Bitter Greens (24 page)

‘I want to be a witch like you.’

‘Then you must be a whore.’

For a moment, I could not speak, my ears and eyes filled with memories like maggots.

Then I realised Sibillia was right. A nun was locked away behind high walls, never to step foot outside again. Even if the tales of nuns tunnelling through the walls to let in their lovers were true, the fact remained that they were bound in service to their god and had little freedom or power in their lives. And, in Venice, wives were kept almost as close as nuns. At Carnevale time, men took their mistresses out to see the festivities while
their wives stayed at home with their children. They went out only to church, or to visit family in their private homes, their hair tucked under demure caps, their bodies encased in armour of farthingales and petticoats. I could not bear such a life.

‘I must warn you, without a dowry, you’ll have little chance of a good marriage,’ Sibillia said. ‘You’ll maybe win a shopkeeper willing to take you on as a pretty face to lure customers in. You’ll be expected to work hard, and heaven help you when your beauty fades.’

‘Is that not true of a whore as well?’

‘Indeed, though there are ways to help preserve your beauty longer if the only work you have to do is lie on your back and let men spill their seed into you. At least your hands stay white and your back unbowed. And a good courtesan can earn as much as a ship’s captain and twice as much as a master tradesman.’

That was something to think about. I never wanted to be poor again. But I remembered my mother and father in bed, panting, moaning. I screwed up my mouth in distaste. ‘I don’t want men slobbering all over me.’

Sibillia was amused. ‘It’s not so bad. You may even come to enjoy it.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then you had best become a nun, because it’s the only way to escape it. A wife sells her body just as surely as any whore, though the coin is different.’

‘Can I not just stay here with you?’ I asked in my most childish voice.

‘Not unless you are of some use to me. Even if you were to retain your maidenhead for some while yet, your blood loses some of its potency once you begin to menstruate. I need to find some other girl on the cusp of womanhood. Sergio is out searching the streets right now, though it seems to be harder and harder to find a virgin in Venice these days. We might need to entice one out of a convent.’

‘And how would I be of use to you if I turn whore?’

‘You would be bringing in some money,’ Sibillia pointed out. ‘Times are hard, and I am getting old. No man would pay to taste my flesh any more. You, however, are as sweet and ripe as a peach. Any man would pay dearly for the chance to pluck you.’

‘You’d turn procuress?’

Sibillia smiled. ‘Not I. There are enough of those in Venice already without adding to them. No, I’d simply allow you to pay for the privilege of copying all my secrets.’

Heat rushed into my cheeks. I dropped my eyes, pretending not to understand what she meant, while I considered what she had said. Nun, or wife, or whore. It seemed I really had no choice at all.

So it was done. My maidenhead was sold to an elderly man whose sagging folds of hairy skin and sour smell made me feel sick to my stomach. It was all over quickly, though, and I was able to give Sibillia a fat purse, and still buy myself velvet gowns and ropes of pearls and fine perfumes from Arabia. Sergio found Sibillia a skinny little virgin from the docks, glad enough to offer up her wrist to the witch to suck in return for a warm bed and a meal every day. I became Sibillia’s apprentice by day and a courtesan by night.

One I loved and the other I hated. A good training ground for a witch.

Plague came to Venice in the summer of 1510, like a hail of poisoned arrows.

Our little virgin was the first in our household to fall ill. At first, she felt just a little unwell and refused her bowl of
spezzatino di manzo
for the first time ever. Then her fever began to climb, and our cook – a chubby man named Bassi – called for Sibillia. She gathered together an infusion of ground willow bark, feverfew and lavender water, and shook together dried linden and elderflowers to make a fever-cooling tea.

‘Come with me and I’ll show you what needs to be done,’ she told me. ‘You must be careful not to give her too much of the willow-bark infusion. It could make her sick in the stomach.’

I followed, though I had no real interest in the girl, being jealous that she had replaced me as the source of blood for Sibillia’s spell against ageing, and having always been more interested in knowing what plants could kill than what plants could heal (strangely, they were often the same plant in different strengths). I knew, however, that as much of a witch’s income came from healing as from curses and cantrips, and I should learn what I could.

The girl, Fabricia, lay on her pallet, her head moving restlessly, her face sweaty and red. Sibillia gave her some willow-bark infusion to drink,
instructing me to make up the linden tea. I swung the kettle back over the fire and was getting a cup down from the dresser when Sibillia said, in a high strained voice, ‘Selena, you had best get out of here. Bassi, you too.’

I swung around. Sibillia had pulled down the girl’s blanket and lifted her nightgown to examine her. I saw large, red, inflamed swellings in her groin, just inside the hairless juncture of her legs.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘It’s the plague. Selena, I want you to go to my room and gather up everything that the Inquisition would find of interest and lock it in my stone chest. If you are wise, you’ll hide your own secret hoard in there too. Bassi, you and Sergio must bury my chest under the compost heap. Go. Hurry, all of you.’

