Read Online The Harem Midwife by Roberta Rich - Free Book Online

done by Jews—extinguishing candles and lamps on Friday night, lighting the fire on Sabbath morning. The services she had performed for Leon’s sole benefit she preferred not to dwell upon.
    Jews were profligate in some ways: two sets of pots and dishes to keep milk from mingling with meat, and costly beeswax candles wasted squinting over books. But they seemed to Cesca miserly in other ways—refusing to buy fresh cherries in July, walking thousands of paces out of their way to save a
scudo
on a pail of goat’s milk.
    Grazia was not like this. She had been a Christian, the blue-eyed daughter of a baker, who had fallen in love with Leon when she was fifteen and, to her family’s horror, converted to Judaism.
    Was Foscari acquainted with the custom of
keriah
? Through the open window, she glanced into the garden, searching in the crowd of men for his well-barbered head of sleek chestnut hair. Evidently not. He was wearing his handsome white jacket, buttoned in spite of the heat, not a bead of sweat on his brow. She looked away when she saw him gazing at her, but not before she observed one blue eye close in a wink. Something stirred in her. It had been a long time since she had had a well-made man in her bed. Had she known what lay in store for her at Foscari’s hands, she would not have given a long, sensual wink in reply.
    Cesca closed the window and turned to the task at hand. She would make quick work of Leon, then the men would lift him onto a palanquin and carry him down the hill to the Jewish graveyard outside of town. While Leon was being released into the waiting arms of his pagan god, Cesca would help herself to what she was after in his study.
    She took a step toward the bed, leaned over the corpse, and lifted its arm. Taking a deep breath, she began to undress him—yanking off his white
tallis
, his prayer shawl, tugging off the black gabardine breeches, and jerking him out of his jacket. Even in death, his body repulsed her—the long feet splayed outward, the fingers curled up at his sides. She tossed a sheet over the corpse and dipped a cloth in a bowl of warm soapy water, then wrung it out so that it was nearly dry. She wrapped it around her hand like a glove. Nudging aside a corner of the sheet, she picked up an arm and began to wash it with purposeful strokes.
    Her gaze fell on his face. There was swelling over his right eye. Grazia believed it had been caused by a blow to his head on the corner of the table as he toppled to the floor after his heart gave out. When Grazia found him, he had one leg folded underneath him, the other rotated at an awkward angle.
    Cesca passed a hand over his eyes but they would not close. They resisted her, staring sightlessly—as dark and cold as they had been in life. This was why mourners placed coins on the eyes of the dead, but she had none, and even if she had, she would not have wasted them on Leon. Studying his cooling body, she wondered at herselfhaving been frightened of him—his pale, lashless eyes that had tracked her as she dusted, swept, polished, and set the table with silver and crystal, all the while feigning interest in the account books he kept for his business as a moneylender, brow furrowed in a scholarly frown.
    In fairness, Cesca had also watched Leon. One afternoon she was quietly trimming candlewicks when Leon thought she was at the market. When she heard the hinges of his strongbox squeak nearby, she fastened her eye to a knothole in the baseboard, which gave her a view of the study.
    The only light shone from high above his head—a lumpy and ill-made candle. The wick was braided from the worst class of rags, cast-off cotton perhaps or a charred scrap of linen. It was hard to imagine the exemplary Grazia—her feather-light pastry, her flawlessly straight seams and crisp table linen—fashioning such a thing. No matter, Leon did not care as long as no tallow fell on his gold.
    He had lifted the lid of the chest wrapped in iron bands, which was