“How beautiful they are. Like you, Beatrice, strange and beautiful.” He took my hand in both of his, closing it around the tablets. “I did wonder, as I came to know you, whether you might be saint or spirit, or perhaps a mystic who had dedicated her soul to God’s service. Your unusual manner of speech, your otherworldly air, your visions, and your ability to delve into the hearts of men set you apart. But now that I have discovered you are simply mortal, I am happy to regard you as a woman. No less marvelous, but human.”
I had a fantasy of kissing him that was so vivid it bordered on hallucination. I’ve always been amazed at the way happiness intrudes on misery, with no regard for the seriousness of the situation.
“Not being mortal would be useful right about now,” I said.
“Indeed it would, though you might become terribly weary, living forever, with everyone dying around you.”
I wondered whether we were thinking the same thing. Immortality with the right company might not be so bad. “I’ve been struggling to think how my knowledge might be useful. Here I am, under oath to dedicate myself to human health. I see death coming, but all I can do is wait. It’s a doctor’s nightmare.” I could feel the sharp edge of panic again.
“Surely everyone does not die, else how would men and women exist in your time?”
“No, not everyone.”
“And what is it that allows some to survive, if not this magical medicine you bring from your century? Can you tell me that?”
“No one, even in my time, understands the answer to that question, except that those who have survived it once cannot be infected a second time. And”—I racked my brain for something I’d read that might make a difference—“isolation of the well from the sick may help, and avoidance of rats and fleas.”
“Rats and fleas? Do they carry a miasma of filth that makes men succumb?”
I paused, trying to decide how to describe the life cycle of the parasite and all of germ theory in as few words as possible. I gave up. “Something like that.”
“Will it make its way to Siena as well?”
“Eventually, yes.”
“Then there is no purpose in flight.”
“It might save us a few months, that’s all.”
“In that case I will do what I am capable of, and what I love, until the time should come when I fall prey to this pestilence or survive it. I will pray to the Virgin to keep us and others safe. I will pursue my commission in Messina so that I may pick up my brushes again. I will paint, and as I paint, I will dream of you, and of the day that you accept my offer.” I closed my eyes for a few seconds, listening to him.
“There is one more thing,” I said.
“I assume it refers to Siena’s fate, and not our betrothal,” Gabriele said wryly. His comment made me smile despite the grim topic.
“Unfortunately, yes. Siena will suffer, perhaps more than other cities, at the Plague’s onslaught—but I don’t know why. If I did, it could be something to act on.”
Before we could go any further with that inflammatory topic, the sound of footsteps coming down the ladder behind me made me jump.
“Monna Trovato,” Cane said in a low voice. “How surprising to find you here, with Messer Accorsi himself. Your fellow Sienese, if I am not mistaken—have I interrupted some private matter?” He looked at me, calculating. “Messer Lugani will be most interested in hearing where I found you today, and with whom. Let us return abovedecks together, Monna Trovato. I prefer to know the whereabouts and purposes of my master’s employees.”
“I don’t need scrutiny.”
“But scrutiny is necessary for the well-being of our compagnia. I am certain you will agree.” He took me firmly by the upper arm. “And see that you restrain yourself from further contact with your compatriot, so that I need not intervene in his business in Sicily. Understood?” I nodded bleakly. Cane escorted me out, leaving Gabriele behind. I did not dare turn around to look at him again, and I hoped Cane and Lugani would leave him alone.
I had little of my former liberty for the remainder of the trip, as Cane had warned; Lugani kept me occupied from dawn until dusk with scribal tasks. I did not catch a glimpse of Gabriele again until we dropped anchor in the Messina harbor at the end of the second week of October, 1347.
* * *
From the Chronicle of the Franciscan Michele da Piazza:
At the beginning of October, in the year of the incarnation of the Son of God 1347, twelve Genoese galleys, fleeing from the divine vengeance which Our Lord had sent upon them for their sins, put into the port of Messina. The Genoese carried such a disease in their bodies that if anyone so much as spoke with one of them he was infected with the deadly illness and could not evade death. The signs of death among the Genoese, and among the Messinese when they came to share the illness with them, were as follows. Breath spread the infection among those speaking together, with one infecting the other, and it seemed as if the victim was struck all at once by the affliction and was, so to speak, shattered by it. This shattering impact, together with the inhaled infection, caused the eruption of a sort of boil, the size of a lentil, on the thigh or arm, which so infected and invaded the body that the victims violently coughed up blood, and after three days of incessant vomiting, for which there was no remedy, they died—and with them died not only anyone who had talked with them, but also anyone who had acquired or touched or laid hands on their belongings.