We did as she said. I put everything into the stone chest, all the books of magical lore, all my secret copies, the different-coloured candles, the seashells and stones, the wand and dagger and cauldron, the broom of elder twigs, the silver cimaruta amulet with its symbols of fish and key and hand and moon and blossom. I closed and locked the chest, and the two big men dragged it out into the garden and buried it deep.

‘We must try and hide Fabricia’s body,’ Sibillia said when I returned to the kitchen, standing just outside the door.

‘Is she dead?’ I asked fearfully.

‘Not yet. It won’t be long, though. If the Health Officers discover we have plague in the house, we’ll be put in quarantine and they’ll be burning all I own in the square. If we can keep it quiet, there’s a fortune to be made here.’

‘Magic cures?’ I guessed.

Sibillia nodded. ‘Last time we had the plague here in Venice, the Council of Ten had to pass an ordinance limiting pharmacies and apothecaries to one every hundred paces. The city was seething with them like maggots on a dead dog. I’ll need to collect some frogs, as many as we can get hold of. And I’ll make a batch of my special Venice honey …’ She stopped suddenly, lifting one hand to her head.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. I’m fine. It’s hot in here.’ There was a long fraught silence, then suddenly Sibillia sat down. ‘I drank her blood three nights ago, when the moon was full. Do you think …?’

I could not speak. I feared Wise Sibillia, but I also revered her.

‘Bring me parchment and a quill.’ For the first time, hunched over in fear, the lines around her mouth driven deep, she looked like an old woman. Silently, I obeyed. Sibillia wrote out a will leaving the house and the garden and all her worldly goods to me. ‘Witch lore is passed from mother to daughter. You have no mother and I have no daughter. It is fitting that we should have found each other in time.’

Fabricia died before dawn. Sibillia wrapped her body in a sheet and the two men carried her out to the gondola. ‘Drop her in a canal or in the lagoon, somewhere away from here,’ Sibillia instructed. ‘Be careful.’

The hours passed, and the men did not return. Bells pealed out all over the city, and several times we heard wailing and sobbing from somewhere nearby and, once, the anguished yowling of a cat. Sibillia and I busied ourselves hiding our jewels and most precious belongings. Soon, however, the witch was too weak to stand and she lay down, shivering with fever. I did not want to tend her, but neither did I want to go out into the streets, filled now with shouting and screaming. It all seemed to have happened so quickly. Bassi had come back from the market only the day before to say there were rumours the plague had come again. Sibillia had told me not to make my deliveries that morning and to stay home from the brothel. I had been glad to obey her, for the heat had been stifling and I was happy to spend an evening in my bedroom, studying my books. Now, the skinny virgin was dead and Sibillia herself was sick. How was it possible? Did she not have spells to cast the plague away?

‘Water … please …’ Sibillia croaked. I brought her a cup but kept a fold of my sleeve across my mouth. ‘Help me …’ She struggled to sit up. I did not want to touch her. Strange black spots were disfiguring her face and I could see purple swellings on her neck, under her ear. I held the cup to her lips and she managed to drink a sip, before beginning to cough violently. I stumbled back, averting my face.

‘Angelica in wine … and chew some garlic,’ she said when the coughing stopped. ‘Are they not back yet?’

I shook my head and backed away. She sighed and lay down again. I went into the garden and sat in the hot sunshine, crushing herbs in my hands and smelling them, listening to the bells clamouring. I was weeping with fear. I did not want to die.

The sun was directly overhead when someone began to bang at our front door. The maids had all fled during the night, and there was no one left in the house but me and the dying witch. Reluctantly, I went to open the door.

Outside, a plague doctor loomed, knocking on the door with the end of a long hooked stick. He wore a black waxed coat falling over high leather boots, a wide-brimmed hat, and a white mask with a long hooked beak and glass eyepieces that flashed in the sun. Behind him were two filthy men, rags tied about their mouths, pulling a cart filled with dead bodies, buzzing with flies. The bodies were naked, a jumble of protruding arms and legs and backs and buttocks. A man with an enormous hairy belly lay on the very top. As I watched, he groaned and tried to lift his head, and one of the corpse-bearers knocked him back with a cudgel.

The fat man was Bassi, our cook. I stared in horror, seeing the swelling of buboes at his neck and groin and armpits, the dark marks like bruises on his swollen belly.

‘You’ve plague in the house,’ the doctor said, his voice muffled by the mask. ‘Bring out your dead.’

‘No. There’s no plague here. Go away!’

‘Two of your servants have been found with plague marks. All bedding and clothing must be burnt and the house shut up. You and anyone else living here will be taken to the Lazzaretto for forty days and forty nights. If you survive, you’ll be allowed back to Venice.’

‘But not many ever come back,’ one of the corpse-bearers sniggered.

I tried to stop him, but the doctor shoved me aside and went into the house. The corpse-bearers followed him, dragging down priceless tapestries and curtains, gathering up cushions and bedclothes and throwing them out
into the street. I wept as my new velvet dresses and fine lawn chemises were tossed out the window. Then the doctor found Sibillia, sweating and moaning in her bed. He called sharply to the corpse-bearers and they came to carry her downstairs.

