Page 19 of The Stone Witch of Florence

EIGHTEEN

GHOSTS IN THE RIVER

1340, City of Florence, A Romance Interrupted

D uring the spring of Ginevra’s love and grief, a terrible flood came roaring. Bridges were washed away, shops crumbled into the river, and houses filled with mud. Many hundreds drowned and when the waters receded, their ghosts climbed up over the banks and followed people to their homes and sat beside their beds all night. “It’s in your head,” said their friends and neighbors who hadn’t seen the ghosts. “It’s been so hot, so sad. You’re stressed, you’re tired. You need to eat something, you need to rest.” But then the people who had seen ghosts were covered in red spots and consumed with fever and soon they died. And then anyone who had touched them died also.

Physicians were called, summoned for cures or at least explanations, but as soon as they said somebody would recover, he died, and as soon as they said somebody would die, she lived. Then the doctors themselves began to die. They refused to see patients anymore. Told the priests it must be something to do with God’s wishes, and perhaps the ghosts came from purgatory to warn the living.

The priests did their best, told citizens of the commune to stop being so lazy and self-indulgent, to redouble their attendance in churches and shrines and pray for deliverance. They held emergency processions of the ancient statue called the Virgin of Requisiti, who was helpful in times of crisis. Held aloft on her gilded palanquin, the Virgin was paraded through the streets, surrounded by clouds of incense and nuns dressed all in white. The procession ended with the Virgin placed upon the ringhiera in the central piazza, and presented with flowers and candles and money.

But once they crowded together, they realized the sickness moved from one person to another, and those gathered in front of the Virgin in the piazza were made ill there by their neighbors.

When the priests realized the prayers were not being heard by the Virgin, they knew then that the ghosts had come to deliver punishment, not to warn about it. They locked themselves in their quarters, but this did not protect them and many clergy still died on their fine sheets behind shuttered doors.

Fra Simone declared Sant’Elisabetta closed to pilgrims. He ordered the nuns and employees to stay inside the walls and spend hours kneeling before the Relic of the Blessed Blood. Agnesa made them boil all the water with a silver coin before they drank it, but still a few of the nuns caught sick and died.

Markets closed, and no farmers entered Florence. Porridge days at the convent became watery gruel days. And Ginevra, for the first time in her life, was lonely. She felt the absence of Vermilia like a wound that would not heal. Cut off from her parents now, as well, she realized it was these far-off supports in Genoa that had allowed her to stand tall and go with confidence in Florence. Agnesa was too busy for her, and her relationship with Taddea remained strained—her friend rarely left the chapel, kneeling to pray disease away, and Ginevra was still upset by her betrayal, too wrapped up in her own grief to reach out and make amends. What she really, desperately needed, was to see Ludovico. He alone might provide solace. But his letters, too, had stopped. Fear crept into her heart that he would die of the current fever.

“Agnesa, let me go out,” she begged when she could stand it no longer. “Let me collect our golden wires from the silk guild. Let me get back what flour I can from our tenant the baker, who is dead. You know this coral that I wear is special—Vermilia told me, as long as it hangs from my neck, no disease can enter me.”

Agnesa pulled the black silk cord at Ginevra’s neck until the amulet was visible. She looked at it closely, examining the carved fruits on the golden bezel, placing her own thumb end to end with the perfectly carved miniature. She closed her eyes and whispered words Ginevra did not understand. She nodded and tucked it back into Ginevra’s dress.

“Go, then. Get the wire and any food you can. We cannot pray all of the day and all of the night. We must keep busy and we must keep fed, or the sisters will go mad. Be discreet.” Ginevra flew out of the doors as fast as she could, desperate to reach Ludovico.

Outside, she saw no one and the air smelled of the black mud that still coated the streets and hid all sorts of rotting things. She went and threw pebbles at Ludovico’s window, but he did not come, though she was sure she saw him moving around behind the tiny panes of glass. She comforted herself with the knowledge that, at least, he lived. She went next to the merchant with the gold wire, but he would not open his door for her. There was nobody selling any food. Somebody had already taken the flour from the dead baker. Indeed, there was nobody walking about at all besides her. No sounds besides grief wails and death rattles behind shut windows. She remembered what Vermilia told her as a child: to keep her ears and eyes open for all things. She did. And though she returned to the convent empty-handed, that night she dreamed.

She was floating above the river, her toes skimming the surface as if she were a bird. The water was black, except for glittering streaks of gold that swirled and disappeared. Ginevra reached out and touched a streak with her finger. It was burning hot. Her finger glowed white and then fell off and sank into the water. She woke up sweating and gasping in her room, using her fingertips to count each other in the complete darkness of early morning.

At first light, she checked in her notebook, to be sure. Here is shimmering black obsidian, made by the heat of volcanoes. It is good against fevers. She ran to Agnesa’s cell and shook her awake. “Sister, look.” She shoved her book in Agnesa’s face. “I had a dream—the fever came from the river. Something in it, stirred up during the flood. Agnesa, we have an obsidian stone—black and streaked with gold—”

“Stop! Stop. Have I not been clear? Have I not been direct? No magic outside these walls.”

