The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi

by Jacqueline Park

  15

  My father’s marriage and our move back to Lombardia brought our odyssey full circle, from Mantova to Ferrara to Bologna and, now, back to the town of my childhood. But we were in a different house this time. And with a different mother. Never were two women less alike than my mother and Dorotea.

  At dinner, my new stepmother imposed an iron discipline completely at odds with the free exchange that had always prevailed among Papa, the boys, and myself. There was little laughing and no leaning at Dorotea’s table. Jehiel and I were not permitted to speak until spoken to. And God help poor little Gershom if he reached out for a bit of bread before the “honored Signore Padre,” as Dorotea insisted we call our father, had raised his cup.

  She was also, like her mother-in-law, a great believer in purges, which she dispensed to us every Sabbath eve before bedtime so that our bodies would be, as she put it, clean inside and out. We had been raised in a more modern school of medicine, where fresh air, exercise, and plenty of fruit did the work of cleansing the gut. But we swallowed the vile stuff she dished out and endured the cramps that inevitably followed without protest.

  I think we were waiting for Papa to step in and set things right. But as the weeks lengthened into months, not a word of objection was heard from him. Instead I found my prerogatives disappearing one by one. The first to go was my place in the banco. Dorotea claimed, with some justice, that my presence was much more urgently needed in the casa than behind the counting table. With a large household to run and two young boys to raise, she needed every spare female hand. And there went my chiefest freedom.

  Next came the matter of books and learning. We had no tutor in residence — Dorotea had as yet been unable to find one to suit her — so that in order to pursue my studies, I would have had to attend the synagogue school with my brother Jehiel. But girls were not welcome in the school. I begged Papa to solicit special permission for me. Dorotea pointed out that it would be unseemly for me to be seen walking back and forth in the public streets every day, like a common tart, as she put it. Once again, Papa withdrew from the contest. Even more than my seat at the banco, my pursuit of knowledge had given me a window on the great world. Now a shade was drawn over that window.

  But I did find a chink of light in the gloom. Denied a tutor, I set out to school myself. Each day after dinner, I sequestered myself in my bedroom, pleading a headache. And there, in the autumnal afternoon light, I pored over my old Cicero, parsing and analyzing just as I would have done under the direction of a teacher.

  Made bold by Cicero, I soon ventured farther into forbidden territory. I had always wanted to sample the worldly pleasures of La Nonna’s “French lies,” and one afternoon, I sashayed through the kitchen, across the backyard, and into the warehouse in search of enlightenment and sin.

  Any loan-banker always held in pawn dozens of copies of the Reale di Francia. It was far and away the most popular book in Italy — still is, I believe — read by the educated class in the original French and by the less cultivated in vernacular Italian. According to the plan I had formulated, I would steal one copy of each version and, by going from the one language to the other, would teach myself the French tongue while I reveled in the forbidden pleasures of romance.

  As I had anticipated, the warehouse held in pawn more than half a dozen versions of the Reale in the French language, two of them beautifully illuminated. But I chose a cheap printed copy with only two woodcuts for illustration, reasoning that the more valuable items might occasion a more serious search if their owners should return to claim them. Likewise with the vernacular translation. I picked the most dog-eared, shabby one of the lot, reasoning that the owner of such a poor thing was unlikely to recoup his fortunes sufficiently to reclaim it.

  As Madonna Isabella is fond of saying, no one who reads books and collects them is ever totally bereft of comfort in this life. Books made my early days in Dorotea’s household bearable. They also kept me out of sight and out of mischief. But books were never all of life for me. I was also attracted to the glitter of the great world. And when a communication came inviting the dei Rossi famiglia to attend upon Marchese Francesco Gonzaga and his Marchesana at the Reggio, I put away my books and entered into the plans for the audience as eagerly as everybody else in our household.

