The Venetian Contract (31 page)

He argued that it was a matter of balance; that the bleedings and leechings and drainings would reassert the natural balance of the humours. In this she found some common ground and attempted to explain the concept of
Mizan
, the balance of body, mind and soul, but here they found themselves in opposition again. He favoured intervention every time.

They were forced to agree on one point: that none of the remedies championed by the
Consiglio della Sanita
for the Plague had any efficacy whatsoever. The Birdman told her the story of a physician called Valnetti and his decoction of Four Thieves Vinegar and she scoffed along with him; but as she laughed a thought occurred – if a person
believed
that they had been given a cure, would the strength of this belief have a physical effect? Could the mind really affect the body through faith alone? So, as she scoffed, she admitted, privily, that what this charlatan, this Valnetti, was practising was the logical conclusion of
Mizan:
the medical manifestation of mind over matter.

Because of their differences, and because of the fact that the Birdman thought that midwifery was not part of his remit, when it came time for Valentina Trianni to be delivered, Feyra fought alone to birth the baby in the
little house by the well, with just the girl’s mother to aid her.

The little wife twisted on her bed, her swollen belly undulating alarmingly, while her husband hunched over the fire downstairs, trying to ignore the appalling screams. She had laboured since noon the previous day, and now it was near midnight. Valentina was drifting in and out of consciousness, her blue-black hair spread out on the pillow like the rays of a dark sun.

Feyra struggled in the candlelight as her own magnified shade mocked her upon the rough plaster wall; a shadow-play of an incompetent physician. The problem, she knew, was the girl’s frame; her pelvis was narrow but the babe was large. Here on the Lazzaretto the islanders ate well – for Feyra knew good diet to be the best physician of all – and breathed the fresh salt air. If Valentina had given birth in a slum the child might have slid forth like an oiled kid; but here the babe had outgrown its dam. So when the church chimed the midnight hour with the dull clink of a goatbell, Feyra wiped her hands and told Valentina’s mother that she was going for the doctor.

She saw the relief on the old woman’s face, but was not insulted but glad; she knew then that she’d been right when she’d argued with the Birdman – believing that a cure was at hand was almost as efficacious as the cure itself; the physician himself as placebo. Still it cost her something to come to the Birdman that night and acknowledge that after six-and-thirty hours of labour she was at risk of losing both mother and child, and that, in this case, surgery was the only recourse.

With renewed energy she ran through the chill night – the doctor’s window leading her like the North Star. She rapped on the wooden door, once, twice, but there was no
reply. Taking a breath of cold night she lifted the latch and walked in.

A young man sat there, hunched over the fire. His tumble of dark curls fell forward, partly hiding his face, the firelight finding the copper filaments in his hair. He was staring into the flames so intently he hadn’t heard her knock. But when she entered he jumped up so suddenly that his chair fell over.

‘Where is the doctor?’ Feyra demanded.

The young man put a hand to his cheek involuntarily, as if he had been caught naked. Comprehension dawned. ‘I am the doctor,’ he said.

Feyra took a step back. His voice was the same, but softer, less abrasive; as if peeled to softness without the hard shell of the mask. ‘
You
are the doctor? But you look –’ she did not know how to finish the sentence. Young? Handsome? Surprised? Guilty? And, she thought,
cornered
.

His hand twitched towards the beak mask where it hung on his fire hook and she wondered if he hid behind his mask as she hid behind hers.

‘What do you want? What’s amiss?’ he asked, and she knew him then for her Birdman: rude, abrasive, abrupt.

‘It is Valentina Trianni,’ she said. ‘She is come to the time with her child, but the babe will not be born.’

Without another word he reached for his cloak; and the mask.

Feyra watched him as he examined Valentina, curving over the girl with his beak as if she were his prey. But Feyra did not see the mask any more, only his unforgettable face, burned into her consciousness like a candle flame. She knew what he would say.

‘The babe must be cut free.’

She had been right. But she also acknowledged that that was why she had fetched him. ‘Bindusara,’ she said at once, like a reflex.

‘Emperor of the Indies, cut from his mother’s womb,’ finished the Birdman, and their eyes met across the heaving belly. ‘And Saint Raymond Nonnatus – the procedure gave him his name. And in both cases …’ he said, and stopped abruptly. Again, she knew what he would not say.

In both cases, the mother did not survive.

But there was no choice. The Trianni babe was breech, and would not turn. Valentina might well die; but if they did not act she would die anyway, and the babe too. Annibale barked at the mother to leave the room, but she would not leave her daughter until Feyra assured her that she would look after Valentina, and that just by being in the room during the procedure she was endangering her daughter. Once the old lady had gone the Birdman removed his mask.

