The Painter's Apprentice

by Laura Morelli

  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.

  Chapter 36

  I have never been inside such a house. I have only admired the grand palaces of our city’s wealthy people from the outside, their tall, colorful façades reflected in the canal waters. I follow Master Trevisan and his journeyman across the threshold into an entrance hall paved with giant white stones. The room holds a single piece of furniture, a narrow, uncomfortable-looking bench against the canal-side wall. A small window affords light through thick, clear leaded panes. Before me stands a curved marble staircase that disappears into the second story. From an iron chain above my head hangs a gigantic chandelier crafted from the antlers of what I guess amount to four or five doomed mountain creatures. The interlocking horns support a dozen white candles whose wax has dripped into haphazard molten shapes. Above our heads I hear the loud din of conversation and laughter.

  “Master Trevisan!” A small, dark-haired man with a receding hairline approaches the painter. What the man lacks in stature he makes up for in his grandiose manner. “The man of the evening!” He grasps both cheeks and kisses them. “Your altarpiece is truly a wonder!” Trevisan looks sheepish and caught by surprise by the lavish attention.

  Master Trevisan deflects the man’s exuberance and turns his eyes to us. “This is my journeyman, Stefano, and my apprentice, Maria. They worked on the panels, too.”

  On either side of the entrance hall a set of doors stands partially open, and I glimpse what I judge to be a tremendous kitchen. The smell of stewed meat and freshly chopped onions wafts into the waiting room, and I salivate.

  We follow a manservant up the marble staircase and are immediately enveloped into a large crowd. A table in the middle of the room is stacked high with braided breads and silver platters spilling over with crustaceans. Stewards carry pewter carafes of wine, refilling the goblets in the hands of each guest with liquid the color of gold. The women are dressed in incredible finery, with golden threads woven into their hair and pearls at their bosoms. There is laughter and tinkling of glasses. Immediately I realize how out of place I am. The dress that the painter’s wife has lent me has saved me from looking like one of the servants, but I am still so far underdressed compared to everyone else.

  “Maria.” I turn to see Pascal Grissoni, and I feel relief to find a familiar face. “I hoped that I might find you here,” he says. I let him take my hand in greeting. “I have the news of your family. It has grieved my father and me greatly. We pray for their survival.”

  “Thank you,” I nod and set my eyes on a loggia overlooking the basin of the Grand Canal and the twinkling lights from the lanterns of the gondolas moored there.

  “This is the man who has done the impossible, who carries the creation of God in his hands!” A man appears out of nowhere, his arm around Master Trevisan.

  “We have heard of your beautiful work in the Vergini,” another man says.

  “Thank you, but the credit goes to my journeyman, Stefano, and to Maria, daughter of Bartolini the gilder,” says Master Trevisan, gesturing to me and deflecting the attention from himself again. “Maria has done all the gold work on the altarpiece.” The journeyman pushes me forward and the men in the group all bow in my direction.

  “Her father is a well-known gilder in Cannaregio,” says the journeyman.

  “That is true,” says Master Trevisan, “but it does not diminish the talent she has in her hands.” The men around him chuckle and an old man in the group raises his silver goblet in my direction.

  “Talented and lovely,” says another. I catch Trevisan watching me, a proud expression on his face.

  “Thank you,” I say, then push my way back into the crowd.

  Other men begin to crowd around Master Trevisan. He looks surprised and somewhat awkward, doing his best to shake everyone’s hand, though I feel that he would rather turn around and go home. A man pats him on the back, and the host pulls him by the hand and begins to introduce him to others in the crowd. The journeyman straggles along on the heels of his master, but I find myself left behind.

  Given a moment to breathe, I feel the weight of being at such a party when my own father and cousin languish in the pesthouse. It is impossible for me to see people drinking and celebrating when in other parts of the city, monks are flagellating themselves, mothers and wives are lighting candles inside San Rocco, and others are trapped behind doors with crosses nailed over them. It does not seem right. The unreality of it nearly takes my breath away.

  In the gaiety of the party I begin to feel my own despair more sharply. I do not belong here. I step out onto the terrace overlooking the canal to get some air.

