Snorts, whinneys, and grunts drifted up from below. I peered down from the hayloft as a young boy filled feed bags with oats, forked hay into the troughs lining the stalls, and poured fresh water into stone basins. As he worked, he murmured softly to each of the animals with familiarity and warmth. “Ciao, bella, hai fame?” He rubbed the donkey’s nose as her soft lips closed around the carrots in his palm. The carrots really got my attention.
The boy made his way through the line of animals and then disappeared through the door. After waiting a few minutes to make sure he wasn’t coming back, I put on my damp dress, scrambled down the ladder, and walked down the row of munching animals, taking a scrap of something from each one to be fair. Fortified by my scavenged breakfast, I brushed the straw out of my hair, said good-bye to my new housemates, and headed out the door into the city.
Now that I was clothed, rested, and fed, the fear came back. My old life was hundreds of years away, and everyone I knew didn’t exist yet. Figuring out how to get home depended on understanding how I’d gotten here. I mentally retraced my steps—the shock of seeing myself in Gabriele’s painting, then reading his journal. What had the words said? Now I couldn’t remember. One minute I was reading, then the next I’d gone straight into a night 650 years earlier than the day I’d started in. I have always preferred reason to blind faith, but what had happened to me was beyond my capacity to rationalize. Still, I tried to work systematically through the possibilities. If the journal held some key, it was lost to me now, since I’d arrived without it. The Duomo itself might be a gateway from the present into the past, but I had no inkling what the mechanism for reopening the gate might be. Or maybe Siena itself was the key; perhaps this city, which seemed magically suspended between times, had allowed me to step out of my own world and into this one. However I’d gotten here, could the process be reversed?
My loitering had started to attract unwelcome attention, so I chose a direction and started walking. My feet led me into the Campo by habit, and I emerged into the middle of the marketplace—a riot of color and sound. The midday sun was high now, the market I’d seen setting up hours ago now in full swing. I had landed in the seafood section. Eels wriggled in the stone trough outside one stall—succulent, according to the fish seller. Next to him, trout flashed silver scales in another basin, and in a third, bug-eyed cuttlefish bumped against each other, displaying their tentacles. While I watched, the merchant grabbed one for a customer and it shot out a jet of black ink—impressive, but futile.
I passed a large public fountain that looked familiar—the Fonte Gaia. The high, sculpted walls on three sides were missing, but the wolves spouting water were still there. With a pang I remembered Donata’s impromptu lecture—this fountain was now just four years old. Women chatted with one another while they waited to fill their buckets at the spouts. A rectangular pool where the fish sellers were replenishing their basins was set beneath a graceful marble carving of the Virgin Mary nursing her infant son, her face suffused with gentleness. Like Siena with her citizens, I thought, feeling comforted, as if I were one of them. Beneath the sculpture was a stone banner inscribed in Latin; I translated slowly to myself:
On this day in 1343 the thirst of Siena is quenched
The Fonte is the heart of the Campo
The Campo the heart of Siena
The long sought source of life and joy from this day forth
Any lingering doubts I might have had about the possibility of time travel vanished as I read. I longed to tell Donata all about it—but maybe I’d never tell her anything again. I had to sit down and put my head between my knees to stop the spinning. Get a grip, I told myself. When that didn’t work, I chanted the arterial Circle of Willis again. Once, twice, three times.
When the dizziness passed, I took a deep breath and stood up. I made my way into the produce section of the market, pausing at a fruit seller’s stall to stare at a pile of purple grapes. The grapes were dotted with droplets of water that sparkled like gems. I began to have a near-hallucinatory experience of popping a grape into my mouth, feeling it burst with a rush of winey sweetness. A sibilant voice at my right shoulder startled me out of my reverie. “Signora, mi scusi, may I have a word?”
I looked into the pockmarked face of what appeared to be a law enforcement official because he said, with a gloating smile, “Need I remind you of the regulations concerning your neckline?” He looked down pointedly at my cleavage as I stared at the lace of my sundress peeking out from the low-cut gown I’d recently acquired.
I searched my memory of all I’d read frantically for the right medieval form of address. “Ser?”
He smirked again. “Certainly you recall the ordinance?” While he waited for my response, I tried to decide whether confession, denial, or silence would be the safest route. I’d gotten the “Ser” right, but the dress probably should have been worn over a higher-necked undergarment I didn’t own. “In keeping with the statute, I will take your silence as a confession, and your acquiescence to document the infraction.” He pulled out a tiny metal rod to measure the exposed area of my chest. “You have ten days to produce the required fine in the amount of a hundred soldi,” he continued, “at which time you will present the appropriately tailored garment to the office of the Donnaio in the Palazzo for inspection. With”—he placed his hands on his belly beneath its black and white tunic and caressed it almost sensuously—“certain consequences should it not meet the required standards. May I have your place of residence, so we may find you should you need assistance complying?”
I was about to be fined for indecency, had no money to pay the fine, and had no address in this century to give to this representative of the government office responsible for enforcing sumptuary laws, one of which appeared to apply to my inappropriate neckline. What if the consequences of indecency in fourteenth-century Siena were imprisonment? Or worse? I felt myself starting to sweat. I had to say something, ideally something that sounded as authentically medieval as the letters I’d been reading in my own time. Left with no other options, I began lying as quickly as possible.
“I am a recent widow.” Here I inhaled with a convincing almost-sob, though it came more from real fear than loss of my imaginary husband. “From the city of . . . Lucca. After the death of my beloved husband, I set out with my handmaid and guards on a pilgrimage to assuage my grief and purify my soul.” I made sure to be clear that I would have backup in case things got unpleasant, but the official’s eyes narrowed.