The color-seller’s shop lies near the tanneries along the Zattere, with a view to the Giudecca beyond the canal. The stench along the canal-side is overwhelming, the result of the carcasses of beasts sacrificed for the skin trade. Piles of hides are stacked beside a stone warehouse slung low along the waterside. Here, there is no sign of Carnival revel or misbehavior; only backbreaking work that continues without ceasing.
Even though it takes everything in me to stand and clamber out of the boat without vomiting at the stench, it is a relief to wriggle from beneath the oppression of the boatman’s stare. I press my palm over my nose and mouth, hurrying past the skins stretched across the wooden racks where they are scraped of their hair and cured in the sun. I rush past the tanneries toward the shop where my father has always sought the best gesso and red bole.
My father has purchased raw materials from this particular vendecolore for as long as I can remember. He says he would not buy from anyone else, that the byproducts of these buffalo skins are the city’s best, that Signor da Segna’s materials impart a quality that accounts for the glistening of our gold that sets our work apart.
In the alley alongside the vendecolore’s shop I pass the giant wooden vats where a poor young assistant has been tasked with boiling the tissue from the animal hides being stretched between the wooden slats of the racks in the tanneries further down the quayside. The skinny young boy stirs a stick slowly in a large metal cauldron over a fire, his wiry hair sticking up and his face smudged with dirt as if he has been living in the woods.
When I cross the threshold, the baggy-eyed color-seller searches my face for recognition.
“I am Maria,” I explain, “daughter of Bartolini the gilder in Cannaregio.”
“Of course! Vieni, vieni!” he says, bustling his hefty frame around the counter to greet me. The buttons on his doublet seem as though they might burst, and his jowls hang in folds around his reddened nose.
Signor da Segna’s shop is deceivingly modest. Little more than a cave in an alley littered with shops and workspaces, its dark interior is overwhelmed by shelves stacked high with glass and ceramic jars with various concoctions, a cluttered apothecary of pigments. Other guildsmen have told my father that Signor da Segna’s pigments are known as far away as London and Constantinople. They say that painters from far across the sea seek out his concoctions, especially those made of lead, which is not allowed to be traded outside the control of Our Most Serene Republic.
“I was only surprised to see you here by yourself,” he says. “Normally you come with your father or his assistant.”
“My cousin.”
Signor da Segna clasps my hand in both of his. “Yes!” I feel the rough skin of his pudgy hand and see the coarse white whiskers on his jowl move with his smile. “But I hope this means that everyone is well?” he says, a concerned look in his bright blue eyes.
“Truthfully, missier, I do not know.” I slide my hand from his grip and place my woven sack on the rough wooden counter. The empty containers from the painter’s studio rattle on the knotted wood. “My father, my cousin, and our battiloro are still in our family studio, but unfortunately the pestilence has come to the quarter and they cannot leave. Nor can anyone else enter.”
The color-seller’s face falls, and he wipes his hand on his dirty breeches. “Yes,” he says hardly above a whisper. “I have heard of it, the ferries lined up to take people to the lazzaretti. God help them. But you are not there with them?” he asks, puzzled.
“My father has placed me—temporarily—in the workshop of Master Trevisan the painter. I am tasked with the gilding for a church commission at the Vergini and the painter is also teaching me to use the pigments.”
“Master Trevisan.” His eyebrows rise and he wags a finger at me. “Ah, you are fortunate indeed. One of our city’s best painters, if you ask me. I hear that he has done wonders with the paintings for the confraternity of the Misericordia,” he says.
“I would not know,” I say. “I am only beginning to understand. Truthfully I am doubtful that I will ever learn the colors. Anyway, I have come for some gesso as we are beginning a new altar for the sisters at the Vergini in preparation for gilding. I convinced the painter that your buffalo skin gesso is the best.”
Signor da Segna lets out a burst of laughter. “Your father has taught you well!” he declares. Signor da Segna puts a glass ring to his eye and pores over the rows of glass jars on the shelves. He pulls out a heavy jar and places it on the counter. With a wooden spatula, he spoons some gesso into my empty container. I watch the white material jiggle inside the jar.
“I must ask you,” I say. “I have seen a most beautiful gilded box in the painter’s studio. It has white figures on it, molded from tin molds. I do not know what they use.”
“Musk paste!” he exclaims without hesitation.
“Pasta di muschio?”
“It can only be,” he says, and runs his fingers along the shelves again until he selects another ceramic jar from the bottom shelf. “I have seen such boxes on terra firma. It is lead mixed with rice flour paste. We also add musk or civet to scent the boxes; the ladies like that.” He opens several sachets and puts them to my nose. “This one was developed to protect against the pestilence,” he says. “I can hardly keep up with the demand for it.”
