The painter’s wife has taken to her bed, overwhelmed with spasms in her abdomen that come and go over the days. She spends more and more of her day there as her body burgeons, and Antonella is more occupied with the children and chores.
From her bedchamber, the painter’s wife has dispatched Antonella with a frock for me to try. Antonella has carried the beautiful billowy dress, deep green with lace trim, destined for the party we are going to attend after the unveiling of the altar panels. I try it on in despair, watching in the mirror as the dress hangs on my frame, my thin arms poking out of the puff. Antonella comes to my rescue, producing a darning needle and tucking pleats under my breasts so that the silk falls and hides my middle that presses against the bindings made with long swaths of linen.
“The painter’s wife is working hard to make sure that Pascal Grissoni cannot bear to take his eyes off of you at this party.” Antonella sets her dark eyes on me, full of thinly veiled envy.
The shoes that the painter’s wife has sent are too large, so I have done my best to shine my own. In the end, I hope that my scuffed leather mules will simply be hidden beneath the copious drape of the green silk.
“I rather think that instead she is trying to get me out of this house sooner rather than later.”
Antonella bursts into a laugh that ends in a cough. “Who could blame her for wishing you married as soon as possible?” she says. “You have upset the balance. Be still.” She fumbles with a knot in the thread.
“I have done nothing,” I say, keeping my fingers busy by running them through my hair to untangle a snag, then redoing the braids. I think about everything I have done.
The truth is that I feel that I might burst, that maybe I should just tell Master Trevisan or his wife the truth. That I was only sent here as a way of separating me from my lover, that I am with child, that the boatman is trying to steal from them, that I do not want to marry Pascal Grissoni, that in spite of everyone’s expectations of what I should do, I love someone else. That I have siphoned off the gold leaf I brought from my father’s workshop, that the man who made the gold is my secret lover from whom my father tried to separate me by bringing me here to Master Trevisan’s workshop. It all seems impossible to unravel, and all I can do is hold everything inside.
I do not know how the painter and his wife have not realized my condition. The painter, after all, has been watching me for months, replicating my hair, my face, in his sketchbooks and on the panel. But I realize that his vision is tempered by what he wishes to see, to the point where he does not see reality. That is what he does best. And the painter’s wife is focused on herself, on her own body, the distractions of her own family, and the delicate balance of running her household.
“That may be true,” Antonella says, “but I have overheard the painter and his wife arguing about you.”
“About me?”
She nods. “You are correct that the wife would like for your betrothal to be secured as quickly as possible.” She tugs at the thread at my side. “But the painter... He wants you to stay. He says that he must honor his contract with your father, but I rather think that he likes having you in his workshop.” She flashes her black eyes up at me again.
I feel heat rise to my face. My aunt’s words ring inside my head. It is clear as day to me that you are with child. All I want to do is hide. I wish I could run home to my father and my cousin.
My cousin. He was raised in the convent. And now my aunt is trying to convince me to go there, to raise my child up the way her own son was raised. By the time he came to us as a seven-year-old, he had learned to write and read. In the convent my cousin was well fed. He learned how to work. Perhaps it is not so bad, if not for me, for the child inside of me.
“There,” Antonella says, breaking the thread with her teeth. “No one would ever guess what’s beneath all this silk.” She runs her hand along the fabric. I look down at the dress and must admit to myself that it is lovely. Her teeth glow white in the evening shadows, and her voice comes out like a hiss.
“Bellissima.”
“Have you brought your fare?” the boatman says as I step into the gondola in Master Trevisan’s boat slip. He offers his hand, but I ignore it, lifting my skirts with one hand and grasping the iron lantern pole with the other. When I do not respond, he tries again.
“It only costs a few sheets of gold leaf for a gondola ride, signorina.”
I meet his wide grin with a steely gaze.
“I have already paid you,” I say, steadying my balance in the rocking boat. “All of the gold leaf that I brought with me from my father’s workshop has been used up in the making of the altarpiece. And you already have my necklace. There is nothing left. Besides, you have not lived up to your side of the bargain. You have not brought me my battiloro.”
“Ha,” he says. “Your battiloro. I think it is time that you tell the truth about him.”
“What do you mean?”
His dark eyes narrow into slits. “I mean the trip to the lazzaretti, all that talk about the Saracen man. It is all smoke,” he says, spreading his fingers before my face. “I am beginning to think that your battiloro does not exist.”
My mouth falls open.
“Tell us the truth, signorina indoradòr. You have been hiding it from us all along.”
“He is a real person,” I insist. “He lives… lived in my own house. Ask anyone in our guild!”
The boatman’s mouth forms a smirk. “I believe that you have been sending me down a false path, signorina. This battiloro may exist, but I think you are trying to distract all of us from the truth. Dai, admit it,” he says, gesturing toward my midsection. “The painter is the father of your child.”
“You are... pazzesco!” The word comes out like a sputter, a whisper that should be a scream if I dared to raise my voice in the painter’s house.
The boatman’s mouth twitches a few times as if he might burst into laughter, but instead he lowers his voice. “But it is a reasonable conjecture,” he says. “The wife is already suspicious, eh? Wives... They have a way of sensing the truth even when no one else can see it.”
“That is a lie!” Another quiet scream.
“But it is you who is lying, signorina.” The boatman’s eyes seem to turn black. “There is more gold leaf in the painter’s house,” he says. “A lot of it, from what I understand.” I am left to wonder how much Antonella has told him.
“A cassetina,” the boatman continues, hissing the word under his breath. “A golden box.”
My heart begins to pound. The signora’s dowry box. Would he really take it from Master Trevisan’s hearth?
“If you bring it to me,” he says, “then I might change my mind about telling the painter’s wife what I know about you and her husband.” Now I begin to see the outline of a plan to extort Master Trevisan and leave the house behind. What I did not realize until now is that the boatman plans to implicate me, too.
At that moment, Master Trevisan and his journeyman appear at the doorway to the boat slip, and step down the stone staircase. The kitchen door clatters shut behind them.
I lower my voice until it is barely audible. “You are evil—and just wrong. And if you want that box, you will have to get it yourself.”
I duck into the passenger compartment and heave myself onto the upholstered bench. Out of view of the boatman, I press my face in my palms and try to calm my wildly beating heart before the men step into the boat.
I think of Carlo Crivelli, the gilder-painter who was so accomplished in his trade and yet paid the price for his adulterous secret with months in prison and exile from Our Most Serene Republic.
I refuse to pay the boatman one more thing. My mind searches wildly for another way for my situation to remain a secret in the painter’s house. But perhaps I am fooling myself. Surely it will not be long before it becomes obvious and there will no longer be any hiding it from anyone.