The boatman seems to have lost the ability to speak, and for that I am grateful. He swirls the water with his oar and looks out onto the horizon, the breeze lifting fine strands of greasy hair. I feel his eyes on me but I ignore him. Since the funerary mass I feel numb, and he seems to sense it.
I manage to stay composed until I see my aunt in the convent visitors’ parlor. Then I fall apart.
Between the iron bars of the convent grille, my aunt grips my fingers. A beautiful, intricate rosary with tiny beads of red glass hangs from her thumb and forefinger. I lace my fingers through the iron bars and grasp her delicate fingers in mine.
For a while neither of us says a word. Then, she lifts her head and makes the sign of the cross.
“I am sorry for you, zia,” I say. “I cannot imagine what it must feel like to lose a child. It is not the natural order of things.”
She nods. “And my brother, your father.”
“And the battiloro.” It comes out as barely a whisper.
She pauses. “Your man?”
I nod. “He was put on the ferry with the others. I was not sure, but Father Filippo confirmed it.”
“Oh my dear.” Her fingers squeeze my hand and I feel the hard little beads of glass against my palm.
She lifts her head and attempts to brighten. “Your father was very proud of you,” she says. “God rest his soul.”
I shrug.
“He would not have worked so hard to keep you in his studio, to make a plan for you to stay there, if he was not,” she says. She wipes her eyes and looks at me in the face.
“The funeral mass was a comfort,” I tell her. “I wish you could have been there.”
“We have had services for them here; you might imagine,” she says. “Maria, our confessor tells me that the Sanità has come to your father’s house. Everything that was left has been pulled out of the house and put on the pyre: the furniture, the curtains, the bedding, everything in your mother’s trousseau. I am sorry. It could not be helped.”
I nod, and clench my throat to try to stop the tears from coming. I have already seen my father’s house bereft of its contents. The trousseau is the least of my worries. I have hardly had time to sew anything in past years. I have only been focused on working the gold.
“There is nowhere I can go to see the bodies, where I can pay tribute.”
My aunt’s head falls, and she, too, wipes her eyes.
“We will continue to have masses for them here,” she says. “Their souls will be lifted up in song and prayer for all eternity, as it will be written in our book,” she says.
We sit in silence for a while, contemplating the gravity of it all.
“In his testament, my father betrothed me to Pascal Grissoni.” My voice hardly rises above a whisper.
She sits back and looks at me, her eyebrows raised in surprise. “Oh my. And this is a good thing?”
I can only shrug, for I have no words.
“Oh my dear. I am sorry,” she says, and sighs. “Even when a father loves his daughter as your father did, sometimes there is no accounting for a father’s choice.”
“It is not that he is not a suitable husband,” I say. “He is more than I might have hoped for, more than anyone might hope for. It is just...” The words fail me again. “Pascal Grissoni is coming with his father to visit me any day now,” I say. “The painter’s wife has told me to prepare myself. Without my father it will be up to me and our gastaldo to set the arrangements.”
She pauses. “But does Pascal Grissoni know about your... situation?” She looks down at my stomach.
I shake my head again. “That is the problem, zia.”
“Nor Master Trevisan and his wife?”
I shake my head again more vigorously, hoping that she cannot see my cheeks go aflame.
“Thanks be to God,” she says, pushing back against the chair. My aunt grips the bars with both hands. “Listen to me. There is more than one solution to this problem. I have already told you. You must come here and join us. If God has spared you, then there must be a reason for it. Before this man comes to take your hand, you must announce your intention to take your vows. You tell no one about your situation, do you hear me? We will take care of you and your baby better than anyone outside of these walls. Think about it, Maria. It is the solution to everything. Now, more than ever before, you must know it is the right thing to do.”
“Bene,” says Antonella, glancing over her shoulder at me, “I hear that that overblown painter is coming for you after all.”
She stirs a pot of rice over the fire. In a small wooden cradle tucked under the kitchen window, the painter’s baby daughter sleeps fitfully.
I do not answer right away, not wanting to engage Antonella on this topic. I take a bite of a small piece of bread and chew silently, but she persists.
“I suppose he was lured by youth and beauty if not by dowry,” she says, her voice tinged with thinly veiled envy.
