“I didn’t do a thing with the hearth.” I didn’t mention that I was totally incapable of managing the fireplace. “I fell asleep while I was working.” I inclined my head in Gabriele’s direction. “Luckily, Messer Accorsi found me.”
“Messer Accorsi, we owe you our gratitude twice: once for turning your hand to the beautification of our facade, and again for rescuing this devoted pilgrim and grieving widow.” Gabriele shot me a look after Umiltà said the word widow.
“It is my great pleasure, Suor Umiltà, to make your acquaintance at last.” Gabriele bowed deeply. “I regret that the circumstances of our meeting are so unfortunate. I know Monna Trovato regretted her inability to stay and give aid to the Ospedale, but I assure you that her condition was such that it could not be allowed.”
Umiltà nodded, satisfied, then shifted her gaze to me. “Beatrice, you must rest. I shall have Clara attend you in your chamber. Will a physician be needed?”
“No, Messer Accorsi’s cousin has taken very good care of me. Was anyone hurt?”
“Fortunately not. And the fire was found early, thanks to Messer Accorsi. This is not the Ospedale’s first fire, though I certainly hope it will be our last. Tonight the servants are cleaning the worst of the mess from the scriptorium. Tomorrow, though, we will begin to inventory and repair the damaged books.” By “we” I knew she meant “you.”
“There is nothing more to do tonight?”
“You would do the Ospedale a better service coming to work well-rested tomorrow than getting in the way of perfectly competent servants doing their job today.” There was no point in arguing with Umiltà. Before I left, I said good-bye to Gabriele, who was watching my interchange with Umiltà with a small smile on his face.
“Thank you, Messer Accorsi,” I said, “for everything.”
“It has been my great pleasure,” he returned, bowing at the waist. I turned away and headed reluctantly to the Pellegrinaio delle Donne. As I headed up the stairs to my room, my legs started feeling shaky and I admitted to myself that Umiltà might have been right about my need for rest. I fell asleep with the image of Fra Bosi’s tear-stained face in my head.
* * *
By the beginning of August the scriptorium was functioning again, thanks to the efforts of a team of Ospedale wards, led by Fra Bosi. Several documents were destroyed beyond repair, others were damaged but with the text still legible. Bosi set me the task of recopying pages, and Egidio worked around the clock churning out paper to meet the demand.
The day of the fire took on a strange encapsulated quality for me, as if it were outside the normal order of time. I had vivid flashbacks for days afterward—seeing Gabriele’s face haloed by sky as I awoke on the Ospedale pavement, and smelling the lavender rising from the bath Ysabella had drawn for me. I stared out the broken scriptorium window periodically as I worked, but Gabriele hadn’t returned to his post yet. I felt restless and jittery and had trouble concentrating for more than an hour at a time. Ben’s mystery seemed like a story I’d once read a long time ago.
After the fire, Umiltà decided to make me an employee rather than a charity case and proposed a small stipend to supplement my room and board as the first-assistant scribe. Earning money for the first time in the fourteenth century hammered home the fact of my existence here—not just a tourist anymore. I had a funny thought of applying for a time traveler’s work visa but had no one to share the joke with. I kept the coins in a pouch I carried at my waist, and every now and then I’d pull the pieces of silver out to look at them. Their strangeness reminded me of how impossibly far from home I was, without any obvious route back.
* * *
After a week of working dawn to dusk to repair damaged texts, I had time to think again, and thinking led inevitably to anxiety. Faced with my knowledge of the future, and my growing doubt that I would be able to leave the fourteenth century before the Plague arrived, I had an overwhelming urge to start planning. But how could I plan anything? No one else knew the Plague was coming, so if I tried to warn people, they wouldn’t believe me, or worse, they’d think I was a witch. Neither outcome would help eliminate the Plague and both risked eliminating me. I had no illusions about my power to prevent the most deadly health disaster in history from killing more than half the world’s population. Even in an electronically connected modern society with high-speed transportation and stockpiled antibiotics it would have been a massive undertaking.
Maybe there was still something I could do for Siena, using my medical knowledge. Quarantine? I remembered reading about Milan’s response to the Plague—the communal government’s draconian solution was to barricade sick people into their homes to die. It might have worked—Milan was known to have suffered much less than most of Northern Italy—but it was a barbaric solution I wasn’t planning to encourage in Siena. Besides, most Plague wasn’t transmitted person to person.
I had five antibiotic tablets at the bottom of the bag I kept in my room; probably not enough to cure myself, let alone anyone else. I had a fleeting thought of leaving bread out to get moldy in the hopes that I’d make penicillin by accident, but discarded it as absurd, in part because of my ignorance on the topic. I wished, not for the first time, that Ben were around; a microbiologist would have been tremendously useful. I heard Egidio outside the scriptorium and knew I’d run out of thinking time for the moment.
* * *
After the fire, Egidio started acting funny. He blushed painfully whenever we met and refused to meet my gaze. I suspected he was feeling guilty for leaving me unprotected in the scriptorium. I cornered him, unable to tolerate the tension.
“Egidio, I’m fine, you know.”
“Yes, Monna Trovato.” Egidio looked so miserable I wanted to put my arm around his shoulders, but I knew it wasn’t appropriate behavior for a medieval woman, even a widow.
“Egidio, it’s not your job to take care of me.”
“I failed in my duty.”
“Your duty is to do what people tell you.” It was true, my translation of a medieval servant’s job. Egidio still looked grim. I had an idea. “Why don’t I teach you how to write a bit, and then you can help me sort through this mess. Will that assuage your guilt?”
“You would do that, Signora?” He beamed like someone who’d just been promised a spot in heaven.
Over the next few days, between stints with burned and waterlogged documents, I worked with Egidio on his writing. He knew more than he’d let on and just needed some tutorials before he was able to copy simple documents neatly. I showed his writing samples to Fra Bosi, who grudgingly authorized Egidio to act as my assistant. Egidio was floating on a cloud for the rest of the week.