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Taddea wishes to provide the parting message

that she will pray to the bread for your salvation.

Inside the parcel—the collection of gems left to her by Vermilia, including the Nemesis ring, which she placed back upon her finger even though its powers were spent. The jewels, which she had so long desired, at last in her possession, but O, at what cost! The guards then escorted her to the Porta San Niccolo, the towering gate on the city’s southern wall, and registered her with the keepers as a persona non grata before shoving her out into the world. Like this, she walked back to Genoa, where she had not been for five years.

The nose notch was not so severe a punishment as Ludovico’s uncle had intended, for the healing magic of the coral did its best and eventually only a thick white line, an asymmetry that gave her a quizzical look, would be left of what was meant to be a gross disfigurement. The banishment was much worse. She was distraught over her Ludo, who hadn’t even come to see her being wheeled around in the criminal cart, and now she had no way of meeting him to learn why he’d abandoned her when she was in such dire need of a friend.

When she arrived at Genoa, she learned the water sickness had also infected that city’s drinking fountains, and her parents were among the dead. This loss struck her as a blow strikes one already beaten to the ground. She curled further inward upon herself, unmoored from everything but the misery of her current situation. This is how it is, she thought. This is how everything is and how everything will be forever, now. Loss upon loss upon loss. But—even with all this—still she could not lay down and die herself. The golden strings wove a net to catch her in her free fall; some hidden part of her could not shake the instinct of self-preservation. In a dreamlike state, she put her small savings from the convent toward a little room in the ugly part of town where she was born. It had a hard dirt floor and a soggy garden plot, good for growing nothing but mosquitoes.

Then the strings tugged at her and made her take up the old reed mats on the floor and burn them and weave new ones. They told her to dig trenches in the garden to drain off the water, and coax what medicinal plants she could from the brackish soil. When she was finished, she painted a little symbol of a snake in coral outside the door, a tribute to Vermilia. Vermilia, who knew how it was, how to appear quiet and poor, and how to be left alone.

Gone were Ginevra’s lofty plans; the hopes of marrying rich, of moving outside the realm of her sex, of helping the world on any grand scale. She just wanted to lick her wounds in the dark. But you still need to eat, the strings reminded her. So, she opened her door and it was not long before the curious housewives of the port began to visit her with their problems, their little coins and barters of bread sustaining her. In this way, Ginevra resigned herself to a future as a local healer and permanent spinster.

TWENTY-TWO

WE DIE, WE FLY

1340–1348, City of Genoa,

Ginevra in Exile

Some months after Ginevra’s forced return to Genoa, a letter arrived from Ludovico. Immediately, she closed her shop and with shaking hands drank wine straight from its jug. She had spent many nights wishing for such a letter—it would say how Ludovico was physically restrained by his father during her trial, and had only now escaped to send word to her. But when she broke open the seal and read, here was the truth written out in fine walnut ink on smoothest vellum: her Ludo had always been promised to another, since he was a small boy. His intended—the only child of a very powerful family—had just come of age. It was his inescapable duty to marry her. This alliance of two great houses was the cornerstone of the Acciaiuoli plans for the future.

Ludo was sorry for keeping this from Ginevra, but he didn’t want to ruin their precious moments together, the memories of which he would always treasure. He explained how even though he could not visit her in prison, he had intervened on her behalf with his uncle, the priest, and convinced him to cut up her nose instead of something worse. It had been a large humiliation to admit their affair, but he did it anyway because of his great love for her. Now that some time had passed, could they not be friends? It would bring him great comfort. His new wife would never inflame his heart as Ginevra had.

Ginevra threw the letter into the fire and watched the red wax seal turn black and sputter away into nothing. A small bit of the wine came back up into her throat, and she lay down upon the floor. There, sideways, she took from her bag of gems a stone called antipathy, a dense black bead the size of a hazelnut. Agnesa had taught her it would absorb unpleasant memories. She tied it around her wrist and sat up, but her troubles were too heavy and the yarn it was strung upon snapped and the stone fell to the ground. She tried to pick it up, but its heaviness was extreme, and she could not. So there it stayed in the middle of her floor, where she stubbed her toe upon it daily.

