Provenzano’s forehead took on a sweaty sheen. “Perhaps I will take this opportunity to retire to the countryside. Would you care to come with me?”
Yet another offer I had to refuse. If I knew I could promise Provenzano passage somewhere, I’d take him with me too.
“I need to go to the Ospedale, to find my . . . my cousin. He is an artist, with a commission there, and we plan to find passage to Siena together. Can you tell me where the Ospedale is?”
Provenzano provided me with directions, then pulled a key from a ring at his waist. He bent over a large chest, fumbling with the lock, then drew out a leather pouch of coins for me. “Ser Lugani will be most displeased if I leave my post.”
“You won’t care if he’s displeased if you’re dead.”
He blinked twice.
“Or get to your country place as soon as you can, and don’t worry about what your boss will say. And avoid rats and sick people.” No matter where Provenzano went, he wouldn’t escape the Plague. But if he survived here, at least he’d have a job.
Provenzano seemed accustomed to following directions from those who spoke with authority. “I wish you God’s protection in your travels, Signora.”
“I will make my way home,” I said with more confidence than I felt, “with this to assist me.” I lifted the bag of coins, hearing them clink against one another. As I left the fondaco office, I realized what I’d said: in returning to medieval Siena, I would be heading home.
* * *
I unlaced the pouch and shook its glittering contents into my hand. I hoped it would be enough to buy three berths on the next boat out. If there was a next boat. Clara was sitting on her trundle bed. “Let’s get packing.”
“Where are we going?”
“First, I’m going to find Messer Accorsi. Then, a boat out of here.”
Clara’s eyes widened. “The painter? I will begin assembling our possessions this very moment.” She curtsied and left.
Outside, I pushed past crowds, wondering if any were already infected, and infectious. The bubonic version was common, with its hallmark lymphatic swellings in the groin and armpits, but the pneumonic manifestation of Plague—rare and rapid—attacked the lungs first, and might be transmitted through the air. All forms were deadly. I held my breath every time I passed someone.
I didn’t need paranormal abilities to sense that things were starting to go wrong. A woman stood wringing her hands in the entrance to her home, talking to a grave-looking cluster of robed and hatted physicians in long scarlet wool robes with collars of white fur. There were more physicians around than I was used to seeing, and more priests.
The chilling sound of a funeral bell heralded a procession of clerics followed by pallbearers dressed in black. They were burdened with a wooden coffin, and a group of lamenting family members walked behind. At the end of the train a bunch of curious oglers wound their way up the hill toward Messina’s cathedral—the bell tower loomed over the buildings surrounding it. No one knew enough yet to flee the dead or to shun the grieving families who had tended the sick until their deaths.
In a side street, a row of large wooden bins overflowed with rotting vegetables, a pile of white and pink turnips at the top of the closest one. But the heap was garnished with a final touch—the carcasses of three crows, their feathers black against the turnips’ pallor. Here was the leading edge of the great pandemic. A narrative spun out in my head, though not from any source I’d ever seen.
First the birds died in large numbers. Flocks dropped to the earth in mid-flight, stricken with the advancing pestilence, and then the people followed, one by one and then in human flocks to match their winged predecessors, until the cities were stripped of men.
I ran the few remaining blocks to Messina’s Ospedale.
* * *
Other than a tired-looking guard, the entrance hall was ominously empty; my steps made a dull echo as I crossed the room. The door at its other end opened into Messina’s version of the pellegrinaio. It was much smaller than Siena’s, and packed with misery from wall to wall. Some patients lay on cots, but most were in piles of straw on the stone floor. Two black-robed mantellate moved about the room, attending to the sick. Near the door a young man on a cot writhed in agony. He was bare to the waist, and the swellings beneath his arms and at his neck proclaimed his illness. His skin was speckled with purplish spots, and he gasped with every breath. I imagined the miasma of the Plague making its way into my body through my mouth, nose, even the pores of my skin. Every itch sent me swatting at an imagined flea carrying certain death. Nothing I had ever encountered before in medicine or elsewhere could compare to the stench of Yersinia claiming its victims.
My task kept me moving through the maze of bodies until I was sure Gabriele was not among them. The exhausted sisters had not seen or heard anything of a gray-haired painter. I stumbled through the doors at the opposite end of the pellegrinaio.
I’d entered a gemlike, empty chapel. Tall stained glass windows topped with pointed arches let beams of colored sunlight into the room, slanting red and blue. The air smelled sweet—seasoned wood and the tang of paint. I walked farther into the chapel, past rows of wooden benches carved with twining leaves and flowers. Every detail stood out in this strange, quiet place. At the far end of the chapel was the altar, a large stone table with a crypt underneath, and above the altar, a partially painted altarpiece.
I stared at the unfinished panel. Was it Gabriele’s? In some places, gold leaf had been applied on a background of reddish brown clay and gleamed in the light from the windows. At the top of the panel were four saints: Christopher, Luke, Placidus, Nicholas. I dropped my eyes to look at the unfinished predella. It portrayed the Annunciation; Mary arched away from the angel Gabriel’s intrusion, her arms warding off the frightening news that she would bear the Son of God. If this was Gabriele’s painting, the model might have been Paola—his late wife. Her fears of childbearing had been justified, I thought grimly. But where was Gabriele? What might be keeping him from his work in the middle of the day—illness, or worse? The wall behind the altar was covered by a blue velvet curtain that I pushed aside with one hand—there was another room behind it, darker than the chapel.