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By the time it was realized what a mistake all this had been, by the time the truth came out, death was on every man’s doorstep. Coffin makers were out of inventory, graveyards were full. Genoa blockaded the port, the source of their livelihood, but it did not matter. The insidious pestilence had gotten down into the blood of the people and no longer needed passage on ships to reach its doomed destinations.

Now Ginevra woke every morning to a line outside her door of sick people begging for help. But she had none to give—her shelves and jars were bare. Her garden was plucked down to the earth. No dreams came with messages of magical cures, and midnight experiments with gems yielded no answers.

“Go to church,” she said, not knowing what else to do. “Pray to the rock that once touched the robe of San Francesco.”

“We have already! Look,” cried a desperate woman, holding up a small glass vial. “It is holy water, poured over the rock you speak of. The priest is giving it to anyone who asks. But it is not enough! Look also here.” She stuck out her tongue and it was black as ink.

“Oh, Sister,” said Ginevra, “I am sorry, but I have no antidote. You must find another saint, and pray to them. Maybe it will work better than San Francesco’s robe’s rock.”

Now came panic. All who had the means fled. Toward rural estates, holy shrines, or just into the country, preferring open fields to their own poisoned beds inside Genoa’s walls. Those who, like Ginevra, had nowhere to go hoarded food and stuffed their shutters with rags. Families shunned members who fell ill. Friends and neighbors refused to touch the sick, and when they died, their bodies were poked into the street with long sticks, where the poorest of poor, who had no shutters to close anyway, made a business of collecting them for disposal.

This pestilence felled those who were young and healthy as if they were old and frail. Mercurial in its nature, it eluded the logic of physicians by manifesting differently from one patient to the next. It might appear as tumors in one person, but a rash of black spots on another. In some people, the disease showed itself not at all until they coughed up blood all over their bedchambers and then expired.

Within months, all of Genoa and its surrounds were covered with bloated bodies, and every corner turned risked the ghastly sight of some poor human decaying without the dignity of burial.

In the springtime of that year 1348 a traveler came to Ginevra’s door, the first in many weeks.

“I am told you pay good money for old rocks?”

She looked at his travel-worn clothes. “Come in,” she said, “and tell me what you know of the world.”

He was, it turned out, a son of Genoa returned home.

“I have gone everywhere, Monna. The whole of Italy is ravaged with disease. We flew, this way and that, to the shrine of Saint Whoever-Can-Stop-the-Plague. None of them helped. I went even to Avignon, the Holy City of the Pope—but there, too, the city is like a sepulchre.”

“And what does the Holy Father say of this pestilence? What does he say we should do?”

“He wrote a special mass, made everyone in the city hear it, and then said we all had to keep a candle lit for three days... Maybe somebody couldn’t keep their candle lit, I don’t know...but it didn’t work. And now their Rhône river, they use as a graveyard because the earth is full, and the Pope calls it a punishment for our sins.”

“But if it is punishment, why is it that priests who are good, who attend the sick at their deathbeds, die in the greatest numbers?”

“Monna, I do not know. Even the Pope’s cardinals are all dying, and they are supposed to be the best among us! Did you know the only cardinal from Italy is dead? The Pope is sure to fill the empty spot with another one of his bastard French nephews, to heap misery upon our misery.”

Ginevra shook her head. “Well, at least show me the old rocks you brought, then.”

She bought a pair of stones from him. Dark green and speckled red, carved with ancient writing. She added them to her collection and resumed her lonely vigil. She watched her city empty, her people gone, saw all tenets of civic life crumble, for lack of living to operate or enforce them. And so it was, soon, all over the world, from the dark north of Scandinavia to the citadels of Egypt. But as is always the case in times of great turmoil, there are certain individuals who remain immune to the chaos that surrounds them, and instead hide within it to conduct their nefarious business without scrutiny.

PART II

THE RELIC THIEF

...Oh, happy people of the future,

who have not known these miseries and perchance

will class our testimony with the fables.

-PETRARCH

TWENTY-THREE

SANT’ELISABETTA DELLE CONVERTITE

Morning, July 8th of 1348,

City of Florence, the Start of a Very Long Day

Though Ginevra had years to prepare something to say, then a day since she’d returned to Florence, and then a good half hour as she walked over, still no words came to her as she approached the Convent of Sant’Elisabetta delle Convertite after her early morning cleaning of Lucia’s palazzo. Thoughts passed through Ginevra’s head in rapid succession. She would come humbly, with an apology. Or, better to be proud and show no shame. They should apologize to her! They would embrace her. They would weep. They would shut the door in her face. It will bring me joy to hear you are well, but far away. She forced her hand to lift the knocker. Its heavy thud rang out against the walls that lined the narrow street. A nun opened the door and peeked out with a scowl that turned quickly to surprise.