Gentilissima Dottoressa Trovato:
We are deeply grieved at the news of your brother’s death and extend our most sincere regrets. We have known your brother for some time and mourn the loss of a well-loved scholar of our beautiful city and its history. As we discussed on the phone, you are his only known surviving relative and the beneficiary of his estate, which includes real property as well as material goods. We look forward to your visit to our Siena offices in the near future to aid in its disposition. We will send you the key to his residence in Siena to spare you the inconvenience of finding commercial lodging.
When Dottore Trovato first began working with our firm, he left instructions, in the event that any misfortune should occur to keep him from his research, that we send you the contents of his permanent carrel at the library of the Università degli Studi di Siena. You should expect to receive his notes and manuscript within the next few days. This is somewhat outside our usual procedure regarding timing of distribution of property before probate, but Dottore Trovato made it quite clear that you are his only surviving relative and that there is no one who would contest the intent of his will.
Although you are a Doctor of Medicine rather than Philosophy like your brother, we are certain you appreciate how regrettable it would be for the work of one of our city’s great modern historians to fall into oblivion. We are the primary firm representing Tuscan academics and have taken the liberty of contacting several scholars who have graciously offered to study your brother’s notes to determine what might be appropriate for publication. We will be happy to discuss the details further at your convenience.
With our sincerest hope for your solace in this terrible time of loss, Avv. Cavaliere, Alberti e Alberti
Even though I didn’t know exactly what Ben had been working on, the thought of other scholars getting their hands on it gave me a queasy feeling. I wrote a quick but polite reply asking the lawyers not to share anything with anyone. I wished I’d had a chance to hear Ben tell me about it himself. Now I never would hear him say anything again.
Three days later I came home late and overheated from my commute in a subway car with malfunctioning air-conditioning to find the package from Ben’s lawyers waiting with the doorman. Inside the wrapping was a battered red accordion folder tied with a flat satin ribbon. Ben held this folder, he tied the ribbon with his own hands. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The folder smelled like a library, of course—old leather bindings and dust—not like Ben. I went to my desk and sat down to read. The papers were a jumble of typed paragraphs, interspersed with photocopies from original texts with notes scribbled in the margins. I could imagine Ben with his forehead creased in concentration, ink smearing along the heel of his hand as he wrote.
Agnolo di Tura, a 14th-century chronicler, recounted the impact of the Black Death on Siena:
“The mortality in Siena began in May 1348 . . . in many places in Siena great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead. And they died by the hundreds, both day and night, and were thrown in those ditches and covered with earth . . . Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another . . . for this Plague seemed to strike through the breath and sight. I . . . buried my five children with my own hands . . . And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world.”
Ben had scribbled a note in the right-hand margin around di Tura’s words, and underlined for emphasis:
How many people died in Siena? Agnolo says 52K—Gottfried insists that can’t be, since population was no more than 60K. BW claims that the population dropped 80 percent! Tuchman: more than half. Was the mortality from the Plague worse in Siena than in the other Tuscan cities? Seems like it. Why?
I went back to Ben’s typed notes.
Siena at her heyday had a master plan to make the Duomo the largest in the world—the nave to become the transept of a vast cathedral. This cathedral would be the physical symbol of Siena’s greatness among the Tuscan cities, what would become Europe, and the world. That plan died with the Black Death. The Plague heralded the collapse of a shining, self-governing city-state. After the Plague, Siena never recovered, unlike her longtime archrival Florence. Why?
For decades historians have tried to explain the particularly devastating effects of the Plague on Siena, her failure to recover, and the eventual fall of the great commune to her rival Florence. The pages that follow will introduce new evidence to explain Siena’s suffering and eventual decline from power and political independence.
I’d been so engrossed by the medieval mystery Ben was writing about that for a few seconds I’d forgotten the present. Now, as I looked up from his notes, the reason I had them at all hit me again like a punch in the stomach. All those years I’d postponed going to Siena, and now I was going to deal with my brother’s property and manuscript, rather than to see him. The consequence of my never having made time for a visit was nearly unbearable. I put Ben’s papers back in their folder, carefully tying the cloth ribbon and trying to breathe. But —I could still see Ben’s house, even without Ben in it. I could still visit the city that had drawn him in, even though he wouldn’t be there to greet me. I needed to sort out the estate, and I needed to get away; I hadn’t taken a vacation day in four years. The thought gathered momentum, and before the night was over I’d made up my mind. I fell asleep seeing Ben’s hand curved around his favorite fountain pen as he wrote about the Siena Duomo that should have been.
* * *
“You’re leaving New York for some Italian hill town?” Linney put her hands on her hips and glared at me. Linney reminds me of a small, fierce hawk. Her short red hair, so dark it’s almost purple, lies close against her head, and from behind you can see the nape of her neck, oddly vulnerable, unlike the rest of her.
“Not just some hill town—Siena.” I glared back.
The specifics didn’t mollify Linney at all. “What’s in Siena?”
“My brother left me a house there; I have to go settle his estate.”
“Your brother died? You decided to tell me your brother died parenthetically while announcing that you’re taking a trip to Tuscany? Beatrice, hello, are you in there?”
I looked down at the blue shoe covers on our four feet. Linney crouched down so she could meet my eyes from below.
“Come back,” she said ominously. “The other neurosurgeons aren’t as good as you are.”
“Why wouldn’t I come back? It’s just a three-month sabbatical.”
Linney didn’t answer.
When the plane took off with me in it, I felt strangely light—as if the strings mooring me to the life I’d made had stretched too far, and had finally broken.