by Roberta Rich
“Mother of God, won’t I be glad when this one is out!” A sweet-faced little girl of about two years, with blond curls and dimples, clung to Bianca’s skirts. “Pass us your bowl, then,” Bianca said, holding out a hand, then lowered her voice. “Hannah, I’ll give you a nice piece of meat, not too much gristle.”
Bianca’s arm, the elbow sticking out like the plucked wing of a chicken, spooned a goodly portion into Hannah’s bowl. Hannah’s eyes filled; she slipped a silver coin into Bianca’s palm. The mutton looked fatty, the skin not crisp and the carrots an orange mush, but Hannah accepted the stew with gratitude.
“Your back is bothering you?” Hannah asked.
“It started this morning. Like someone was pressing hot coals to it. No matter, I’ll soon be home. My mother has promised to come help with the children, God bless her.”
“Maybe your time is here. Labour often begins this way.”
“No, ‘tis too early. I have another fortnight at least.”
“I might have something to help you bear the pain.” At the bottom of her linen bag Hannah had a ball of opium paste wrapped in gold foil. She had been saving it for her own confinement.
Bianca was about to reply, but the next prisoner in line, an old woman with wild grey hair and an unsteady balance, tugged at her sleeve.
Hannah carried her bowl deeper into the courtyard, the common area where all the female prisoners gathered to eat, a rough patch of mud and broken bricks and the leavings of fruit and vegetables. At least the sky overhead was blue and the air in the yard better than in the cells. She squatted on the ground next to the others, her back braced against the wall and her bowl in her lap.
Bianca finished serving and walked over to Hannah. She eased herself to the ground. “Guido said you were a midwife.”
Hannah nodded.
“And that you are the best in Venice.”
“That is for others to judge.”
“This will be my…” She trailed off. “I think…my fifteenth confinement.”
“How hard it must be for you.” The poor soul looked as though the baby had sucked all the colour and strength from her. Hannah could not imagine where she got the energy to cook up a huge cauldron of soup and then cart it to the prison each day.
“If not for the young ones at home and this one—” she put her arm around her little girl, who had flopped down next to her “—I would throw myself in the lagoon. How can I face the pain of another birth, and another baby to nurse and clean up after?”
It was not the first time Hannah had heard such a sentiment from a worn-out mother. She took Bianca’s callused hand in her own. “May God give you courage.” Hannah dropped her voice. “And may this be your last pregnancy.”
Bianca sighed. “It won’t be. Guido will be in my bed again before my bleeding stops.”
Marital relations when the wife was unclean shocked Hannah. Jewish law required the woman to cleanse herself at the ritual bath, the mikvah, after her bleeding had stopped, to remove all traces of blood. Although Hannah made allowances for some Christian ways, she assumed even gentiles refrained from coupling when a woman was bleeding. It was common knowledge conception at such times could result in a baby born with animal parts—hooves or snouts or scales or curling horns. She hoped Guido was not too rough in his concupiscence.
Bianca said, “My last child was born ten months ago. The unfortunate mite didn’t live long enough for the priest to christen her.”
Hannah turned her head so none of the other prisoners could hear. “I can fashion a device for you that will prevent further babies if you use it every time you and your husband join together.” A pessary of washed and carded sheep’s wool soaked in a seed-slowing compound such as olive oil infused with rosemary would work.
Bianca drew back. “That is blasphemy. I must accept all the children God, in His wisdom, sends me.”
“Of course you must. I should not have spoken.” Hannah glanced up at the high, unbreachable wall. She thought of the iron locks on all the doors, the stocky guards all around. And yet, freedom was so near. The street, just on the other side of the wall, was a rich compost of noise and commotion. Carts rumbled by on cobblestones; gondoliers importuned passengers; hucksters cried out the virtues of their remedies for impotence and carbuncles. How easy to get lost in the press of the crowds. “If your travail proves too great for you to bear, send Guido to fetch me. I have a compound to deaden the pain.”
“Such a thing exists?” Bianca let the soup ladle hang at her side.
