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“Thank Mary and all the saints! The brave girl managed it on her own.” She picked up the baby and slapped it until it bawled. Ginevra tried to surreptitiously grab the stone back, but Agnesa’s quick eyes followed her hand and saw the little rock there on the sheets. She gasped and snatched it away, hiding it inside her palm.

“Fool, fool, how long has the eaglestone been lying here??” Agnesa hissed.

“Just a moment...”

“Did my careless cousin give you this?”

Ginevra hung her head, and Agnesa’s eyes widened with understanding.

“So you helped yourself, then, to a package meant for me, to a thing you don’t understand?”

“But, it worked! And, you know what it’s called? An eaglestone?”

Agnesa bit her lip.

The new mother again asked for wine.

“Ginevra, go and fetch this thirsty lady a drink. Then come straight away to my cell.”

Ginevra left the fuming Sister Agnesa clutching the infant, and went to pour a draft of wine with shaking hands. She was terrified of what she had done. She had stolen something, something that compelled her to use it carelessly. She thought of the thieves in Genoa who became beggars after their hands were cut off for their crimes. Would they do that to her?

She touched quickly her coral to make sure it was still there, that this was not caused by the malocchio finally come back for her. The jewel lay at her collarbone, where it always did. Whatever punishment was coming her way, she had brought to her own self. Maybe Fra Simone would excommunicate her, when he was told what she did, and after a miserable, handless life she would go straight to hell and be tortured for eternity. But under these fearful thoughts there was something else: anger. She had saved a woman’s life and was in trouble for it.

FOURTEEN

THE GOATS LED ME HERE

July 7th of 1348, Streets of Florence

Ginevra leaned against the door of the inquisitor’s palazzo and shook herself free from the memories of her early years in Florence. Right. The sooner she solved the inquisitor’s “small problem,” the sooner she could fix her own. She looked across the piazza to the messy construction site of the new cathedral, which seemed no closer to being finished than it had eight years earlier. It had been only partially built for as long as she could remember, the massive foundations of this new building enclosing the original, intact cathedral of Santa Reparata. The site was covered with tatty wood scaffolding, and at the top of one platform a stonemason, still holding his hammer, had crawled up to die in the sun. Birds were picking at him, a feast with a view. This was the place from which the relic of San Zenobio had been stolen.

She must start investigating right away, perhaps by examining the cathedral? Three days was not much time. But her stomach rumbled loudly, and she realized that she’d had a long and arduous morning without food or drink, and was now standing in the full heat of the afternoon. Her mind was strained with the loss of Piero. The remembering of Sant’Elisabetta. The death of Ludovico. The empty reliquary of Zenobio would wait until she found a place to settle her own bones. But where could she go? Her internal map of the city was outdated. New buildings had altered the pattern of streets since her departure eight years earlier, and the paths leading out of the Piazza della Santa Reparata were not as she remembered. Without Piero as her guide, she had no idea where she might find lodging.

She sat down on a bit of quarrystone, and looked around to make sure nobody was watching. From her bag of gems, Ginevra plucked a limpid green smaragdus, which was supposed to bring clarity, focus, and guidance. She had never been able to make it work properly, but now was as good a time as any to try. She stared into its minty depths, and willed her mind to empty so the stone could do its work. Her thoughts went immediately to Sant’Elisabetta. She saw Taddea, Fra Simone, and Sister Agnesa kneeling before the blessed bread. But even after eight years, the shame burned hot and she wished to wash her memory like a sheet.

“No!” she said out loud to the smaragdus.

She put the stone away, told herself it still wasn’t working properly, and watched as a dusty white goose walked into the square, followed by a herd of emaciated goats who had adopted him as their leader. Ginevra couldn’t help but laugh at the band of misfits. She thought for a minute and then walked over to join them—a sight so merry was good luck, in times like these. They must have been sent specifically to get her attention.

She was with them about an hour, twisting through residential streets, seeing no other human soul the whole while. No breeze stirred. The animals let out not a single bleat or honk. Everywhere doors were left ajar to what were recently well-tended and busy homes. Foul odors wafted through open windows, where now-gone neighbors had been too afraid to retrieve the dead for burial.

The sun was directly overhead, casting no shadow, when they arrived at the church of Santa Trinita. At this, Ginevra lost faith in her goose leader. She was familiar with this spot and knew it was only a short distance from where they had started. She began looking at the empty homes with an eye for one that might do for her own shelter when she heard a loud BANG. The door of a fine palazzo flung open twenty yards ahead. A man, well-dressed, though quite disheveled, blinked in the sunlight and let out a deep sigh of relief that he stifled when he saw Ginevra and her companions. Before man, woman, or goat could say anything, a piteous cry escaped from a window of the building the man had just exited.

“Come back, come back, my lord!” called the voice, with wheezes and rasps.

The animals jerked their heads in unison toward the sound. The man glanced at the window, cast a pained look at Ginevra, and said, “I’m just...going to find the...thing!” And then he ran away.

The voice cried out again, “Come back, my lord, I’m still alive! Perhaps I won’t die! Please, don’t leave me all alone!” The goats looked expectantly at Ginevra, who thanked them for their company and shooed them on. She walked through the loggia at the front of the building; in his haste to depart, the disheveled man hadn’t locked his front door. She entered into the dark courtyard of a fine home.

“Hello?” Ginevra called up the stairs that ran round the courtyard, blessedly cool against the afternoon heat. “Who is there?”

The cries stopped. The stench of yesterday’s death lived in this house. Up the steps to the second floor, through a great hall, the floor covered with rotten salad leaves and old pork bones, she came to a door that was locked from her own side, the key still in its hole. She turned it and the door swung open into a finely appointed bedroom. A young woman lay on the floor next to a bucket of black bile. She was crumpled below the high open window, having collapsed with the effort of shouting after the escaping man. She was pale and her dark hair stuck to her sweaty forehead. At her throat, the swollen nodes of advanced disease. Ginevra looked around the room and saw a foot sticking out from a stained sheet in the corner; the source of the death smell.

She asked from the doorway, “Can you speak still, my darling? What is your name?”

“I am Lucia,” she wheezed. “Where is my husband?”

Ginevra had no more tolerance for absent men. “Think of him no more, the worthless fool has fled.”