Beatrice
As soon as I started reading about places and dates, it became obvious that I needed a diagram. Referring to multiple sources, I pulled out a blank sheet of paper and started to sketch a graphical representation of the Plague’s path through what would eventually become Europe, with Italy’s boot at the center. I hunched over my sketched map, adding different-colored, multidirectional arrows labeled with dates. Fabbri periodically looked in on me courteously. I wondered whether he might have thought I was going to deface original manuscripts with Magic Markers. My chart looked like a kindergartener’s drawing, but it was just what I needed. I have a good memory for many things; dates aren’t one of them.
Over the next few days, I pored over modern epidemiologic treatises on the origins and spread of Yersinia pestis, the bacteria blamed for the epidemic, and learned about the digestive system of the infected flea, the main vector for transmission of the Plague from infected rats to humans. I read medieval chronicles describing the buboes—armpit or groin swellings—that burst, spewing purulence. People spouted blood from every orifice and worsened so rapidly that they might go to sleep well and never wake. I went home with a headache and thrashed around most of the night, imagining lumps in my armpits and wishing the sun would rise. But it made me feel a satisfying connection to Ben, who must have followed these paths many times before me.
On my third day in the archives, I began to feel like an underground animal. I attached myself to a hard wooden chair and took notes furiously. After three hours I got up and looked for Fabbri, but couldn’t find him. I wandered through the aisles of books with faded titles and soon I was deep into unknown territory.
The books got darker and shabbier, and I began to feel an odd sense of unease. I ducked under a low doorframe into a small windowless room. There the feeling got stronger, as if someone were speaking just under the threshold of my hearing. The books were so crowded here that there was hardly space to walk, and nowhere to sit. I could feel my heart accelerating. It’s a library, Beatrice, not a haunted house. Most of the books had no words stamped on their bindings. I picked up a small leather-bound journal, smooth from handling. I closed my eyes, dizzy, and put the book back on the table where it belonged.
I kept one hand on the table until I felt steady, but the book waited to be picked up again, inanimate but irresistible. As I reached for it, I heard a hollow sound in my head, like the echo in a tunnel, and smelled the scent of damp plaster and paint. When I opened the book the faded handwriting seemed unaccountably familiar. I glanced down at the first page and read:
Anno Domini 1343
Gabriele Beltrano Accorsi
Gabri-EH-leh. He would have said it the Italian way.
My good mother, I am told, lived more in the spirit than on the earth. With her final breath she carried me to the threshold of this world, then left me for the angels. I still bear the marks of that loss upon my heart.
I recognized the quiet hum, then the heightening of perception, and then I was flooded by this fourteenth-century writer’s loss. It’s one thing to read the words and sympathize—how tragic, he lost his mother as he was being born, just like me. But I didn’t just think. I felt his grief, despite the fact that he had been dead for centuries. I closed the book but could not put it down. I made my way back to the table I’d huddled over for three days. As I was packing up my things, a voice behind my right shoulder made me gasp. I turned to see Fabbri standing at attention. His head came barely to my chin.
“Dottoressa Trovato, does this book have bearing on your research?”
“It’s very informative, Signore,” I croaked, unaccustomed to speech. “It comes from just the right time period.” I think he expected me to hand him the book for safekeeping, but I didn’t.
“Do you think I could take it home rather than try to get through it here?” Fabbri puffed his cheeks out once, started to speak, stopped himself, then started again. I hoped the internal battle he was having would end in my favor.
“I would hate to see any damage come to it in your hands.”
It was time to name-drop. “I don’t know whether I told you—I’m Beniamino Trovato’s sister. I’m working on a project he left behind when he died.” Fabbri’s jaw dropped.
“You are that Trovato? Of course you know how to care for a manuscript! Under the circumstances I think the archive’s policy can be waived. But might you be so kind as to leave some form of identification?”
I beamed at him and handed him a credit card I wouldn’t miss. “Thank you so much.” He helped me wrap the book carefully, and I headed back out to daylight. I walked home, holding the little book against my chest.
June 11
Dear Nathaniel,
Every night I dream stripes, stripes, stripes. The green and white cathedral has invaded my sleeping life. All this reading is really getting under my skin. Ben’s project has become mine, and everything else fades to insignificance next to it. I’m so absorbed in Siena’s past I feel like I’m actually there . . . or, maybe more accurately, THEN. Maybe I should have been a historian after all—Ben would be so smug if he could see me now.
This Franco Signoretti guy has become more insistent—somehow he got my address and sent me a letter that on the surface looks pleasant but between the lines reads as a threat. Probably an academic competitor who doesn’t want me publishing what Ben dug up. So of course I will do just that, once I figure it out. The other option my lawyers are pushing doesn’t look good either—passing Ben’s research to a local Sienese scholar who looks like he just finished high school. I’m not rolling over for any of these guys.
The guidebooks say Siena’s glory is frozen in time, suspended in the Middle Ages unchanged—all because of the Plague. Can you imagine what it would be like if more than half the inhabitants of New York City died within two years? It might be a lot easier to get a dinner reservation. Sorry, morbid humor. Actually, it’s true—people ate a lot better after the Plague than before, with at least half the population gone. Poor consolation for losing half your neighbors and family, I know, but at least there was an upside.
I found an interesting book—I think it’s actually a diary—from the 1300s. It’s really bringing the past to life. Don’t you just love primary sources?
Love,
B
I was hanging my long-neglected laundry in the courtyard behind the house when I noticed someone watching me. A little girl sat in the fork of the orange tree, staring silently as I struggled. I couldn’t find any clothespins and the wind kept blowing things off the line, so I’d resorted to tying knots in my bras.