  It had been the old Marchese’s custom to reaffirm his condotta with his Jewish banchieri each autumn — a not so subtle reminder that October was traditionally the month for giving gifts. During the first years of his rule Marchese Francesco had allowed this custom to drop from use, largely because the harvest time coincided with the major palios of the year and he far preferred galloping around racecourses winning ribbons to staying home and entertaining packs of Jews. But after he married Madonna Isabella in 1490, life at the Reggio became more courtly. And one of the customs Marchese Francesco revived in honor of his Este bride was the annual reception of his Jews.

  On the day of the harvest reception we joined the five other Jewish banking families of Mantova and marched together into the Gonzaga stronghold: women, children, rabbis, shohets, clerks, and serving maids — all polished up for the occasion and dressed so grandly you would have thought we were en route to meet our Maker rather than a minor Christian prince — and only a marchese at that, not even a duke.

  Mind you, the Gonzagas disported themselves like kings. The Marchese and his bride had set themselves up on identical gilded armchairs in the center of a large, formal garden under a white silk baldacchino that fluttered in the breeze. What a sight they presented to us on their twin daises, surrounded by courtiers and dogs — lean, rangy hunting dogs for him, small squeaky lapdogs for her — and two or three of their favorite dwarfs tumbling around at their feet. Glowing mistily in the autumn sun, they seemed posed, as if waiting for Maestro Mantegna to immortalize them with his brush as he had Marchese Francesco’s grandparents on the walls of the Camera degli Sposi.

  All that was missing was an appreciative audience. And that we Jews supplied when we were pushed forward into the presence, en masse, by a pair of turbaned body servants, garbed to resemble Janissaries with balloon trousers and scimitars hanging from their waists — a marvelous exotic touch.

  Madonna Isabella had chosen blue for her summer gamorra. Seated there against the red cushions, framed in gold and clad in the Virgin’s own color, her golden hair streaming down over her shoulders, she bore an eerie resemblance to the Queen of Heaven, for she was barely eighteen years of age, with the fresh skin and clear eyes of youth.

  As for her husband, Marchese Francesco — whom I had seen only at a distance at the Este-Sforza wedding — up close he was an amazingly atavistic creature, squat and swarthy, with thick lips and an abnormally low-slung jaw. But power and presence fairly radiated out of that sullen face.

  I found it astonishing that his young wife appeared to be completely unintimidated by him. When he rose to give his welcoming address, she hardly bothered to feign interest. She simply sat there, playing with the gold bracelets that lined her bare arm. Then again, why should she be cowed by the likes of him? She was, after all, an Este — a clan with far deeper roots in Italy than the upstart Gonzagas.

  The Marchese had chosen as his subject the monte di pietà — the Christian loan bank — that he had recently authorized in Mantova, at the request of Fra Bernardino da Feltre (yes, the same). An invention of the Franciscan friars, these monti were springing up wherever the brotherhood held sway. Their capital came not from savings or risk but from the charitable contributions of wealthy Christians. Thus the monti were able to lend to the poor at a much lower rate than the Jews — sometimes as low as five percent. And what had been virtually a Jewish monopoly of the pawnbroking trade was being seriously threatened up and down the peninsula.

  With farming, landowning, commerce, and almost all civic employment forbidden to Jews, pawnbroking stood as the last bastion of an independent life for them. The alternative was penury. Do you
wonder that the Mantovan Jews listened attentively to Marchese Francesco when he spoke to them of the imminent opening of a monte di pietà in Mantova?

  It was an unusually hot day for October. The air, heavy with the sweet odor of the trumpet-flowered vines that hugged the atrium’s pillars, resonated with the buzz of hummingbirds and the croaking of crickets. In this thick, heavy air, the Marchese’s words reached my ears as if from a great distance. After a time, I heard him call out for an equerry, but the name he shouted hung in the air and did not reach me.