“When your pangs start, I will deliver your baby.” Hannah held out her hands, fingers spread. “See how small my hands are? How nimble?” She took Bianca’s ladle, bent it in half, then straightened it. “And how strong?” Touching Bianca’s cheek, she said, “The Angel of Death flees when I am present.”
“But you are a prisoner. You cannot leave.”
Hannah could not survive in this grim, filthy place with rainwater coursing down the walls and foul smells rising from buckets without lids. This might be her only chance for her, her baby and, God willing, Matteo.
Hannah leaned over to pat Bianca’s belly. “What husband can resist the pleas of a wife suffering the agonies of childbirth?”
CHAPTER 23
Pozzi Prison,
Venice
TINY CLAWS SPRINGING off her cheeks, followed by excited squeaking, jerked Hannah awake. She had not the will to throw off her blanket, stand and stomp about to send the creatures skittering back to the corners of her cell.
The bolt on her cell rasped and the door creaked open. Guido stumbled in. He was rough of tongue when sober and unpredictable when drunk. Hannah recoiled and shrank as far as possible from him into a corner, where she wrapped her arms around her belly. He had been bold with some of the other women—groping their laces and lifting their skirts to pinch their thighs in exchange for clean water or a fresh pile of straw—but had been decent to her, perhaps out of respect for her condition. Now he crouched over her, fingers digging into her shoulders. He reeked of sour wine and onions and his words were so slurred she could not make out what he was saying. Hannah tried to push him away, but he cupped the back of her head and pulled it close. “Come with me,” he whispered. “Bianca is calling for you.”
“So soon? But her time is not for a fortnight.”
“Come.”
Hannah grabbed her linen bag, which by some miracle still contained her birthing spoons—matching soup ladles fastened together with a hinge, which she had designed and a silversmith had fabricated—her almond oil and a river reed splayed at one end. She ran her fingers along the hem of her skirt to ensure the ducats sewn into it were still there. She had made the transfer from the hem of the nun’s habit to the hem of her cioppà last night when no one was about.
There was no need to slip on her sandals—she slept with them strapped to her feet to guard against thieves, not to mention the scorpions in the cracks in the floor, where they sat poised, ready to sting. Guido took her arm and pushed her from her cell and down the corridor.
After many twists and turns and much scrabbling with locks—Guido was clumsy with drink—they were outside. He hurried her along a side street. Up one calle, down another, past churches, over bridges, under this sotoportego and that. Night noises filled the air: the drip of water off oars, the slamming of shutters and the groaning of the wood-keeled boats. Hannah soon lost track of where they were, although it seemed they were heading east to the sestiere of Dorsoduro. What a fine thing to be striding along in the open air.
Guido guided her to a low dwelling wedged between a cheese maker’s store and a chandler’s workshop. There was no proper door, just a length of soiled burlap to keep out the rain and the grunting, snuffling pigs foraging for garbage. He held the burlap to one side and pushed her inside.
“I’ll wait out here under the eaves until the baby is born then take you back to the prison. And don’t try anything clever. I must have you back by sunrise when the head jailer makes
his rounds.”
“You will be waiting in this filthy weather a long time,” said Hannah, knowing full well a woman who had borne fifteen children would not take long to deliver her sixteenth but that a husband such as Guido, who no doubt saw childbirth as an occasion to get drunk, would not realize such a fact.
Rain bounced off his hat, a felt affair, misshapen from years of hard use. Hannah fumbled in the pocket of her cioppà and extracted the last of her scudi. “Here, Guido, find a snug, dry wine shop. Childbirth is women’s work. Your task is to pray for your child’s safe arrival.” Was there a Christian born who could refuse the temptation of wine? “Never fear, I shall be here when you return.”
Guido glanced at the coins in her outstretched hand, weighing the risk. “You won’t run off? Do that and my head is on the chopping block. Without me, Bianca and the children will starve.”
“Where have I to go?” That, at least, was true.
He snatched her coins and shoved her through the doorway, letting the burlap fall on her head in his haste to be gone. Off he lurched into the night, heading west, hanging on to the walls of neighbouring houses for support. She watched until he had disappeared. Stepping back into the street, she pulled her shawl higher against the rain. Hannah would head north. Before he drank up her scudi, she would have disappeared like steam from a kettle of soup.
