The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi Read online

  Papa was the first to recover his equanimity. Having thanked the equerry profusely, he turned to his famiglia.

  “As you hear, the gracious Marchese has sent wagons to take us to the port. Let us therefore stanch our tears” — this advice was accompanied by a stern look at Dania and Cecilia, two young women of the famiglia who had embarked on a fortissimo duet of weeping and wailing — “and with all good haste, make our preparations.”

  “Pack no cassones. No boxes. Nothing that will impede our flight,” he cautioned them. “Each bring your own bedsack and put on all your warm clothes. Be quick. Time is our ally. We must not betray him with tarrying.”

  Still old Rabbi Isaac stood, supported by his son, as if fixed to the floor. And Davide, our tutor, appeared dazed beside his weeping wife and as short of will as my Aunt Sofronia. But Monna Matilda had will and energy enough for all.

  “Get on, you lot,” she ordered. “You heard Ser Daniele. Time is our ally. We must not betray him.” And to emphasize the point, she sent the rabbi flying out the door with a great shove. Then, turning back into the room, she headed for the table in a most resolute way and proceeded to wrap up the leftover cakes of matzoh in a cloth.

  “We will carry our matzoh as we make our escape just like the Jews of old.” Then she gathered up her twins and took her leave.

  Meanwhile, Papa had bade our servants to fetch our clothes and mattresses, for he wished us to remain with him.

  Now, Papa inquired of the equerry how many horses the barge might accommodate, for he did not wish to abandon his animals.

  “None, I am afraid,” was the answer. “The boatmen of the Mincio have little taste for nocturnal voyages. We could commandeer but one vessel to carry you to Governolo and that one too light to carry animals.” Then, seeing the distress on Mama’s face, the gentleman quickly added, “I am certain that when you reach the Po, there will be no shortage of comfortable barques to carry you on to Ferrara.”

  Having thus smoothly disposed of the Jewish problem, he turned to take his leave. But something stopped him.

  “About the animals . . .” He hesitated, no longer the patronizing flunkey but a man with fellow feeling. “I share your concern for them. Knowing my lord’s nature, I feel he would wish me to offer the hospitality of the Gonzaga stud to your horses. Yes, indeed he would. And believe me, Maestro Daniele, they will be cared for as if they were the Marchese’s own precious Barbary steeds.” They love horseflesh in that family.

  Mama kept her composure during the equerry’s visit, but the minute the door closed behind him her lips began to quiver.

  “They were only concerned to protect the contents of our warehouse,” she cried. “Now that the goods are safely put away at the monastery, they will abandon us.”

  “You forget, my Rachel, that I am a sharp Jewish gambler,” Papa replied with a smile. Papa a gambler? We had never before heard such a thing mentioned.

  “Oh yes, my dears,” he went on, including us now in his audience. “Your father has been cursed as a damned Jew cardsharper. And you know that the cardsharper always has a knave up his sleeve . . . or under his shirt . . .” Whereupon he reached under the strings of his camicia and drew forth a small dun-colored bag of some undistinguished cloth.

  “Daniele,” Mama rebuked him, “this is no time for games.”

  “And this is no game, my dear,” he retorted, as he loosed the cord around the little bag and poured out onto the table a cornucopia of jewels. Diamonds and rubies and pearls tumbled onto the tablecloth, shooting out into the room a corona of red and green and clear white shafts that made our eyes blink. And when that brilliant stream ceased, Papa shook the bag and out rolled two great green emeralds the size of plover’s eggs.

  “By Saint George and Saint Stephen,” Papa shook his head in imitation of some desiccated cleric, “I seem to have forgotten to send these treasures to the monastery for safekeeping. Where can my poor memory have wandered?”

  Pretending to search for his lost wits in the folds of his camicia, he drew out a large leather purse which must have been hanging from an inner belt. “What have we here?” he asked.

  This time what poured out onto the table was a shower of gold — chains, buttons, rings, and plaquettes.

  “What to do? What to do?” Papa wrung his hands. “So much treasure. We cannot leave it behind for the barbarians, can we?”