  The equerry entered from a side portico, so that only his profile was visible to those of us facing the princes. Punctilious in his court etiquette, he bowed first before the young Marchesana, then made the same obeisance before his liege lord, the Marchese. That courtesy accomplished, he turned to survey the assemblage of Jews spread out before him. Poised confidently with his hand on his hip, a living reproduction of some contrapposto Greek hero, he slowly fanned the half-circle of Jews with a languid gaze. To me, seeing him through the heavy mist and heat of the false summer, he appeared as if in a daydream. But when his eyes came to rest on me, I knew that this was no fantasy. Without doubt, my Knight of the Este Colors was standing before me in the flesh.

  He held my eyes with his and slowly lowered his left eyelid in a sly wink, as if daring me to lose countenance. I rose like a poor fish to the bait and sniggered aloud.

  “You find my address amusing, signorina ebrea?” The Marchese was speaking to me. “Does it appeal to your wit?”

  Dead silence in the garden now. All eyes on me. Then, out of the silence came a voice: “I cannot attest to the lady’s wit, sir, but I can bear witness to her courage.”

  It was my young knight speaking up for me.

  “Cousin.” The lady turned to the young lord. “How is it that you know this Jewess?”

  “She was the Jewish queen at your honored brother’s wedding,” he replied easily. “Perhaps you do not recognize her without her elephant.”

  It was not a first-class jest but it did turn Madonna’s frown to half a smile.

  “Come, Signorina Grazia.” Lord Pirro took my hand and led me toward her. “Allow the illustrissima to look at you up close.”

  His touch bolstered my courage. Assuming the regal carriage of the Jewish queen, I honored her with the deep curtsy I had learned from Maestro Ambrogio.

  As I rose she nodded approvingly and, turning to her consort, addressed him: “We have heard excellent reports of this young girl’s ride through the streets of Ferrara. Being at the head of the procession myself, I was not witness to it, but your kinsman, I believe, will bear me out that she was reported by my honored father to display great poise and true courage riding the beast.”

  “She was magnificent,” the young lord affirmed with a long look in my direction. Whereupon I flushed.

  “Look how she blushes.” Madonna Isabella laughed. “A girl who can master an elephant has no need to be shy of a few Gonzagas.” She turned to her husband. “Is that not true, sir?”

  But the Marchese was not into the spirit of the jest. He never did like me. Not from that first moment. At the same time, Madonna Isabella made her judgment and came to a completely different conclusion. If a great Christian princess can be said to befriend a Jewish pawnbroker’s daughter, she showed every evidence of befriending me. Yet I hung back, still not recovered from her husband’s malevolence.

  “Sit here, donnina.” She patted the stool at her feet. “Let us talk. You have nothing to fear from us. We are Christians here, not savages. We don’t eat young Jewish maidens for supper.” She turned to Lord Pirro. “Do we, cousin?”

  “Only when we are very, very hungry.” At this, he bared his teeth, made a lunge as if to grab my arm and take a bite of it. Of course, I screamed. And all the assemblage collapsed with giggles. All except one. The Marchese was not amused.

  “Enough of this jesting.” He raised his hand in command. “Lord Pirro, fetch me the documents relating to the monte di pietà.” And to his young wife: “Honored lady, you will repair with the Jewish ladies and children to the summer sitting room whilst I continue my business with the signori ebrei.”

  I did not see Lord Pirro again that day. Nor did he seek me out at the banco in the days that followed. But I felt certain that he would come someday soon, if only to reclaim his chess set, which lay sequestered in my cassone under the two forbidden volumes of the Reale di Francia. And to be sure, not many days went by before he arrived at our banco. I was not there. I only learned of it from that most unlikely of Cupid’s messengers, my cousin Ricca.

  “Asher tells me that the princeling who kissed your hand so boldly at the Reggio was sniffing around after you at the banco yesterday,” she whispered to me as we knelt at prayers.

  My delight must have registered for she instantly added, “If you take my advice you’ll avoid him like the plague. Christian princelings bring nothing but trouble to Jewish girls.”

  “But what have I to do with him or he with me?” I asked, making a poor effort to hide my excitement.

  “He came looking for you, didn’t he?”

  “For me? Did he ask for me?”

