. Don’t forget, Francesca, we have a cardinal on our side. He must know better what your Lady wants than you do. He’s a prince of the Church, isn’t he? And you’re just some peasant woman.”

  Francesca turned away, body shaking. Throwing a shawl over her shoulders, she left the house and went out to her small backyard altar. There, she lowered herself to her knees, hands clasped before her in prayer, and burst into tears.

  17

  FEBRUARY 3

  The attack changed everything. The ball in Venice seemed to have happened in another lifetime; its dreamlike quality and Mirelle’s subsequent romantic fantasies were tainted by the nightmare she was now living. For the past two days, she’d sat on a wooden box in the middle of her parents’ drawing room, mirrors concealed by black velvet, a sideboard covered with loaves of bread and cake, olives and oranges. Mama wouldn’t leave her wounded husband, so Mirelle welcomed the parade of well-wishers alone. She pushed away the memories of violence that threatened to overwhelm her, accepting the pats and kisses and whispered prayers that were all the Jewish community of Ancona had to offer.

  Everyone paid their respects: the rabbi, her neighbors, the two Morpurgo brothers. Dolce came early and left late each day. The men from the workshop stood awkwardly, pushing their wives forward to say what they could not. Mirelle endured the prayers for mourning in her mother’s old black silk dress, which was now ripped open at the neck—a tear inflicted upon her by the rabbi’s wife as a symbol of grief while they lowered her brother into the ground. Mama refused to stir from Papa’s side, even for the funeral. So Mirelle stood solitary, feeling alone in the world, convinced that nothing would ever feel whole again.

  As she satshiva—the week-long observance of mourning—she was flooded by memories of her brother. She remembered him as a baby, taking his first steps from Mama’s arms to hers. How his face had lit up when she’d kissed his chubby cheeks. How Papa had given him a bundle of candy the first day of school, telling him that his study of Torah should always be sweet. How proud both parents had been of his talent for art a
nd his progress in the ketubah workshop. How she’d miss his off-key singing at the Shabbat table, their tussle over the largest piece of Mama’s pastry, his teasing about the still-unknown man she’d eventually call husband.

  During the second day of shiva, Signor Morpurgo explained how he and his servants had defended his home. “They were taking what they could, destroying the rest,” he told a rapt audience. “But we scared them off. It’s amazing what you can do when forced to it. Imagine me, wielding a sword!”

  Rabbi Fano grunted, his thin mouth pursed disapprovingly. “I hear you actually wounded one. If he had threatened your life, perhaps you would have been justified. But in defense of mere property?”

  Morpurgo glared. “And after they took my property? Do you think they’d have hesitated to kill us? Are we not here, mourning one of our own?”

  “What would you have us do, Rabbi, if they attack again?” asked a neighbor. “Cower and hide, rather than fight?”

  The rabbi grimaced. “In a moment, you’ll quote ‘an eye for an eye,’ or some other Biblical verse endorsing violence. But have not generations of scholarship taught us better? I ask again: Should we not abstain from killing for mere property?”

  Dolce, sitting up stiffly, retorted, “With all due respect, Rabbi, my father works very hard for that ‘mere property.’”

  Rabbi Fano shook his head, his long gray hair brushing his narrow shoulders. “Surely, David, your daughter doesn’t mean to be so bold, so unmaidenly. She should remember her place.”

  Mirelle stared at her friend. How did Dolce feel, being called unmaidenly by the rabbi before everyone? Did it sting her the way Mirelle’s banishment from the workshop still stung her?

  Dolce took a long, shuddering breath before replying, “No wonder adherents of the Enlightenment abhor religion, Rabbi. Why should I curb my tongue when I disagree with you?”

  “Dolce,” her father cautioned her. “Show some respect.” “Am I entitled to less respect than he?” she flashed. “I will be happy to show the same level of respect I’m shown.”

  Affronted, the rabbi bowed. Though she agreed with Dolce, Mirelle wished her friend had kept her opinions to herself. Her brother’s shiva was not the place for such disagreements. She put a hand up to her throbbing temples.

  Signor Morpurgo was watching her closely. “Let’s change the subject,” he said quietly.

  “What will happen when the French get here?” someone asked, and conversation shifted to General Bonaparte’s campaign. Half-admiring, half-fearful, they spoke of how he’d cut a swath through Italy before arriving at the gates of Mantua and forcing the city to surrender. The French were heading inexorably toward Ancona, and it seemed only a matter of time before the city fell.

  For the past two nights she’d sat up, propping her eyelids open, afraid to sleep. Fearing the dreams that visited when her hands dropped and her heavy lids fell shut. Nightmares suffused with the copper taste of blood, the suffocating smell of fire and smoke, the terrifying touch of men’s hands crawling over her skin. Her parents dead. Via Astagna deserted, buried in fog. Even during the day she kept her breathing shallow, fearful that her sorrow might burst forth from her tightly laced corset.

  On Saturday morning, Mirelle woke to the sound of cannon fire outside the city gates. Despite her anxiety that the French could strike Ancona any moment, she realized she needed a respite. The urge to escape the ghetto that held the Jews fast, like unwitting flies in a spider’s web, was too strong to resist. Today she was prohibited from sitting shiva, mourning superseded by the holy Shabbat. No one would be surprised if they stepped through the half-open door and found her away from home.

  When she’d returned from Venice, she’d made Jacopo show her the gap in the walled street he and his friends had talked about. Then she’d kept on finding ways to delay him from sneaking out.

