“We will need full names, and places of residence and work, if we are to visit your acquaintances in Siena.”
Targets, rather than acquaintances, would be nearer the mark. “You will have those as well.” The Accorsi household first, and after that, the cathedral builders,who dared to make Siena’s duomo “the greatest church in all Christendom,” the Lorenzetti brothers, whose paintings decorated the palazzo, civic leaders, judges, architects, members of the Biccherna, i Noveschi: all those whose industry, art, power, and renown graced Siena would be struck down by a blow too savage to withstand. He imagined a swarm of Becchini fueled by the Brotherhood’s gold, winging toward their targets like deadly birds of prey.
Iacopo’s step felt lighter with the gold gone as he left the abandoned shop and reemerged into the sun. But soon doubt, his familiar companion, came back to accompany him on the walk home.
When he arrived at the family palazzo, one of the chambermaids had drawn a bath for him. Immacolata would not let any member of the household back inside without cleansing the dirt from the street, for who knew how the illness spread? He lay in the tepid water, but when he closed his eyes he saw the pallbearer’s bony hand extending to grasp the pouch of gold.
Two disembodied voices warred within him now, one questioning his purpose as the other spurred him on.
Now, I shall follow in my father’s footsteps.
-You are not your father, Iacopo.
I shall prove myself to be his equal.
-And is that what you desire, to be your father’s equal? To walk his violent path?
Iacopo was not sure whether he uttered these words out loud or whether they stayed silent in his own head. It had become difficult for him to tell the difference.
*
Ysabella took up her apprenticeship with Monna Tecchini just as the long winter began to release its grip on Siena. She accompanied the midwife at every hour of the day or night, learning to coax new lives into the world. One particular birth, twin babes each vying to be first to take a breath outside their mother’s womb, kept Ysabella late. Both infants survived, but there were moments when, struggling to untangle the wet limbs, Monna Tecchini had feared they might lose not just the babes but the mother as well. When Ysabella left the house, all three were safe at last, two wrapped tightly in linen, the third holding her miracles against her chest.
The streets were dark when Ysabella began her walk toward home. As she passed the house of the Lorenzetti brothers, she saw an odd sight and slowed to watch. Two men cloaked in black stood at the grand house’s front door, lit eerily by the lamp at the top of the entrance stairs. It was odd enough to see a visitor at this late hour, but these gave her a chill, for she recognized the distinctive garb of the Becchini, the pallbearers’ faces hidden under their wide hoods. Their presence always meant death, a body waiting to be carried to its grave. Tonight their sight sent fear snaking through Ysabella’s chest and into her limbs. She had seen the Lorenzettis only that morning when she’d passed the house as the bells were ringing Prime, on the way to the twin birth she’d spent half the night attending. Had one of the brothers sickened and died in just that short time? And if the pallbearers had not come to pick up the dead, why had they come at all, in this secret dark after moonset?
When the door opened and the two figures disappeared into the doorway yawning black against the stuccoed walls, Ysabella slipped from her post and headed quickly home, trying to erase the image of the grim twin silhouette that shadowed the Lorenzettis’ door.
Two days later, she heard that Pietro first, then Ambrogio, had died, the new Pestilence from the Orient raging in their blood like demons let loose from hell. Ysabella did not understand what she had seen, for certainly the Becchini came to take death from a household, not to bring it. Afterward, though, her dreams were haunted by the image of two cloaked men, angels of death bringing despair in their wake. In the weeks that followed, when the Becchini passed in the street outside the bakery, she barred the door against them, but that did not protect their home from death’s entry.
Gabriele had not returned to his uncle’s house by the time the dying began in Siena. Ysabella prayed at first for her cousin to return to them, but as each day brought new horrors, she began to wish he would stay away. Her father, Martellino, went first—one night in May, he took to his bed early complaining of a mighty headache. The next dawn, when he failed to come down to stir the coals in the bakery oven, Ysabella sought him out.
They no longer shared a room; since Gabriele’s departure for Messina, Martellino had offered the top floor camera to his daughter. “You are nearly a woman now, though it seems only a few days ago that you wore a child’s long-hemmed gown. Might the space serve as a studium for preparation of your herbs and tinctures?” He had smiled, touching her cheek with a hand that smelled, as it always did, of fermenting yeast—but he would not smile again, and her herbs could do nothing to save him. Ysabella found her father in bed that morning, shivering so violently she could hear his teeth clacking in his mouth, and the boils stood out florid against the pale skin under his arms. The doctor would not come, fearing for his own life. Ysabella tried to nurse her father back to health, bathing him in her own urine mixed with fresh water from the Fonte Gaia, for the urine of a virgin was said to hold exceptional powers of purification. She surrounded his head with bundles of sweet-smelling rosemary, and burned lemon leaves and juniper until the smoke filled the room and she could hardly see her father’s face.