“But people are dying and the priests cannot stop it.”

“Exactly,” she said, putting on her habit over her nightshift. “This is the worst time to attract attention. If we have success, we will make the priests look ridiculous, and it will go badly for us... They will say we have conjured demons. And he will say we have made terrible sacrifices in exchange for this cure.”

Ginevra understood immediately that he referred to the recently appointed papal inquisitor, Fra Andre di Perugia. Before the flood and sickness, the unusual zeal with which the new inquisitor approached his position had been the talk of the town. How he had hired two hundred men to his personal retinue, granting them the unusual permission to carry weapons inside the city walls. How these men slunk about, shouting “Heretic!” at anyone from whom they might extort a fine. Most extreme, how an academic was whipped through the streets for wondering whether earthquakes might occur separate from God’s intervention. The poor man was put into the stinche , the city’s jail, and all his possessions confiscated. He was fined 200 florins and his left hand was amputated when he couldn’t pay it. But Ginevra was not to be deterred. Her dream had been so clear.

“Healing sick people is no heresy, Sister. Even the inquisitor must know that. You have not seen as I did, walking about yesterday. There are many thousands—”

“Enough. You must bear it,” Agnesa interrupted. “This thing will leave us in a few months, but poor women are a constant in this world. Do not draw attention to yourself. We must still be here to care for them when this is all over. Now get out, it’s too early for this.”

Ginevra left, resolved to act as she saw fit. Agnesa might be afraid of the inquisitor, but she was not. She paced ruts in the courtyard all morning, waiting to cross paths with her mentor and continue the conversation. Finally, she stopped her as the old nun was crossing to the women’s ward. Ginevra knelt before her, hands clasped.

“Please, Sister, I beseech you—our people are dying when they may live. We will be subtle, we will be quick. Nobody will know that magic happened. Except for us, who will know we have done right by our fellow man.”

“Get UP. Get up, you make a scene. Come with me. Now.”

Ginevra followed Agnesa back to her cell. The nun shut the door. She pried up the tile under her bed, and took out the obsidian—black and streaked with gold. She placed it in Ginevra’s right hand. “Speak of this to no one. Tell me not what you do with it.” She left Ginevra standing alone in her cell.

Ginevra opened her left hand, where she’d twisted Vermilia’s ring around on her finger. The orange stone had been so tightly pressed into her flesh that the goddess Nemesis was imprinted in her palm.

She left the convent, quietly triumphant, and did what the obsidian told her: drop it over the side of a bridge, into the Arno. She wondered if it was very expensive or if it would be hard to find another one. The stone called out from the river and told her not to worry about all that, but to bring a wineskin to the banks and fill it and bring it to those who thirsted.

Ginevra did as the stone said, and then brought the full wineskin to the poor crowded quarters, where people were desperate enough to drink river water offered by a stranger. Some were too sick and could not get better. But others saw their spots fade, felt their fevers cool. Ginevra rejoiced, and went again to the home of Ludovico, throwing handfuls of rocks at his window until a pane cracked, and he finally gestured that they should meet in the kitchen of the palazzo.

“Didn’t you see me at your window yesterday?”

“Ginevra, it’s not the time for visitors.”

“I know, but I come with the best news.”

He did not respond, nor did he reach out to take her hand or touch her waist, nor had he called her his Beatrice, but just plain Ginevra .

“I’ve found it, My Heart,” she said quietly, and pulled out the wineskin. “Drink this and you will be safe from disease.”

“Really?” he said, his voice suddenly imbued with emotion.

“Yes, really, I promise you.”

He took it and drank, and then smiled at her and put his hand on her shoulder. She relaxed a bit at the touch, but still, her shoulder was not her waist.

“There’s enough for your whole household,” she said.

“Thank you, Ginevra, I will not forget this. But now you must go, it’s not a good time for us to visit.”

“But you’ll write to me, when it is?” she said, hearing her own desperation.

“When it is a good time, I will write.” He kissed her on the forehead and then walked through the doors that led to the palazzo of his father, where Ginevra was not allowed to follow.

It was not long before she was noticed. Florence was not so big and people peeked out through their shutters and saw her going from house to house when nobody else was about.

Whispers spread as the poor became well while the wealthy still wasted away: there was a woman who was not afraid of the disease, who was not afraid to touch the ones coughing and spewing out vile humors. People began to leave their shelters to seek her out, and if they found her, she would not turn them away, but followed them to their homes where their children lay dying to administer the enchanted water.

She went into every parish, into places where the disease was thickest, and walked out again unaffected when all others who tried to do so were struck with the illness themselves. Soon, so many people said things like “bless you” and “God protect you,” and gave her food from their own meager stores, that she forgot all about discretion, all about Agnesa’s warning, about the woman burned to death on the ladder and the man whose hand was cut off for wondering about earthquakes.