Page 35 of The Stone Witch of Florence

THIRTY-FOUR

MINIATO AL MONTE

Late at Night, July 10th of 1348, City of Florence

A fter a decent while of Lucia’s aimless pointing, her guides’ wine-induced cheer wore thin. “Lucia, I hate to say it but you’ve been taking us mostly in a circle. You do know where you live, right? Which side of the river?”

She nodded “yes” but that was all she could muster.

“Oh, God, Maria, we’re fools,” said Lorenzo, smacking himself on the face. “She already told us the night we met, remember? She’s in Santa Croce! Mother of God, still so far!”

“No. No. Not there,” Lucia slurred. “Santa Trin-i-ta.” Her chaperones stopped in their tracks and looked at each other.

“No,” said Lorenzo.

“We can’t just leave her here, she’s plonked.”

“Yes, we can. She should be dead already.” He let go of Lucia’s arm and moved several steps away. “Come, Maria.”

“Lucia, in what parish is your home?” asked the woman.

Lucia realized the mistake through her drunkenness, and tried clumsily to correct it. “Shh. Shhhh. S’alright... San—HIC—Croce.”

“She lies in her throat,” said Lorenzo angrily.

Maria unraveled herself from Lucia, who began to sway precipitously without her supporters. “You are a dirty, dirty liar,” she said. “There is no one left alive in Santa Trinita—well, no one but you. It is filled with pestilence. A dead parish . You exposed us all to your contaminated breath. Now we leave, to enjoy what is probably our last evening.”

Lorenzo spat on the ground at her feet and called her a whore for good measure, and the pair walked away into the darkness, taking the torch with them. Lucia staggered until she bumped into a wall and finally puked purple all over the front of Antonella’s dress. She knelt down and searched with her hands through the vomit, looking for the amethyst, but she could not find it. The street tilted up to greet her, and she lost her balance. She was both terrified to be alone, and glad nobody was there to see her. She vomited again, pushed herself back up, and began to wander through the pitch-dark streets, clinging to the walls of empty houses for balance.

No windows showed lamps, no lanterns were lit in their niches to mark the crossroads. Houses leaned over the roads and blocked the sky completely. Lucia could not see her hand in front of her face. The wind became angry, little raindrops began to fall. Soon the sky spilled forth a proper summer torrent and streams of water rolled down the streets, washing mud and dead things toward her. Lucia wept, huddled in some corner. She deserved all this, she told herself. She had prioritized her own pride, her own vengeance over the all-important search for the thief. In a flash of lightning, she saw the ancient hulking church of San Miniato al Monte, keeping its lonely watch over the city. She must have wandered right through the Porta San Niccolo! All the gatekeepers really were dead. She went toward the church, and found it open.

It was blacker, still, inside. She could barely make out the pale rectangles of white marble sarcophagi, laid flush with the floor. Lucia did not want to sleep on the floor among the dead so she shuffled, hands out to see where her eyes could not, until she found the steps leading up to the raised choir.

The choir platform was supported by a columned crypt that held the tomb of the martyr Miniato. A grate was set in the floor of the choir platform through which the priest could look down to view the holy grave.

Lucia crawled up the stairs on all fours and sat down behind the altar. How would she explain this part to San Tommaso? Being so drunk that she slept in a church. The lonely and frightening walk had brought Lucia a false sobriety, but now that she was sitting down, the church began to spin faster and faster until she thought she might be sick again. She lay down, touching the cool floor with forehead and palms. An attempt to steady the world that was whirling around uncontrollably. Blessedly, she passed out.

Sleep comes easily to the inebriated, but it does not stay long, and Lucia woke some hours later with a spasm of anxiety, still quite drunk. She stayed absolutely still, working out where she was and why. She couldn’t believe she’d lost another of Ginevra’s magic stones—and this one she took without permission! Fool, fool, no wonder her husband left her. She was always taking and giving only frustration.

It was still as black as the bottom of a well inside the church. Fool again! The heliodor, still in her pocket. So drunk she had forgotten the very thing that might have led her home. She pulled it out and held it aloft, a personal orb of light in the vast darkness of San Miniato. But there was another faint glow hovering above the floor, about ten feet in front of her. She stared hard at it, convinced it was a spirit come out of its grave. The sounds of soft scratchings and the chink of metal on stone echoed up—the noise was coming through the grate over San Miniato’s tomb.

Lucia stayed still on the floor, terrified that any small noise or movement would make her presence known to whoever (or whatever) was in the crypt. She listened hard, the chinking and scraping continued, and then a melody, hummed as by a carpenter busy at his bench. A person absorbed in their task, not worried about observers.

On fingertips and the toes of her ruined leather shoes, with her invisible light, she crept toward the grate so she might better observe. She reached the hole and peered through.

Below her, she saw the back of a figure kneeling down in a rough wool cloak. A small lantern, a large satchel, and a little bottle just the shape of a spring onion rested on the ground beside the figure. Her heart flipped over in her chest—here was their thief at work! But—Miniato was not one of the Divine Nine. His church was too far from the city center.

There was a faint sizzle and smell of something acrid, like vinegar, that stung her nostrils and throat. Her eyes watered with the effort of suppressing a cough. From below, now a rasping, scraping noise that carried on for a few minutes. A muted exclamation of triumph and a louder clang as she saw metal bars placed carefully to the side of the cloaked figure. Then to her horror, Lucia saw the figure reach into the tomb and ease out the dried old leg of the hermit martyr Miniato. He rocked the leg to and fro and with an unpleasant “crack” and a little puff of dust, it broke free of the body.

She waited for something, anything—the floor to open up and swallow this thief—but there were no sounds besides the clinks of his labor. The thief’s hand reached out from his cloak, and pulled the bottle underneath it. Lucia could not see what was happening, only the skeletal foot of Miniato, sticking out from under the cloak at an odd angle, jerking about as he fiddled with it.

She heard the tinkling of liquid being poured into a vessel. A flurry of movement under the cloak, then the thief stuck the holy right leg of San Miniato into his satchel and stood up. Lucia rolled away from her viewing grate. Her wet shoe made a tiny squeak on the floor. The thief looked around, and then blew out the lantern. Lucia had not caught one glimpse of his face. She removed her shoes and slunk away, guided by the light of the heliodor. She crept down the stairs to the crypt door and hid beside it, against the wall. A moment later out came the thief with his lumpy satchel in one hand, the other stretched out in front to feel his way. The hood of his cloak was drawn.

As she strained to see his face, she was hit by a nauseating stench, worse than the sickly sweet scent of rot to which she had become accustomed. Worse than a beard stuck full of anchovies. The thief turned his head in the direction she stood, and she felt cold, deep inside her body, though the air was hot and humid. She nearly puked again. While she struggled to stay silent, the thief went beyond the light of the heliodor. He hurried out of the building, going as fast as the darkness allowed, and into the night, unconcerned with the rain that still came down in sheets. Lucia slumped to the floor and lay with her back pressed against the wall of the crypt, trying to pull warmth into her body from the stone floor. She stayed there until dawn crept through the windows and the storm had passed.