  Before me, several dozen private gondolas are moored in the water before the façade of the palace. Each of the boats has a lantern lit, and, bobbing in the water, they flicker as if candles before the altar of San Rocco. The gilding on the gondolas catches the firelight and flashes, glittering across the small waves.

  From here, I see the painter’s eyes flicker around the room, and he is no longer paying attention to the men bustling around him. Who or what is he looking for? A way to bow out of the crowd like I have? Beyond, I spy Pascal Grissoni pressing his way through the throng. His eyes are also searching, seeking. Are both of them looking for me?

  As the two painters approach the terrace where I am standing, I react without thinking. I scamper down a stone staircase that leads from the terrace into a courtyard on the ground level. I push through a small wooden door that leads out into the street, and break into a run.

  The street opens to a small campo with a dark church façade looming over the deserted square. I press the door of the church and it heaves open. The space is dark, empty, and overwhelmingly silent. The bustle of the party now behind me, I drink in the silence of the church.

  I make my way to a small side chapel where a single candle flickers before a large gilded panel. I lift the candle and touch the flame to the wicks of several others, watching the flames dance in the darkness. Immediately, the gilded panel above the altar sparkles to life.

  For a moment I stand and catch my breath. As soon as peace washes over me, I begin to feel guilty instead. Why would I leave such a tremendous party? What was I thinking? The invitation was exceptionally generous. Master Trevisan and Pascal Grissoni, at least, are looking for me. Surely they will wonder what has happened.

  “Maria.”

  Startled, I turn to find Master Trevisan standing behind me. “I saw you rush out. I followed right after you. Are you all right?”

  I feel my face flush. “I am sorry, Master Trevisan,” I say. “Truly. I apologize. I... I needed some air. I am not accustomed to such celebrations.”

  “It is I who am sorry,” he says, bringing his hands to either side of his head and shaking it vigorously. “I should have thought better of bringing you here. This must seem very strange to you,” he says. I nod but cannot find the words to respond. “I mean, to see people reveling when there is so much despair in the city and your own family is... well. Clearly it was not appropriate for me to expect you to celebrate. I should have thought more of it. I am filled with shame. It was wrong of me to require you to come tonight. Forgive me.” In the candlelight, his eyes are shiny, his pupils dilated.

  “Please do not berate yourself,” I say. “You were generous to invite me to such a wonderful party, for your wife to arrange for this dress.” I run my palms over the green silk. “It is more than I could have ever dreamed. I have never worn anything so beautiful. Thank you.�
�� I cannot find it within me to turn toward him. He talks to my back while I turn to the picture. The atmosphere suddenly feels heavy and charged.

  “Well.” Trevisan says. “I felt that you should get the credit you deserve for the work that you have done on the altarpiece. I am sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable.”

  “It’s all right,” I say, feeling my heart begin to pound. Something has changed. It is as if the space between us has filled with a crackling energy, like the lightning that blankets the sky over the lagoon on a hot, humid night. “It is just... I am not accustomed to being the center of attention.”

  “You and I are alike,” the painter says. “I am not comfortable being in large gatherings such as that. I know it defies reason. But you have every right to be proud of yourself for your accomplishment on the altarpiece. No less than my journeyman and myself.” Trevisan follows my gaze, and the two of us look at the gilded painting in silence for a few moments. “Mesmerizing, is it not?” he says, as if reading my mind. “I think there will always be people who want gold. There is nothing else like it,” his voice turns to a whisper.

  The artist stands directly behind me. I feel him push my hair to the side and his breath on my neck, just behind my ear. “It is the truth,” he says, barely above a whisper. “Maria.” I feel my body freeze, then the warmth of his body press me from behind. “You are a most remarkable woman.” His face brushes the side of my neck, sending a tingle down my arm to my fingertips. “I am sorry, but I cannot help myself,” he says. “Surely you must feel it, too.”

  I turn to face the painter. He brings his palms to my cheeks. I turn my face to the side and step back out of his grasp just as his lips search for mine. I press my hands on his chest.

  “Forgive me,” I say. “Things are not... as they seem.”