  He held up a rope of large, creamy pearls. “The young Marchese would never forgive me for neglecting the care of this necklace. It belonged to his dear mother, the Duchessa Barbara of sainted memory, and is destined to grace the pretty throat of his intended bride, little Isabella d’Este. He has told me that he intends to redeem it in time for her thirteenth birthday, this very year . . .”

  He paused as if to consider what course to take, then picked up the matched emeralds and held them aloft. “And what are we to do with these, pledged only last month to tide the treasury over until the spring taxes are farmed.” Very gently, he cupped Mama’s delicate hand and placed the huge gemstones in her palm. “I appoint you guardian of the Gonzaga emeralds, my dear Rachel. Let us hope we will not have need of them to buy our safety. But, if we do . . .”

  At last, Mama smiled. Jehiel, who had been looking on gravely until then, quickly reached out for a small gold rabbit he had spotted. Squirreling it away inside his borzacchino before anyone could stop him, he announced, “I shall be the guardian of this.”

  I took nothing. In the Holy Book, we are told to carry forth naught of the flesh abroad out of the house, not even a bone. I was not certain if the prohibition against bones included jewels, but I was taking no chances. For I had persuaded myself that if I followed God’s instructions to the letter, He might bring us forth safely on this Passover as He brought forth the Jews out of Egypt in bygone days.

  In all our lives in Mantova, neither Jehiel nor I had ever been to the port. One look was enough to tell why. It was a sewer of a place, the stink of the air exceeded only by the squalor of the denizens. In the midnight darkness — it was six of the clock by then — the odd flickering candle disclosed a litter of layabouts, women as well as men, huddled on the steps. Many of the women wore the yellow badge of the prostitute.

  There is an inn at the top of the steps where sailors go to game and carouse. There went Papa, leaving us huddled at the shore in the feeble hands of Rov Isaac and Davide, the tutor — poor Davide almost as close to tears as his wife, Dania. But Jehiel and I, more through innocence than bravery, danced about the piers investigating the various crafts and speculating which one we would be boarding.

  The Marchese’s golden bucentaur lay at anchor there and Jehiel believed that it would carry us to Ferrara. Being two years closer to cynicism than he, I was certain that the gilded barque was not for us. But there were at least five worthy crafts tethered to various poles, any one of them spacious enough to accommodate our famiglia plus the ten or more oarsmen needed to power the craft along the river should the wind fail.

  However, when Papa returned after a while with a half-drunken barge captain in tow, we were led around the bend of the river, away from the Marchese’s barque and the fishing fleet, to where a single open boat lay at anchor without so much as a canopy to protect the passengers from the wintery winds.

  Seeing it bobbing up and down forlornly, Mama uttered a piercing “No!” Jehiel ran to her side and began to cry. How could we survive the chill of the river in that scow? As if to emphasize our peril, a light snow began to fall. Dante’s ominous warning came to my mind: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

  Only Papa kept countenance. He detached his borsa from his belt, withdrew from it a thick rope of gold, and held it out to the captain. Grabbing it, the captain lurched off.

  Moments passed. Then, out of the fog, a second craft emerged looking for all the world like the ghostly boat that Dante tells us plied the River Styx. This one had sails, b
ut they were so tattered and frayed that I could not believe them capable of containing any wind stronger than a breeze. However, the barque also possessed a skimpy canopy, and because of that slim protection, Papa selected it.

  Thus our pathetic armada set sail for Governolo, the town just beyond that crotch where the Mincio joins the Po, and where, Papa reassured us, we would most certainly find a comfortable bucentaur to carry us the rest of the way to Ferrara. But, from the looks on the faces around me, I could tell that nobody believed him. And I wonder if any of the party besides me were haunted by Dante’s vision as we set sail across the foggy vastness of Lago Minore under the venomous gaze of that drunken navigator. Wrapped in a gray shroudlike cloak, he did indeed resemble the dreaded boatman, Charon, as he thrust his head into the fog, red-eyed and blinking. It took very little power of invention to imagine that the water washing across our bow was that of Dante’s river and that this ghostly craft was heading straight for the ninth circle of Hell.

