As fate would have it, however, one bleary eye was cast in the direction of the garden at precisely the moment Niccolo had chosen for his escape. The alarm was raised.
“What now! Who goes there? Show yisself.” All three were struggling to their feet. “Is that our little Jewish witch, come home to roost?’
Niccolo took the only chance he was given. He let out a scream, which froze his opponents for a fraction of a second. Then he turned and made a run at the rear wall. He threw himself as high in the air as he could. He reached and barely managed to grab the top edge. The bricks were rough. His hands held. He pulled himself up and scampered over. Better the uncertainty of whatever was on the other side than what the three brutes might have in store for him.
Niccolo dropped to earth in another world. Everywhere there were rags, heaps of rags, scraps of every description, size, and color, a sea of rags, great swelling waves of rags. And in pockets scattered here and there in the ocean of rags, he saw silent, impassive faces staring up at him. Six harsh faces. Twelve accusing eyes. The steady eyes of old women. The women were seated on the ground among the rags, sorting through them, separating out the good ones. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.
Meanwhile, his drunken pursuers could be heard launching their assault on the other side of the wall. One had just fallen heavily, but Niccolo knew they would not give up. There was anguish in his face.
One of the ragpickers raised a skinny arm and with a bony finger indicated a small green door to Niccolo’s left. He needed no urging. “God bless you!” And he was gone.
A second later, one of the hissing man’s henchmen fell to earth among the ragpickers. Then another. Two surly, threatening, armed men. Again nobody moved. Again the women said nothing. Again the skinny arm came up, the shaky finger pointed. Following it, they rushed off, full of bluster, through a blue door, directly opposite the one Niccolo had taken.
The escape hatch through which Niccolo plunged led to an alley, the alley to a street, and the street to another, slightly wider, street. In the course of his prodigious, headlong flight, he thought only of getting away, of dodging stationary and slow-moving obstacles and of keeping his footing on the slippery stones. As he neared the square where the ever-vigilant angel Gabriel kept his thankless watch, he was constrained to duck into a side street to make way for a large contingent of uniformed guards on their way into the ghetto. In tow, a small, vociferous mob was chanting anti-Jewish slogans. At the head of the intrepid contingent, he could make out a small, misshapen, blackened imp. The little black demon was gesticulating animatedly with the captain of the guards.
They were going in after her.
The pretty little thing. With the mark of the Jew. The black hair. Black eyes. The knife.
He tried to calm down, by telling himself it was perfectly plausible that some other Jewish girl was the object of their attentions—pretty little thing, black hair, black eyes, a knife, that this ghetto was positively teeming with Jewish girls, pretty little things, hundreds of them, thousands, with black hair and black eyes, and a knife.
Quite by accident, he had stumbled upon hideous, hidden truths, for when things are done clandestinely, there are always clandestine witnesses. Murder and subterfuge were swirling all around him, and at the center of it all was some obscene lesson, but a lesson in what and for whom? And who was the teacher?
Sitting on a patch of damp grass, Niccolo waited hours for the guard contingent to come out of the ghetto. His mission seemed to be over. This grim vigil was the final chapter before his adventure’s horrible, foregone conclusion. He didn’t notice that moisture from the muddy grass was gradually seeping through his smart white hose, that his hero’s doublet was filthy and stained.
Finally, he heard the heavy clatter of iron on iron and iron on stone. They were coming out. He held his breath as they emerged from the dark street. Deo gratias! No prisoners taken. No witch.
The praetorians grumbled audibly as they passed him. “We’ll get her, don’t you worry.” It was the captain speaking. “We have men at every gate, we’ll search every cart that passes out. We’ll seal this city off tighter than a bloated wineskin.” The blackened imp seemed to agree, and with that resolution, they passed out of earshot.