I shrug as if brushing her hand from my shoulder. “It is not decided.”
“Boatman says that he got word the painter will arrive with his father tomorrow in their fine boat,” she says. “They are coming for you.”
My heart begins to leap in my chest. “I do not put much trust in what comes out of the boatman’s mouth,” I say. “I am afraid that he is inclined to indict me.” The words come out even though I don’t mean for them to.
“I would not worry about the boatman,” Antonella says. “I do not expect he will be here much longer.” She pauses. “Nor I.”
I stop chewing. “You are leaving?”
“Shhh.” Antonella glances quickly at the baby’s cradle, and then at the back stairway. “I do not think it is a secret that the painter owes both of us,” she says, wiping her hands on a rag and coming to stand next to me. She lowers her voice. “We are working on a way to make sure we get what is due to us before we leave. Once we do, we will not be here one day longer.” She presses her index finger on the tabletop. “Boatman believes he has found a way. But don’t tell anyone. I know your secret,” she says, swiping her rag toward my stomach, “and now you know mine.”
For a few moments we remain in the silence. I am left to consider the gilded box on Trevisan’s mantel.
Antonella returns to her boiling pot and inserts the long wooden spoon. Then I hear her speak again but she does not turn to face me this time.
“And what shall you say to that painter when he comes?”
When Pascal Grissoni comes, I must tell him the truth. I will never tell Antonella this, of course, but I know in my heart it is what I must do.
There is not much time left. I can feel it. Marrying Pascal Grissoni and passing off the child as his is no longer a possibility. It is too late for that. The medico at the Health Office said it himself. I am near my time.
I watch the carpenter and his sons lift the heavy gilded and painted panels, now wrapped in swaths of canvas and paper, and carry them gingerly to the cargo skiff waiting at the painter’s boat landing. The finished pieces are finally leaving the painter’s workshop and will soon make their way to the great altar of Santa Maria delle Vergini.
Perhaps there is a way to explain it all, I think, watching the carpenter’s young son careen under the weight of a great wooden panel. Pascal Grissoni seems a man who can see reason. Would he find it within himself to take pity on me or at least understand my circumstance? Would he still want me for a wife in spite of it all?
If I am realistic, I know that he is likely to reject me outright, but the truth is that I want more than anything to work with my hands. Going with Pascal Grissoni seems a more viable way to do that than committing myself to the convent. And if he says no, then perhaps I will have found a way back to my father’s workshop on my own, which, if I am honest with myself, is what I want more than anything else.
And so, when Pascal Grissoni and his father come to ask for my hand, I will say yes.
And then, when I can find a moment alone with him, I must tell him the truth, for better or for worse.
In the meantime, I must make sure that the servants remain silent long enough for me to do what is necessary. Long enough for me to hide the gilded box containing Donata’s dowry from the boatman’s reach. And long enough for me to find the right words to say to Pascal Grissoni that will secure a future for myself and my baby.
At nightfall, I wait for the house to grow silent before extinguishing the lanterns in the painter’s studio. Antonella has already retired to the upper floor. I no longer hear the pattering feet of the painter’s young son on the ceiling above my head. The baby’s warble and her mother’s soothing voice have long fallen silent.
I grasp the handle of the single lantern with its wick still aflame, and set it down on the mantelpiece above the hearth. The gilded box with its raised figures comes to life, glistening in the candlelight. With both hands, I remove it from the mantel and set it on one of Master Trevisan’s worktables. I fish the key from the drawer where I have seen the painter store it. I turn the key in the lock and open the velvet-lined lid. Inside, Donata Trevisan’s dowry is all there, more gold leaf than I would ever need in a lifetime. I run my hands over the nearly weightless sheaves stacked in small, neat books of vellum inside the box. Then I close and lock it again.
I return the key to the drawer, but instead of returning the box to the mantel, I carry it to my own worktable. I push back the drape that covers my table, and set the box on the lower shelf, pushing it back into the dark clutter among the jumble of painting and gilding supplies. In the shadows, I reach for the box I have made with my own hands, my feeble first attempt at copying the box on the mantel.
Would anyone know the difference?