  I could feel the presence of spirits all around us in the water — a flash here, a leap there. I even saw the spirit of Fra Bernardino rising out of the water, his magic cloak floating behind him. And, floating in his train like a school of sea monsters, his white-clad boys drifted by brandishing their knives.

  I must have screamed, although I had no awareness of it. For I felt a hand across my mouth and, looking up, saw the face of Monna Matilda, for once not angry but kindly.

  It was but a flash. The very next instant, the old puckered-up frown returned. “Ser Daniele . . .” She plucked at Papa’s cloak and whispered loud enough for all to hear. “I fear that the Lord is not looking kindly on this craft.”

  Surely she was not going to blame that on the dei Rossis!

  “And just what,” Papa inquired with more than his usual asperity, “would you suggest we do about that, respected madama?”

  “I would suggest,” she replied, bold as ever, “that we complete our ritual of thanks, so rudely interrupted by these distressing events.”

  “Here? In this boat?”

  “Here is where the good Lord has placed us. Here is where we must complete our prayers. Is that not what the Jews did during their flight from Egypt?” she asked, quite mildly. “And are we not also in flight from a cruel oppressor and saved from destruction by the grace of God?”

  Her logic was, in a certain sense, unassailable. And it did have the virtue of taking our minds off our troubles. I, for one, had quite forgotten my fears, so intrigued was I by the proposal to conduct a seder on a barge in the middle of the night.

  “But we have no —”

  Without allowing Papa to finish, Monna Matilda pulled out of her tattered borsetta a small, misshapen piece of tallow.

  “I have brought this candle. It will stand for two,” she announced firmly. “The Lord will understand.”

  At this, Rov Isaac, who had remained quite speechless with astonishment, rose to his feet to object. But the virago was not to be gainsaid.

  “Abraham! Jacob!” she called out to her boys.

  From somewhere deep in the pocket of his cloak, Jacob drew a folded napkin and handed it to his mother. The afikomen!

  A ragged cheer went up.

  Rov Isaac reseated himself.

  Papa’s eyes crinkled. “We have indeed been saved through the Lord’s goodness, Monna Matilda,” he said. “And we owe Him thanks. Yes, we will say our last blessing and eat our last morsel and then . . .” Here, he took a breath and looked straight at the lineup of cowed women huddled together against the railing. “And then,” he repeated, “we will sing our praise of the Lord.”

  And so we did. We sang the Kiddush and the Hallel and then we moved on to the old Passover question-and-answer songs, Had Gadya and Ehad Mi Yodea. We sang them in Hebrew; then we sang them in the Italian vernacular, one voice rising above all — the deep, strident basso of Monna Matilda, resonant with ardor, every note off pitch.

  We sang ourselves hoarse.

  In the end, we sang ourselves to sleep.

  I woke up when someone shouted, “Land ahoy!” We were approaching the town of Borgoforte, where the Mincio meets the Po. Half asleep, I heard Mama whispering urgently in Papa’s ear that we must dock at once. Her pains had begun. There could be no waiting for Governolo. The barque lurched sharply as it heeled over in midstream, and when I looked up, we were in a small side canal lit by torches that bathed the quay ahead in a greenish-yellow light. Behind me, Mama rose unsteadily to her feet, as if she could not even wait for the craft to be properly moored.

  Our captain hurled the landing rope onto the dock and shouted to the mate to jump up and fasten it. But before the fellow could obey, a giant figure emerged out of the yellow light bellowing at the sailor to keep his hands off the bollard if he valued his life. “I am Pietro, the dockmaster,” he roared. “Who the hell are you?”

  To protect himself from the bully’s wrath, Old Charon, as I had taken to calling our captain in my mind, immediately disowned us and all our works. He was simply a sailor for hire, he whined, and the Jew in the back of the boat had ordered him to put in at Borgoforte, for what purpose he did not know.

  “Where is this Jew? Why does he not show himself?” the bullying dockmaster demanded. “Is he afraid to reveal the horn that grows out of his head?”

  My father stood up, removed his berretta, and bowed low. “I am the Jew, dockmaster,” he announced. “Daniele dei Rossi traveling under safe-conduct from the Marchese of Mantova with a wife about to give birth any moment.”

