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“This is very...formal, Ser Inquisitor.”

“Thank you,” he said blushing. “The beauty illustrates the importance of the words.”

She squinted to read his perfect handwriting, the tiny names of churches cramped inside colorful borders. No wonder Florence needed her help. Their inquisitor spent all his time drinking wine and making art.

“Fine,” she said, tucking the list and the contract into her belt. “I take my leave, and will return soon.”

“In three days,” pressed the inquisitor.

“In three days.”

“I pray for your success, and for the soul of your friend, Ludovico. I shall inform the bishop of our arrangement.”

Before she could respond, Giuseppe ushered her through the front door and locked it. She did not see Piero outside. She called out his name, but there was no answer. She started toward the bishop’s home, intending to ask the boy if he’d like to continue as her partner. But then she stopped herself. Perhaps it was better this way. Piero would be sent to live with a family, with other children. She would not force him to accompany her on her crooked path. She put him in the place in her heart she kept for things she had cared for and lost, along with Ludovico, Monna Vermilia, and her original left nostril.

Now, in the street alone, she was struck by the reality of her decision. She did not know how to hunt a thief. She took out the inquisitor’s list, with its lush illustrations and scant information, and then put it away again. She looked around the empty piazza, a place once lively and familiar, now distant and strange. Again, her mind went into the past, back to the circumstances of her first arrival as a girl, to the city of her heart.

ELEVEN

A GOOD GIRL, SO TO SPEAK

1335, City of Genoa

Quite a bit of time had passed since Ginevra’s first encounter with the malocchio, but in those years, the coral figa stayed bright red and kept Ginevra in health and safe from the Eye, just as Monna Vermilia promised it would. No longer did she have to close her eyes and concentrate to know how the strings connected one thing to another. She had become fluent in their silent language of cause and effect. But at fifteen, for the first time, her attentions and desires were not wholly devoted to her work with Monna Vermilia. Now when she walked down the little streets along the harbor, she was noticed by the sailors and loaf-abouts. And sometimes she noticed them back. Vermilia listened every day to Ginevra recounting their unoriginal and libidinous comments as if they were rare poems penned by a courtier.

The older woman saw that soon Ginevra would want to marry one of these fools if nothing more interesting happened. This was a treacherous time of life for a young woman, when she was susceptible to finding worthy qualities in men who had none. The time had come, she realized, to push Ginevra toward her full potential. Vermilia went to Ginevra’s father, Gasparo, and said, “Look here—you haven’t any money, and your daughter is a good girl, so to speak, and does not deserve to become a slave wife to whatever miserable rope-maker will be content with the public dowry.”

“What should I do?” asked the poor Gasparo, concerned in earnest for his child.

Vermilia patted his hand sympathetically. “Don’t worry, I will tell you: My cousin is an abbess at a convent called Sant’Elisabetta, operated by the Augustinians as a charity for women who were formerly prostitutes but now are nuns. She could make use of a girl such as Ginevra. There, she may learn and practice the healing arts without causing a scandal. Your daughter will make her own living, and she need not settle on the first circumstance that presents itself.”

Gasparo conferred with his wife, Camiola, and they both agreed they did not want their daughter to be married to a miserable rope-maker. So Vermilia went to the monk she had seduced and had him write out the letter of introduction. She then helped Gasparo arrange for Ginevra to travel with a group of pilgrims who were making a southward journey the following week and would stop at the merchant republic of Florence.

Ginevra was not entirely in favor of this turn of events—she could not imagine being apart from Vermilia, being apart from her parents. But even though she wore the coral mano figa, she had not forgotten the Eye and was afraid it would come back for her if she was ungrateful. So, she cried her tears quietly into her bed and made no protest as she prepared for the journey.

Camiola noticed Ginevra’s despair anyhow and went to her daughter and embraced her as she bundled her few belongings together. Ginevra began to weep and clutched at her mother’s sleeve. “Why do you send me away? Do you not love me now that I am grown?”

Tears came also to the corners of Camiola’s eyes. “Your absence will be a yoke upon my shoulders. But do not think about us—this convent will be a pleasant place, I am sure—go there and be a credit to them. Learn what the Florentine nuns will tell you, see what is in the wider world. Then when you come back to us, it will be because you chose to, and not because it is all you know.”

“But are there not convents enough here in Genoa?”

Camiola hugged her only living child closer to her and spoke slowly or else she, too, would weep freely. “This one must be special. Your teacher, Vermilia, is wise. She knows—and I even in my humbleness know—there are not so many ways for a woman to improve her lot. We must be willing to go farther, to search harder to find how we may realize our truest talents, and to please God with them.” Ginevra knew her mother was right and that it was not fair.

To solemnize their farewell, Monna Vermilia invited Ginevra to her home for a last supper of sorts. She had gathered a hundred tiny clams from the shore, and now threw them without mercy into a sputtering pot of lard and garlic. The delicate creatures stood no chance, and opened immediately to release their briny liquor into the frying pan. Vermilia dumped the whole lot of them into a great earthen bowl with much clacking of shells and splattering of fragrant broth.

Ginevra smiled weakly, and dipped a round of saltless bread into the broth. Vermilia did the same. In the silence of the shared meal, the immediacy of departure weighed heavily.

Ginevra put down her bread. “Oh, Monna, I cannot bear it!”

Vermilia reached across the table and held her arm tight. “Tonight we must be glad, we must enjoy each other, because I am old and will die before you return.”

“No! You are like Noah and will live to be nine hundred years old!”

“Who says I haven’t done that already, eh? God has no great plans for me, I saw it long ago—the morning you came to me with the malocchio, I asked the stone in my ring and it told me my time is approaching. So go, my dear, and look only forward, for you have had the best of me.”

Ginevra sat stunned. “I do not believe it. Show me the stone that could know such things.”

Vermilia sat still for a moment. “Very well, then, if it will make you accept it.” She took her ring off and placed it among the clamshells on the table.