Gold is a beautiful and reflective metal, one of the most precious materials known to man. But in spite of its sparkle, gold can be deceiving. For what lies underneath is often dull, dingy, mean. Gold makes even the most common object seem something it is not. It can melt in a heartbeat. When beaten out into a leaf, it is as thin as a hairbreadth and can blow away with the slightest breeze. Gold leaf is a foil. It lies.
Our city is full of shimmering materials: mosaic shards, glass vessels, metals precious and shining. But just as you might introduce your finger to the surface of a shimmering lagoon, one touch and everything shatters.
Things are not as they appear.
When I was a child my father showed me how to lay the gold leaf around the corners of a panel so that the wood beneath was invisible. “Bene, Maria,” he began. “What kind of wood is underneath this altar?” Although his voice was stern and serious I saw the skin around his eyes begin to crinkle. It was another one of my father’s endless questions.
A game. A challenge.
Now I see that it was his way of teaching me, of showing me the way with the gold. Of course it was impossible to know what kind of wood was there as long as we had done our job well.
I turn the wooden box over in my hands now, considering how I will attach the molded figures just like the box above Master Trevisan’s hearth. The rest of the house is asleep. Everything is dark. I pick up my brush and swirl it into the pot I have prepared with the glistening medium. I add a little egg from Trevisan’s hens to thin the paint. It jiggles and reflects the flickering candlelight.
In the silence, I feel my heart beating through every fiber of my body. The fact of my pregnancy is irrefutable, and Antonella is right; it cannot remain a secret forever. The battiloro. He must know about it first, before anyone else. I must know if he will claim his child, and if he will claim me. I must reach him before the painter, the gastaldo, my father, or anyone else discovers it.
For now, I must keep Antonella and that boatman quiet.
But I am not a thief.
It is not within me to take something that belongs to someone else. I know that now. As much as we have had our uncomfortable moments, the painter and his wife have been kind to me, and I cannot steal from them.
But that boatman has gone out of his way to extort me, and I must respond.
The last thing I want to do is hand over the most precious object I own, the golden ingot strung around my neck by the battiloro’s own hands.
But if that boatman is to ask something precious of me to keep his silence, then I think that I must ask for something from him in return. He has named his price and now I must name my own.