Page 15 of The Stone Witch of Florence

FOURTEEN

THE GOATS LED ME HERE

July 7th of 1348, Streets of Florence

G inevra leaned against the door of the inquisitor’s palazzo and shook herself free from the memories of her early years in Florence. Right. The sooner she solved the inquisitor’s “small problem,” the sooner she could fix her own. She looked across the piazza to the messy construction site of the new cathedral, which seemed no closer to being finished than it had eight years earlier. It had been only partially built for as long as she could remember, the massive foundations of this new building enclosing the original, intact cathedral of Santa Reparata. The site was covered with tatty wood scaffolding, and at the top of one platform a stonemason, still holding his hammer, had crawled up to die in the sun. Birds were picking at him, a feast with a view. This was the place from which the relic of San Zenobio had been stolen.

She must start investigating right away, perhaps by examining the cathedral? Three days was not much time. But her stomach rumbled loudly, and she realized that she’d had a long and arduous morning without food or drink, and was now standing in the full heat of the afternoon. Her mind was strained with the loss of Piero. The remembering of Sant’Elisabetta. The death of Ludovico. The empty reliquary of Zenobio would wait until she found a place to settle her own bones. But where could she go? Her internal map of the city was outdated. New buildings had altered the pattern of streets since her departure eight years earlier, and the paths leading out of the Piazza della Santa Reparata were not as she remembered. Without Piero as her guide, she had no idea where she might find lodging.

She sat down on a bit of quarrystone, and looked around to make sure nobody was watching. From her bag of gems, Ginevra plucked a limpid green smaragdus, which was supposed to bring clarity, focus, and guidance. She had never been able to make it work properly, but now was as good a time as any to try. She stared into its minty depths, and willed her mind to empty so the stone could do its work. Her thoughts went immediately to Sant’Elisabetta. She saw Taddea, Fra Simone, and Sister Agnesa kneeling before the blessed bread. But even after eight years, the shame burned hot and she wished to wash her memory like a sheet.

“No!” she said out loud to the smaragdus.

She put the stone away, told herself it still wasn’t working properly, and watched as a dusty white goose walked into the square, followed by a herd of emaciated goats who had adopted him as their leader. Ginevra couldn’t help but laugh at the band of misfits. She thought for a minute and then walked over to join them—a sight so merry was good luck, in times like these. They must have been sent specifically to get her attention.

She was with them about an hour, twisting through residential streets, seeing no other human soul the whole while. No breeze stirred. The animals let out not a single bleat or honk. Everywhere doors were left ajar to what were recently well-tended and busy homes. Foul odors wafted through open windows, where now-gone neighbors had been too afraid to retrieve the dead for burial.

The sun was directly overhead, casting no shadow, when they arrived at the church of Santa Trinita. At this, Ginevra lost faith in her goose leader. She was familiar with this spot and knew it was only a short distance from where they had started. She began looking at the empty homes with an eye for one that might do for her own shelter when she heard a loud BANG. The door of a fine palazzo flung open twenty yards ahead. A man, well-dressed, though quite disheveled, blinked in the sunlight and let out a deep sigh of relief that he stifled when he saw Ginevra and her companions. Before man, woman, or goat could say anything, a piteous cry escaped from a window of the building the man had just exited.

“Come back, come back, my lord!” called the voice, with wheezes and rasps.

The animals jerked their heads in unison toward the sound. The man glanced at the window, cast a pained look at Ginevra, and said, “I’m just...going to find the...thing!” And then he ran away.

The voice cried out again, “Come back, my lord, I’m still alive! Perhaps I won’t die! Please, don’t leave me all alone!” The goats looked expectantly at Ginevra, who thanked them for their company and shooed them on. She walked through the loggia at the front of the building; in his haste to depart, the disheveled man hadn’t locked his front door. She entered into the dark courtyard of a fine home.

“Hello?” Ginevra called up the stairs that ran round the courtyard, blessedly cool against the afternoon heat. “Who is there?”