  “No, stupid. Nothing that obvious. He made as if he had come to place a book in pawn, but it was really you he was after.”

  “Why, Ricca, wherever did you get such an idea?” I temporized, searching my mental library to find some tale that would distract her mind from these dangerous suspicions.

  “I saw the wink he gave you at the Reggio. You ought to know better than to try and fool your wise cousin Ricca.” She smirked.

  Now I am not a natural liar nor a practiced one. But something told me that if ever there was a time to break the eighth commandment, that was it. I had to find some way to rid Ricca’s mind of its suspicions.

  “Well, this time, wise cousin, you are off the track.” I took a deep breath and silently asked God to forgive me for the libel I was about to commit. “Did you not know that young Lord Pirro is the favorite of Cardinal Monsanto? They say at court that he is the old man’s bum boy.”

  It was an inspired invention. You could almost see her salivate when I laid the choice morsel before her. “You mean he’s a . . . I cannot speak the word.”

  “Life in these courts is not like life in our casa, cousin,” I assured her airily. “They practice vices that you and I have never even dreamed of.”

  “Such as?” Her eyes widened avidly.

  “Oh, Ricca, those vices are unspeakable. I couldn’t soil my tongue with them.”

  And with that, I enjoyed the satisfaction of having her, for once, begging me to tell her a secret — a plea to which I, of course, remained deaf. For, truth to tell, I had not the least idea what I was speaking of. My total knowledge of “the unspeakable vice” was all ill-digested reading of Alcibiades’ defense of his intercourse with Socrates, hardly a fruitful source of information on the subject. But my invention did serve to put Ricca off the scent and left my mind free to concoct wild schemes to seek out my Knight of the Este Colors.

  In the Reale di Francia, the old nurse always serves the lovers as a go-between. But in our house the closest thing to a nurse had been Gelsomina and she was dismissed by Dorotea on Gershom’s first school day. My brothers would willingly have done me courier service but their lives were even more circumscribed than my own, since they left for school each day before sunrise and only returned after dark. However, having established the custom of retiring to my room with my afternoon headache, I myself was free between dinner and evening prayers. If I could somehow breach the defenses that Dorotea had erected around our casa, I could act as my own messenger.

  In my mother’s time, our doors had been left open during the day and members of the famiglia came and went freely. Under Dorotea’s regimen both great portals, front and back, remained bolted at all times. And the keys to those locks never left their pl
ace at Dorotea’s waist. In the Reale di Francia, the heroine or her knight solved such a problem by dosing the villainess with a sleeping potion and stealing the keys from her while she sat snoring in front of the fire. But Dorotea never slept by the fire. And the wizards who turned up so conveniently at French castles to peddle lotions and potions never seemed to stop by our house.

  Desperate for instruction, I turned to Caesar, who had breached so many walls in the course of his Gallic campaigns. And to be sure, he advised me that every citadel has its weak spot, even the most impregnable. Find that place and sneak in through it, he counsels; for it is no less honorable to breach a wall surreptitiously through a chink than to scale it heroically with a ladder. His exact words.

  If anyone had bothered to notice, which of course no one did, that person would have been mightily amused to see me sneaking stealthily around the grounds, rattling the locks, pushing at the gates, searching fruitlessly for one of those chinks that Caesar claims no citadel is without. Obviously, he never ran up against a castellan like my stepmother.

  But in the end he justified his reputation as a tactician. One morning when I slipped into the stable yard to examine the huge wooden doors one more time, there stood a horse and cart come to bring firewood from the nearby woods. A chink in the citadel. If what goes up must come down, I thought, then surely what comes in must go out.

  Sounds of conviviality told me the muleteer was enjoying a bowl of cheer in the stable. Familiarity with Dorotea’s ways told me he would not be long consuming that small portion.

  Carpe diem. Horace’s exhortation sprang to mind. Seize the day, Grazia. Darting across the muddy yard, I hurled myself into the wagon and pulled a rug over me. No time to plan how I would get back into the fortress once I had gotten out. No time for thought at all.