The gastaldo places his hat on the artist’s worktable and bends down to take both of my wrists between his broad, warm hands. He pulls me to my feet.
At that moment the painter’s wife appears in her husband’s studio. “What has happened?” she says.
“Maria,” the gastaldo begins, ignoring Signora Trevisan and pulling me to him in a tight embrace. I press my face to his shoulder, filling my nostrils with the musk of his leather doublet. I feel his warm breath on my cheek as he strokes my hair as if I were a small child.
“O Madonna!” the painter’s wife rushes to my back and grasps my shoulders with both hands as if to hold me upright. “You poor girl!”
“Signorina Maria,” the gastaldo tries again. I cast my gaze to the floor and cannot bring myself to look at their faces. “I am deeply sorry. The Sanità posted the names for Cannaregio this morning. I saw them on the list and I came right away.”
Behind the gastaldo, I see the buffed leather shoes of the health official from the Sanità, shifting from one foot to the other. He is scribbling something in a leather-bound book with a long feather pen. “Signorina,” he says. “It is my burden to notify family members in the zestier of Cannaregio. Your gastaldo insisted on coming with me to tell you. It is our duty, charged by Our Most Serene Republic, to inform you of the deaths of Giuseppe Bartolini the gilder and his assistant Paolo in the Lazzaretto Vecchio.”
The gastaldo embraces me again. “They were administered their last rites in the pesthouse,” he says softly. “They have already done the burial there. That is how they do things with the infected. They bury them as soon as possible. You must realize that there is no other way, Maria.”
“I wish I could assure you that they did not suffer in their final days,” says the man from the Sanità.
I hear the painter’s wife gasp. “And are you charged by the Provveditori alla Sanità to be so tactful?” For a few long moments the studio falls silent, and all we hear is the sound of raindrops plunking into the canal outside the open door. “It is the worst that we have feared,” the painter’s wife speaks for me to the gastaldo and the health official.
“Please accept my deepest condolences,” says the official. “The priest in your parish has been notified and will contact you with services to be done on their behalf. The parish church in Cannaregio is still open so we will be able to arrange funerary masses for them.”
“I’m very sorry, Maria,” the gastaldo says again, then turns to the painter’s wife. “I might have a word with Master Trevisan.”
“He is not here,” she says. “He left just hours ago to see to his family’s lands on terra firma.”
“I see,” says the gastaldo. “I wanted to assure him that, even under the current circumstances, nothing will change with our arrangement. I will personally ensure that Maria’s father’s wishes are honored.”
“Of course,” says the painter’s wife, pulling me close to her shoulder. “Thank you for bringing the news. Of course Maria is safe here under our care. Povera.” She clucks with her tongue. The gastaldo lets go of my hand and turns to pick up his hat from the table.
“Gastaldo, wait.” I finally find my voice. He turns and looks at me, his eyebrows raised.
“What about the battiloro?” I manage to say.
“Battiloro?” The health official turns and looks at me with a confused expression.
The gastaldo responds. “Maria’s father and cousin had another man working with them, a Saracen specialized in beating gold. He was living and working with them there in the same workshop.”
The man looks confused for a moment and shuffles through the last few pages his leather-bound book.
“I am sorry, signorina, but I cannot say,” says the man, looking at the paper in his hand then looking me in the eye. “According to the official record there were only two people from that house recorded with lesions and transported to the lazzaretto.”
“I know for a fact that he was working in the studio,” the gastaldo says. “Saw him there myself before the disease began to spread. Surely he was put on the boat if the other men had lesions.”
“I need to know what happened to him,” I say, trying to keep my voice in check but I have lurched forward to take the gastaldo’s arm for support.
“We cannot get into the house yet,” the man says. “The street is still under a ban as they have not finished clearing out. There is still danger that people will fall ill. I am sorry, signorina, but I cannot allow you to go back home to investigate.”
I move forward. “Surely you must be able to find out what happened to the battiloro.”
“Can you work with the Health Office or ask the neighbors?” the gastaldo asks.
“We have no other record of him, signorina. I can assure you, though, that if he was in that house he has gone to the lazzaretti. There is no other conclusion.”
The last time I walked into our parish church my father and my cousin were by my side. This time, I am alone.
In the vestry, I find the gastaldo is waiting for me. His brow is already covered in beads of sweat. His leather belt has been cinched up tight across his full abdomen. I take note that he has tried to dress himself up for the occasion.
“Cara,” he takes my hands and squeezes them tight. “What a difficult day for you. For all of us. And for our guild.”
“Grazie.” I nod, meeting his sincere blue eyes.
“You must not feel slighted if few of our guild attend the funerary mass. This disease is keeping many of us at home.” He pats my hand. “My boys are coming,” he says, as if it is a consolation.
I know this is not the only funeral mass being celebrated across Our Most Serene Republic for bodies that are not actually there. These dark celebrations are happening all over the city right now, many in this very church. As the bodies pile up in the pesthouse cemeteries, the churches around the city are lifting up prayers to heaven for the souls of the dead.
