The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi

by Jacqueline Park

  The Sultan had pursued the renowned Jewish physician through the courts of Europe for several years before finally bagging him. And he was not about to allow the unexpected appearance of a motherless boy to rob him of his campaign physician. Certainly not at this moment when the gout that it was said only Jewish doctors had a cure for, was beginning to make it uncomfortable for him to mount a horse.

  To initiate what he confidently expected to become a fruitful dialogue, Suleiman called in his physician for a friendly chat, reminding him that the campaign season would not commence for many months, that there was no urgency to make such an important decision, and urging the doctor to take some time to reconsider resigning.

  “You have my assurance that in the harem school your son will do his learning as a part of my own family under the watchful eye of my mother, the Sultana Valide,” he coaxed. “Surely that would be a much safer arrangement than dragging the boy off to the battlefield or leaving him behind with strangers.” Then to add a little sweetener to the sherbet, he offered to assign the boy an armed guard to escort him from The Doctor’s House in Topkapi to the Princes School in the harem each day that Judah was absent on campaign. The prospect was tempting.

  Judah wavered. His head told him that the Sultan’s offer was a solution to his problems. But his fatherly heart told him that the boy was not yet ready to deal with a new abandonment by the only parent now left to guide him through the labyrinth of dark memories that haunted him. What the Sultan was offering the doctor was time to ferret out what had happened during the boy’s captivity on the pirate ship, and to find the key to his son’s despair. A boy’s natural grief for the loss of a much-loved mother could account for weeping, fainting, even vertigo . . . but not for virtual paralysis. What cruelty had the damned Corsicans inflicted on Danilo to cause such damage?

  That question might never have found an answer had not some lost soul stumbled in the dark into the Sultan’s personal domain, a swampy moraine outside the wall of the Third Court. If an interloper ever managed to get anywhere near the Sultan’s selamik, a warning fired from a Janissary’s musket would have scared him off, pronto. Which is what happened that night. But as the shot reverberated across the palace wall into the Third Court, it also shattered the silence in The Doctor’s House where Judah del Medigo and his son lay sleeping.

  At the sound of the shot, the boy sprang up from his pallet as if he had been hit, clutching his heart in terror. “Stop, don’t shoot!” he pleaded. “Noooooooo . . .”

  Then came a blood-curdling shriek of anguish. “Not mama. Not her, I beg you. Take me . . . take me.”

  The musket-shot had released a flood of dammed-up memories that gradually dissolved into a series of racking sobs. And finally, between the sobs, came a confession.

  “It was all my fault. She begged me to climb down. I wouldn’t listen to her. If I had come down, the pirate wouldn’t have aimed the gun at me and she wouldn’t have thrown herself in front of me to take the bullet. She would be here now. Alive.” A long pause. “I killed her.”

  A glance at his son’s face told Judah he could not allow this madness to go on. Gently but with great firmness he took the boy’s pale face between his hands and addressed him sternly. “Did you have a gun?” he asked.

  When no answer came, he demanded with fatherly authority, “Answer.”

  The answer was barely audible. “No.”

  “So who did have a gun?”

  “The pirate they called Rufino.”

  “Then it was the pirate Rufino who killed your mother. Not you.”

  “No. No.” The boy wrenched himself from his father’s grasp. “You weren’t there. You don’t know what happened.”

  “Tell me,” the doctor urged him softly.

  Somehow he had struck the right note. Danilo took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders and began to relive his memory.

  “Madonna Isabella left the Hesperion to finish the trip to Mantova by land because she was seasick,” he began, hesitantly at first but with increasing assurance as he went on. “Before she quit our ship she asked me to guard her baggage with my life and bring her things home safely to Mantova. There were treasures packed in those cases — a tapestry by Raphaello that she said meant more to her than her life. When the pirates attacked, the crew put up a brave fight but the Hesperion sprang a leak in the hold and began to take on water. That was when Rufino and his crew began to remove Madonna Isabella’s valuables from our ship to theirs. All I could think of was my promise to watch over her goods. I climbed up on top of her cases to guard them. Rufino ordered me out of the way. I didn’t move. He said he would count to three.

  “‘One.’ The pirate raised the musket to his shoulder. I saw mama moving towards us. ‘Two.’ He placed his thumb on the trigger.‘Three.’ He squeezed. The shot rang out just as mama threw herself into the line of fire. Nothing seemed to happen . . . then she fell at my feet.”

  No tears now in the boy’s eyes. Simply a blank emptiness. “That bullet was meant for me. I killed her.”

  “That bullet was shot by the pirate, not by you,” Judah insisted.

  “But if I had stepped down . . .”

  “It would still be the pirate that killed your mother. There is no pity in these men. Murder is their business. When I first saw you at Pirates’ Cove you were tied up in a tarpaulin. They had bound your ankles, taped your wrists and covered your head in a hood. You were their prisoner. They would have killed you.”

