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“No! That’s where the shoulder of San Giovanni Gualberto is kept.”

“He must have taken that, then!”

“But why? The crucifix is much better, hardly anyone prays to the shoulder.”

“Why take one relic but not the other?”

“Of course, this is why I became sick, why we are the only ones here: Santa Trinita is a dead parish, Ginevra.”

A grumbly voice singing and the rasping wood wheels of a cart on flagstones came through the broken doorway and interrupted them. As the voice got closer, they could make out the words to its song:

My passengers are stacked within

And though their lips are taut and grim

With puff of gas and jerk of limb

Your friends and lovers call to me

“As you are now, once was I thee

As I am now, so you shall be”

A becchino had come at last. Ginevra tucked away the bottle, and the women ran out and called to him. The frightful character stopped. Ginevra and Lucia looked at him as they walked across the piazza, shielding their eyes from the afternoon sun with their hands.

It was impossible to tell his age. His posture was crooked from years of manual labor, so that at first he seemed to be very old. But then he had moved his heavy cart so deftly it seemed he must be very young. He was dressed in nothing but his breechcloth and a large rag piled up on his head.

“Good afternoon, rosy maidens,” he said cheerily. “I see you’ve a fresh one for me?” He lifted the corner of Antonella’s shroud. “Oof, maybe not so fresh. She smells like Satan’s farts.”

Lucia’s jaw dropped. Ginevra grabbed her shoulder.

“Excuse me, my dear Signore, for interrupting your song,” she said. “We were hoping we might acquire your services to take our departed friend to the yard at...” She looked at Lucia.

“I... I don’t know her parish, she was poor.”

“Well, you’ll want San Paolino, then,” said the becchino. “That’s where the poor are buried. And I can take her there for two florins.”

“Two FLORINS?” the women shouted in unison.

“San Paolino is not even a mile from here,” objected Lucia.

“Ladies, if you can find a man cheaper than I—or, rather, if you can find any other man at all than I—then I shall be on my way and leave you with your fragrant friend.”

“Give us just a moment,” Ginevra said.

He bowed accommodatingly, and the two women stepped away to consult each other.

“Has your husband left you wanting?” Ginevra asked Lucia quietly.

“For Christian tenderness, yes.”

“You know what I mean.”

“In his haste to escape me, he neglected to collect a certain strongbox.”

“Let us appease the becchino’s greed, then, for we have no other alternative.”

Lucia nodded reluctantly.