The cries stopped. The stench of yesterday’s death lived in this house. Up the steps to the second floor, through a great hall, the floor covered with rotten salad leaves and old pork bones, she came to a door that was locked from her own side, the key still in its hole. She turned it and the door swung open into a finely appointed bedroom. A young woman lay on the floor next to a bucket of black bile. She was crumpled below the high open window, having collapsed with the effort of shouting after the escaping man. She was pale and her dark hair stuck to her sweaty forehead. At her throat, the swollen nodes of advanced disease. Ginevra looked around the room and saw a foot sticking out from a stained sheet in the corner; the source of the death smell.

She asked from the doorway, “Can you speak still, my darling? What is your name?”

“I am Lucia,” she wheezed. “Where is my husband?”

Ginevra had no more tolerance for absent men. “Think of him no more, the worthless fool has fled.”

Lucia breathed in to begin a sob, but her throat was so swollen she stifled herself and then lay back down on the floor in exhaustion. Ginevra’s hand dipped into the purse at her waist and her fingers were drawn to two bloodstones, recently acquired. They thumped like little hearts at her touch. She’d had no opportunity to use them yet, was not sure if they might cause more harm than good to a sick body. There was another wretched gasp from poor Lucia. She could barely breathe. One thing was certain: the lady was sure to die without intervention.

Ginevra raised her eyes to the heavens. Here she was, just an hour after swearing to a papal inquisitor that she would perform no medicine. But how could she withhold help from this poor woman? Well, she told herself, my mistake last time wasn’t healing people. It was being caught . “I am going to come into your room now, Monna Lucia, do not be afraid.”

Lucia said nothing. This woman had clearly come to rob her home. At least she could have waited until Lucia was properly dead! This new woman, Lucia observed, did not share her husband’s fear of infection. How greedy, to risk your life for linens and chairs. It would serve her right when her own throat was swelling up like a toad’s. But the new woman did not go to the painted bridal chest, where things of value might be stored. Lucia watched with unfocused eyes as the thief moved aside the bucket of vomit and knelt down in its place.

“I am called Ginevra di Genoa. It is within my knowledge to cure you...I think...but you must promise that you will keep my secret.”

Lucia wondered if this was the devil, tricking her into bargaining away her soul... Were there any demons named Ginevra? She couldn’t remember. But her fear was superseded by anger toward her husband, and she thought of how shamed he would be if she got better and arrived, unannounced and alive, at the country estate (her inheritance), where he had surely gone.

“Listen,” said Ginevra di Genoa. “I believe the goats led me to you for a reason. But you must promise you’ll keep my secret. Tell no one if I cure you.”

Lucia tried to speak but only bloody bubbles came out of her mouth.

“If you promise, squeeze my hand.” Lucia did not understand about the goats, but she understood she didn’t want to die and with her last strand of energy gave Ginevra’s hand the faintest little squeeze. Lucia then blacked out into nothingness.

Ginevra set to work, pulling out the two speckled bloodstones from her leather pouch. They were darkest green dotted with flecks of red iron. A long time ago, they had been polished into smooth ovals and inscribed with runes by the priestess who first blessed them. Like the eaglestone so long ago at Sant’Elisabetta, Ginevra let the rocks guide her hand. She placed the stones against the swellings that protruded from Lucia’s throat, willing her own health to flow through them and push out the disease. At least, that’s how she hoped it would work. The thrumming sound she now knew as familiar filled the air and the stones’ heartbeats went faster, faster until they were buzzing. She held them firmly against the swellings, her fingertips growing numb, her hands cramping from the vibrations. Lucia began to spasm, arms flapping and slapping, back arching, mouth chomping. And then with a terrible, rasping gasp she became still and collapsed flat against the floor. Oh, God, I’ve killed her , thought Ginevra. She took the stones away and broke out in a cold panic-sweat.

“HUNGGGHGHH.” Lucia sat straight up and dry-heaved. Ginevra screamed in surprise and jumped away. The sick woman leaned her head forward and a large black glop fell out of her mouth and onto her lap, and she collapsed again onto the floor. Ginevra crept back to her and listened. Lucia’s faint and ragged breaths became slow and even. The swellings on her neck shrank into dark purple bruises. A hand on the forehead proved the fever had broken. Ginevra laughed out loud and sat back on the floor, legs splayed in front of her. Lucia would live. The bloodstones worked . For the first time in years, she actually felt good about herself.

