Giacomo was overjoyed and puffed with pride at my news. As soon as the Lenten season ended he threw a large, lavish party in honor of the forthcoming birth of (he hoped) his son and heir.
The spring and summer that followed were wonderful: Giacomo saw to it that I had everything I could possibly need or desire—from fresh fish, fruits, and vegetables to pastries and even a new, softer coverlet for my bed—brought to me without question or delay.
As my belly grew and my time neared, I went out in public less, depriving my friends of my company on their excursions—something they lamented very loudly. But much as I missed accompanying them out, I had begun to anticipate the birth of my child with unabashed joy. This child would never be able to replace my Anna, but here was a chance to start again, and to have a son or daughter that would be mine to love, bring up, and care for as I saw fit.
We went to Giacomo’s villa for June and July, but returned in mid-August as my confinement drew nearer. And so I waited, without dread, only happiness, and perhaps a little impatience.
* * *
“A girl,” Giacomo said, trying and failing to hide his disappointment as he looked down at the squalling infant in my arms.
“But look at her,” I said testily, lifting her up. “Is she not beautiful?”
“Oh, beauty she has in abundance,” he said, displaying the first genuine smile I had seen since he entered the birthing chamber. “Just like her mother.”
I smiled.
“Still, she is a girl, so I cannot make her my heir.”
“I would love her no more if she were a boy,” I said defiantly. “I am going to call her Lucrezia, after my mother.” It was a statement, not a request. Her full name would be Lucrezia Giuseppina, but I chose to omit the second name for now.
“As you wish, my dear.” He moved to the door, then stopped and turned back to me. “This has only strengthened my resolve to beget a son,” he informed me. “We must continue our efforts as soon as possible.” He closed the door behind him with a decisive click.
I cringed but put our conversation out of my mind as I found myself alone with my daughter for the first time.
I do not know how long I spent marveling at her. She was perfect. As she drifted into sleep, a look of contentment came over her face, and I felt as if light shined down upon us from heaven itself, bright and warm.
And she was all mine. There was no one hovering at my bedside, ready to snatch her away. I would have a lifetime to watch every exquisite change that she went through, from babyhood to childhood to womanhood. And never, I vowed, would I let her father or anyone else sell her in marriage or lock her in a convent against her will. Her choices would be her own, and if she chose to marry, it would be for love.
She soon woke and began to wail. At the sound of her cry, the midwife appeared from the next room. “Let me take la bambina to the wet nurse,” she said, moving to take my daughter from my arms.
I shifted my body slightly, moving little Lucrezia out of her reach. “Certainly not,” I said, my voice coming out sharp. “I am her mother. I will nurse her myself.”
The midwife gasped in horror at such a flouting of convention. “But madonna, surely il senatore your husband would prefer—”
“These are women’s matters, signora, and not something over which my esteemed husband has dominion,” I told her. “I pray you send the wet nurse away with some coins for her trouble.”
And with that, Lucrezia latched onto my breast, and I blissfully allowed my eyes to drift halfway closed. I was wonderfully, completely happy.
* * *
Lucrezia’s cradle was placed in my room, so that I might tend to her during the night if need be—though a young maidservant by the name of Giovanna slept in the nursery adjoining my bedchamber, should I need assistance. Exhausted, I immediately fell into a deep sleep the night following her birth, only to awaken with a suffocating sense of urgency in the dark hours of the morning.
For a moment I thought Lucrezia’s crying must have woken me, but all was silent. Rising, I crossed the room to peer into her cradle. She was perfectly well, her chest rising and falling as her tiny lungs settled into their task.
Yet as though she could sense her mother nearby, she soon woke and began to fuss. I lifted her out of her cradle and sat in the chair beside it, tugging down the shoulder of my shift to offer her my breast. But Lucrezia was having none of it. I waved away Giovanna, who had stumbled sleepily into the room when she heard the baby’s cries. After unsuccessfully trying to persuade my daughter to feed, I checked her swaddling clothes, but they were dry, leaving me at a loss as to why she continued to wail.
I tried humming to her, a lullaby I vaguely remembered my mother singing to me. But that did nothing to calm her—small wonder, my vocal talents being quite nonexistent.
“Please, madonna.” I jumped, startled, when Giovanna slipped back into the room unnoticed. “You need to rest. Let me take the child.”
“No!” I insisted. “I will tend to her. Go back to bed.”
The timid Giovanna sighed but did as I commanded.
In my mind, it had become a test: only if I could find the source of Lucrezia’s distress and soothe it was I fit to be her mother.
Standing, I began to pace, hoping the movement would lull her back to sleep. In this, too, I was disappointed.
I placed her back in her cradle, hoping that she might fall asleep again if she were lying down. Still I did not meet with success.
I wrung my hands, almost frantic. Could she be ill? Should I send for a doctor? Was she in some sort of pain that I could not detect? Did infants simply cry for no reason?
Wait, I thought suddenly, maybe …
Kneeling down on the floor beside my bed, I reached underneath and pulled out the violin case that had sat there, untouched, since I had moved into the palazzo. Vivaldi’s violin.
Lucrezia’s cries faded into the background as I took the instrument out and beheld the polished wood, worn but still gleaming in the dim light. I ran my finger over the strings, listening to them hum. I reached for the bow, tightened it, and ran it slowly over two strings at a time, my fingers automatically moving to tune it. Then I played a long, glorious, drawn-out E, just to hear the music in the air, just to hear the instrument sing. A smile tugged at my lips.
I moved to the side of Lucrezia’s cradle, took a deep breath, and began to play.
Slowly and awkwardly, then more smoothly, the second movement, the largo, of Vivaldi’s A-minor concerto from L’estro armonico, came spilling from the strings. I had always suspected, hoped, he had written it as a love song for me. Now it became a different sort of love song, a lullaby for my baby. My fingers were stiff from lack of practice, and I stumbled over sections that I had forgotten, but it did not matter. Lucrezia’s crying slowed to a stop as I played, as though she were as transfixed by this piece of music as I had once been.
Once I reached the end of the movement, she was drifting off to sleep again. Afraid to stop for fear she would wake again, I quickly began to pick out my mother’s lullaby on the strings, smoothing it out, embellishing and rearranging as I went.
I do not know how long I played, but when I stopped Lucrezia was sleeping deeply once more. I lowered the instrument, my heart racing. The temptation to keep playing, to reach back into the memories I had walled off for any scrap of music—Vivaldi’s or my own—was almost more than I could bear. Yet I did not want to reach for too much all at once. What if the magic that had returned to me so briefly should disappear if I chased after it too eagerly?
So I put the violin back in its case, returning it to its spot beneath the bed. There would be time enough to rediscover what I had lost. And suddenly I could no longer remember what it was that I had been so afraid of.