From behind her, louder than the splash of overflowing street gutters, came Bianca’s moans. Hannah hesitated. She owed nothing to this woman. Bianca was not a sister, not a neighbour, not a Jew. Fate had decreed that women like her would always be poor, ignorant and helpless, with or without Hannah’s assistance. Hannah stood outside Guido’s hovel, water dripping down her neck and soaking her clothing.
It was well after midnight. The streets were empty of all but milk-souring demons and fever-making goblins. Hannah would put as much distance as possible between herself and Guido. The sound of Bianca’s weeping and what seemed a young girl’s voice trying to comfort her interrupted Hannah’s thoughts. Unyielding, she took a few steps down the street.
Many births went badly in spite of Hannah’s skill and experience. Even if she stayed, there might be little she could do. Lilith, the Angel of Death, was a mighty foe. There had never been a birth when Hannah did not look over her shoulder, certain Lilith had come to claim mother or babe. She could enter with ease the grandest mansion. No iron lock was so well fashioned, no porter so vigilant, that Lilith could not glide in. This strip of dirty burlap that served as a door would not slow the angel’s progress. Lilith hovered, invisible in her black cloak, ears pricked for the slightest mewling of exhaustion from small bodies. Her nose twitched at the coppery smell of blood. Bianca, weakened from too many pregnancies, would present no challenge.
So what if Guido was hanged for Hannah’s escape? So what if Bianca and her children starved? If Hannah were free, meat fed, fire warmed and well shod, she would follow the dictates of her conscience. In her present circumstances she had not the luxury of compassion.
She sidestepped a mound of manure and stumbled into a deep rut in the street. Bianca’s cry came again, more anguished this time. Hannah would go back and check on her, no more than that. After all, Bianca’s only sin was to have been born poor. After so many pregnancies, she could bleed to death if her matrix refused to contract. Years ago Hannah had witnessed such flooding, the childbed a lake of blood pouring faster than could be absorbed into a dirt floor. Hannah skidding on the blood, sticky and warm, not knowing a body contained so much of it. A fifteen-year-old girl buried in the dress she had worn the previous year when she had danced at her wedding.
A simple examination; then Hannah would be on her way. She returned to the hut, held the burlap to one side and groped her way in.
Dear God. A sack suspended from the low ceiling, stiff with smoke and grease from the cooking fire, smacked her in the face. Other sacks—grease-stained canvas bags containing unwashed wool, awaiting washing and carding—hung like stalactites in a cave. A chimney-less fire smouldered in the middle of the floor. Sour air like old cheese pervaded everything. The stink of unwashed bodies and unclean linen made her eyes tear.
Hannah fumbled around until she found, in a hollowed-out piece of limestone, a lump of fat with a twist of linen as a wick. She managed to ignite the wick with an ember from the fire then wished she hadn’t. Lard. The smell made her nauseous, though the pork fat gave enough light to view the room.
Young children slumbered in cots and baskets and packing crates tucked onto shelves projecting from the walls. Older children slept on the floor in twos and threes, lying head to foot. The walls of the hut seemed to contract and expand with the inhaling and exhaling of the roiling mass of children. It was as though the abode was not an ordinary one fashioned of bricks and mortar and wood beams but an edifice built from the parts of children—of the skin and blood and bones of children, lining the walls, shoring up the ceiling. The dwelling reminded her of Asher’s, but without the strong-willed Tzipporah to maintain order. Hannah reached up to bat away what felt like a cobweb enmeshed in her hair. It was a child’s tiny hand stroking her head.
Amid the snoring and heavy breathing came Bianca’s cries. Hannah took the woman’s cold hand and rubbed her wrists. A pool of blood had gathered between Bianca’s skinny legs. “Hello, cara, I am here to get this baby out of you.” She remembered saying the same words to the Contessa Lucia, Matteo’s mother, years before. How different this was from Matteo’s birth in the di Padovani palazzo on the Grand Canal—the sway of the damask curtains around the Contessa’s bed, the casement windows with glass from Murano, the fragrant tea and rich broth awaiting the Contessa when the ordeal was over.
