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“I SAID I will look for them,” interrupted Ginevra. “Go to your chamber and pray for the little girl. Surely, you can do that properly, at least?”

“Of—of course. I will. I’m sorry. Good night.”

Ginevra turned and went back to raking her fingers along the dirt floor, commending herself on restraining her temper. But the little barbs she couldn’t resist, about the bread and the praying, worked their way deep into Lucia’s flesh and stung terribly.

Any rest Lucia had gotten during the afternoon was wasted as she lay awake praying to San Antonio di Padua to find the missing bloodstones, promising to light a candle for him, too, eventually.

She, then, became worried about all the saints to whom she owed favors. Her thoughts turned to the Divine Nine. How proud she’d been, to once think she was good enough to become a holy nun. She should probably confess about that as well. With these nasty thoughts swirling about her mind, she managed only to fall into a troubled rest as the sun began to rise on the next day.

THIRTY-TWO

O, ZENOBIO

July 10th of 1348, Torre Girolami

Ginevra never found the stones. In the earliest morning, she left without rousing her friend. She was still angry, and did not want delays or distractions. The girl Zenobia could be very sick or even dead by now, and she wasn’t sure the little bit of medicine she’d salvaged from the inside of the jar would be enough, or if it even was properly made. After, she would visit the inquisitor. Explain about the Divine Nine and San Francesco’s shoe and the man so smelly he stood out even among the patrons of Alle Panche. Surely, all this was not nothing? Surely, she and Lucia had reached a greater understanding in three days than the inquisitor had in as many months!

Now, back in the dead parish of Santo Stefano al Ponte, the streets were silent as midnight, though the sun was full and round and heated the air like a bakery. The door to the Girolami tower remained unlocked from her last visit. Easing her way in, Ginevra realized how tightly her jaw was held and willed it to soften, moving it back and forth with a painful click. Again, she walked up the twisting stairs; again, she went brazenly into the chamber of Lady Girolami, bracing herself for whatever household object would be chucked at her head. Instead, the lady barely looked up to acknowledge her arrival. She knelt on the floor, with gray face and black gown, slowly folding children’s clothing into a chest.

“I never paid you for your services,” she said by way of greeting. “You must be coming about that.”

Ginevra exhaled with relief. “Where is your daughter?” she asked. “I was worried, with the sickness—I have something that might help.”

The lady stared at her hard. “You were right. I should have moved the body sooner but I could not bear it... She is dead now, like him. I have buried them next to their father.”

Ginevra sunk onto her knees, shattered. To save this child, with the stones and the secret of the cats, it would have brought some meaning to witnessing Agnesa’s death. But again, she had arrived too late to help. The golden strings that attached her to people, to places, one by one they were being snipped and snapped. She felt that soon there would be nothing left to tie her to the earth.

“I’m so sorry, I tried to come back sooner with medicine—”

“If you are sorry for anything, let it be for saving me to witness the death of my children.”

“Your elder son—he lives yet, does he not? Let him be your salvation.”

The lady softened. “He lives, it’s true. Thanks to your interventions. I’m sorry I hit your head. You don’t want money?”

“No, Dama. It’s as I told you: I only came here to look for Zenobio, to help the city.”

“What city? Look around you. Soon there will be nobody. Why attach yourself to such a place? In a year, it will be abandoned to ghosts and grazing sheep.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“And why do you care what happens? You seek our stolen property out of the goodness of your own heart?”

“Only saints can claim such motivation, and I am not one. I was hired by your bishop, and I work for a fee: the funds to establish myself as a businesswoman here. To gain sponsorship to the doctors’ guild.”

“After everything they did to you? You would wish to entangle yourself further with Florence?”

Ginevra stiffened. The lady continued. “Don’t be surprised. I know who you are, Ginevra di Genoa. We are the same age, you and I. Your trial was the talk of the town, and I remember how it went for you. Wheeled out of Florence as an exile—covered in manure and blood. I can see the spot where they cut your nose. They did not accept your miracles then, and they will not accept them now... Monna Ginevra—I will not tell that you came here and used your magic on us. But I cannot be associated with a heretic, now without a husband to protect my interests.”

“I am no heretic, Dama. I just want to help people the only way I know...”

The lady packed furiously now. Crushing beautiful tiny embroidered gowns into an overfull valise. “Then we both want impossible things. I want to tear all the hair out of my head. I want to crawl through the streets until my hands are worn to stubs and my knees are bone, and rub the filth of the gutters on my face and shriek until the voice in my throat has shattered and my mouth fills with blood and I choke to death upon it. But not all my children have died. Just the two of them. So I curb my grief and take the one living away from here to survive in a different way. And for his sake, I cannot follow the desires of which I have just spoken. I say thank you for what you’ve done, but now you must go and leave us to swallow our sorrow and make what we may of our blackened lives.”

“Mama—”

The two women turned. Lady Girolami’s son had entered her chamber.

“Oh, my God—Zenobio—forgive me, that was not for your ears.” At ten, he was the same height as his mother. She embraced him fully and began to weep, but he wriggled away toward Ginevra.