“Signor Grissoni’s father is a well-respected guildsman.”
The painter’s wife bounces her baby girl on her lap. In recent days Donata has been spending more time inside the painter’s workshop, pacing the room with the baby in her arms, flitting about with a feather duster, or making small adjustments to the arrangement of paintbrushes on the table. “And his mother,” she says, “came from a highborn family in San Polo.”
“Mostly he is talented with the pigments,” says the painter, looking up at his wife from one of the sketchbooks where he has collected pages of drawings of my hair, my face, my hands, long before I realized he was doing so. The painter has turned to a fresh page and is working through the arrangement of figures composing a Lamentation. My eye goes immediately to the figure of Mary Magdalene, which he has begun to sketch over and over in his book.
“I am sure that is true, though I have never seen his work,” his wife says. “But owing to his family pedigree anyone would be fortunate to be allied with him.”
I say nothing, not knowing how to respond. It is clear now that the appearance of Pascal Grissoni at our dinner table had little to do with painting, and mostly to do with the seeming need for me to wed, with arrangements that are being made for me outside of my own view. A marriage with Pascal Grissoni or any other painter is the last thing on my mind. I cannot begin to imagine what any husband would say about my condition.
I turn my focus to the small scrap panel where I have been practicing painting drapery folds with various tones of red. Master Trevisan follows my gaze, then comes to stand so that he can look over my shoulder. In the beating silence, he watches my hand move slowly and awkwardly with the brush.
“Hmm,” he says, pressing his fist to his mouth as if to prevent himself from blurting a comment. “Allow me.” I hand him the paintbrush. He picks up a small bead of amber-colored pigment, then traces a fine line along the edge of one of the drapery folds I have begun to form. “Do you see how this highlights the edge of the umber?”
The truth is, I do not see. I simply nod. “Yes,” I say. “Grazie.”
He puts the brush back in my hand. I try to replicate what he has just shown me. The painter nods, then presses his hand over my own in order to direct my brushstroke. I feel his warm breath at my neck, and smell a hint of perspiration over the egg-like scent of the pigment binder.
“You will master it, I assure you,” the painter tells me. “We have at least a year to get it right.” He raises his eyebrows at me and grins. “Fortunate for us. Am I right, Donata?”
“Yes,” the painter’s wife says, and her lips spread out to a thin-lipped smile that looks pained. “Fortunata.”
“Bring me the red ink wash,” says the painter to his journeyman before returning to his sketchbook.
Stefano rises from where he is seated in the corner, stabbing green on some trees in the background of a picture of the Madonna and Child that the painter has told me that they are preparing for the confraternity of drapers. As he passes the canal-side door, the brass bell outside of it jingles.
“Signor Baldi,” the journeyman says, opening the door. In the frame of the doorway I recognize a familiar face and feel my heart lighten.
“Baldi!” the painter smiles. “You are a welcome sight.”
Signor Baldi, a carpenter from my old quarter in Cannaregio, steps into the painter’s studio, followed by three of his sons. The carpenter is a shaggy-looking stray dog of a man with a gaggle of children too large to count. Since his wife died in childbirth last year, he has employed all of his children, even his twin toddlers, in his dilapidated yet bustling carpentry studio several streets away from my father’s. I never thought I would be so happy to see anyone.
“I have brought your panels, painter. And your new lantern.” He gestures to a small skiff docked at the painter’s wooden mooring. Cold, damp air rushes in from the canal and I peer through the open door to see the dingy boat filled with a stack of poplar panels of the kind we use to paint and gild for altarpieces and other works.
“At last. Excellent. Please... bring them in.”
Signor Baldi gestures to his sons to bring in the panels. The carpenter’s sons, all three handsome boys in the flush of youth, bring in the panels one by one. The journeyman follows to help them, then shows the boys where to stack the hulking wooden panels along the wall.
“Maria.” Baldi removes his hat and approaches my table. “There you are. We have heard that you were here working with Master Trevisan.” He fidgets with his hat, running his grubby fingertips along the brim of the green felted wool. His face is prematurely lined, and he brushes his thinning, wheat-colored hair away from his forehead as if he is suddenly worried about his appearance.
“Yes,” I say. “Since Epiphany I have been here.”
“I saw your father,” he says. “Some time ago. I brought him some of the small alder wood panels he likes, you know the ones.” He gestures as if to convey the idea of a small square. “He told me that you were coming here.”
“You have seen my family?” I interrupt. “You have been in the workshop?”
The carpenter’s face darkens and a grim expression passes over his face. “It was more than two months ago now, I suppose,” he turns to me. “Before they began to block the streets.”
“You saw my cousin? And Cristiano—our battiloro?”
“Sì,” he says. “They were all well when I saw them.” I feel all the breath flow out of me.
“It was good timing for Maria to come join us here,” the painter’s wife says, “given the spread of the plague in Cannaregio.”
“Fortunate indeed, Signora Trevisan,” says the carpenter. “Yesterday I heard that they have docked two passenger ferries at the traghetto in Santa Croce, and two more at Rialto. They are beginning to ferry people to the plague islands.”
“Madre de Dio!” the painter’s wife exclaims.
The eldest son, a lean boy of about twelve, sets an ornately carved wooden lantern on the worktable. His father says, “We will be back with the battens to fasten together the panels after you have prepared them, Master Trevisan. In the meantime, we have finally finished the lantern for your new gondola. Please forgive our delay.”