  “Not here she don’t,” was the reply. “We will welcome no Jews in our town on the eve of Easter day.”

  And nothing would budge the brute. He waved aside the Marchese Francesco’s safe-conduct pass contemptuously. “Try the dockmaster at Governolo called Pepino,” he advised Papa with a twisted grin. “They say he is not unwilling to soil his hands with Jewish gold. But here at Borgoforte we fear God and love Christ.”

  Wait. I hear footsteps . . .

  Dio, I am summoned. Forgive the hasty departure, my son. I am not my own person in this palace.

  What keeps Madama awake this late? I wonder. Have the Imperial troops launched an offensive against France? Has the King of France caught Madame d’Etampes in flagrante delicto? Or does Madama simply feel the need to hear the poetry of the ancients issuing from my golden throat? I leave you to wonder while I answer the summons.

  Later. Before I sleep, a quick report on the urgent matter that interrupted my ricordanza. A midnight courier had arrived with a letter from Madama’s son, the Marchese Federico. A new threat of trouble in Mantova which had to be addressed at once, even if at once occurred in the middle of the night. Madonna Isabella and her son may be at odds over the matter of his mistress but she still stands guard over him like a tigress protecting her cub. And a good thing for him. Month by month, the battle lines become sharper and tighter between Francis, the King of France, and Charles, the Holy Roman Emperor. The issue: which of these titans will achieve domination over the Pope and, by extension, over all Christendom? In this struggle little Mantova, pledged at one and the same time to both the French king and the Emperor, finds itself not only powerless but pulled tighter and tighter in opposite directions. When a man is stretched long enough on such a rack, he dies. Is it the same with a state?

  Tonight i copied two letters that made me wish you had been a fly on the wall of Madama’s sala. Then the thought occurred, why not make copies for you, in my immaculate hand? Why not put aside, even search out, documents in which you will hear these people speak in their own voices as I do?

  Tomorrow I will purchase a fine wooden box with two locks in which to keep my purloined documents, singular ones winnowed out of the vast number that pass through my hands, which I trust will amuse, entertain, even edify you. Thus begins Danilo’s Archive, a scribe’s gift to the son she loves more than her own life.

 
TO ISABELLA, DOWAGER MARCHESANA OF MANTOVA AT ROMA

  Honored and Most Illustrious Mother:

  I send you this by a courier with orders not to stop riding until he reaches Roma. A dependable witness advises that Georg Frundsberg, the Emperor’s German feudatory, has gathered together an army of thirteen thousand landsknechts from Swabia, Bavaria, Franconia, and the Tyrol. He proposes to duplicate Hannibal’s feat by crossing the Alps of Savoia into Italy. He rides with a golden garotte swinging from his saddle which he swears he will use to strangle the Pope with his own hands. But before he can accomplish that he must pass through our territory.

  To be blunt, Madama, these damn Germans threaten to bring the Emperor’s war to our doorstep. If they succeed in crossing the Alps, they will surely pass through the Mantovana on their way to join with Bourbon’s forces at Milano. I ask you, respected mother, what am I to reply to this Frundsberg when he asks for safe passage through my lands?

  Only last week the Holy Father wrote to remind me that, as gonfaloniere in his army, I am bound to serve in his League if needed. Does his Holiness not understand that I cannot go to war against the Emperor who is my liege lord? Can you perhaps explain it to him?

  I blame the whole mess on that German priest, Luther. It is he who fired up the Germans and set the Emperor against the Pope and left me in the middle. How will I persuade them to leave us in peace, mother? Do you have a plan? I await your words of wisdom.

  Your most respectful and admiring son,

  Federico Gonzaga.

  Encoded in cipher at Mantova. October 21, 1526.

  TO MARCHESE FEDERICO GONZAGA AT MANTOVA

  Most Illustrious Marchese and Loved Son:

  You must know out of your own wisdom that if Count Frundsberg does prove himself a second Hannibal and manages to present himself at your doorstep, you have no choice but to grant him safe passage through the Mantovan territory. If you do not, he will march across you anyway. But, by giving the permission freely you will be in a position to extract guarantees of safety for our towns and our people.