Page 23 of The Stone Witch of Florence

TWENTY-TWO

WE DIE, WE FLY

1340–1348, City of Genoa, Ginevra in Exile

S ome months after Ginevra’s forced return to Genoa, a letter arrived from Ludovico. Immediately, she closed her shop and with shaking hands drank wine straight from its jug. She had spent many nights wishing for such a letter—it would say how Ludovico was physically restrained by his father during her trial, and had only now escaped to send word to her. But when she broke open the seal and read, here was the truth written out in fine walnut ink on smoothest vellum: her Ludo had always been promised to another, since he was a small boy. His intended—the only child of a very powerful family—had just come of age. It was his inescapable duty to marry her. This alliance of two great houses was the cornerstone of the Acciaiuoli plans for the future.

Ludo was sorry for keeping this from Ginevra, but he didn’t want to ruin their precious moments together, the memories of which he would always treasure. He explained how even though he could not visit her in prison, he had intervened on her behalf with his uncle, the priest, and convinced him to cut up her nose instead of something worse. It had been a large humiliation to admit their affair, but he did it anyway because of his great love for her. Now that some time had passed, could they not be friends? It would bring him great comfort. His new wife would never inflame his heart as Ginevra had.

Ginevra threw the letter into the fire and watched the red wax seal turn black and sputter away into nothing. A small bit of the wine came back up into her throat, and she lay down upon the floor. There, sideways, she took from her bag of gems a stone called antipathy, a dense black bead the size of a hazelnut. Agnesa had taught her it would absorb unpleasant memories. She tied it around her wrist and sat up, but her troubles were too heavy and the yarn it was strung upon snapped and the stone fell to the ground. She tried to pick it up, but its heaviness was extreme, and she could not. So there it stayed in the middle of her floor, where she stubbed her toe upon it daily.

Now, the strange dreams that began during the flood were her constant companions. Dead things and peculiar creatures visiting with messages she could not understand. She was held down in her bed, and she opened her mouth to scream but could produce no sound. Cruelest of all, she was back in Florence, Taddea telling her she was a lady in the Acciaiuoli household. When she woke and reality was once again manifest, for days after she sunk into an even darker depression. She learned to get by with as little rest as possible, preferring tiredness to the places her mind journeyed in sleep.

She kept to herself, besides modest dealings with clients: people who needed their rashes or toothaches cured, or vendors, sellers of lavender, and fishermen who brought her broken bits of coral or special sea snails. Occasionally, individuals came to her with greater troubles than toothaches. Business was done between Florence and Genoa, and word of her special abilities spread. A noblewoman who had miscarried five times and was pregnant with a sixth child. A merchant who lost all his ships because of the malocchio . But Ginevra turned away these people, referred them to the shrines of the saints. The court of the inquisitor had done its work well. Like Vermilia, she shied away from the use of stones, from grander gestures of magic. She provided simple herbal remedies, fixed minor wounds, built small charms for small problems. She was cured of the delusions of her youth, that the good results of her work would excuse its unorthodoxy.

On the frequent nights when she could not sleep, Ginevra spent the dark hours experimenting with her healing stones, counting and re-sorting them, learning what she could without the use of a human subject. She put out subtle inquiries with merchants who had taken her help in sensitive matters, so she could be sure of their discretion, and took as payment unusual stones from their travels. In this way, her collection and knowledge grew, though it remained unused, theoretical. This much she allowed herself of her former passion.

She lived this way for seven years, when, late in the year 1347, a sailor came to her with a large swelling on his neck. He was home from a long journey, he told her. Part of a Genoese merchant contingent, trapped for years by the Tatar army at Kaffa. They had been under siege in their citadel, living off cockroaches and shoe leather toward the end. Ginevra gave him a cup of undiluted wine and tilted his head; this was to get a good look at the lump, but also to make him be quiet. Such were her own troubles that she did not like to hear others’.

“Oof,” she tutted. “This thing is as big as a pigeon egg! Surrounded by water all that time and you never thought to take a bath?”

“Monna, there was no time for baths. Once we were to sea, away from that foul place, we just wanted to be home as quick as we could.”

“Fair enough, though a layer of dirt is what you have to thank for your twin that’s growing here.”

“Really? You’re sure?”

“Unless it is something I’ve never seen before, I’m sure.”

“Good. This is good news.”

“If you say so. Look, I’m going to lance it and then you must scrub your neck so you don’t get any more. Ready?”

He drained his wine. “Ready. I’ve pricked enough women. I suppose it’s only right to have the favor returned.”

“Well, as they tell us ladies in such situations: close your eyes, it’ll be over soon.”

“OWWWW!!! OW, OW, OW, STOP! For the love of Christ!! Dio cane , is it supposed to hurt like that??” Ginevra withdrew her probe. It was not supposed to hurt like that. Purple veins began to spider out from the point of her needle, like stripes on an unripe eggplant. Shaken, she gave him a poultice and sent him on his way. She was not used to hurting her patients. Later that week, she heard that the sailor and a lover had been found dead together, black swellings at their necks and other places. Ginevra’s coral figa glowed red. Her dreams were filled with rats and beetles.

