Page 1 of The Stone Witch of Florence
PROLOGUE
Summer, 1348
O ne wicked July, a boy approached the ancient archway of the Porta di Santo Stefano. Squinting into full summer sun, he saw the heavy wooden doors shut tight. Although it was midday and the normal time for business, no guards stood outside, no people sought entrance. The year before, the scene would have been very different.
In happier times, any traveler arriving with honest purpose could enter Genoa for a small fee. But now cities detested strangers, and the boy was afraid of being turned away. He stepped off the road and into an untended vegetable garden, concealing himself in the overgrown arbor. A feeble breeze stirred the wilting vines, carrying with it the nasty scent of burning hair. There were hard green grapes just starting to grow, and the boy plucked and ate them eagerly. When his sour little meal was through, he settled down in the hot dirt to wait for an opportunity. He peered through the leaves, his eyes following the dirty stones of the city wall southward to where they met the Ligurian Sea.
The squeaking wheels of a cart brought his attention back to the road. It was loaded with dusty sacks, once filled with flour, now to be used as shrouds. In spite of the punishing heat, the cart’s driver was wrapped up in a heavy cloak, his hood ringed with salt lines from drying sweat. Cracked leather gloves covered his hands and yellowed linen covered his face. None of this was strange to the boy. He crept out of the arbor as the wagon rolled past, jumped up lightly, and burrowed into the empty sacks. The driver continued on, oblivious, and when he reached the archway, the gate was pulled open without question.
Once inside the walls, the boy slid off the cart and followed the sloping streets down toward the port, his own footsteps the only sound. The places of mirth, commerce, and worship were now empty. Except for the rats—grown bold in the absence of men and women, the rodents ignored their natural hours and left their holes even in the bright daytime. The few remaining residents, the ones too poor to flee, hid themselves indoors, shuttered against afternoon heat that radiated off buildings in visible shimmers.
When the boy reached the third street from the waterfront, he turned left as instructed and walked until he came to a low house discreetly marked with the image of a serpent slithering up a branch of coral. He might have cried with relief at locating his destination, but he was twelve now and trying to be manly about things. He took a shuddering breath, smoothed his hair, all full of muck from sleeping outdoors, and knocked. A woman of about thirty came to the door. She had the coloring of the region, with dark eyes and light hair that was twisted in plaits around her head. On her left hand she wore a ring set with an orange stone. Her nose looked crooked. The boy saw that a thick white scar hooked up her left nostril.
“What are you doing out now, little one?” she asked, looking down at him. “Has your mama sent you for something?”
The boy remembered the speech he had been told, and said it quickly: “Excuse me, Lady, are you Monna Ginevra di Gasparo, called Ginevra di Genoa, who walks through pestilence but will never be ill?”
“Who has said this of me?”
“The ones that sent me, who said they have seen this to be true with their own eyes.”
She nodded slightly at his answer but did not seem pleased to be found. The boy smiled.
“Good. Then I have a letter for you.”
The woman ushered him across the threshold, and bade him sit at a small table in the center of her single room. As the boy’s eyes adjusted to the indoor darkness, he saw the walls were lined with dozens of neatly arranged blue-and-white ceramic jars. Above his head were ceiling beams strung with ropes of garlic, the feet of little rabbits, and lots of other lumpy dried-out things he did not recognize. Monna Ginevra wiped the dust from his face and hands with a damp cloth and placed a pitcher of cool water and a wedge of yellow melon before him: a feast for the boy. He became completely distracted by the sweet, glorious fruit. Monna Ginevra gave a little cough to remind him of her presence.
“Oh!” he said through a mouthful of melon. “Sorry! I am Piero di Piero Cazzola, and I have a letter for you all the way from Florence. It comes from Signore Ludovico Acciaiuoli. I don’t know what it says, but I’m supposed to bring you back with me right away and then he’ll pay me.” He reached inside his smock and triumphantly pulled out the much crumpled (and now slightly sticky) document. It bore the lion rampant of the Acciaiuoli family, stamped assertively into a seal of bloodred wax. Monna Ginevra’s eyes widened, then narrowed, and the faint lines between her eyebrows became deep furrows.
She broke open the seal to the letter and scanned the page, surprising Piero with an incredulous “HA!” when she reached the end. She read it again out loud, as if requiring a witness to confirm the absurdity of its contents:
In the name of God, Amen. It is June the Twentieth, 1348.
My most esteemed and darling Ginevra, your Ludovico has thought of you often in these terrible times and still laments our unfortunate separation.
I have entreated my dear uncle, Fra Angiolo Acciaiuoli, on your behalf. In your absence, he has been appointed most holy bishop of our city, and he is willing to reverse your exile. We believe your—unusual—talents may be useful in resolving a small problem for the city.
It is different now, in all things, except that you remain locked within my heart.
For your Ludovico, I beg your swift return to Florence. In the name of God, Amen.
Ginevra smacked the letter down upon the table.
“You were exiled?” exclaimed Piero. He was impressed. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” she said through gritted teeth. “Tell me, what has happened that the great Acciaiuoli family places such a message in the care of a beardless boy?”
Piero was stung. He thought they were friends, because of the melon, and cast his eyes to the floor. “They sent me because I was the only one they could find that would not die.”
“What do you mean the only one that would not die ?”
He began to tear up a little, in spite of all his efforts, and said in a whisper, “My whole family got sick and they died, but I became well. They say if you survive, you will not catch it again. That’s why they sent me, because another might fall ill and die along the way, and you would never even know they sent you a letter.”
Ginevra di Gasparo was ashamed, then. Having forgotten, in her own frustrations, to show compassion to a most unfortunate creature. The walk from Florence was seven days, at least, for one who knew the way, and with things as they were, there would have been any number of ghastly sights and dangerous persons along the road. She saw Piero now as he was: a child sent when grown men were afraid to go. She cursed her short temper—a lifelong failing—and went to him and patted his head and said she was sorry. She dried his sniffles, and gave him more good things to eat until he felt well enough to ask if she would come back with him as the letter requested.
Ginevra picked up the document again. For Ludovico to write her after so long was strange. She did not trust it. The seal on the letter looked real; it was the contents that rang false. It is different now, in all things, except that you remain locked within my heart . Tender words, which once would have been a balm to her, now offered lamely from years and years and miles away. Did he mean it could be different, between the two of them?
“Tell me, Piero, would you go, if you were me? At such a time as this?”
“Well,” he said, “what would you do instead, if you stayed?”
The question stuck. What was she doing? She kept her business at a discreet address, her deals small-time. The full extent of her talents hidden. It was safest that way. But there had been years, now, of doldrum days and lonely evenings. The sharp edge of her fear was dulled by boredom. Perhaps, Ginevra thought, she had removed herself from the world more than necessary. Here was an invitation to rejoin it. All she had to do was solve a “small problem.” She closed her eyes and searched her secret heart and found in it a tiny flame that still burned with hope for a full and visible life—a life rich with love and with friendship.
The flame grew large and bright, consuming worries of personal danger and questions about the letter’s meaning. She turned back to the boy.
“Yes, Piero, I will return with you. I will not make you go alone.”