The Dark Lady's Mask (24 page)

From an upper window, she caught an achingly familiar melody that made her stop in her tracks and listen even though she couldn't understand a word of it. A sense of indescribable joy and wonder enveloped her. Suddenly, she was a little girl again, listening to Papa and her uncles singing their forbidden songs in the cellar. So these songs were not just something that had transpired in her childhood home; they were also a part of something much bigger, an entire world she now saw unfolding around her, connecting her to her lost father.
Everything I see here is a part of him—and a part of me.

It astounded her that what appeared to be a prison on the outside could also be a precious refuge where Jews could live without artifice.

“You're so quiet,” Will said. “Why are you smiling like that?”

Earlier this very day, inside the church of Santo Stefano, Will had revealed his secret Catholicism to her. She wondered if she would ever dare to reveal her secret to him. Jasper would be furious if she divulged their family's Jewish history—her cousin would regard this as an unpardonable act of betrayal.

“It's a city within a city,” she told Will, trying to express her fascination without giving herself away. She waved her arm to encompass the Levantine merchants' warehouses and the women bearing baskets of almonds, grapes, and figs. “To think all this can flourish here behind such forbidding walls.”

Vending stalls sold candles, wine, hats, and books. Greengrocers, butchers, barbers, tailors, and alchemists plied their trades in these narrow alleys. This would have been Papa's entire universe had he chosen to stay here and live openly as a Jew. He would have never come to England, never met Margaret Johnson. Aemilia would have never been born. Instead, he might have had another daughter, a Jewish daughter.

Reaching the dead end where the unpaved street met the boundary wall, she and Will turned and retraced their steps back to the main
campo
where dozens of Venetian Christians queued up outside the pawnshops and money lenders—the Banco Rosso, Banco Nigro, and Banco Verde. At ground level, all around the
campo
, she saw the vendors of used clothes and remembered her original intention—to purchase the garments that would transform her and Will into gentlemen, for here in this watery city they could claim to be anything as long as they looked the part.

A young man beckoned them as they approached a narrow shop front. In his sarcenet hose, he was arrayed in the height of fashion. He wore his red cap at such a jaunty angle as to make it almost stylish.

“
Signori,
you are English,” he said. “I can tell because the rain doesn't bother you. And you wear
riding boots
”—he cast a pointed look at Aemilia—“in a city with no horses!”

“Then it is your task,
signore,
” she said, “to clothe us in the Venetian
moda.
We have eight ducats to spend between us. What can you provide?”

The young man waved his empty hand to the sky. “Good clothes are expensive,
signore
! Many of the
cortigiani
of the Rialto do not even own their own gowns—did you know this? They must rent them from their pimps.”

Aemilia translated for Will. Buying used clothing, it appeared, was a far more complicated and costly procedure than she had first envisioned. Will suggested they try their luck at another stall. But when they turned to go, the young man's father, a bearded man in black fustian, intervened.

“We can clothe you for a good price,
signori,
” he said. “If my son tries to coax you to spend more, it's only because the rent and taxes we must pay to the Doge are so high. They rise every year. So we must struggle for every ducat.”

With no further ado, father and son sifted through their boxes of used garments.

“First, the younger
signore,
” the vendor's son said. “Look at the elegant costume I have chosen for you.”

Aemilia was dazzled as he held out a shirt of whitest cambric and a doublet of dove-gray damask. To wear over the doublet, he presented a severe black jerkin, boned and padded to create a fashionably masculine silhouette. Next he held up a pair of rose-colored slops in the Venetian style, long and voluminous, that tied below the knees. Then came dove-gray nether socks and a pair of thin-soled shoes in butter-soft calfskin that would allow her to steal along as silently as an assassin.

Inspecting each garment, she found evidence of previous use—mended tears and stains that had been laundered to near invisibility. But for the price, they were more than adequate. After she was shown into the tiny changing booth with its steel mirror, the transformation astounded her. Would Jasper even recognize her?