In a burst of ecstatic relief, Niccolo sprinted all the way to the tavern where he had left his horse a couple of centuries ago. Retrieving the docile beast, he mounted and rode toward home. His optimism on behalf of his beloved, if he dared call her that, was short-lived, however. As he passed one of the closed city gates, he noted the ominous presence of the guards going about their investigations rudely, but with painstaking attention to detail. Sealed off tighter than a bloated wineskin.
Niccolo rode on in a stupor toward the Via Romana, and then, knowing that the horse could find its own way home, abdicated all authority over it and surrendered himself to his own profound fears and overwhelming anxieties. Eventually, the reliable animal deposited its rider at the door of the Machiavelli household. Mechanically, Niccolo removed saddle and bridle. He went through the motions of watering, feeding, and securing the horse in its stall.
A tremendous amount of saliva had built up in his mouth, and some other bitter taste was mixed in with it. He spit in the straw at his feet. When the blessed portals of home were securely shut and the heavy iron bars rammed to, he opened the tiny wine window and peered out onto the street.
Like many other Florentines who had holdings in the country, his father maintained vineyards and produced wine. It was good, sturdy wine, and when there was enough of it, Bernardo sold off his surplus through the wine window. Nearly every house in the Via Romana had a wine window cut into its heavy door at shoulder height. “A handy device for spies,” he thought, the wine window.
His reconnaissance revealed only the usual, unending procession of men and women and beasts in the street outside. What had he hoped to see?
“Psssssssst.” He jumped, the reflex reaction of sorely tested and badly frayed nerves. Someone was there behind the barrels of olives and vinegar. But his panic was only momentary. Primerana and Ginevra, his younger sisters, loved to cavort among the stores down here. They built houses, sometimes neighborhoods, even entire kingdoms inside broken barrels. They erected tents of old sackcloth and lavishly entertained imaginary young men in them for hours on end. Niccolo walked wearily over to their hiding place, in no mood for games or tittering or healthy family conviviality of any sort.
“Come on out,” he grunted in a dispirited voice, and she did.
Giuditta stepped into the light. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said, almost matter-of-factly. “Where have you been?”
“Where have I been?” babbled Niccolo. “I’ve been everywhere—all over the city, up and down, in strange neighborhoods, at your house, at Melchisadech’s—where have you been?”
“Here waiting for you,” she said a little testily, “What took you so long?”
“Right here,” Niccolo stammered incredulously, in my house?” As he said these last words, it dawned on him that of all the places in the city, in the world, where she could have gone, she had come to him. A sense of inordinate pride and satisfaction spread through him.
She interrupted his thoughts: “I had a little trouble.”
“A little trouble,” he shouted. A company of guards is out looking for you; the whole city will soon be crying for your blood; armed thugs are lying in wait for you at your house, and you call it ‘a little trouble.’”
“It’s not my fault.”
“And who, in God’s name, is the little black demon?”
“A spy. And don’t swear.”
“Ahime,” Niccolo groaned in a burst of near-hysterical relief. “Santa Maria, but how could you possibly know where I lived?”
“You told me,” she said.
“But only in passing. I just mentioned it once, and you remembered?”
“I remember everything,” she said gravely.
When Niccolo had gotten over the sho
ck of finding her, Giuditta explained quickly what had happened. Her account confirmed what Niccolo had already learned: that the hissing man came for Melchisadech. She heard them arguing over the garden wall. “Then Melchisadech screamed at the top of his lungs for me to run, and I did.”
Briefly, breathlessly, Niccolo recounted what he had seen: “They killed Melchisadech. An old woman told me about it.”
“Magda, she’s Melchisadech’s slave.”
“He owns slaves?”
“He can’t own land,” she shrugged. “What else do you know?”
“They made the killing look like a ritual murder, and they’re blaming you for it. They even know your name.”
“Oh, dear.” Was she mocking him and the gravity of the situation?
“They have a witness, a little black imp who’s willing to swear he saw a Jewish witch do it. Who is he?”
“A charcoal burner, blackened by his métier. His name’s Simone.”
“Is he Jewish?”