  Her heart ached, remembering how she’d stopped him. Eventually he would have overruled her; his desire to escape had been too strong. It was one of many life’s ambitions he’d never realize now.

  You had to be young and slender to fit through the fissure. Christians avoided the alleyway because of the tanner’s shop that sat at one end. A permanent stench—of urine and dung and rotting animal hides—sat in the alleyway, and when the wind blew from the east, it crept into the ghetto, causing the Jews on that poorest of side streets to flinch behind their handkerchiefs.

  Drawing near the gap, Mirelle looked to all sides. She heard the faint chanting of Shabbat services in the synagogue up the street—the rising sound of the pious, a sound that drifted off in the wind as she strode toward the crack in the wall.

  She wrapped the ends of a black shawl around her, the damp February wind whipping at her dark dress. Her curls threatened to tumble from the cloth hat tied tightly beneath her chin. She took the ends of her ribbons, tied them over the brim of her hat, and folded her body nearly double. Heavy stones scratched her shoulders as she squeezed through, but in a moment, she was outside the gates.

  Heart pounding, she made her way out of the city toward the promontory where the Jewish cemetery sat. Without her Star of David armband and yellow kerchief, both deliberately left behind, no one would ever be able to tell she was Jewish.

  Within minutes, she had climbed the steep hill and was standing just outside the graveyard, on a shallow rock that commanded a view of the gleaming turquoise harbor far below. She entered and made her way to the new burial plots dug in the attack’s aftermath. Staring at her brother’s grave, she hoped the wind would sweep away the heaviness in her heart.

  She knew she should not be here. Not on the Shabbat, when shiva was forbidden. Not outside the still-locked gates of the ghetto, which were all that stood between her and the mob that had killed her brother. Especially not now, when the French troops were rumored to be camped just beyond the city, fresh from their victory at Mantua. Not when any moment could bring more terror and blood.

  But something drew her to this little patch of earth overlooking the city, begrudgingly given to the Jewish community generations ago when it became clear that the narrow ghetto alleyways could not house the dead along with the living.

  The white pillar gravestones with their curved tops glowed in the thin winter gloom. Pelted by light rain, Mirelle fixed her eyes on the fresh mound of dirt that contained her brother’s remains.

  “Jacopo . . . marmocchio,” she whispered, somehow hoping the familiar taunt would restore him to life. It was unimaginable that she would never see him again.

  The enormity of what her family had lost assailed her. The family legacy, the next generation of artists, the very workshop itself—all slaughtered together with her young brother. A knot tightened in her chest. The air seemed too thin to breathe.

  She thought of her parents—how her mother had doted on Jacopo, the light in her eyes as she’d watched her only son study his lessons or peered down at him from the synagogue balcony every Shabbat. She thought of her father’s pride in the boy’s work—how he’d been growing into the best artist in the workshop, how Papa’s talents had reflected themselves in him. How happy he’d made the both of them. Tears streamed from her eyes.

  Jacopo was dead, and the workshop would die with him.

  No. She rested a hand on the grave. She was no artist, it was true—no craftsman. She had none of her father’s talents. And she was not a man—not a suitable heir to the family business. But it was still her family business, her heritage. She recalled Narducci’s tale of her grandfather nearly bankrupting the manufactory, and the whisper of a smile came to her lips. A whisper of defiance.

  She could preserve her family’s legacy—and she would.

  Tears rose, and she swore a vow to the mound of earth before her: “I’ll take care of everything, Jacopo—Mama, Papa, the workshop. I promise.”

  She stood for a few more minutes, waiting for some peace to descend on her soul. Instead, tears spilled down her cheeks, her breath caught in her throat. She cried until she could barely bre
athe. Nothing helped. Her well-wishers had all told her that time would heal the wound, but she couldn’t imagine a time when she wouldn’t grieve.

  Just as she was about to succumb again to her despair, she remembered her parents at home. Had they noticed that she was away? Were they frightened for her safety?

  “I’ll take care of them, Jacopo,” she repeated. Then, not bothering to wipe away her tears, she headed home.

  18

  FEBRUARY 6 ANCONA

  The weather turned rainy and a perpetual pall hung over the camp. Daniel couldn’t dry his socks or his trouser legs, which stuck to his ankles and legs like seaweed. Even the dustiest of mountain trails is better than this, he thought, peeling the clammy cloth off his thighs.

  A year in the Army of Italy had hardened him. His once-slender arms and chest were now crisscrossed with muscles that flexed as he effortlessly carried a heavy pack and musket over miles of rocky terrain. His legs, too, were thick as cables, testing the seams of his narrow trouser legs.

  The troops had camped outside Ancona for nearly a week. A rumor had threaded its way through the ranks: the general preferred to wait out any resistance rather than engage insurgents who’d stockpiled arms inside the city gates. It reminded Daniel of the early months of the campaign, when all they’d done was wait. The only difference now was that Christophe was obsessed with the young woman who’d saved them in Venice.

  “We need to go back,” he told Daniel. “I was a fool, not asking her name. How will I ever find her again?”

  “Perhaps you won’t.” Daniel smiled, waiting for his friend’s inevitable outburst.

  “I must! This was fate, Daniel. I can’t stop thinking about her—about her lovely face, the way she was so brave, helping us escape!”

  In the months since Milan, the French forces had struck the Austrians again and again like lightning. Daniel couldn’t help but admire Bonaparte’s sheer nerve and rock-solid resolve. Napoleon spread his armies thin and marched them hard—thirty, forty miles a day. Then he brought them back together, always attacking the Austrian lines where least expected.