Bursting out of the booth, she fairly swaggered before Will, whose eyebrows rose to his hairline.

“Clothes make the man,” he told her, with a wink.

But beneath his banter, Aemilia caught something potent sparking in his eyes, as though these garments had truly transformed her into a young gallant—one who captured his desire. The thought left her shaking. In a rush of air, she inhaled.
Don't be ridiculous. He's your friend.

The vendor eyed her critically.

“The slops fit well enough, but the doublet and jerkin should be taken in,” he said, approaching her with his needle and thread.

Aemilia warded him off with flailing palms—how easily her secret might be revealed.

“That's quite all right,
signore,
” she told him. “We English are quite fond of loose garments.”

“And now for you,
signore,
” the vendor said to Will.

The vendor and his son selected a linen shirt, a small ruff, a pinked doublet of olive green, hose of dark russet, black nether socks, boots that rose halfway up the calf, and a sweeping black surcoat.

When the poet emerged from the changing booth, it was as though Aemilia saw him for the first time. Styled in the very height of Venetian sophistication, his sleek new garments hugged and accentuated the slender, muscled contours of his torso and thighs. The olive-green doublet set his clouded hazel eyes darkly aglow.

“Do you like what you see, good Emilio?” Will asked, catching her in the act of staring at him stupidly, as though she were an infatuated girl. He grinned at her until her temples pounded.

“If only our dear Harry could see you now,” Aemilia said drily, to hide her embarrassment.

In his few words of Italian, Will thanked the vendor profusely and was content to allow the man and his son to take in his seams until the garments were perfectly tailored.

“And your old things?” the vendor asked. “Do you wish to keep them? We couldn't offer you much for these.”

Will parted from his old clothes without a second's hesitation, but Aemilia clung to hers, her beloved disguise that had been her salvation. She certainly wasn't going to part with her riding boots, for no matter where she went, she wanted to be able to make a quick escape if necessary, not trip and flounce in stylish slippers.

After Aemilia and Will had paid, the vendor and his son began to close up shop.

“Why do you close your business in the middle of the day?” she couldn't keep herself from asking.

“We are going to hear our young rabbi speak,” the vendor said. “Leone da Modena. So great is his fame that bishops and foreign ambassadors come to listen to him.”

“Might we come as well?” Aemilia asked, her voice rising unintentionally high, causing the vendor's son to throw her a curious look.

“Since it isn't the Shabbat, anyone may come,” the vendor said. “The great rabbi speaks in Latin so that every educated visitor will understand him.”

“This is our chance to hear a great rabbi,” she told Will, seizing his arm and not giving him a chance to refuse.

Carrying her boots and old clothes in a cloth satchel the vendor had given her, she followed the man and his son across the
campo
toward the Scuola Grande Tedesca, distinguishable as a synagogue on the outside only by its row of five arched windows.

“For the five books in the Torah,” the vendor's son explained. He kept shooting her covert glances as if he found something unaccountably strange about this young Englishman.

Trying to ignore the young man's inquisitive gaze, Aemilia followed his father up the stairs to the second floor, entering a high-ceilinged, irregularly shaped chamber, as packed as the
campo
below, with red-hatted Jews jostling with Christian visitors, including a small number of monks and priests. But as her eyes scanned the assembly, she saw not a single female.

“Are no women permitted entrance?” she hazarded to ask.

The vendor's face darkened. “What interest do you have in our women?”

She dropped her eyes to the floor in humiliation.

His son leaned over to whisper in her ear. “The women are up in the gallery. Behind the screen.”

She followed his gaze to a pillared balustrade with an intricately carved screen above it, behind which shadowy figures shifted and murmured. If Papa had remained here, his Jewish daughter would be up there, peering at the men below.

Had her father ever stood in this room? The synagogue was as foreign a place as she had ever found herself in. Even in Santo Stefano, the first Catholic church she had ever set foot in, she had known how to tell the high altar from the baptismal font. Where was the altar here—on that raised platform? What was stored in that cabinet with the arched double doors on the far end of the room?