“Half. He spies on us. He makes deliveries to all the houses, so he has access. He has informants. He pays them.”
“Who does he spy for?”
“Interested parties.”
“Like the hissing man? Do you know who he is?”
“I’ve seen him,” said Giuditta. “A representative of those interested parties is how he introduces himself. He would occasionally drop by to relay messages to my father, offer him friendly advice.”
“About business?” asked Niccolo.
“Mostly. Do you know anything about money lending?”
“Usury?” Niccolo blurted out.
“When your people do it, they call it banking,” she shot back. “Anyway, my father and some others lend money to the city at a certain rate of interest, so your leaders can put up more statues of themselves or whatever. Lately, they said the rates were too high, and they wanted us to lower them. That’s when the trouble started.
“Especially for my father. He was accused of being the ringleader and a sower of discord. Moneylenders and pawnbrokers were beaten and robbed. Fires broke out in their houses and shops. Many were leaving the city.
“And,” she continued, “taking their business elsewhere. My father and Melchisadech found out that the pope was paying a much better rate, and they were pulling out of Florentine business altogether. That’s one of the reasons we went to Rome . . .” Her eyes and her attention seemed to drift away as she recalled that journey and its fatal outcome.
“You knew all along your father’s murder was deliberate?”
“I was pretty sure.”
“Then why did you come back here? Weren’t you afraid?”
“We were all going to Spain. We were set to leave in two days’ time. I came back to meet up with Melchisadech and the others and to get a few important things. When they came for Melchisadech, I ran. I knew if I hid in the ghetto, they’d find me. So I ran out into great, wide open Christian Florence. I thought I could get to the city gates, and get out. I’m supposed to meet our friends outside the city, at an inn on the road to Pisa.”
“And now?”
“You have to help me get out of the city,” she said, looking up at him.
“How?” said Niccolo.
Giuditta’s reply was almost cavalier, “If I knew how, I wouldn’t need your help. You’re clever. You’ll think of something.”
Throughout the course of this interview, Giuditta had remained seated among the casks and barrels that held the stores of the Machiavelli family. Niccolo was standing in front of her the whole time, too amazed to move. As he stood listening, he slowly became aware that his elegant courtier’s costume was in shambles. His embarrassment was acute. The fine white hose were muddy and snagged. His velvet jacket was torn, and his soft cotton shirt drenched in sweat. His hair was disheveled, his fingernails were dirty. The hero would need some refurbishing before going back into action.
Before trudging up the stairs to the family apartments, Niccolo helped Giuditta to more comfortable and secure quarters at the back of the courtyard. There was a shed there with rough bunks where peasants and hired workmen slept, and it was empty now. He brought her some food, which she eyed suspiciously, but ate. They agreed that it would be foolish to venture out into the streets in broad daylight, now that the alarm had been raised. They would wait for darkness. But to do what?
To allay the suspicions of his family, Niccolo joined them for dinner. He had managed to wash and change clothes without anyone seeing his tattered knight errant finery. At table, his father was holding forth on the limited availability of fava beans this year. He could not understand it—there had been plenty of rain and plenty of sunshine; it had been a good season. “Greedy farmers,” he was grumbling, “they’ll hold out for higher prices later.”
Niccolo had one enormous problem and a host of smaller, subsidiary ones to occupy his thoughts. How, he kept asking himself, could they get out of the city? The gates were closed at sundown. The walls were too high to climb, and anyway, they were patrolled. The city was sealed. Nothing came in and nothing went out, not without special passes and permission from the highest authorities. When his mind tired of going over the same untenable options and running into the same insurmountable obstacles, he would let it run loose, to the lore of secret passages and clandestine, subterranean escapes. But hard, unforgiving reality would soon steal back. Secret passages, he was forced to conclude, were storybook stuff. Nothing comes in and nothing goes out.
