In the next few days, I met with the lawyers, retrieved Ben’s notes from the safe-deposit box at the Bank of Siena, and clarified that I’d be resuming work on the manuscript without the aid of any meddling scholars. The Albertis were tight-lipped with what I suspected was disapproval, but they remained polite. The gas and electricity had been turned off while I was away, and I had to spend several unpleasant days getting my utilities back. This made me not only cold and dependent on candles, but also unable to make coffee—a bigger disaster. A few days after I’d arrived in Siena the weather hit record low temperatures, and the pipes froze in the top-floor kitchen. Not having running water reminded me of the less pleasant aspects of medieval life. I went to the corner bar for espresso to stay caffeinated, but while I was waiting for the heat to come back on a frozen pipe burst upstairs, damaging one plaster wall. Donata recommended a plumber and contractor for the repairs and offered me hot meals and showers until I could resume modern life at home again. Then I dove back into research. I had firsthand information about medieval Siena now, but I wasn’t sure how my intimate knowledge of the fourteenth century could help me with Ben’s mystery.
Ben’s unanswered question was as much a part of his legacy as the house he’d left me. Since the break-in, I had imagined the lengths to which someone might go to interfere with the work I was doing, and my resolve to finish it had grown even stronger. But beyond the modern-day academic threats, I had a personal drive to know. The evil that Ben had uncovered wasn’t just an academic question for me anymore—it might have killed people I loved in a time and place I had once called home.
On the morning of December 28, I woke up just after dawn. Out the window, a bitter freezing rain was falling and the street was empty except for a woman bundled against the cold, leaning into the wind. What was I looking for? Did I want to take up where Ben had left off and make a new life of scholarship? Or did I want to find a more direct route to the past? Read about it or live it? And who knew whether I could control my reentry to the past anyway? It had happened by accident the last time, as far as I could tell. Now, in this city that straddled a millennium with uncanny grace, the past pressed in on me.
Gabriele’s journal could be the key to my return to his time. But where could it be? The book hadn’t followed me into the fourteenth century—I’d lost it on my trip, perhaps because Gabriele had it then himself. So where should I be looking instead?
I thought through the twisted logic. When did I last have it? The time Gabriele had handed me his freshly written diary to hold didn’t count—that wasn’t the right version of the book I’d lost. I traced my path backward in my head. I’d been reading it in the Duomo when I first traveled to July of 1347. That book, if I could find it, might tell me whether Gabriele had survived the Plague. Gabriele’s handwritten lines stood out when I closed my eyes, like a bright afterimage:
I find the mysterious figure hovering at the edge of my paintings, watching the events unfold in the scenes I depict. It is as if she were seeking a path through my paintings and into this world.
Seeking a path through my paintings and into this world.
Here was something even more compelling and terrifying: maybe the journal, far from its time of origin, would again open a gateway to the past, as it had before. You’d better be sure you know what you want before you look for it, Beatrice. But even as I thought those words, I rose from the bench and walked out of the room.
I arrived at the Duomo in time for Mass. It was almost possible to pretend, listening to the Latin, that I was back in the 1300s. Until I looked at the boy next to me, fiddling with his mother’s smartphone. After the service, I made my way over to a gray-haired docent at an information desk near the entrance. She turned to me with a practiced smile and perfect English. “How can I help you, Signorina?”
“Do you have a lost and found?”
“Of course. What have you lost?”
“It’s been a few months.”
“You’re coming back for the first time now?” Her pleasant demeanor cracked a bit.
“I didn’t realize I’d lost it.” It sounded lame even to me.
“It’s quite unlikely we’ll be able to help you, but why don’t you give me a description of the item and I’ll ask the other staff.”
“It’s a book.”
“What sort of book? At this point you might just want to buy another copy.”
“It’s irreplaceable, actually.” I had a terrible thought about how much trouble I’d be in with the Siena library for losing the book, and with the inappropriately trusting Fabbri.
The docent raised her eyebrows but pushed a small piece of paper and a pen over to me. “Please write a description here, and your contact information. You must realize how unlikely it is that we will find it after all this time.”
I wrote a few lines, and she put the description into a manila envelope. I took a walk around the cathedral, going back to the pew where it had all started. I even checked the floor but found only a discarded monthly Siena Attractions pass and a plastic barrette decorated with a yellow daisy.
* * *
Foiled in my attempt to find Gabriele’s diary, I resorted to academic pursuits. I considered my evidence: firsthand knowledge of Giovanni de’ Medici’s execution, and the poignant letter written by Immacolata Regate de’ Medici about her grieving, increasingly inaccessible son. If it somehow related to Siena’s extreme devastation by the Plague, then it might implicate the Medici family—but the connection was still obscure to me. I had Immacolata’s letter with me now, carefully packaged in a waterproof archival envelope. Once I got to the library I took it out and read it again, the words familiar now.
Since the death of his father I fear my little Iacopo has been full of strange and troubled thoughts. . . . But ever since the misery that has befallen his father, my beloved husband, the execution that has become the tragedy of our noble family, Iacopo . . . broods alone and writes endless pages in a small cramped hand. . . . It does not appear to be a letter. . . . I pray to see the joy return to my son’s face, and lighten the shadow that weighs upon all our hearts.
Iacopo de’ Medici. Giovanni de’ Medici had to be Iacopo’s father. How many executed Medicis could there have been in 1347? It was enough to get me started.
A quick Internet search for Medicis in the 1300s came up with a Giovanni, executed for an unknown crime, but in 1342—too early. Could the website be wrong? My best living source was Donata, who, over coffee that I managed to make competently enough to please her, suggested I try the crypt. The crypt was the university library’s underground archive, which I’d missed on my first trip to Siena. Built in the catacombs of one of the university’s original buildings, it housed some of its oldest documents in a dimly lit space with low arched stone ceilings. The humidity was tightly controlled by a regiment of humming machines along the wall.
I spent the rest of the day there, assisted by the now familiar and untiring Emilio Fabbri. I smiled my most Gabriele-like smile and told him how helpful the journal had been thus far in my research, omitting the fact that I’d lost it. I hoped he didn’t mind if I kept it a bit longer? He bowed his assent and left me to the documents he’d assembled.