Now, the strange dreams that began during the flood were her constant companions. Dead things and peculiar creatures visiting with messages she could not understand. She was held down in her bed, and she opened her mouth to scream but could produce no sound. Cruelest of all, she was back in Florence, Taddea telling her she was a lady in the Acciaiuoli household. When she woke and reality was once again manifest, for days after she sunk into an even darker depression. She learned to get by with as little rest as possible, preferring tiredness to the places her mind journeyed in sleep.

She kept to herself, besides modest dealings with clients: people who needed their rashes or toothaches cured, or vendors, sellers of lavender, and fishermen who brought her broken bits of coral or special sea snails. Occasionally, individuals came to her with greater troubles than toothaches. Business was done between Florence and Genoa, and word of her special abilities spread. A noblewoman who had miscarried five times and was pregnant with a sixth child. A merchant who lost all his ships because of the malocchio. But Ginevra turned away these people, referred them to the shrines of the saints. The court of the inquisitor had done its work well. Like Vermilia, she shied away from the use of stones, from grander gestures of magic. She provided simple herbal remedies, fixed minor wounds, built small charms for small problems. She was cured of the delusions of her youth, that the good results of her work would excuse its unorthodoxy.

On the frequent nights when she could not sleep, Ginevra spent the dark hours experimenting with her healing stones, counting and re-sorting them, learning what she could without the use of a human subject. She put out subtle inquiries with merchants who had taken her help in sensitive matters, so she could be sure of their discretion, and took as payment unusual stones from their travels. In this way, her collection and knowledge grew, though it remained unused, theoretical. This much she allowed herself of her former passion.

She lived this way for seven years, when, late in the year 1347, a sailor came to her with a large swelling on his neck. He was home from a long journey, he told her. Part of a Genoese merchant contingent, trapped for years by the Tatar army at Kaffa. They had been under siege in their citadel, living off cockroaches and shoe leather toward the end. Ginevra gave him a cup of undiluted wine and tilted his head; this was to get a good look at the lump, but also to make him be quiet. Such were her own troubles that she did not like to hear others’.

“Oof,” she tutted. “This thing is as big as a pigeon egg! Surrounded by water all that time and you never thought to take a bath?”

“Monna, there was no time for baths. Once we were to sea, away from that foul place, we just wanted to be home as quick as we could.”

“Fair enough, though a layer of dirt is what you have to thank for your twin that’s growing here.”

“Really? You’re sure?”

“Unless it is something I’ve never seen before, I’m sure.”

“Good. This is good news.”

“If you say so. Look, I’m going to lance it and then you must scrub your neck so you don’t get any more. Ready?”

He drained his wine. “Ready. I’ve pricked enough women. I suppose it’s only right to have the favor returned.”

“Well, as they tell us ladies in such situations: close your eyes, it’ll be over soon.”

“OWWWW!!! OW, OW, OW, STOP! For the love of Christ!! Dio cane, is it supposed to hurt like that??” Ginevra withdrew her probe. It was not supposed to hurt like that. Purple veins began to spider out from the point of her needle, like stripes on an unripe eggplant. Shaken, she gave him a poultice and sent him on his way. She was not used to hurting her patients. Later that week, she heard that the sailor and a lover had been found dead together, black swellings at their necks and other places. Ginevra’s coral figa glowed red. Her dreams were filled with rats and beetles.

Soon, she knew the whole story of the ill-fated expedition to Kaffa, told to her in bits and pieces by clients who came to buy something, anything, whatever she had that might keep away foul disease and evil spirits. It seemed that the only reason the Genoese had escaped the siege was because the Tatar army became very ill. So many of their soldiers died, in fact, that they were forced to abandon the fight. And as a last spiteful act, the Tatars flung the infected corpses of their comrades over the citadel walls, as many as they could, until there were not enough left alive to load the catapults. This was how the Genoese escaped, stepping gingerly around their exploded enemies.

So eager to be home, were they, that they all agreed to keep this unpleasantness a secret lest they be denied entry to the port of Genoa. They would not mention their comrades who died on the journey home, their bodies covered in black spots. They said nothing as they spilled forth from their ships, into the arms of loving wives, eager mistresses, and sympathetic courtesans. The young ones made no mention of death in the dimly lit taverns where they leaned close to impress strangers with tales of their adventures. The old ones omitted disagreeable details as they dined gratefully in the homes of friends.