  I lift the hem of the dress and run toward the door. The great iron clasp clatters shut behind me and I plunge again into the darkness of the square. I keep running this time, clambering, wending my way through a tight alley and into the shadows. Behind me, in the house of the banker Signor Zanchi, there is only fading laughter and the tinkling of glass.

  Chapter 37

  The next morning I lie awake wondering how I will meet Master Trevisan’s eyes, what I will say, how we will go on working together side by side now that he has crossed the chasm that turned out to be merely a hair’s breadth.

  I have stared at the ceiling all night, thinking of what I have done to invite him, to lure him to follow me into the church. His breath at my neck.

  Surely you must feel it, too.

  It was just a small thing, really, but it has upset the balance, fundamentally changed it all. He realized his mistake immediately, pulling away and letting me run from him without following. I wonder now if he pulled me close enough to have felt the hardness of the bulge around my middle, or if he suspected. My aunt, after all, said it was plain as day.

  It takes every bit of courage I can muster to make my way down the stairs and into the painter’s workshop. I know I am late; the birds have long fallen silent after their dawn concert. I will need to account for my tardiness.

  But when I arrive in the workshop, Master Trevisan is not there.

  Instead, the journeyman is pacing the studio, running his hand through his hair. “Bondì,” I say, but he only salutes me with a weak wave and continues his pacing. The air is thick and still. The journeyman walks nervously back and forth, as if searching for something but doing nothing productive.

  “Master Trevisan is gone,” the journeyman says finally.

  It takes me a moment to register what he has said. “Gone?”

  He nods.

  “What do you mean—gone?”

  The journeyman shrugs. “It is odd. When I came down early this morning I found him packing his tools. Pulling individual brushes out of the jars and wrapping them in a satchel. He seemed in a great rush. He said that he was going away from the studio for a while.”

  “Away? Where?”

  “Mmm,” he nods, running his fingers through his hair. “Terra firma.” His cheeks look flushed. “He said that it has been nearly two years since he visited his family’s ancestral farms near Padua. Our work for the convent is now done and, well, someone there has promised him a new commission. He needs to go there to see it.”

  “But his wife,” I say, gesturing toward the stairs. “She is about to be delivered of a child.”

  He nods. “Yes. That. Well, Master Trevisan said that she birthed the other two without his assistance, and that she will be capable with this one, too. Antonella will help her, and once the labor has started it is in the midwife’s hands.” He throws up his hands as if to demonstrate. “That there is not much that men can do in these circumstances. I suppose he has a point. Anyway, it was strange. It felt kind of rushed. He has never left so quickly like that before.”

  I feel my heart sink, knowing that the real reason he has left is because he cannot face me. I know nothing of his heart, but I have observed Master Trevisan enough to know that he is a shy, decent man and that for him to make himself vulnerable to me must have taken every bit of courage or a complete loss of self-control. His wife was already suspicious. Now I see that she has had every right to be.

  “His trunk was already loaded in the gondola when I came downstairs. Boatman is ferrying him to Pellestrina right now. From there, he said, he will hire a coach to take him inland.”

  “And what are we to do?” I ask.

  “A fair question,” the journeyman says. “Master Trevisan placed the commissions in my hands for now, for he does not know how long he will be away. He asked me to tell you to keep practicing your trees. Perhaps you will work on your boxes.”

  At that moment there is a knock on the canal-side door, and the journeyman stops his pacing to open it.

  There in the doorway I see the portly silhouette of our gastaldo. He holds his hat in his hands and looks at me with a dire expression. Behind him, there is another man uniformed in the manner of those assigned by the Sanità to report the plague-affected in our neighborhood. The men say nothing, but stand there as dark sentinels in the morning light.

  As soon as I see the look on the gastaldo’s face, my hands fly to my mouth. The gastaldo approaches me and looks at me with drooping eyes like those of a dog. Then he runs his palm over the top of his head and opens his mouth, pausing, as if trying to find the words. I feel my hands start to shake and everything before my eyes goes blurry. Before the gastaldo utters a word I have already fallen to my knees before him on the stone floor.

  Chapter 38

  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 dea
ths 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.