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“Aha...see. You have sought out the details. You are at least a little bit intrigued.”

Lucia made a face, annoyed at how she had been pulled in.

“Look, Lucia. This is not a situation I would normally interfere with.” Ginevra sighed. If she was going to convince Lucia to help her, she would have to be honest about the entirety of her circumstances. “I only agreed to do it because it is required to reverse my exile and start my life over again. This contract guarantees that if I find the relics, the inquisitor will supply funds for me to start my own business here and to support my application to the physicians’ guild.”

“Ginevra,” Lucia said, fortified enough by the drink to sit herself up, “if it’s money you need to start your business, I will lend it to you. You’ll have all the business you want and more besides, when I tell how you cured me.”

“No! You promised. You must tell no one. Do you remember the water sickness of the year 1340—you would have been a child. I lived here then, and did my healing as I liked, and was banished because of it.”

Lucia was unfazed. She stopped caring about such things after her own father’s execution. “This is why you made me promise to keep it secret?”

Ginevra nodded.

“Why not go anywhere else besides here, then? People are dying the whole world over, you know.”

Because every night, I have terrible dreams; because I cringe with guilt and shame when I think of Sant’Elisabetta; because this is the place I felt most myself and also the place where I was robbed of that feeling; because if I am accepted again in Florence, perhaps these sorrows will go away. “Because living safely has left me sad and lonely. So I am here to do good in a dark hour. And you could, too, if you wish it. In three days, I’m supposed to deliver news of progress to your inquisitor... I could use your help.”

Lucia lay back and tried to imagine herself as a sort of saint, frail and glowing from fasting, demurring humbly from those who asked her to recount how she had rescued the stolen relics of Florence. Perhaps Ginevra’s arrival was a message from God, her true purpose, when she had failed as a wife.

Ginevra took her hand. “Kind lady, lie down and rest now. In the morning, you will begin to feel your regular self. We can talk of these things later.”

“Thank you,” said Lucia, relieved. “When I am better, the first thing I must do is visit Santa Maria Novella and light a candle in thanks that you were sent to me. There is a shrine there to San Tommaso D’Aquino, who keeps special watch over me. It must be he who sent you.”

“I would be grateful,” said Ginevra. And she meant it, though she had never heard of San Tommaso D’Aquino.

EIGHTEEN

GHOSTS IN THE RIVER

1340, City of Florence,

A Romance Interrupted

During the spring of Ginevra’s love and grief, a terrible flood came roaring. Bridges were washed away, shops crumbled into the river, and houses filled with mud. Many hundreds drowned and when the waters receded, their ghosts climbed up over the banks and followed people to their homes and sat beside their beds all night. “It’s in your head,” said their friends and neighbors who hadn’t seen the ghosts. “It’s been so hot, so sad. You’re stressed, you’re tired. You need to eat something, you need to rest.” But then the people who had seen ghosts were covered in red spots and consumed with fever and soon they died. And then anyone who had touched them died also.

Physicians were called, summoned for cures or at least explanations, but as soon as they said somebody would recover, he died, and as soon as they said somebody would die, she lived. Then the doctors themselves began to die. They refused to see patients anymore. Told the priests it must be something to do with God’s wishes, and perhaps the ghosts came from purgatory to warn the living.

The priests did their best, told citizens of the commune to stop being so lazy and self-indulgent, to redouble their attendance in churches and shrines and pray for deliverance. They held emergency processions of the ancient statue called the Virgin of Requisiti, who was helpful in times of crisis. Held aloft on her gilded palanquin, the Virgin was paraded through the streets, surrounded by clouds of incense and nuns dressed all in white. The procession ended with the Virgin placed upon the ringhiera in the central piazza, and presented with flowers and candles and money.

But once they crowded together, they realized the sickness moved from one person to another, and those gathered in front of the Virgin in the piazza were made ill there by their neighbors.

When the priests realized the prayers were not being heard by the Virgin, they knew then that the ghosts had come to deliver punishment, not to warn about it. They locked themselves in their quarters, but this did not protect them and many clergy still died on their fine sheets behind shuttered doors.

Fra Simone declared Sant’Elisabetta closed to pilgrims. He ordered the nuns and employees to stay inside the walls and spend hours kneeling before the Relic of the Blessed Blood. Agnesa made them boil all the water with a silver coin before they drank it, but still a few of the nuns caught sick and died.

Markets closed, and no farmers entered Florence. Porridge days at the convent became watery gruel days. And Ginevra, for the first time in her life, was lonely. She felt the absence of Vermilia like a wound that would not heal. Cut off from her parents now, as well, she realized it was these far-off supports in Genoa that had allowed her to stand tall and go with confidence in Florence. Agnesa was too busy for her, and her relationship with Taddea remained strained—her friend rarely left the chapel, kneeling to pray disease away, and Ginevra was still upset by her betrayal, too wrapped up in her own grief to reach out and make amends. What she really, desperately needed, was to see Ludovico. He alone might provide solace. But his letters, too, had stopped. Fear crept into her heart that he would die of the current fever.

“Agnesa, let me go out,” she begged when she could stand it no longer. “Let me collect our golden wires from the silk guild. Let me get back what flour I can from our tenant the baker, who is dead. You know this coral that I wear is special—Vermilia told me, as long as it hangs from my neck, no disease can enter me.”

Agnesa pulled the black silk cord at Ginevra’s neck until the amulet was visible. She looked at it closely, examining the carved fruits on the golden bezel, placing her own thumb end to end with the perfectly carved miniature. She closed her eyes and whispered words Ginevra did not understand. She nodded and tucked it back into Ginevra’s dress.

“Go, then. Get the wire and any food you can. We cannot pray all of the day and all of the night. We must keep busy and we must keep fed, or the sisters will go mad. Be discreet.” Ginevra flew out of the doors as fast as she could, desperate to reach Ludovico.

Outside, she saw no one and the air smelled of the black mud that still coated the streets and hid all sorts of rotting things. She went and threw pebbles at Ludovico’s window, but he did not come, though she was sure she saw him moving around behind the tiny panes of glass. She comforted herself with the knowledge that, at least, he lived. She went next to the merchant with the gold wire, but he would not open his door for her. There was nobody selling any food. Somebody had already taken the flour from the dead baker. Indeed, there was nobody walking about at all besides her. No sounds besides grief wails and death rattles behind shut windows. She remembered what Vermilia told her as a child: to keep her ears and eyes open for all things. She did. And though she returned to the convent empty-handed, that night she dreamed.

She was floating above the river, her toes skimming the surface as if she were a bird. The water was black, except for glittering streaks of gold that swirled and disappeared. Ginevra reached out and touched a streak with her finger. It was burning hot. Her finger glowed white and then fell off and sank into the water. She woke up sweating and gasping in her room, using her fingertips to count each other in the complete darkness of early morning.

At first light, she checked in her notebook, to be sure. Here is shimmering black obsidian, made by the heat of volcanoes. It is good against fevers. She ran to Agnesa’s cell and shook her awake. “Sister, look.” She shoved her book in Agnesa’s face. “I had a dream—the fever came from the river. Something in it, stirred up during the flood. Agnesa, we have an obsidian stone—black and streaked with gold—”