The painter pats Baldi on the shoulder and brings the lantern to my worktable. “A work of remarkable beauty. Maria, this one is for you to gild.” I examine the ornate wooden contraption, a four-sided, lidded container for an oil lamp that may be hung from an iron hook on the aft deck of the gondola so that the craft may be seen at night. I run my hands over the finely carved swirls and leaf patterns that the carpenters have crafted along the sides and the lid. I can already imagine the lantern gilded, swinging suspended above the boat where it glitters in the night.
“The loveliest thing!” exclaims the painter’s wife.
“Exactly as I wanted,” says the painter.
“I know how proud you are of that new boat,” the carpenter says. “I would not have done my job if I had not tried to match the craftsmanship of the gondola.”
Trevisan smiles. “You have succeeded, and that is no simple task. You may know that the gondola came from the Squero Vianello, perhaps the best boatyard in Our Most Serene City.”
I step out from behind the table, eager to turn the conversation back to my family. “What does that mean, that the boats are lining up at the traghetto?”
Signor Baldi returns to my table and presses his knuckles on it. The creases in his face deepen as he chooses his words. “It means that the officials from the Health Office are taking the sick out of the neighborhood and to the old lazzaretto before the pestilence spreads any further,” he says. I feel my heart begin to pound. “The sick are being coerced to board at the ferry stations. They and the contents of their houses.”
“And they are burning people’s stuff!” The carpenter’s youngest son has been distracted by the tools on Trevisan’s worktable and has stopped helping his older brothers. He runs his dirt-stained fingers over the metal scrapers as he sets his wide brown eyes on me. I sense wonder, if not fear, in them.
His father steps in. “The belongings from the houses where the pestilence has struck are being sent to the Campo Sant’Alvise to be burned on the pyre.” My heart begins to pound as I imagine the small public square nearest my father’s house. “It is a normal measure to stop the spread. There is some rumbling that Our Most Excellent Prince will soon declare a quarantena. If he does, then the war galleys and merchant ships must anchor in the lagoon for forty days before mooring. That way they ensure that no one is sick before disembarking.”
“Santo Cielo, a quarantine! It is getting worse!” The painter’s wife rushes to her husband’s side and grasps the widest part of his arm for support.
“I do not know that it is worse than in past outbreaks, signora, but ever since Our Most Beloved Prince was struck down the Sanità seems to be taking it seriously.” I have heard people speak of Our Most Excellent Prince Giovanni Mocenigo, who fell to the pestilence just a few years before my birth. Signor Baldi continues. “The Lords of the Council seem to be taking measures to ensure that it does not spread like it did the last time.”
“I hope they are successful this time,” says the painter. “We cannot afford to have our population decimated as has happened in the past.”
Baldi shakes his head. “An unpleasant job; I do not envy them. My cousin told me that the men assigned to Cannaregio—the ones who are being paid to record the names of the sick and manage the ferry transportation to the pesthouses—are having a difficult time convincing people to leave.”
“Who would want to leave their home and go to one of those God-forsaken lazzaretti?” The painter’s wife’s voice has lifted to a high-pitched plea. She clutches her baby tightly against her body.
“They are going to have to start paying people to leave,” says the carpenter’s oldest son. “That is what the baker told me.”
“The doctor does not come and visit them when they get sick?” I ask. Everyone looks at me with wide eyes.
“Doctor?” says Trevisan’s journeyman, shaking his head. “What can a medico do? What can anyone do?” He shrugs his skinny shoulders toward his ears. “In the end it is futile to fight the pestilence. Once such a scourge gains a foothold there is no stopping it.”
Antonella is already in bed when I step into the dark room. I quietly remove my dress in the cold, then pull my linen shift over my head and slide under the woolen blankets. I feel Antonella stir beside me.
She clears her throat and speaks softly in the darkness. “The wife is spending more time in the studio than usual.”
The moon casts just enough glow for me to see half of Antonella’s face, a smooth arc of light in the darkness. “I have noticed. I do not know why,” I say.
Antonella turns toward me, propping her body on her elbow so that the light illuminates all of her face. She makes a soft snorting sound under her breath, almost a laugh. “Is it not obvious? You have turned the painter’s head.”
I puff air in disbelief and meet her gaze. “What are you talking about?” I say. “That cannot be true.”
“Why would he not be smitten?” she says, her large black eyes shiny and flashing in the moonlight. “A beautiful young woman like yourself in a tradesman’s workshop. Talented with your hands as well as beautiful. And that hair!” Antonella reaches out and grasps a few strands of my hair that have escaped my braid, turning them between her thumb and forefinger. She picks up my braid to catch the shine in the moonlight, then lets it fall back across my shoulder. I turn onto my back so that my braid presses into the mattress, out of her grasp.
“I can assure you that I have done nothing to lure him,” I say. I sink my back into the mattress and press my forearm over my closed eyelids. Suddenly my mind is flooded with the sketches I discovered in Trevisan’s notebook, dozens of small renderings of my hair, my hands, my face.
“Well. Whether he is lured or not, the important thing is that the painter’s wife thinks her husband is being tempted. She has told me that much herself.”
“What?” I sit up in bed and turn to look at her incredulously. “When?”
Antonella shrugs. “We spend a lot of time together, the painter’s wife and I. And, as you have seen, she is not very good at keeping things to herself.” Antonella reaches out to finger a strand of my hair again. “She has asked me to keep an eye on you.”