The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi Read Online Free

man. Hiding his distress under a flinty smile, he offered his arm to the factotum and led the way to the warehouse.
    I remember asking myself, as I watched them turn the corner, why if we were so safe under the Marchese’s protection, must our valuables be sequestered elsewhere “for safekeeping”? But something else bothered me even more. I could not get out of my mind the moment at dinner when everyone fell silent at the mention of Trento. What had happened in that place? I had to know.
    I could not have chosen a worse time to trouble my father with my perturbation. But, to his credit, he put aside his own worries and responded to my question. “The events at Trento are among the blackest ever recorded,” he advised me. “You are a maiden. Do you have the stomach for a diabolical mix of horror, lies, and slaughter?”
    I did.
    “Very well.” He laid down his papers and took me up into his lap. “I suppose a girl who has weathered the Odyssey is ready for Trento. But you must agree to stay with me till the end of the story.”
    I agreed. And he began. “Twelve years ago, the Christian Easter coincided exactly with the Jewish Passover.”
    “As it does this year?”
    “Exactly. And it so happened that the preacher who came to Trento to preach a course of Easter sermons that year was —”
    “Bernardino da Feltre!” I knew it.
    “Now before you jump off into a sea of analogy, daughter, bear this in mind: That was Trento and this is Mantova.”
    “Analogy is milk for babes but reasoned truth is strong meat,” I quoted proudly.
    Papa sighed. Why was it that everybody always sighed when I quoted the ancients? “Now can we get on with Trento?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Very well. In the year 1475, Fra Bernardino was still merely one of a legion of itinerant preachers who roam the peninsula in bare feet exhorting Christians to revenge Christ and kill the Jews. But by the time he had delivered the last of his sermons, titled ‘The Sins of the Jews’” — here Papa’s voice took on a deeper timbre — “his name was inscribed in the Book of Infamy.”
    “What did he say, Papa, that was so evil?”
    “The libel is breathtaking in its malevolent simplicity,” Papa answered in the same stentorian tone. “He told the people of Trento that there was a secret ingredient in the matzoh that the Jews baked and ate at Passover time. And that this secret ingredient was human blood. Now here is the real cunning of the man. This blood, he told the people of Trento, was no ordinary blood, mind you, but the blood of Christian babies stolen from their mothers’ breasts by the blood-hungry Jews, crucified in a mockery of the suffering of our Lord, and finally disemboweled, their tiny limbs torn from their bodies and their hearts milked for blood.”
    “But that isn’t true!” I burst out.
    “It is a falsehood so monstrous that it has achieved its own cognomen: the Blood Libel of Trento.” He shuddered slightly as he spoke the word. “Now you, my daughter, are schooled enough in the law of Moses to appreciate the magnitude of the falsehood. You know well the categorical prohibition in the Mosaic Code against the consumption of blood in any shape, form, or quantity. You know that a Jew would rather die than eat blood, so repugnant is it to his faith. But how were the people of Trento to know this? Their saintly friar had verified the libel as true.
    “On fire with blood lust, the crowd streamed out of the church bent on vengeance. In the street where they lived, the Jews of the town were conducting the first seder, celebrating the escape of their ancestors from bondage in Egypt. As the Jews bowed their heads in prayer, the crowd of Christians stormed the street like an enraged beast, shouting, ‘Burn the Jews! Avenge the children!’”
    “No!” I did not want to hear any more. But Papa plunged on as if unable to stop himself.
    “The people of Trento put the houses of the Jews to the torch one by one. Then they lay