After dinner, Niccolo’s mother repaired to her private chapel to fortify herself against the wickedness of the world and the high price of fava beans. His father moved out onto the balcony, where the evening breezes and a flask of hazelnut liqueur would facilitate the arduous but delicate task of digestion that lay ahead of him. Niccolo, feigning indisposition, retired to his bedroom. He knew he couldn’t sleep, but he needed time to prepare himself, to compose his thoughts and, he hoped, to find a way out.
He was aware, in a half-conscious sort of way, that he had changed significantly in the past two days, since this morning, even, when he had ridden out in all his finery, on a great steed like someone from the tales of Lancelot and Guinevere, like someone in a storybook. This afternoon, he had huddled, trembling, behind broken furniture; he had heard the machinations of evil discussed openly, plotted and planned in banal detail. Then he had run for his life. Unheroic, to be sure. He had weighed the odds, used his head, and seen that flight was the only practical solution. He had acted quickly, and he was still alive. Yesterday he had seen death, today he had faced it and he was still alive.
His fairytale dreams of the morning seemed far off; bravado and dashing heroism seemed so unreal. The business of heroism was more than mounting a fine horse in fine clothes. It was scrambling in the dirt, slithering over walls. It was knowing when to hide and when to run. It was knowing when to be afraid.
Only last night he had lain on this same bed, his head full of grandiose visions, of escorting his lady to Pisa, of her sitting across his lap while he entertained her with delightful stories and conversation, of her laughing at his wit as they followed the meandering course of the Arno down through the hills to . . .
The river.
Porco Dio! The river. The Goddamn river came and went as it pleased. Day and night. Past the guard towers, under the bridges, through the walls, along the embankments, and out again. Nobody stopped it! Nobody asked to see its papers! Nobody questioned it about its destination! Niccolo had found his solution.
Niccolo dressed, choosing his clothes with an eye to the work at hand—dark clothes for night work. On the way downstairs, he slipped into his sisters’ room and rifled through the chest at the foot of their bed until he found what he was looking for.
“Here,” he said, stealing into the shed and closing the door behind him, “Put this on.”
“What is it?” asked Giuditta, looking up at him.
“It’s a Christian frock of good Florentine wool. If we’re spotted, they won�
��t see your Jewish sign. That way, at least we stand a chance of talking our way out of it.”
Giuditta took the frock and held it up at arm’s length for inspection. “It’s ugly,” she said, “and it’s going to be too short in the sleeves. Couldn’t you go back and find me something a little more becoming?” Then she laughed. “Alright, I’ll put it on,” she said, “but can’t you turn around? Don’t Florentine boys have any sense of decency?”
“All done,” she said a minute later, “When do we go?”
“In about half an hour. When the bell sounds, curfew will be in effect and the streets should be empty.”
“Except for the guards,” said Giuditta.
“Except for the guards,” he confirmed. “But don’t worry about the guards for now. Can you swim?”
“Of course I can swim,” she said defiantly.
“Good,” said Niccolo. “Because we’re going down the river, right under the noses of the guards where they stand watch on the towers.”
“What if they spot us?” asked Giuditta, not a little frightened of the idea of the river.
“They won’t,” said Niccolo, “Not with one of those.” He pointed to a heap of broken and useless barrels piled up in the corner of the shed. “Listen, here’s how we’re going to do it.”
When he had finished explaining, Giuditta seemed profoundly apprehensive but resigned. “Are you sure there’s no secret passage?”
Niccolo shook his head, “No secret passage,” he said. “Only the river.”
They were sitting on one of the hard, dusty beds, at opposite ends. Giuditta’s little bundle lay undone, between them. Niccolo was examining the “important things” that had drawn her back into the city. There were coins, what he took for religious objects, some odd iron tools, and a few small books. “What are these,” he asked, indicating the tools. “May I?” He picked one up to have a closer look.
“They were my father’s,” she said. “They’re dies for stamping coins. He cut the designs himself.” Niccolo squinted in the dim light. The design on the face of the die was of a woman with a balance in her hand. With a blindfold. Justice.
Machiavelli: The Novel Page 12
