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Lucia breathed in to begin a sob, but her throat was so swollen she stifled herself and then lay back down on the floor in exhaustion. Ginevra’s hand dipped into the purse at her waist and her fingers were drawn to two bloodstones, recently acquired. They thumped like little hearts at her touch. She’d had no opportunity to use them yet, was not sure if they might cause more harm than good to a sick body. There was another wretched gasp from poor Lucia. She could barely breathe. One thing was certain: the lady was sure to die without intervention.

Ginevra raised her eyes to the heavens. Here she was, just an hour after swearing to a papal inquisitor that she would perform no medicine. But how could she withhold help from this poor woman? Well, she told herself, my mistake last time wasn’t healing people. It was being caught. “I am going to come into your room now, Monna Lucia, do not be afraid.”

Lucia said nothing. This woman had clearly come to rob her home. At least she could have waited until Lucia was properly dead! This new woman, Lucia observed, did not share her husband’s fear of infection. How greedy, to risk your life for linens and chairs. It would serve her right when her own throat was swelling up like a toad’s. But the new woman did not go to the painted bridal chest, where things of value might be stored. Lucia watched with unfocused eyes as the thief moved aside the bucket of vomit and knelt down in its place.

“I am called Ginevra di Genoa. It is within my knowledge to cure you...I think...but you must promise that you will keep my secret.”

Lucia wondered if this was the devil, tricking her into bargaining away her soul... Were there any demons named Ginevra? She couldn’t remember. But her fear was superseded by anger toward her husband, and she thought of how shamed he would be if she got better and arrived, unannounced and alive, at the country estate (her inheritance), where he had surely gone.

“Listen,” said Ginevra di Genoa. “I believe the goats led me to you for a reason. But you must promise you’ll keep my secret. Tell no one if I cure you.”

Lucia tried to speak but only bloody bubbles came out of her mouth.

“If you promise, squeeze my hand.” Lucia did not understand about the goats, but she understood she didn’t want to die and with her last strand of energy gave Ginevra’s hand the faintest little squeeze. Lucia then blacked out into nothingness.

Ginevra set to work, pulling out the two speckled bloodstones from her leather pouch. They were darkest green dotted with flecks of red iron. A long time ago, they had been polished into smooth ovals and inscribed with runes by the priestess who first blessed them. Like the eaglestone so long ago at Sant’Elisabetta, Ginevra let the rocks guide her hand. She placed the stones against the swellings that protruded from Lucia’s throat, willing her own health to flow through them and push out the disease. At least, that’s how she hoped it would work. The thrumming sound she now knew as familiar filled the air and the stones’ heartbeats went faster, faster until they were buzzing. She held them firmly against the swellings, her fingertips growing numb, her hands cramping from the vibrations. Lucia began to spasm, arms flapping and slapping, back arching, mouth chomping. And then with a terrible, rasping gasp she became still and collapsed flat against the floor. Oh, God, I’ve killed her, thought Ginevra. She took the stones away and broke out in a cold panic-sweat.

“HUNGGGHGHH.” Lucia sat straight up and dry-heaved. Ginevra screamed in surprise and jumped away. The sick woman leaned her head forward and a large black glop fell out of her mouth and onto her lap, and she collapsed again onto the floor. Ginevra crept back to her and listened. Lucia’s faint and ragged breaths became slow and even. The swellings on her neck shrank into dark purple bruises. A hand on the forehead proved the fever had broken. Ginevra laughed out loud and sat back on the floor, legs splayed in front of her. Lucia would live. The bloodstones worked. For the first time in years, she actually felt good about herself.

Now Ginevra finally took in all the details of her surroundings. She was in the town house of a well-to-do merchant. The family must have been without proper help for months, and the palazzo was cluttered with the detritus of daily life. The fireplace was full of ash, dirty sheets were upon the bed. Right, she thought, let’s get poor abandoned Monna Lucia off the floor.

She opened the painted wedding chest. There were sheets inside of very fine Flanders lace, and shifts of transparent linen, trimmed in cream silk. Things that should not be used for a sick and dirty body, but they were all that was at hand. She remade the bed and with some effort, removed Lucia’s ruined nightshift and lifted her onto the mattress. Ginevra’s head spun with the exertion, and she remembered her hunger and thirst.

