Ysabella returned as the bath was beginning to cool off. She carried a clean white linen chemise—a more appropriate medieval undergarment than my anachronistic underwear.
“I’ll wash your gown with our other laundry,” she said, briskly, and I didn’t argue. I kept the bra and panties.
Ysabella handed me a gown made of blue-dyed light wool. It was long-sleeved like all the dresses I’d seen here, and laced in back, allowing for a snug fit through the body. I was comforted to see that the new dress had a higher neckline than my old green one. As I dropped the dress over my head I wondered whose it was. It would have been at least a foot too long for Ysabella. The thought that it might have been Paola’s—Gabriele’s late wife’s—chilled me. I thanked Ysabella and she nodded quietly. As I dressed I felt dizzy again, and had to sit down on the wooden chest.
Ysabella motioned to the bed and I gave in to her command. She brought me a cup of milk mixed with honey and ginger, placed a moist cloth smelling of lavender on my forehead, and left the room, making the wooden steps creak.
I had a few sips of the warm milk and lay down. After a while the smell of lavender was replaced by a stronger scent wafting up the stairs. Something with anise maybe, or fennel, onions, chicken. It wasn’t long before the soporific effects of the bath and warm drink began to wear off and my thoughts sharpened. I just met Gabriele Accorsi. The fourteenth-century journal writer, fresco painter, and rescuer all had to be the same man—and he would soon be eating chicken stew downstairs, in my brother’s future house. The whole thing was implausibly coincidental, but not impossible—no more impossible than traveling back in time. I listened for Gabriele’s voice from the kitchen but I mostly heard Ysabella. She was a force to be reckoned with, despite her youth, and I could see that the men of the household respected her imperious will.
That last meandering thought put an end to my easy idleness. Here I was, lying in bed with a scented cloth on my head while my colleagues back at the Ospedale were dealing with the aftereffects of a devastating fire. I sat up abruptly and headed down the stairs to find Gabriele, Ysabella, and Martellino sitting at the table in the kitchen, eating.
“I must return to the Ospedale.” Three heads swiveled toward me.
“You are not well enough,” Ysabella exclaimed with outrage. I saw Martellino and Gabriele exchange glances.
“Monna Trovato, I hope you will accept our hospitality and the healing ministrations of my daughter Ysabella; she learned a bit of the womanly art from her mother, who lives now with the angels.” Martellino stopped speaking for a moment before he resumed. “Her dress becomes you, Signora.”
I put my hand to the smooth fabric of the skirt. It had belonged to his late wife, Ysabella’s mother. I wondered how she had died. “Thank you for letting me wear it,” I said, “I’m honored.”
“Please keep it,” Martellino added. “And do stay with us until you regain your strength, at which time we would be happy to accompany you back to your home, or the Ospedale.”
I did not correct his assumption that my home and the Ospedale were two different places. I chose my next words carefully. “Ser Martellino, I could not have wished for better care than your family has provided. Your nephew saved my life, and your daughter has returned me to health. I feel hardly deserving of such generosity.” I saw Ysabella and her father both smile. So far so good. “But I can’t justify resting here, while my colleagues and friends deal with the fire and its consequences.”
“I will escort you back immediately, if you feel well enough,” Gabriele said. Ysabella opened her mouth to protest, but Gabriele put his hand on her arm. “You have done your part in returning our lovely guest to health, good cousin. But regrettably we both must leave your competent hands to return to our work—even more work than before, now that this terrible event has occurred. Thank God it was not worse.”
As we headed back out into the street I registered that he’d said lovely guest. Of course it might have just been a polite turn of speech. I glanced up at him surreptitiously, but he kept his gaze forward. “Thank you again for your help. I would have died back there if it hadn’t been for you.”
“I am glad to have been able to protect you from injury, or worse.” Gabriele stopped and turned toward me. The crowds of people in the street parted around us like a stream around stones. “Though it appears some force other than my own had your protection in mind. When I arrived at your side, the room was aflame and the air full of smoke. You slept, without a single injury—no burns, no blisters, no poisoning of your breath. You have at least one saint protecting you on your pilgrimage.”
“How do you know I’m a pilgrim?”
“A woman who lives alone in the Ospedale, speaks with a peculiar accent, has no nearby family to which she would prefer to turn to when offered help by a stranger, and cannot help staring at everything she sees along the streets? With this ample evidence, I hazarded a guess.”
“It’s not nice to make fun of immigrants,” I said sarcastically. Gabriele responded with a puzzled look and an apologetic bow. Apparently 650 years make a big difference in social convention and my sarcasm wasn’t immediately recognized. Plus, he’d probably never heard the word immigrant.
“I only meant that your obvious delight in the wonders of the city around you—a city whose beauties I marvel at daily—gives me great pleasure. Wherever you are from, it certainly gives rise to women with remarkable temper and force of will.”
He smiled, and I couldn’t help smiling back. “Lucca,” I said, reflexively.
“I have never visited Lucca but hope to do so; I hear it is a haven for pilgrims as well?” I nodded again, rather than expose my ignorance.
When we reached the Ospedale the smell of smoke still hung in the air. There were puddles of water on the pavement from the bucket brigade, and the place was teeming with people—pilgrims evacuated from the pellegrinaio, robed wards, men and women of the lay orders that staffed the Ospedale. A familiar figure appeared out of the crowd, moving quickly in our direction. Umiltà’s robes billowed out behind her, making her look like a small sailboat in a high wind.
“Beatrice—it is truly a miracle to see you here, unharmed. May God be praised for his beneficence. How did you manage to escape the flames? It appears that the scriptorium’s hearth was the source of the conflagration—you might have easily perished.”
She stared at me as if intense scrutiny might give her the answer. I need some facts to defend you properly, she might have said. Her eyes went rapidly to Gabriele, who was standing beside me, then back to me.