A stir went through the crowd as a man who appeared to be no older than her twenty-four years swept in and mounted the platform. Aemilia struggled to see him above the men's hatted heads. Even when she managed to catch a glimpse of the young rabbi, he appeared to her as a blur filled with frenetic energy, gesticulating as he spoke. His sermon, if that's what it was, seemed directed toward the Gentile visitors, especially the monks and priests, rather than his Jewish congregation.

“A Jew was claiming repayment for a large debt from a gentleman in Ferrara,” Leone da Modena began, in an engaging tone, “which included hundreds of ducats of interest.”

The crowd seemed to contemplate the enormity of such a debt and what lay at stake for both the debtor and the moneylender.

“However,” the rabbi continued, “the gentleman alleged it was illegal for the Jew to take interest from a Christian. A rabbi had even written an attestation in favor of the Christian while other rabbis had written in favor of the Jew. The most illustrious cardinal then sent for me and asked me whether or not it was legitimate for a Jew to take interest from a Christian.”

Aemilia glanced at Will, who seemed to listen with full concentration. She envied her friend his superior height, for he must have a clearer view of the young rabbi than she did.

“My answer,” Leone da Modena said, “was ‘No, your grace, and, yes, your grace.' ‘Explain yourself,' said the cardinal. So I quoted Deuteronomy 23:19, which says thou shalt not lend to thy brother at interest. The Christian is our brother and can't be lent to at interest. And therefore, I said, ‘No, your grace.'”

Here the rabbi paused. The room fell silent and Aemilia held her breath, awaiting his next word.

“But that is not all I told the cardinal.” A touch of both humor and melancholy danced in the rabbi's voice. “I told him, ‘If the Christian treated us like brothers and let us live as his citizens and subjects, and did not forbid us the familiarity in all dealings, the purchase of real estate, many trades, and in certain places such as Venice even the mechanical arts and infinite other prohibited trades, we would be equally obliged to acknowledge him as brother.'”

The word
brother
filled the air with bittersweet longing before Leone da Modena delivered his concluding salvo.

“‘But if he treats us like slaves,' I told the cardinal, ‘we, as slaves, would find it legitimate to lend at interest for the sake of our own survival. And therefore, I say yes.' The most illustrious cardinal, with a grave laugh, placed his hand on my shoulder and ruled in favor of the Jew.'”

Aemilia's vision blurred with tears, for in a few sentences the young rabbi had conjured all the suffering and injustice that lay at the heart of Papa's tragedy, the loss and exile that good man was forced to endure. To think her father had intended to keep her in ignorance of his true identity, of who he most deeply was, keep her in exile from his people and their truths. At least the women behind the screen knew who they were, knew what to call themselves. What or who was she? Neither truly Christian—for Anne Locke's God left her cold—nor a real Jew, for she knew nothing about her father's religion, his secret language, or his prayers. Whether she dressed as a woman or a man, whether she called herself Aemilia or Emilio, she was just a mask with nothing behind it. An empty shell. A player in a tragicomedy uttering lines written by someone else.

“What's wrong with your friend?” she heard the vendor's son ask Will. “Why does he weep like a girl?”

“I,
TOO, WAS MOVED
by the rabbi's speech,” said Will, his hand on Aemilia's shoulder as they walked out of the Ghetto's gate in search of a gondola that would take them back to their lodgings. “But you must learn to hide your tears lest you betray your tender female heart. The clothier's son suspected. I'll wager he was half besotted with you.” There was a catch in Will's voice that confused her. He opened his mouth, as if about to say more, then ducked his head.

Wiping her eyes on her sleeve, Aemilia's throat brimmed with everything she couldn't bring herself to tell him. Since she didn't dare speak of her father, she asked Will about his.

He grimaced. “A debtor and a disgrace, John Shakespeare is. An overambitious glover who laid waste to my mother's dowry. Thanks to him, the very name Shakespeare is a thing of dishonor. Pray, let us speak of happier things.”