With Lucia asleep in her finest sheets, Ginevra went up to the top floor, where the kitchens were located in such homes, so if they caught fire, the house below might be saved. It was a massive room with red tile floors and creamy plaster walls. The unadorned plaster was in contrast to the colorful faux tapestries frescoed on the walls of the living spaces. She went to the three large windows and opened the shutters, letting in sunlight. She was relieved to see there were still a few provisions. There was a bin of barley flour, half a wheel of hard cheese, a box of lard, and a sticky plate of honeycomb (now rather dusty). Hanging from the rafters, a desiccated link of dark red salami, two salted fish, and bundles of rosemary, lavender, and sorrel.

Taking up an entire wall of the kitchen, the great hearth, big enough to roast a boar in, gaped black and cold before her. Among the ashes was a large iron cauldron that in better times was kept bubbling with soup bones. On the wooden table, where the long-gone cook had once trussed rabbits and shucked oysters, a rat nibbled at a nub of stale bread.

She shooed away the rat and took the bread, scraping off hard bites with her teeth. The crumbs coated her parched throat and made her cough. Just outside the kitchen, she saw a small cupboard that opened into a shaft, containing a winch to draw up water from a cistern under the house. Ginevra tried to turn the crank, but it did not budge. She didn’t want to risk breaking it. So she walked all the way down the stairs, stopping at the dirty dining table on the second floor to pick up a fine painted beaker, laughing to see it was the same pattern favored by the inquisitor—chickens eating grapes—and into the cellar below the courtyard.

In the dim light, among leaking oil jugs and scampering mice, were a heartening number of barrels stacked neatly against the wall. She poured herself a healthy portion from an already-tapped hogshead. A normal sip was quickly followed by a deep draught, for in her thirst it seemed finer than any drink she’d tasted before. In truth it was only vinello, the mild “little wine” that everyone drank daily. But it was fizzy and tart and slightly cool from the dark room it was stored in. She dipped the hard bread into her cup to soften it, allowing her to take the first real bite.

Off to the side of the cellar was a cistern that collected rainwater, funneled from roof gutters and a drain in the center of the courtyard. She looked into it and saw it was filled with blind eels, who ate the eggs of mosquitoes that grew in the water, and were also delicious when baked in pies. With her vinello and bread, she walked back up to the ground floor courtyard and through a rear door to find an octagonal plot enclosing a now-overgrown garden. A fountain burbled in the center of the space, surrounded by four symmetrical planting beds that contained a good number of onions, savory herbs, and flowering nasturtiums. Gnarled quince trees provided shade for benches placed between the beds. The stone walls of the enclosure were mostly covered by apple trees that had been trained so their branches grew flat like vines against the stones instead of out in all directions. Pecking their way around the onion tops were two peacocks, who remained ignorant of the present chaos, living happily off worms and fallen apples.

In this space of calm and luxury, clutching her fancy new cup, Ginevra felt the mild potency of the vinello take effect. For a moment, she forgot to feel anxious about the great tragedy through which she was living. But only for a moment. And then she went back upstairs to drag the dead maid out to the curb for the next morning’s body collector. Here she was, among compatriots. One woman living, one woman dead. And herself, feeling somewhere in between. All of them left alone.

FIFTEEN

A TRUE AND ACTUAL SECRET

1335, City of Florence,

Convent of Sant’Elisabetta delle Convertite

After the eaglestone incident, Ginevra sat alone with Sister Agnesa upon a straw mattress in the nun’s plain little cell, the intimate proximity at odds with the serious mood.

“Do you know why I picked up the stone so quickly from the bed?”

“No,” Ginevra said quietly.

“I took it, because if an eaglestone is left too long, it will pull the woman’s womb out along with the baby. Or did my cousin not teach you that part?”

“No! I had no understanding. I wouldn’t have—I didn’t even know there was such a thing as an eaglestone. I’ve never seen one work before.”

“Never?” said Agnesa, scratching under her gray veil. “You mean you got it to work, just like that?”

“Yes, I swear it—it’s just something that’s always in my purse—it was like the stone told me somehow, that it would help get the baby out. I didn’t know about the womb part. Please, I thought you were going to cut her all up.”

“No, ignorant girl. Such a thing would not happen here.”