“You came by yourself?” the gastaldo asks.
“Master Trevisan is still away. He does not know. His wife and the journeyman accompanied me here. I was fine coming by myself, but they insisted. I suppose it is only right. They want to do something.”
“I am glad for you that they came. Do not forget, the painter and your father are bonded by our guild after all.”
“Yes, I know,” I say. “I am still in the midst of the arrangement.” I muster a dark grin.
Through the open doorway from the vestry I see people begin to straggle in. I see the painter’s wife and the journeyman, the back of their heads visible in the crowd. I recognize a few other familiar faces, including the carpenter Baldi and his sons.
“Father Filippo?”
“He is coming,” the gastaldo says.
I think about the grim tasks that our parish priest must carry out among the sick and dying of our quarter. Just then, he steps out of the shadows behind me, a slight man in dingy robes who looks as if he has not slept in days. “Maria,” the parish priest says. Father Filippo’s face looks dark and drawn, with great circles under his eyes. His thin hair barely covers his nearly bald head and dark shadows draw his mouth into a permanent frown. He seems to have aged a decade since the last time I saw him, just a few months ago.
“My dear, my deepest condolences,” he says in his gravelly voice, and the sourness of his breath fills the air. “I am very sorry, signorina. You must feel at peace that they have had a Christian burial. Normally there would be many people here in the church for these services, as you know. Everyone respected your father. But these are dark times and this scourge is keeping many people away. So many of the families are affected and they are staying home, either by choice or by force.”
I nod. “I understand. Father Filippo, can you tell me what happened to the battiloro?” The old priest is my last ray of hope.
“The battiloro in your father’s workshop? I do not have any news. I only know about your father and young Paolo. The Sanità has required my presence at all the places where people were sick. Because your father had boils the Sanità put me under a ban as well. The doctor too. Thanks to God neither of us got sick. I have only come out of the ban this week.”
“You did not sign for him when my father and cousin were sent to the ferries?”
“Yes,” he says, “I signed for your battiloro, too.”
I feel my heart drop to my stomach. “He was sick?”
The priest shrugs. “On the day I went with the medico to examine your father and cousin their lesions were large and pustulent. You must understand that things were dire for them. And as your battiloro was present in the house with them, well… In a case like that it is automatic that anyone in the house should board the plague ferry.”
I feel that I can hear the blood coursing through my veins, filling my ears with pounding. I do not want to imagine the scene in my father’s house, but I have no choice.
The priest looks at me with a serious expression. “Now. Signorina Maria, before we begin the service for your father and your cousin there is one other matter to discuss.” I watch the gastaldo fidget with his hand and look nervously at the priest. He seems to be intensely interested in a crack in one of the giant scuffed stones that make up the floor.
“What is it?” I say. I study his eyes.
“Your father... Before he was taken to the lazzaretto... Well.” He clears his throat and struggles to find the words. “Your father left something with us before he boarded the ferry for the Lazzaretto Vecchio. I have been holding it for you.” From his vestment pocket, the priest produces a piece of parchment rolled up and tied with a green silk ribbon. “I suppose we could describe it to you at some length, but you are capable of reading your father’s words yourself,” the priest says.
I unfurl the small piece of parchment, searching their eyes for clues to what lies inside. Immediately I recognize my cousin’s neat handwriting.
I, Giuseppe Bartolini, suffering from the pestilence, do hereby entrust my soul to God and to the Holy Spirit. Should I not survive the grip of the Hand of Death, I leave my gilding workshop and all of its contents to my nephew Paolo, who is as able and capable as any son to run it as I and my father and his father before him have done. I entrust my daughter Maria in marriage to Pascal Grissoni, the son of Grissoni the Elder in San Marco, whom she will join in holy union and who has already agreed that in lieu of a dowry, to have her work alongside him in his workshop as any able partner, my daughter now having become skilled with colored pigments. My nephew has already witnessed and agreed to this arrangement and it has been approved by the master of our guild. If my nephew does not survive the pestilence, then my gilding workshop shall be sold and the proceeds used as a dowry for my daughter Maria.
Recorded by Paolo Bartolini on the Feast of Saint Anthony
And witnessed by Father Filippo of Madonna dell’Orto and Aureo dalla Stava, gastaldo of the painter’s guild
“Pascal Grissoni.” My hands falter and the paper drifts like a leaf and lands with a swoosh on the stone floor. I feel my hands press together as if trying to wring the life out of them.
The bells ring in the church tower, a sound I’ve heard all my life that now somehow sounds sad and distant.
“Father.” The deacon appears in the doorway and looks expectantly at the priest, the gastaldo, and myself. Behind him the acolytes press together in the doorway, nothing more than innocent faces and white robes with open sleeves. The deacon gestures for us to follow him through the door and into the church.
“It is time.”