Now Ginevra finally took in all the details of her surroundings. She was in the town house of a well-to-do merchant. The family must have been without proper help for months, and the palazzo was cluttered with the detritus of daily life. The fireplace was full of ash, dirty sheets were upon the bed. Right, she thought, let’s get poor abandoned Monna Lucia off the floor.

She opened the painted wedding chest. There were sheets inside of very fine Flanders lace, and shifts of transparent linen, trimmed in cream silk. Things that should not be used for a sick and dirty body, but they were all that was at hand. She remade the bed and with some effort, removed Lucia’s ruined nightshift and lifted her onto the mattress. Ginevra’s head spun with the exertion, and she remembered her hunger and thirst.

With Lucia asleep in her finest sheets, Ginevra went up to the top floor, where the kitchens were located in such homes, so if they caught fire, the house below might be saved. It was a massive room with red tile floors and creamy plaster walls. The unadorned plaster was in contrast to the colorful faux tapestries frescoed on the walls of the living spaces. She went to the three large windows and opened the shutters, letting in sunlight. She was relieved to see there were still a few provisions. There was a bin of barley flour, half a wheel of hard cheese, a box of lard, and a sticky plate of honeycomb (now rather dusty). Hanging from the rafters, a desiccated link of dark red salami, two salted fish, and bundles of rosemary, lavender, and sorrel.

Taking up an entire wall of the kitchen, the great hearth, big enough to roast a boar in, gaped black and cold before her. Among the ashes was a large iron cauldron that in better times was kept bubbling with soup bones. On the wooden table, where the long-gone cook had once trussed rabbits and shucked oysters, a rat nibbled at a nub of stale bread.

She shooed away the rat and took the bread, scraping off hard bites with her teeth. The crumbs coated her parched throat and made her cough. Just outside the kitchen, she saw a small cupboard that opened into a shaft, containing a winch to draw up water from a cistern under the house. Ginevra tried to turn the crank, but it did not budge. She didn’t want to risk breaking it. So she walked all the way down the stairs, stopping at the dirty dining table on the second floor to pick up a fine painted beaker, laughing to see it was the same pattern favored by the inquisitor—chickens eating grapes—and into the cellar below the courtyard.

In the dim light, among leaking oil jugs and scampering mice, were a heartening number of barrels stacked neatly against the wall. She poured herself a healthy portion from an already-tapped hogshead. A normal sip was quickly followed by a deep draught, for in her thirst it seemed finer than any drink she’d tasted before. In truth it was only vinello , the mild “little wine” that everyone drank daily. But it was fizzy and tart and slightly cool from the dark room it was stored in. She dipped the hard bread into her cup to soften it, allowing her to take the first real bite.

Off to the side of the cellar was a cistern that collected rainwater, funneled from roof gutters and a drain in the center of the courtyard. She looked into it and saw it was filled with blind eels, who ate the eggs of mosquitoes that grew in the water, and were also delicious when baked in pies. With her vinello and bread, she walked back up to the ground floor courtyard and through a rear door to find an octagonal plot enclosing a now-overgrown garden. A fountain burbled in the center of the space, surrounded by four symmetrical planting beds that contained a good number of onions, savory herbs, and flowering nasturtiums. Gnarled quince trees provided shade for benches placed between the beds. The stone walls of the enclosure were mostly covered by apple trees that had been trained so their branches grew flat like vines against the stones instead of out in all directions. Pecking their way around the onion tops were two peacocks, who remained ignorant of the present chaos, living happily off worms and fallen apples.

In this space of calm and luxury, clutching her fancy new cup, Ginevra felt the mild potency of the vinello take effect. For a moment, she forgot to feel anxious about the great tragedy through which she was living. But only for a moment. And then she went back upstairs to drag the dead maid out to the curb for the next morning’s body collector. Here she was, among compatriots. One woman living, one woman dead. And herself, feeling somewhere in between. All of them left alone.