I bring the sachet to my nose and inhale its pungent mixture of sharp scents that seem to make the hairs of my nostrils stand on end. For a moment, I had forgotten my unsteady stomach. The musk paste begins it rocking again, and I place it back on the counter.
“I have an arrangement with one of the spice merchants who brings things from the east on the merchant galleys,” he tells me, gesturing to the canal in view of his shop. “This one is a particular type of muschio,” he says. “It is concocted to help disinfect the air and to protect its owner from the pestilence. Some of my artisans are beginning to mix it with their materials.”
I crinkle my nose. “It smells like animal urine.”
Signor da Segna laughs as I fish out the coins that Master Trevisan has given me for the purchase.
“You are alone?” he asks.
“Master Trevisan’s boatman has brought me,” I say, glancing toward the door and dreading going back into the boat.
“Here,” he says, placing three sachets in my bag. “I will give you some. At a minimum you can hold it to your nose as you ride around the city,” he says. “At all costs we must ensure that you ward off the pestilence.”
I turn toward the door.
“Wait,” he says. “I have something else for you. I have just received this.” The vendecolore brings out a small book of golden-colored sheaves set between slivers of vellum. “It is sold in sheets much like the ones your battiloro prepares for you. It is not gold, but it is made of a certain alloy that is much less expensive.” I hold up the small book and consider the brassy-colored sheaves. It is clear to my eye that it is not pure gold, but would one untrained in the gilding arts be able to tell the difference?
“It looks like gold, but it is not,” I say.
The vendecolore points at me. “Intelligent as well as lovely.” He looks over the top of his glasses at me. “I am certain that you can see the advantages.”
On the way back to Master Trevisan’s house, I gather my courage to ask the boatman for a favor.
“Would you pass by the rio della Sensa?”
The boatman slows the movement of the oar. “A detour?” His eyes narrow into dark slits.
“My quarter,” I say. “Cannaregio. I have not been home in some weeks.”
“Ah,” he nods and raises his eyebrows. “I see. Well. Normally, signorina, there is a… surcharge… for such deviations.”
I do not respond, but instead cross my arms to see if an uncomfortable silence might prompt him to yield to my request.
“But,” he says, “it is not so often that I have a woman such as yourself in my boat. I will consider that payment enough—at least for today.” He makes an exaggerated bow and then his black eyes settle on mine. A shudder makes its way up the bones of my back, tingling and tickling beneath my linen undergarments.
The boatman realigns the oar into the lower notch on the oarlock, and turns the boat into one of the narrow cut-throughs that lead from the banks of the Zattere toward the Grand Canal. I turn my face to the wind.
For a while, I lose myself in the rushing sound of the craft creasing the still water. Billowing clouds and palace façades reflect in the canal waters, shimmering, wavering mirror images of life above the waterline.
Near the turn into the Grand Canal, a mask maker’s young son stands at a table on the quayside, stacking newly made black baute and more elaborate faceplates decorated with color. A group of a half-dozen young noblemen wearing the patterned stockings designating their neighborhood association stop to banter with the mask maker. Shards of their conversation float through the air—a joke about a woman, the price of the masks, a stick fight that is being organized on a bridge in San Polo.
The boatman makes another sharp turn northward toward my neighborhood. At the corner of the narrow waterway, a black gondolier is tying off a fine gondola to a mooring post. He smiles in recognition as we pass, and Trevisan’s boatman reaches out to clasp the other man’s hand in a brief greeting.
This short, wordless interaction seems an unspoken doorway from one world to the next. As we make our way down the narrow rivulet, the bustle of the Grand Canal and its Carnival preparations fall behind us. Ahead, there are no market-goers, no shopkeepers, no stocking-wearing young men. The boats along the quayside lie covered and still. The quieter the canal becomes, the more wildly my heart seems to beat in my chest.
When we finally turn into the confines of Cannaregio, I feel a deep pang—a mixture of anticipation, excitement, and trepidation—well up in my breast. Before I know it I am standing in the boat, planting my feet firmly to steady myself as I scan the familiar façades as they unfold along the canal-side. The canal should be full of barge captains selling vegetables and linens from the decks of their boats. Women should be rushing toward the Rialto markets for the ingredients of their midday meals. Instead, a vast silence hangs heavy in the still air. The stone quayside is devoid of life.
At last, we turn into the rio della Sensa and the first wooden barrier comes into view. The boatman stills his oar, seemingly struck as silent as the stone quaysides. We drift alongside the entrance to one of the alleys that snakes back into the tangle of streets surrounding my father’s house. What they have said is true. Men have erected a solid wooden barrier across the opening to the quarter, and a large black cross has been painted over it. A banner hanging above the cross announces the ban handed down by Our Most Excellent Prince.
Trapped. They are trapped behind the barrier. That is the only thing that fills my mind.
My father. My cousin. My Cristiano. If I worried before that I might not find a way to reach them, there is no longer any doubt.