For once Feyra was happy just to assist. She gave Valentina as much juice of the poppy as she dared, but the poor girl was in such agony she could not be still to take the draught, and the black decoction ran down her cheeks. Feyra cleaned the distended belly with rosewater steeped with mint and borage, but stood back as the Birdman made the wide incision just above the pubis, dark blood springing up in an admirably straight line. The babe spewed forth almost at once, and as Feyra lifted it two little eyes opened and a mouth formed to cry as the Birdman sliced through the cord. Feyra cleaned the babe with linen, and placed her finger between the tiny lips to clear the mouth. The babe suckled instantly. Valentina had lost consciousness at the cut. Feyra laid the bundle by the dark head, and continued
her work. She cleaned the wound and took up the wine-soaked thread for the sutures. She bent her head over her task and sewed as neatly as she could by the light of the candle. Remembering Palladio, she set the glass bowl that held the rosewater before the candle flame, and the light spread through the makeshift lens. As she sewed, she looped the thread under each stitch to anchor it as Haji Musa had taught her. She could feel the Birdman watching her. She then laid a poultice of cinnabar and rosemary above the wound to draw infection and laid the coverlet tenderly over the girl. Then there was nothing to do but wait.

The babe, as if exhausted by his violent entry into the world, slept by his mother’s head. Feyra expected the Birdman to go, but he stayed and watched with her, his shadow joining hers on the wall. She knew he did not seek her company, but was waiting, dispassionately, for the medical outcome. They did not have to wait long. On the stroke of Matins, Valentina opened her eyes, and, as if prompted by some indefinable bond, her baby woke too.

The Birdman and Feyra walked back across the green in companionable silence in the pitchy dark. Across the lagoon the dawn was a white line on the horizon, the spring grass dewy underfoot. As they passed the Tezon she turned to him in the dark. The wards of their hospital were the lists where she and Annibale jousted every day, and she could not resist a sortie. Valentina’s father lay within, recovering from his own battle with the Plague, so she said mischievously, ‘And perhaps you will now agree with me that old Gianluca Trianni should be told about the birth of his burly
grandson? That the news will do him more good than any potions we may give him?’

The Birdman regarded her down his beak. ‘And perhaps
you
will agree with me that the morning will be soon enough? For even you must own that Doctor Goodtidings is an inferior physician to Doctor Sleep?’

Feyra smiled and inclined her head. She saw his window ahead, golden with firelight, as she’d seen it a hundred times. Her own house was dark. She did not want to go home, not yet. At his door they stopped by tacit consent.

‘Would you like to come in?’

This time he took off the mask as if it were a relief to him. She revised her earlier opinion – he did not love to hide, he found it onerous. She looked at him anew. This was him, her Birdman. No; Annibale – for tonight she had learned his name; and only then because Luca Trianni had wanted to thank the
Dottore
by naming his new son after him. She found it difficult to adjust.
Annibale
. She would be surprised if he was older than she. When they stood together they were exactly the same height, and she looked at him eye to eye. He looked tired, but elated.

‘Sit,’ he said. ‘I suppose you don’t drink?’

She shook her head.

He poured the wine. He gestured to the chair on the other side of the fire and she fell into it, exhausted.

He raised his glass – to himself as much as the babe. ‘To Annibale,’ he said.

When Feyra had burst on upon him he had been staring morosely into the coals, feeling for the first time in his life that he had bitten off more than he could comfortably
chew. He had been so sure that his hospital would be a success, but the Plague was gaining pace. There had been more deaths lately than the little cemetery could hold, and he felt that he was losing his grip. In the long-fought battle with death he felt that death was gaining on him. Then he had been handed this surgical triumph by this extraordinary girl.

Of course, the danger was not over for Valentina Trianni. The surgery was a major procedure, and the risk of secondary infection was great; but he, Annibale Cason, had performed a
non natus
procedure, and, for now at least, both mother and child had lived. He acknowledged that he was not concerned overmuch for the young mother. He was more interested in Feyra. He studied her across the firelight. Tonight she had given him back his belief in medicine, his belief in himself. He wanted to give her something in return.

He noted her skin, the colour of cinnamon, the amber of her eyes, the tiny reflected fire burning in each. She looked at him directly, and he felt, again, the power of her gaze. Tonight, it seemed, she admired him, and that warmed him even more than the fire.

‘So you are Annibale.’

‘Yes, Annibale. Annibale Cason,
Dottore della Peste
.’