“Thank God you are here. I begged Guido just as you told me.”
Before Guido left, Hannah should have insisted on a proper candle—rush, perhaps; beeswax would have been an unthinkable luxury. She wanted to view Bianca’s belly as well as palpate it for the position of the infant. Bianca’s cheeks were red from exertion. She grunted with pain. No birthing stool, no comfortable bed, no clean linens; just a heap of straw not much better than the one Hannah slept on in prison. Cows in the field gave birth in more wholesome surroundings. With Guido gone to the nearest wine shop—he would not return until his money ran out—Hannah had some time. Not much, but some. Her scudi would buy him two or three mugs of sour wine—maybe an hour’s worth.
Hannah took the almond oil from her bag and applied a drop to her hands then rubbed them together to warm them. She touched Bianca’s belly—and breathed a sigh of relief. Next, Hannah removed from her bag the hollow river reed, which she had cut into sections and serrated at one end. She placed the splayed portion on Bianca’s stomach and put her ear to the other end, listening. The reed amplified the sound of the baby’s heartbeat.
When Hannah was a girl, she and her sister, Jessica, used to lie together in bed, a river reed pressed to the plaster wall to eavesdrop on the young couple in the next apartment. They would take turns listening to their night noises—the man’s soft entreaties; the woman’s sighs; and sometimes moans and groans and wet, thrusting noises, which for reasons she and Jessica did not understand made them giggle as they fought for their turn with the reed. The “listener,” Jessica had called it. When Hannah was an apprentice midwife, it occurred to her that a hollow reed might be useful in hearing an unborn baby’s heartbeat. Indeed, it had proven so. By experimenting, Hannah learned to make the reeds sturdier through applications of linseed oil and beeswax. With this simple device, even the weakest heartbeat was audible.
This baby’s heart was as rhythmic and strong as a smithy’s hammer, although it seemed to have an almost imperceptible echo. God was on Hannah’s side. The head was descended into the wreath of sharing bones. Such a sturdy child would be born quickly. With so many births, Bianca’s passage would be slack. With the help of her eldest daughter, who hovered nearby, she would survive. Bianca’s colour was healthy, and her clasp on Hannah’s forearm firm.
Bianca whispered, “You were good to come, Hannah. It is such a comfort to know I am not alone. Some of the other babies I delivered myself. Even the monstrosity born three winters ago. Little more than toes and fingers woven together like a cat’s hairball.” She winced as a pang took hold of her. She waited for it to pass before saying, “I had to fling the poor thing into the fire myself.”
Hannah had heard such tales before. Born-too-early babies tossed onto the fire, forgotten by all except their mothers. She pressed Bianca’s hand. “You are doing fine, cara. It will not be long now.”
“During this pregnancy, I have felt so tired. I hardly had the strength to make soup for my family and the prisoners.”
“And very good soup it was,” said Hannah. She reached for her linen bag, about to tuck her reed back inside next to her birthing spoons. “Of course you are exhausted. You work hard and have borne so many children.”
Bianca closed her eyes, dozing between pangs. Hannah continued to hold her hand. Bianca had hands worse than those of a laundress, chapped from lye soap, with swollen red knuckles and calluses so thick Hannah wondered if Bianca even registered her touch. Forgive me, cara. She unclasped Bianca’s hand and rose. It was time to leave.
Bianca began to pant. Hannah crouched again. She would stay long enough to cut the cord. As Hannah urged her to push, the baby’s head crowned—pliable and wet, covered in blood. Hannah freed the shoulders and pulled the infant out. A healthy, surprisingly fat little thing, as white as a winter rabbit, almost translucent in its paleness. The baby was a girl. There was no mistaking the swollen lips of the vulva. She gave a shrill, startled cry as Hannah set her in the basin of water one of Bianca’s older girls had the presence of mind to fetch. One of the guards had seized Hannah’s iron-bladed knife, but there was a rusty gutting knife within arm’s reach and she employed it to sever the cord. Hannah had not even had to use her birthing spoons. A girl of about ten years got up and took the wailing newborn into bed with her. All travails should be so easy, although the birth cake had not come slithering out as it should have.
