I had a peculiar dream that night—a fragment without an obvious narrative. A man who looked like Lugani, but dressed in a dark gray pinstriped business suit and black wing-tip shoes, stood outside the Ospedale, staring up at the dark-haired angel. He did not blink, and a small smile played over his lips. Gabriele was painting high on the facade, oblivious to the spectator, putting the finishing touches on my likeness. In the dream I stood on the ground, so close to Lugani I could feel the heat emanating from his body, and I could not move or speak. I woke up sweating. It took me a long time to fall asleep again.
I opened my eyes to see Clara next to my bed, smiling.
“Suor Umiltà has sent me to assist you with your preparations for the voyage. I cannot imagine how marvelous it must be to travel in a great merchant ship! Loaded with gold and exotic spices, armor, dyes . . . wool, of course, since Ser Lugani is a wool merchant. And he’s quite a dashing figure, is he not? I have often dreamed of travel but I have lived within these gates all my life. I have never even seen the sea.” Clara began cleaning up in a desultory way, as if to keep her hands busy. It was patently unnecessary, as I had almost no possessions. While I got out of bed and dressed, she busied herself with lifting a few objects, dusting them off on her skirt, then replacing them again.
I had a brilliant thought. “Clara, would you like to come with me?”
“Signora, how would that even be possible?”
“I’ll tell Lugani I need a personal assistant.”
“I cannot read or write! How can I assist a scribe? Perhaps you had better invite Egidio.” Her voice trailed off unhappily.
“It would be reasonable to say I needed a servant for the voyage.” I was unaccustomed to the idea of having a servant, but it was the norm here.
“Do you really wish it?” Clara’s eyes were as wide as I’d ever seen them.
“It would be a pleasure to have your company, and your help. I should be able to pay you something from the salary I’ve been promised. We’ll have to ask Suor Umiltà, of course, and the Ospedale cook should have a say as well, before you abandon her kitchens.”
“May I have your leave to ask Suor Umiltà this instant? I cannot bear to wait!”
I nodded, smiling at her enthusiasm. Clara hugged herself and squealed with delight before running out of the room. She’d forgotten the task she’d been sent to do, but I didn’t really want her looking through my things anyway. The safety pins had made enough trouble.
Once Clara was gone and I had a moment to think, it hit me. Messina, Sicily: the first landing place of the Plague in Italy. The city where twelve Genoese galleys returning from Caffa, the medieval Ukraine, would enter the harbor with their deadly, microscopic cargo. I remembered the book in which I’d read about the Plague’s arrival, could see the cramped words on the page. But when had it arrived? If it had been early in 1348, the year that had brought the Plague to Siena by May, then I still had time—a few months at least. Time to do what? That was the bigger problem I still hadn’t solved. I had a vision of that paper chart I’d made. But, of course, I didn’t have the diagram with me for reference anymore—it was still pinned to a bulletin board over Ben’s kitchen table back in modern Siena. I strained at the memory, trying to bring it into focus, but the image grew fuzzier the more effort I made. Memory is like a cat. It comes and wraps itself around you when you least desire it, and the moment you seek it out, it disappears.
*
Iacopo found Baldi in the same corner he’d occupied at their first meeting, rolling dice while downing a goblet of Messer Semenzato’s best wine.
“If we keep going off in private, Ser, someone will think I’ve taken a liking to men.”
Baldi burst into gales of laughter while Iacopo squirmed with disgust.
“Our business is no one else’s,” Iacopo snapped as they mounted the narrow stairs. Once behind the closed door of his chamber, he turned to face Baldi. “Accorsi is not dead. He is not even hurt.”
“Oh no? Too bad. But I’ve enjoyed your money.” Baldi lifted the wine goblet in appreciation.
Iacopo grabbed Baldi’s meaty arm. “You have not earned it yet. A little fall and a fright do not do justice to what Accorsi has wrought.”
“You want me to try again? I could use a few more coins to line my pouch.”
“This time I will pay you only if you succeed.”
“Is death by my hand the only outcome you are willing to pay for?”
Iacopo narrowed his eyes. “State your meaning clearly.”
“What if your target were to meet an unfortunate end by virtue of the law?”
“I was not aware Accorsi had done anything that merited imprisonment.”
“He need not have committed murder to be accused of it.” Baldi grinned. “Or to be convicted of it, for that matter.”
*
When Lugani announced his intent to remove me from Siena, I felt I had suddenly run out of time. I’d had a silent countdown to the Plague in my head (September now, eight months left), but until then, I believed I would be able to return to my old life before it was too late. Lugani’s arrival heightened my predicament: whatever I intended to do here had to happen fast.
I spent several sleepless nights trying to come up with a plan. There was no use evacuating the city or warning people to leave, since I knew the Plague would go everywhere. Preaching doom? Useless, since I was more likely to be imprisoned as a witch than believed. On the morning after my second sleepless night I had a glimmer of an idea, sparked by my own carelessness. The night before, I’d brought a fruit tart to my chamber. Just before dawn I heard a scratching sound, and saw a substantial brown rat making off with what was left of my neglected late-night snack. Then I remembered: rats. Fleas bite plague-infected rats, then bite humans. What if there were fewer rats?
As soon as the sun rose I headed straight to Umiltà’s studium to talk about pest control. She was sitting at her desk, poring over a ledger and frowning.
“Suor Umiltà, may I have a moment of your time?”
“Beatrice, what a welcome respite your arrival has produced from the Biccherna’s calculations of our taxes. Do you need my assistance?” she asked, smiling.
“I think the Ospedale should invest in a rat catcher.”
“What has prompted your interest in the rodent population of the Ospedale? Has the pellegrinaio become infested? If you have been bitten, we must hasten your visit to Dottore Boccanegra, for those bites can fester terribly.” She had given me a perfect opening.
“I don’t need to see the dottore. But I, like you, am concerned about the diseases these rats carry. It is time to take a preventive stance. Immediately.”
“Why now, just as you are preparing for a voyage across land and sea?”