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Notable among the attendees of the ceremony were the Lord and Lady Girolami, who were rich as Croesus and claimed Zenobio as an ancestor. As was tradition, the Girolami family had processed to the cathedral from their imposing tower home in order to receive the saint’s head on a gilded tray.

Again, the Bishop Acciaiuoli excused himself, leaving the ceremony in the charge of an inexperienced replacement (this one a notary public, by training). And when the nervous young priest removed the silver head reliquary from its locked altar, the two halves cracked apart in his hands like a walnut. Instead of Zenobio’s skull, out fell a small glass vessel, closed with a cork and filled with liquid of palest sage green.

The priest stuttered with fear. The people fell on the ground and wept. The Girolami ran away and locked themselves up in their tower. Somebody went to the ringhiera, the stone platform in the central piazza, and yelled out that the saints of Florence had abandoned the sinful city to plague. Only one or two people were there to hear him, but it was enough.

The terrible news floated with the poisoned miasmas through shuttered windows and sequestered courtyards until it reached the newly appointed papal inquisitor, Fra Michele di Lapo Arnolfi.

The previous Florentine inquisitor had taken to his role of eliminating heretics with a bit too much zeal, and Bishop Acciaiuoli had lobbied the Pope personally to secure the nomination of the younger, more-easily-managed Inquisitor Michele.

A native Florentine of strong faith, but delicate health, Inquisitor Michele was afraid of disease even in normal times. Terrified of stepping out of doors, the new inquisitor plunged into research, obsessively going through records of old trials, looking for anything that mentioned the stealing of relics, of sorcerers turning them into glass bottles.

However, bad news soon overwhelmed his task: every day, it seemed, new and awful crimes were shouted from the central platform by...by somebody, nobody was really sure who, since most citizens remained locked inside their homes.

But to the inquisitor’s ears, the yelling voice was authoritative—and well-informed. It shared that the altars inside San Lorenzo, San Paolo, and San Pier Maggiore had been emptied; how at Santo Stefano al Ponte a shrine was broken open; how, in all cases, sacred bones were taken from crystal caskets and switched for tiny bottles of unholy potion.

Determined to end these foul crimes, but unwilling to risk his own health, the new inquisitor sent man after man from his personal retinue to investigate the thefts in his stead. But so potent was the plague that each of his deputies dropped dead before he could gather any helpful information. Down to his last man, Inquisitor Michele changed tactics and hired a disposable peasant to deliver dispatches to the fifty or so parishes of Florence, commanding each of them to conduct inventories of the precious relics within their charge.

The peasant messenger did his best, but really, he could hardly find any people to deliver the letters to. Nearly everyone was dead, it seemed, and those left alive refused to leave their apartments. The peasant abandoned his fruitless task without a word to the inquisitor, who waited in vain for responses that never came.

When summer arrived, hot and deadly, the city canceled all future processions. The people were afraid to be near their neighbors, afraid another relic would disappear. The Signoria—the group of wealthy men elected to lead the city—ceased to meet, and municipal services were suspended indefinitely. Most churches stopped holding mass altogether. The sickly sweet stench of decay was everywhere, the taste of it stuck in the back of peoples’ throats.

But the shouts from the ringhiera did not abate: word continued to spread that a wicked thief was plucking the relics of Florence from their golden boxes and leaving strange glass charms in their place. And to heap misery upon misery, it was now apparent that if a parish was robbed of its saintly protection, its entire population would soon after be decimated by plague. The people of Florence began to call these unfortunate places “dead parishes,” and nobody would cross into those cursed neighborhoods for love or money.

EIGHT

FIRENZE DI NUOVO

July of 1348, Gates of Florence

Ginevra and Piero arrived at the Porta San Gallo early in the morning of July 7, 1348, several long weeks after the fiasco at the Feast of San Zenobio—and only a few short hours after the pear tree intimated that Ludovico was cold and dead. Normally, there was a long line of Florentine gentlemen standing in front of the gate at daybreak, each waiting to pass back into the city after an evening of revels in suburban brothels. But today, Ginevra and Piero were the sole applicants for entry. The gigantic nail-studded doors were shut, and it was only with much shouting that they were able to attract the attention of the keeper who sat in his room atop the gate’s tower.

“Move along! The city’s closed to foreigners!” he yelled down once he saw them.

“We have business here with His Holiness the Bishop!” called up Ginevra.

“Where is Old Antonio?” called Piero. “He let me out of this gate two weeks ago and said he would watch for my return!”

“Old Antonio is now Dead Antonio, may his soul be at peace. I’m the new gatekeeper, Young Antonio, and I’m not supposed to let anyone in.”

“But we have a letter from the Acciaiuoli family, inviting us to Florence!” said Ginevra.

Young Antonio paused, uncertain of the correct action.

“Please,” continued Ginevra. “Can you have your man open the door?”

“Man?! I have no man. It is only me at this post! You’re lucky you came to this gate and not another, where there might not even be anyone there at all!”

“Well, we are sorry to trouble you, Young Antonio. But please have a look at our letter! We come at the urgent request of the bishop’s nephew. Piero here is the son of a Florentine and is a resident of this city.”

Young Antonio squinted down from his perch. Even from the height, he could see a big official-looking seal on the letter. He did not want to interrupt the business of the bishop.

Nobody was around anyway to see that he let them in, a crooked-nosed woman and her child. They seemed harmless enough.

“Alright, alright, hold on.”

The keeper climbed down the long spiral stairs from his tower, opened a little door that was cut out of the big door, and for the first time in eight years, Ginevra saw her adopted home.

She stepped through the doorway, eager to experience the same elation she had when she first entered Florence as a young girl so many years ago, but O—desolate place! Never had Ginevra felt old before, but nothing shows time like a place once gay and full, now going to dust and shadows. Instead of the giddy excitement of her youth, she was overtaken by deep dread. She was now absolutely certain that her dream had been a portent. It was not just Ludovico who was gone. The city was so quiet she could hear the ringing in her ears, hear the plaster upon the walls. As if all its inhabitants had disappeared into the air.