‘It’s not the plague,’ I argued. ‘She just has an ague. She’ll be better tomorrow.’

The doctor did not bother to reply. He watched, inscrutable behind his beaked mask, as all our bedding and clothes were set on fire. Gasping, I ran back inside and caught up Sibillia’s purse and shawl and a loaf of bread from the kitchen. It was all I had time for, the corpse-bearers coming to manhandle me away. Sibillia was tossed on top of the dead bodies, her cook, Bassi, groaning beside her, and planks were nailed across our door. I had to walk, stumbling and weeping, behind the cart as it made its way through the narrow alleyways and over arched bridges towards the lagoon. Every house and inn was shut up, every shopfront shuttered. Fires smouldered in every square, and the air was orange with smoke. The corpse-bearers rang a handbell, shouting, ‘
Corpi morti, corpi morti!
’

Each narrow
calle
ran with the same cry and the tuneless clanging of countless handbells.

In Piazza San Marco, a great bonfire was burning. Amidst the cloth and trade goods, I saw the small shapes of skinned cats and dogs impaled on sticks. Black smoke billowed everywhere, smelling nauseatingly of cooking flesh. Corpses lay in piles. People wailed, on their knees, hands lifted imploringly to heaven. A priest in a black cassock chanted incomprehensible prayers.

The clock on the Torre dell’Orologio began to toll out.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten.

Eleven.

Twelve.

Each toll a second of my life unravelling, each toll a moment gone forever. I felt as if I was falling down into a great pit of blackness and madness and despair. The smoke choked me. I could not breathe. My heart clamoured in my ears.

A young man lurched at me out of the haze. His fine velvet clothes were torn and disordered, his handsome face streaked with tear-tracks through the char of smoke. He saw me. Eyes widened in recognition.

‘You! You did this! You cursed me. Witch! Whore!’ The young man launched himself at me, knocked me to the ground. He punched me in the face, so blood poured from my nose. I could taste its strange metallic richness on my tongue. He punched me again, and I felt a tooth crack.

No one came to my rescue. He could have sat astride me and pummelled me into a pulp, if Sibillia had not somehow found the strength to slip from the cart, falling to her knees beside it. She struggled up and stumbled towards me, her hands held out. With her white hair straggling about her pain-contorted face, her eyes wild with fever, she looked exactly like the evil witch of fairy tale.

The young man moaned in terror and rolled away from me. Sibillia pointed one hand at him, two fingers extended in the sign of the devil’s horns, and chanted some words in a strange language. Terrified, the young man fled across the square, almost falling over a pile of dead bodies. I scrambled to my feet and ran to Sibillia, both hands catching her when she would have fallen. All around us, people were staring and pointing. ‘It’s Wise Sibillia,’ someone cried. ‘And her witch apprentice.’

‘He said she’d cursed us.’

‘Plague-carrier.’

‘Devil.’

I put my arm around her back and supported her, obeying the plague
doctor’s emphatic gesture towards the docks. As we stumbled past him, he drew away and made a quick sign of the cross. Sibillia’s legs almost gave way beneath her, and only my arm kept her from falling. An angry mutter rose from the crowd.

We were put together in a small boat, tied by a long cable to another boat, where a cloaked and hooded man waited. The plague doctor bent and whispered something in his ear, and he turned his terrifying white-beaked mask towards us, eye-holes staring blankly. I saw his hand clench on the handle of the long oar he was holding. His fingernails were black and cracked and rotten. He made the quick sign of the cross and spat at us.

Bassi and the dead bodies on the cart were tipped into a barge. I watched, shaking, as more bodies were flung on top. Soon, Bassi’s chubby form was hidden from sight. A few more people were ushered onto our boat – a distraught woman with a weeping child, a haggard young man, an old man in a nightgown and bare feet. They had evidently seen Sibillia cursing the young man, for they huddled at the other end of the boat, too frightened to look at us.

Then the hooded oarsmen rowed away across the lagoon, dragging our smaller boat behind theirs. Sibillia coughed hoarsely. I wrapped her shawl about her and wished I had thought to bring something to drink. Smoke drifted through the air, stinging my eyes. The water did not glitter as it usually did but heaved up and down, grey and lustreless as the scales of a dead fish, occasionally gleaming with lurid reddish light. I peered ahead.

We passed a low-lying swampy island. Ancient black galleons were moored about it, their bare masts creaking as they rocked on the swell. People crowded the decks, holding out imploring hands to us, calling in thin cracked voices. On the muddy shores were piles of dead bodies, some naked, some wrapped in shrouds. Men were digging graves nearby.

Our boat was dragged past, heading towards another swampy island, the Isola del Lazzaretto Nuovo. Set right at the mouth of the lagoon, it was the place where ships had to go and unload their cargoes of spices and silks to be decontaminated with smoking herbs before being allowed into Venice. I had heard of it before – I did not know when. It seemed now it
had been turned into a place where those suspected of having the plague were to be quarantined.