Page 4 of The Stone Witch of Florence

THREE

MILKSTONES

July of 1348, Between Genoa a desperate plan to appease an angry God with offerings of witches and heretics? But even after everything that had happened, she could not believe Ludovico would do something so vile as that.

So maybe the best was true, the hopes so wild that she was self-conscious of them even in the safety of her own mind: that Ludovico missed her, that he would make amends by using his influence and his fortune to restore her name; his patronage would ensure her application to the physicians’ guild was taken seriously. But even if this was Ludo’s intent, Ginevra knew she would first have to work some extraordinary magic. And, the truth was she did not know how to cure the plague. At least, not yet . Her hand reached into the purse tied around her waist and, for the thousandth time, confirmed that the two hemispherical stones were still there.

“Hey!” said Piero, trotting to keep up with her adult strides. “Slow down.”

“Hmmm?”

“We have to go slow. You didn’t—you didn’t let us get hardly any water. Or food. Or anything at all. We must go slow and stay in the shade or we will die of the heat.”

“Here, take water from my flask.”

He shook his head. “I told you the next well is a day from here at least—”

“Take it,” she said, thrusting the flask into his hands. “We’ll find what we need.”

But he shook his head no and held it back to her.

Ginevra shrugged, opened the flask, and drank fully. Piero gaped at her in anguish. “Now, Piero, you will have a drink. As you say, the sun is strong and we must be careful.”

To his surprise, the flask handed to him was just as heavy as before. He held it to his ear and it sloshed around. He took a cautious sip and the water was cold and bubbled with minerals, as if from a spring in the mountains and not the cistern under Ginevra’s gutter, which is where he knew it was filled. And filled it was. And as much as he drank, this did not change. He looked at Ginevra with questioning eyes. “It will last us our journey, I think,” was all she said, and returned to her thoughts.

On the second day, they arrived at an orchard. The ground was sticky with fruit that had ripened and rotted unpicked. The air hummed with flies. “Here we will find something to eat,” she said.

But Piero hung back. He had passed this place before, and knew that farmers lay dead amongst the dropped harvest. “We are too late in the season,” he said. “The trees are empty.”

“Come,” she said, taking him by the hand.

They walked between rows of trees, leaves curling and wilting in the heat. Air heavy with the smell of molded apricots and something else, sweet and stinging. She stopped at a tree where the trunk split in two and grew in opposite directions, and placed her hands on the spot where the trunks came together.

“I told you,” said Piero. “There is nothing here.”

She removed her hands from the trunk and smiled at him, tucking something back into her purse. “You must look up, not down. See in the branches? On the left, there are apricots, on the right are figs. Climb and gather as much as you can.”

“But—how could they both grow on the same tree?”

Ginevra shrugged. “Trees do what they want,” she said, and then began to pluck figs from the low-hanging boughs. They filled their bags and walked until dusk, when they came upon a dry haystack to sleep in just as Piero began to feel tired.

On the third day, there were dark clouds that made the loose hairs on their heads stand out straight. They left their haystack for the safety of a small thatched hut, doors open and black, both afraid of what they would see inside. At the doorway, they jumped at eyes that gleamed at them from a dark corner, like a cat’s at night. But the eyes were human—two boys a little older than Piero. One clutched a brand-new baby. Piero stood shy in the doorway but Ginevra walked right in.

“Is it only the three of you left here?” she asked.

The taller boy nodded. “Can you help our sister?” He held out the listless baby.

Ginevra took the infant. “Who has been feeding her?” she asked them gently.

The smaller one began to cry. “We have a goat. But she has given no milk since yesterday.” He nodded to the other side of the room.

Ginevra turned and watched a goat lick salt out of the earthen walls. To the boys, she said: “Go into the fields and bring me back a horn. I saw a dead buffalo out there. Quickly, before the storm starts. Piero will help you.”

But Piero lingered in the doorway. He didn’t like the idea of leaving his traveling companion alone, after he had gone through all that trouble to fetch her. He watched quietly as Ginevra ran back and forth after the goat, who leaped easily away from her grasping hands. The swaddled baby lay on a single bed, staring at the roof beams.

“What are you doing?” Piero asked eventually.

She jumped at his voice. “I am trying to catch this goat!”

“Why? The boy said she is dry.”

“Piero, please. Just, help me catch this damned goat and hold her still. I will explain to you later.”

So Piero helped her and pinned the goat in a corner while Ginevra pulled from her purse a smooth white disk, opaque and shiny like a tooth. She offered it to the goat, who considered it a moment and then took it on her pointed tongue and swallowed it. The animal shook Piero free and began to pace back and forth, bleating.

Ginevra sighed with relief. “Piero, go ask the boys for a bucket.”

“Why?”

“So we can milk this poor goat! Don’t you hear her? She’s ready to burst.”

Piero turned to the goat and then back to Ginevra, who had somehow gotten a fire started in the few moments he looked away.

“Bucket!”

When the three boys came back, she made them boil the horn and scoop out the inside of it so it was hollow, then they poked a hole in the tip and filled it with milk for the baby.

They stayed like this through the storm, eating figs and apricots and feeding the baby until she was pink again. Ginevra and Piero left in the morning.

“How far to the nearest well?” she asked him. “Do you remember?”

“I thought you said your flask would last us the journey?”

She said nothing.

Hours later, they came to another orchard. “Look, Ginevra, these are peach trees. Do you think we can find fruit?”

She shook her head. “No—the trees are barren. I have prunes I brought from Genoa, but we must not eat too many. We have several days’ journey ahead of us.”

Piero stopped. “TELL me what is going on! First, you don’t let us get any provisions because you say you can find them, now you tell me we have hardly anything after we give all our figs and water to those strangers—and why did you make their goat eat a rock?”

Ginevra sighed. Now was the time to stop hiding. “That rock is called a milkstone. It is very old and its presence creates abundance when there is none. This is how I kept my flask full and made trees bear fruit past their season.”

“And you fed it to a goat?”

“The baby would have starved, Piero.”

“Now WE will starve.”

“No. We will not starve because we are clever. Surely, you can see they needed our help? They would have perished without it.”

“So? Everyone else has already died. My mother and father and sister—all gone! And nobody helped them.”

“My parents are dead also, Piero. I know what it is to ache for family, but you must not be cruel.” She reached out to touch him but he jerked away.

“You are old! Your parents are supposed to be dead. Everyone who ever lived along this road is dead besides you and me and those wretches in the hut. You think one goat will save them? All you’ve done is stretch out their suffering a little longer!”

“Piero, you are too young for such evil thoughts.”

“You care more for them than you do for me! Me, who brought you a letter all the way from Florence.”

“Shhh. Do not be jealous. The malocchio hears such things. It will come and make it worse for you.”

“The Eye is not real,” he said, though more quietly, unsure of himself. “It is a story women use to scare children.”

Ginevra said nothing.

“It’s not real, is it?” asked Piero.

“It is real, and I have felt it and you must be careful or you will, too.”