Page 28

“Monna Lucia! It is so pleasant to see you awake.”

It was the stranger—Ginevra?—back with a brew that smelled of honey and rosemary. “How is your throat? Do you find it comfortable to speak?”

Lucia gave it a try: “Ahemmm. Hmm. I... Yes...yes, I do.”

“Good. The stones worked perfectly. I wasn’t sure they would, but either way, since I have saved your life, I am bound to you as your devoted friend. You must tell me everything about yourself and how you came to be a lady in charge of her own palazzo.”

Everything was so strange that Lucia did not know what to do besides agree, and found herself telling a very personal story to a woman she did not know, who was sitting on her bed.

When the pestilence first arrived, Lucia was invited to go with a group of friends to their country home, but her husband would not allow it, preferring her to stay with him as he kept an eye on business affairs. So, Lucia resigned herself to some boring weeks while she waited for the disease to pass.

As was not uncommon in her social class, Lucia’s husband was some twenty years her senior. But since she was only sixteen at the time of their betrothal, he was not yet such an old man as to be completely unpleasing. He was born very poor in the country, but through luck and scheming, had become so rich that nobody cared he was born to farmers who lived in the dirt.

Lucia descended from a noble clan; however, her family had become impoverished when her father, accused of supporting the wrong political faction, was beheaded by the Signoria. But the merchant was in no need of money, and what Lucia lacked in dowry she offered in her youth and impressive lineage, so the thing was arranged.

Lucia was excited for her wedding to the rich merchant. She was brought up her whole life for this purpose, and selecting items for the trousseau became a passion. Her gown was crimson silk embroidered with gold (103 florins). Around her waist, a silver girdle with enameled scenes of Tristan and Isolde (20 florins), and on her head a jeweled brooch (also 20 florins). She also ordered five other fine gowns (one of white brocade with a long train, one of rose-colored silk, one lined with cat fur, one of embroidered taffeta, and one of forest green with long sleeves), eight plain gowns for daily wear, twenty shifts of gauzy linen, and the aforementioned bedclothes (now ruined). The marriage feast was as magnificent as Lucia’s wardrobe. To feed the multitude of guests, the merchant ordered 406 loaves of bread, 250 eggs, one hundred pounds of cheese, half an ox, four sheep, thirty-seven capons, eleven chickens, and a number of seabirds, along with eight barrels of fine Provençal wine and two dozen more of cheap Tuscan Chianti. Lucia touched none of the food herself, of course. It was gauche for a bride to eat at her own wedding.

Ginevra yawned a little at this point and Lucia realized she ought to move on from the details of her nuptials.

The marriage started out pleasantly enough. The merchant was eager to impress his bride with a lavish lifestyle, depositing her in the fine palazzo where they now sat. But, after several months went by and Lucia was not pregnant, the merchant became frustrated. He knew the issue was not his, on account of all the bastard children he paid for, and informed Lucia so.

She wished for children as strongly as her husband, and purchased an ointment that was guaranteed to result in a pregnancy. But it smelled so terribly that the merchant refused to come near her and made her throw it out, so she never found out if it worked. The months became a year, and the merchant grew bitter. Lucia was a bad investment, but he couldn’t extricate himself from the situation as he would have normally. He also informed Lucia of this fact. No longer did he have a kind word or loving touch, but criticized her every movement.

This imperfect domestic life was further exacerbated by the departure and deaths of the household servants as the pestilence took hold. Lucia tried to ingratiate herself to her husband by taking charge, but really she had not much experience in running a household. She was used to telling her wishes to her maid and having them carried out. So their grand palazzo quickly became disheveled. Lucia’s one small victory was in securing Antonella, who was available only because she was too poor to flee the disease. She was untrained, however, and did not do much to improve the general order and appearance of things.

With her home such a miserable place, and her hired help so unhelpful, Lucia, for the first time in her life, began to personally run errands and pick up food. Her husband would not have approved, but he stayed shut up in his studio all day, working and reworking figures, writing correspondence nobody would read, looking for the magical calculation that would leave his wealth intact even when every single one of his clients had closed their own shops.

In normal times, when Lucia went out, it was always with a companion. But now nobody stared if she was alone. Nobody cared what anybody did, really, so long as they kept their distance. For the first time, she walked without worrying if she was too fast or too slow, and could choose the route she liked best. She had always loved the streets of Florence, many just wide enough to fit a man’s shoulders. The city felt close and safe to her, the high exterior walls impenetrable to enemies, the gates a welcome port for friends.

But soon the food vendors vanished, and in their stead flagellanti wandered the barren markets, beating their backs raw and screeching at the sky. Then even they left. The friendly streets became dikes through a fetid swamp, their narrowness and crookedness holding the putrid air in place. Lucia imagined she could see the miasmas, puffing out around her skirts like fog, every step she took stirring up the sick like dust that clung to her clothing and her face. So she went back inside her house, and decided they would make do with what was stored in the larder.

One night, Lucia woke in the pitch-black of their shuttered bedchamber, covered in sweat and trying to discern if anything was actually the matter. She thought she detected the first faint beginning of nausea, and focused on it, waiting for the feeling to dissipate, the leftovers of some anxious dream. But the dull ache tightened into sharp waves and she knew she would vomit. She leaped naked out of bed and ran to the chamber pot, clutching her mouth, retching violently.

“What is it, wife?!” cried her husband.

Lucia was throwing up and could not answer. But she did not need to. He gathered his things and locked her in the room. Still, she would not believe it was that. It must have been the old salted fish they had for dinner. Had she put it to soak the night before or in the morning? Perhaps she was finally pregnant? She dragged the pot back over next to the bed, and waited to feel better but only kept feeling worse. The relief from the vomiting lasted only minutes before her stomach cramped anew. She spent the rest of the night like this alone, growing weak and thirsty. In the early morning, the door was unlocked and Antonella pushed in, looking sweaty and wan herself.

Then the dreadful buboes grew on her throat and in her secret places and Lucia could deny no longer that the pestilence had found her. All the other worries of her life, past and present, became trifles. In between bouts of vomiting, she bargained with God, offering her most weak and painful moments, to be experienced a hundredfold over again in exchange for deliverance from her current plight. Antonella became too weak even to put a tepid rag on her mistress’s brow, and curled up in the corner where she expired. This was when the merchant locked the door for good, letting the body molder in the same room where his wife lay bedridden. It took a few days, but with his entire household (almost) dead of the plague, he finally knew it was time to abandon the inventory in his Florentine warehouses and flee.

“And that is how I found you?” said Ginevra.

“Yes, that is how you find me.”

“Monna Lucia, I’m very sorry... I know what it’s like when a man leaves you all alone.”

“I had heard of this, this terribleness where family abandons family. But to hear these things is not to believe they will happen to oneself. But we were not such good friends, my husband and I.”

“It is monstrous all the same, for him to flee from you.”

“How many times I prayed he would go away, but I meant on business. Not like this.”

She teared up, and began to mutter over and over, “What shall I do?”

“Lucia—now you are free to do as you wish.”

Lucia sniffled and thought this over. What did she wish? It was possible, once her tale was heard...people would sympathize with her taking a vow of chastity. She could become a nun in some comfortable convent with nice gardens. Or! Her husband could die of plague, in which case she might inherit all his properties, if she could keep the knowledge of his death from the bastard sons for a bit. She smiled a little. Ginevra saw it.

“And another pleasant thing: if you are cured of pestilence once, you are cured forever.”