“Your expression of concern is gracious, Ser Battista. Where can my messenger look for you, if I hear any news of my cousin?”
Battista, if that was his real name, hesitated before he gave his address, further raising her suspicions. What sort of man is it who does not swiftly recall his own place of residence? When the visitor took his leave, Ysabella made certain he was well out of sight before she closed the door again.
* * *
By the height of spring, the Becchini had turned to looting and pillaging, and the mere sight of a dark-robed figure at a distance would send gentlefolk rushing home to bar themselves behind locked doors. But Iacopo continued to meet with his messengers of death, slipping out of the palazzo late at night to avoid his mother’s gaze, and sending them on continued trips to strip Siena of her greatest men.
The first of the Brotherhood met his death at the hands of the Pestilence in May, speckling the walls of his bedchamber as he sputtered his last breaths. Within a month, half the Brotherhood was gone. Albizzi, Ridolfi, and Acciaioli survived, as did Iacopo himself, crossing one name after another off the list of Siena’s most respected citizens that he kept hidden close to his heart. There were moments Iacopo half wished the Mortalità would take him as well, and allow him oblivion. But through some odd perverse good fortune, it spared him, to bear witness to all that he had wrought.
PART IX
ROUND TRIP
Afterward, I was known as “that neurosurgeon who came down with Plague on vacation.”
“It wasn’t exactly vacation,” I usually said, though that didn’t get at the nature of the inaccuracy. I was well enough by Thanksgiving to celebrate with Nathaniel and Charles at their sleek Upper West Side apartment—always a banner event, especially when Charles was cooking. Linney would have been there but had the flu. Not Plague, she’d made sure of that. The three of us studiously avoided the topic of my illness until dessert. I’d been gone since June—five months, though for me it was more than five centuries.
“So, about that trip you took,” Charles said, grimacing wryly as he brought in the final course of the meal, “just tell me where you stayed so I can avoid it. And next time consider a flea collar, okay, honey?” I had to laugh, and the dessert Charles plopped down in front of me kept me smiling—pumpkin crème br?lée, the top browned with a handheld torch. The scents of vanilla and nutmeg filled the room, and the espresso Nathaniel served had a perfect flourish on the crema: ferning dark brown on white that would make any barista proud. But even the delicious smells were dull compared with what I had become used to—the headiness of freshly ground spices, the jammy aroma of fruit picked from a contado orchard, a loaf baked in Martellino’s wood-fired oven. When my eyes teared up, the boys misunderstood why I was crying.
“Sweetie, I’m sorry, it’s not right to tease. We almost lost you.” Charles was always more voluble with his affections than Nathaniel, but I knew from the look on Nathaniel’s face that he had feared for my survival. So had I.
* * *
The oldest memories, from before Messina, were crystal clear; I could replay them like a vivid film in my head. But my recollections fragmented as they drew closer to that moment when I jumped centuries for the second time. Maybe because the sickness had been brewing inside me already, distorting my consciousness. Or maybe clarity was impossible at the border of the two worlds I had bridged. Whatever the reason, those last few hours I spent in the fourteenth century assembled themselves like a collage of pictures pasted loosely together on a page.
I remember sitting under a pear tree outside Messina’s walls. Feeling thirsty—terribly thirsty. Clara is bending over me, her eyes overly large and glistening with tears. But I send her away—to find water? Then the headache starts, a strange, dull, evil headache, like a warning. How long has she been gone? I am not sure.
I remember the flies buzzing around a squashed fruit on the ground—an autumn pear. I look up to see fruit still on the tree, too high to grasp. I remember the ache in my legs, my run from the Ospedale, then backward, a bit clearer, the brilliant colors of the unfinished predella in the chapel. What transpired there—my mind shies away from the memory.
Under the tree, I am lying on something lumpy and uncomfortable: my bag. I look for the water bottle, but it’s gone of course. I gave it to Clara. My hand goes to the very bottom of the bag and touches a corner of paper. It’s a letter, a modern handwritten letter. I can see the watermark on the page when I hold it up to the light filtering through the fruit tree. Did I already try to reach the fruit? Yes, I think so. I see it’s the note from Donata I’ve been carrying around since June, but a different June. The page is creased and grubby. My eyes are out of focus now; I have to strain to make the words clear. I have the beginnings of a fever, and every seam of the dress I’m wearing grates against my skin.
The letter looks familiar to me; of course it does. There is my name at the top of the page, Beatrice. Even in my head I say it the Italian way now.
Cara Beatrice,
How silly to write to you when you live next door, but it seems we never have a moment to talk when I am surrounded by my sweet distractions.
Sweet distractions. I once knew what that meant, but now I can’t recall.
If you can spare a few hours from your research, perhaps we might attempt an adult outing together? There is a place near the Fonte Gaia—Caffè Rossi—that the tourists have not yet discovered. And Signora Rossi makes espresso like none other in the Western Hemisphere.
Espresso. I used to drink espresso—the bitter rich taste blooms in my mouth like a hallucination. I think I am crying because now I taste salt, and I remember the feeling of standing next to Donata so acutely it’s almost real.
Perhaps tomorrow afternoon?
—Ciao,
Donata
The fever is rising, I know, because the chills are coming, and the shadow of the tree twists and bends on the ground. As I read, I can hear Donata’s voice, the intelligence and humor vivid in her words.
And that was when it must have happened, because I don’t remember anything after that. I think I rode that letter home. All this time, I had it in my bag, and could have used it. Or could I? What released me from the time I’d become attached to? The Plague taking root in my body and scrambling my sense of place? Or was it the loosening of ties that held me there, with the knowledge of Gabriele bent in suffering in the workroom behind Messina’s chapel? I still don’t know. But when I awaken, I am staring into a worried, pale face. At first I think it is Clara, then Donata. But then slowly I become aware of the beeps and whines of machines around me. I am in a hospital bed, and the face is Linney’s, surrounded by her dark red hair.
* * *