“But I haven’t got anyone to have children with. That’s a bit of an obstacle.” I’d not considered thirty-three to be an obstacle either, but clearly Clara did.
“I cannot wait until the day I hold my own babe in my arms,” Clara said, her voice filled with longing. “I turned fourteen years this past month. And my cycles have just begun; Umiltà says I’m a woman now.” She looked younger, and despite her responsibilities, her innocence made her act younger too.
“What did Umiltà say when you asked to accompany me?” Silence. Clara went on packing methodically—a bag of sugar, a flask of vinegar, and a collection of spices in small wooden boxes. “Clara, look at me.”
She looked up, smiled blandly, and resumed her efforts to squeeze a small box of salt into an even smaller space remaining in the trunk.
“You did ask her, didn’t you?”
“Of course I asked her!” Clara looked horrified at the thought that she might waltz out of the Ospedale without talking to the lioness guarding its gates. “We will have to pack the loaves and eggs closer to the start of our voyage.”
“What did she say to you?”
“I wonder whether Umiltà will let us take one of the lambs.”
“Clara!”
Clara smiled as if she’d just heard my question. “Yes, Signora. She was pleased that you would have my assistance and company.” She paused, uncomfortably. “But that I’d best be cautious traveling across the oceans in a ship run by a . . . a . . . lasi, lusci . . .” She was struggling with the word but finally got it. “Lascivious, venal, power-hungry viper of a man.” Her face reddened. “What does lascivious mean?”
“It means lustful,” I said, carefully.
Clara didn’t seem troubled. “Oh, that’s what I thought. Lugani is clearly driven by carnal urges.”
The smile on Clara’s face worried me. “He hasn’t spoken to you, has he?”
“No, not at all!” Clara dropped the salt pork she was holding.
“Clara, you look like you’ve been caught cheating at dice.” I wasn’t sure whether in the medieval hierarchy of immorality cheating at dice might be a worse offense than having clandestine meetings with a Genoese merchant who was old enough to be her father. It turned out not to be the best choice.
“I have never even touched dice! How could you think that of me?” Clara burst into tears. I put my arm around her narrow shoulders and murmured what I hoped were comforting blandishments until she stopped sobbing.
“Please, Clara, I didn’t mean to insult you. You must know how highly I think of you, or I wouldn’t have invited you to join me.”
Clara wiped her nose on her sleeve and blinked at me with moist eyes. “I would hope never to lead you to suspect me of any dishonesty.”
“I’m sure I’ll never have a reason to.” I patted her arm comfortingly. I didn’t think she was a gambler, but she was more entranced by Lugani than I would have liked. I hoped, for her sake, that her interest was not reciprocated.
The week passed quickly. I spent hours bent over the copy of Paradiso that Lugani had requested, and in my limited free time assembled a collection of items to take with me. Bosi reminded me that I would have to bring my scribal tools—pens, wax, seals, and inks—adding darkly that Lugani had better spend his own money on parchment.
“Taking you from us was bad enough,” he said, gruffly.
I packed the supplies in a velvet-lined box, feeling affection for the tools of my new trade as I nestled them in their traveling case. Other than the obvious problem of being stranded in 1347 with the Plague approaching, I was actually enjoying my job. The peaceful absorption suited me, and the process of recording what transpired had reawakened the historian that my neurosurgical career had effectively put to sleep. I am Ben’s sister, after all. I imagined telling my twenty-first-century friends what I was doing for a living now and giggled.
“Is there something humorous that I have failed to notice?” Bosi’s eyebrows lowered over his eyes, making him look a bit like a Neanderthal.
“No, no, of course not. Nothing funny in the least.” I went back to packing and kept my thoughts to myself.
*
Iacopo stood against the pellegrinaio’s wall, watching Accorsi paint. The painting moved Iacopo more than he expected—even unfinished the angels’ flight upward, with the blessed Virgin in their midst, was so beautiful Iacopo felt it hard to breathe. So many times he had imagined the moment of the Virgin’s ascension to heaven, and now here it was before him, more real than he could have imagined. “Do not waste your time with frivolities,” his father had said, when Iacopo, just shy of ten years old, had stayed too long staring at the frescoed walls of the family chapel. “But it is beautiful, Father,” Iacopo had replied. “Beauty is well and good, but not if it keeps us from our work,” his father had answered, with a firm hand steering him by the shoulder, back to the ledgers he must learn to understand. Iacopo shook his head, as if the memory might be shaken off like water from a wet dog’s fur. There was a danger in coming to know his victim too well—he must not allow himself to be tinged by a misplaced sympathy that might undermine his purpose—and he concentrated again on the task before him.
The scaffold was rebuilt, he saw, now stronger than before. The new plan was more subtle, and more certain. Accorsi would be no match for Signoretti’s testimony. He would hang, just as his father had, with no one to defend his case. The Ospedale doors opened beneath the scaffolding, and a woman emerged. Her familiar silhouette made Iacopo’s heart lurch in his chest. It was the woman he’d seen entering Signoretti’s palazzo with the merchant by her side. Before he could slip away, she turned and noticed him. Then he was looking into her pale eyes under a crown of dark braids, and it was too late to hide.
*
Lugani’s large party was scheduled to leave the Ospedale in late September, on horseback until we reached Pisa’s port. Lugani had hired a band of armed guards to accompany us, and by the end of the week they were housed in the pellegrinaio, looking fierce and unapproachable. From Pisa, Lugani had chartered a ship that would take us to Messina. Lugani, despite his apparent wealth, didn’t own a ship; from my new colleagues’ conversation I gleaned that most merchants didn’t. Lugani’s employees were informative but not exactly welcoming, perhaps because of my newness, or gender, or both.