  “You don’t understand, papa. They never would have killed me. They tied me up to save me from drowning. They saved my life.”

  “Are you telling me that these bandits rescued you out of pity?”

  “Of course not. I may be confused, papa, but I am not a fool. I know they saved me to sell in the slave market in Istanbul. But they did fish me out of the sea and save me.”

  “After they threw you in?”

  “No, no. After they put mama’s body in a wooden box and shoved it off the side of the ship. When I saw her body sinking under the waves I wanted to follow her, to be dead like her. So I jumped in. That’s when they tied me up so I wouldn’t try to do it again.”

  Judah had convinced himself that if he learned the secret of his son’s suffering at the hands of the Corsicans, that knowledge would guide him to a cure for the boy’s malady. But having relived his ordeal, the boy stood facing his father once again, pale, silent, and still. Clearly reliving his nightmare had done nothing to alleviate Danilo’s guilt and pain. It would take months, even years to rescue his son, Judah thought, from the pit of despair he had fallen into. If there had been any doubt in Judah’s mind, there no longer was. There would be no campaigning this year for the Sultan’s Chief Body Physician. Danilo’s needs were far greater than the Sultan’s and Judah’s first duty was to his son.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My work on this book over ten years on two continents has left me with a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid. My ledger of indebtedness begins at New York University, my university, and early conversations with colleagues, notably two distinguished scholars, Norman Cantor and Baruch Levine, who set me on a righteous research path.

  Through the generosity of the Art History department, I got a crash course in Renaissance art that led to a series of wanderings in Italy to see for myself what the slides had promised. The Italian department introduced me to the Italian language, now a lifelong study. An introduction from Professor Levine put me in touch with Professor Benjamin Ravid at Brandeis University whose vast knowledge of the history of the Jews of Venice is exceeded only by his willingness to share it.

  From the Tisch School of the Arts I got encouragement and time off. My thanks to my former dean, David Oppenheim, and to the present dean, Mary Schmidt Campbell. Janet Neipris, my chairman and friend, continued to believe in this book at times when I quite lost hope for it.

  I am not the firs
t to recognize the New York Public Library, that astonishing repository of everything you ever wanted to know about anything. In my case, I found the beating heart of my story buried in their microfiche archives and am, for that, especially beholden. Living within blocks of the Bobst Library at NYU and the Hebrew Union College library, I took it as my right to use them as I wished. It took research experience in Europe to teach me that the vast network of free libraries in this country has no equal in the world and to learn to cherish them.

  A stay at the MacDowell Colony enabled me to make my first efforts at writing fiction. The American Academy in Rome gave me a safe and friendly place from which to pursue my Roman researches. And the Canadian Cultural Council has offered advice and help over the years. To Gilbert Reid, who headed that office, and to Elena Solari who still represents Canada’s cultural presence in Italy, my everlasting gratitude.

  Everybody loves the Italians. And, like all lovers, we all believe that our relationship with the loved one is unique. I am no exception. I went to that country ill versed in the language and profoundly ignorant of Italian life, both in the sixteenth century and in the present. And to a man — and woman — the Italians I turned to for help offered me their time, their knowledge, their precious documents, their hospitality, their friendship. Who else but Tudi Sammartini, the greatest guide in Venice, perhaps in the world, would have undertaken to guide me from Ferrara to Bologna on a lunatic search for the long-buried Reno Canal — and helped me find its remains? Who would have handed over to me, without my asking for it, a private history of his family, as did Dottore Ugo Norsa of Mantova? Or have given hours of time out of his busy life to act as my interpreter as did Professor Vittore Colorni?

  My knowledge of the Gonzaga reggio comes from a tour I was given by Sandra Sicoli of the office of the Sovrintendenza per i Beni Artistici e Storici. My acquaintance with the Venetian ghetto I gained from Sally Spector; with the Roman Jewish quarter from Bice Migliau of the Centro di Cultura Ebraica; of Italian Jews then and now from the late patron of the Jewish museum in Rome, Signore Fornari; and from Tullia Zevi, head of the Union of Jewish Congregations of Italy. The kindness and patience of these individuals and countless others has been simply boundless.

  Finally, I must express my gratitude to the staunch crew of friends who read through this lengthy manuscript — some more than once, some more than twice — as it took shape: Zane Kotker, Susan Cartsonis, Michael Manzi, Sheri Holman, and Laurie Chittenden, who came aboard late but has been an unwavering support. My agent, Molly Friedrich, and my editor, Mary Ann Naples, have devoted themselves without stint to the task of steering this book to publication. To say that I thank them with my whole heart does not begin to express the gratitude and affection I feel for these two kind, smart, and generous women.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JACQUELINE PARK is the founding chairman of the Dramatic Writing Program and professor emerita at New York’s Tisch School of the Arts. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”