Soon, she knew the whole story of the ill-fated expedition to Kaffa, told to her in bits and pieces by clients who came to buy something, anything, whatever she had that might keep away foul disease and evil spirits. It seemed that the only reason the Genoese had escaped the siege was because the Tatar army became very ill. So many of their soldiers died, in fact, that they were forced to abandon the fight. And as a last spiteful act, the Tatars flung the infected corpses of their comrades over the citadel walls, as many as they could, until there were not enough left alive to load the catapults. This was how the Genoese escaped, stepping gingerly around their exploded enemies.

So eager to be home, were they, that they all agreed to keep this unpleasantness a secret lest they be denied entry to the port of Genoa. They would not mention their comrades who died on the journey home, their bodies covered in black spots. They said nothing as they spilled forth from their ships, into the arms of loving wives, eager mistresses, and sympathetic courtesans. The young ones made no mention of death in the dimly lit taverns where they leaned close to impress strangers with tales of their adventures. The old ones omitted disagreeable details as they dined gratefully in the homes of friends.

By the time it was realized what a mistake all this had been, by the time the truth came out, death was on every man’s doorstep. Coffin makers were out of inventory, graveyards were full. Genoa blockaded the port, the source of their livelihood, but it did not matter. The insidious pestilence had gotten down into the blood of the people and no longer needed passage on ships to reach its doomed destinations.

Now Ginevra woke every morning to a line outside her door of sick people begging for help. But she had none to give—her shelves and jars were bare. Her garden was plucked down to the earth. No dreams came with messages of magical cures, and midnight experiments with gems yielded no answers.

“Go to church,” she said, not knowing what else to do. “Pray to the rock that once touched the robe of San Francesco.”

“We have already! Look,” cried a desperate woman, holding up a small glass vial. “It is holy water, poured over the rock you speak of. The priest is giving it to anyone who asks. But it is not enough! Look also here.” She stuck out her tongue and it was black as ink.

“Oh, Sister,” said Ginevra, “I am sorry, but I have no antidote. You must find another saint, and pray to them. Maybe it will work better than San Francesco’s robe’s rock.”

Now came panic. All who had the means fled. Toward rural estates, holy shrines, or just into the country, preferring open fields to their own poisoned beds inside Genoa’s walls. Those who, like Ginevra, had nowhere to go hoarded food and stuffed their shutters with rags. Families shunned members who fell ill. Friends and neighbors refused to touch the sick, and when they died, their bodies were poked into the street with long sticks, where the poorest of poor, who had no shutters to close anyway, made a business of collecting them for disposal.

This pestilence felled those who were young and healthy as if they were old and frail. Mercurial in its nature, it eluded the logic of physicians by manifesting differently from one patient to the next. It might appear as tumors in one person, but a rash of black spots on another. In some people, the disease showed itself not at all until they coughed up blood all over their bedchambers and then expired.

Within months, all of Genoa and its surrounds were covered with bloated bodies, and every corner turned risked the ghastly sight of some poor human decaying without the dignity of burial.

In the springtime of that year 1348 a traveler came to Ginevra’s door, the first in many weeks.

“I am told you pay good money for old rocks?”

She looked at his travel-worn clothes. “Come in,” she said, “and tell me what you know of the world.”

He was, it turned out, a son of Genoa returned home.

“I have gone everywhere, Monna. The whole of Italy is ravaged with disease. We flew, this way and that, to the shrine of Saint Whoever-Can-Stop-the-Plague. None of them helped. I went even to Avignon, the Holy City of the Pope—but there, too, the city is like a sepulchre.”

“And what does the Holy Father say of this pestilence? What does he say we should do?”

“He wrote a special mass, made everyone in the city hear it, and then said we all had to keep a candle lit for three days... Maybe somebody couldn’t keep their candle lit, I don’t know...but it didn’t work. And now their Rh?ne river, they use as a graveyard because the earth is full, and the Pope calls it a punishment for our sins.”

“But if it is punishment, why is it that priests who are good, who attend the sick at their deathbeds, die in the greatest numbers?”

“Monna, I do not know. Even the Pope’s cardinals are all dying, and they are supposed to be the best among us! Did you know the only cardinal from Italy is dead? The Pope is sure to fill the empty spot with another one of his bastard French nephews, to heap misery upon our misery.”

Ginevra shook her head. “Well, at least show me the old rocks you brought, then.”

She bought a pair of stones from him. Dark green and speckled red, carved with ancient writing. She added them to her collection and resumed her lonely vigil. She watched her city empty, her people gone, saw all tenets of civic life crumble, for lack of living to operate or enforce them. And so it was, soon, all over the world, from the dark north of Scandinavia to the citadels of Egypt. But as is always the case in times of great turmoil, there are certain individuals who remain immune to the chaos that surrounds them, and instead hide within it to conduct their nefarious business without scrutiny.