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But Ginevra did not come. Her boldness had grown with her skills. She knew just enough to think she knew everything, and was tired of holding herself back. So when Vermilia turned back around, to her horror she saw Ginevra had approached the gentleman and was making him a proposition. Vermilia hobbled over and smacked her on the side of the head, mid-sentence.

“Forgive her, sir, she is simple.”

The man muttered something about crazy puttane, and hurried off, a flurry of dandruff in his wake.

“I am not simple!”

“Oh? You will have to prove it after that. We have a new lesson today. See if you can take its meaning.” Vermilia grabbed Ginevra’s arm tight and led her to the stone piers that jutted out into the harbor. They walked to the farthest one, and Ginevra saw that there were no boats tied to it this day. Instead, a large bonfire burned at the end, tended by soot-blackened men stripped down to only their breechcloths. Vermilia pulled her into the crowd that gathered around it. The people spoke quietly and jostled each other for a view of the flames. Soon a group of men arrived, led by a friar in a black pointed hood. Upon their shoulders, they carried a wooden ladder with a woman tied along it. They propped her so she was upright in front of the fire, on view to the crowd. The onlookers’ murmurs grew louder until the priest lifted his hands for silence:

“We are here to pray for the soul of Monna Caterina D’Augustino, who calls herself a witch and is an unrepentant heretic.”

A few of the people mumbled prayers but most said nothing. The priest continued: “In 1332 she was summoned to court when she claimed to remove vile spirits from a young girl. She paid her fine and promised to cease performing such rituals, but she was a liar. Later, after being shown every mercy by the court, she gave a woman a stone amulet carved with symbols and told her this would make her pregnant, and she did this without the knowledge of the woman’s husband. And so she was brought before us a second time and became angry, and was heard to say in the presence of several witnesses that she could remove diseases with methods unknown to physicians, and claimed she possessed other skills over which only God has domain.”

The crowd hissed. Ginevra looked at Monna Vermilia, who just inclined her head toward the spectacle, indicating that Ginevra should keep watching.

The priest was now recounting how the woman had repented in the end, admitted her sins. But Ginevra and anyone close enough could see that all her fingers were bent at the wrong angles and that the spirit of God perhaps was not the only thing that inspired her confession. The priest made the sign of the cross over her and nodded to the men who held the ladder. They let it tip forward so she dropped face-first into the glowing coals and was consumed by flames.

A flake of ash landed on Ginevra’s cheek and she slapped it away, suppressing a gag. “Why did you bring me here?” she choked out.

“So you know,” said Vermilia. “So you know what happens if you do not keep your secrets.”

THREE

MILKSTONES

July of 1348, Between Genoa & Florence

Ginevra and Piero were on the road in no time, walking toward Florence under the hot sun, a crooked-nosed woman and a child. Ginevra wore a large straw hat and Piero, who had no mother to help him dress, kept his sun-browned face deep in the folds of his hood. Ginevra walked quickly, eyes forward, observing the empty world. She had not left the city walls in... Had it been years? A jolt of panic. One letter from an ex-lover and here she was, answering the call of the same priest (no—he wasn’t just a priest anymore, he was bishop) who once ordered her tortured and banished. What did Bishop Acciaiuoli want with her, anyway? Ludovico’s letter mentioned only a small problem. It must be for curing plague—though that problem was hardly small. But, what if it was something else? What if the bishop had sent out dozens of letters just like this, in the care of dozens of orphans just like Piero? What if the Florentines were just coaxing back criminals to burn them; a desperate plan to appease an angry God with offerings of witches and heretics? But even after everything that had happened, she could not believe Ludovico would do something so vile as that.

So maybe the best was true, the hopes so wild that she was self-conscious of them even in the safety of her own mind: that Ludovico missed her, that he would make amends by using his influence and his fortune to restore her name; his patronage would ensure her application to the physicians’ guild was taken seriously. But even if this was Ludo’s intent, Ginevra knew she would first have to work some extraordinary magic. And, the truth was she did not know how to cure the plague. At least, not yet. Her hand reached into the purse tied around her waist and, for the thousandth time, confirmed that the two hemispherical stones were still there.

“Hey!” said Piero, trotting to keep up with her adult strides. “Slow down.”

“Hmmm?”

“We have to go slow. You didn’t—you didn’t let us get hardly any water. Or food. Or anything at all. We must go slow and stay in the shade or we will die of the heat.”

“Here, take water from my flask.”

He shook his head. “I told you the next well is a day from here at least—”

“Take it,” she said, thrusting the flask into his hands. “We’ll find what we need.”

But he shook his head no and held it back to her.

Ginevra shrugged, opened the flask, and drank fully. Piero gaped at her in anguish. “Now, Piero, you will have a drink. As you say, the sun is strong and we must be careful.”

To his surprise, the flask handed to him was just as heavy as before. He held it to his ear and it sloshed around. He took a cautious sip and the water was cold and bubbled with minerals, as if from a spring in the mountains and not the cistern under Ginevra’s gutter, which is where he knew it was filled. And filled it was. And as much as he drank, this did not change. He looked at Ginevra with questioning eyes. “It will last us our journey, I think,” was all she said, and returned to her thoughts.

On the second day, they arrived at an orchard. The ground was sticky with fruit that had ripened and rotted unpicked. The air hummed with flies. “Here we will find something to eat,” she said.

But Piero hung back. He had passed this place before, and knew that farmers lay dead amongst the dropped harvest. “We are too late in the season,” he said. “The trees are empty.”

“Come,” she said, taking him by the hand.

They walked between rows of trees, leaves curling and wilting in the heat. Air heavy with the smell of molded apricots and something else, sweet and stinging. She stopped at a tree where the trunk split in two and grew in opposite directions, and placed her hands on the spot where the trunks came together.

“I told you,” said Piero. “There is nothing here.”