Page 46 of The Stone Witch of Florence

FORTY-FIVE

THE LADY AND THE JETTATORE

July 13th of 1348, the Palazzo Tornaparte

L ucia and Giancarlo the Relic Thief sat in her home, wondering what to do with the latest news brought by Piero. He had hurried it to them, in between tasks. The trial was to be tomorrow, in the central piazza upon the ringhiera platform. Lucia understood what would happen immediately: the trial of a heretic was the perfect place for the missing relics to “reveal” themselves to the bishop. He must be planning to smuggle them onto the platform inside the blessed statue. The false miracle, witnessed by many, would elevate the bishop’s holy reputation, putting him forward as a primary candidate for the vacant cardinalate.

With Becchino nowhere to be found, Lucia could send no warning pie to the stinche . As long as the bishop held the relics, nobody would believe their story, that of an abandoned wife and a blind man. Filled with dread, time seemed fast and slow all at once. Lucia thought again and again of going to San Tommaso for assistance, only to remember his relic was stolen and she already owed him many candles.

Lucia looked at Giancarlo and sighed. She meant to be frightened of the jettatore , and upset with Ginevra for sending her such a dangerous guest. But because she now held Ginevra’s diamante, it would not let her be angry, and compelled her to become friends with this strange creature. Even without the influence of the diamante, Giancarlo so dutifully kept his blindfold on, and loved so much to lie on the floor and let the kitten walk on him, it would not have been long before she forgot his crimes and perceived him a gentleman. She chastised him for his heinous acts now as one would tease a dear friend who had done something foolish.

“And what were you thinking, taking our relics at a time like this? It was not enough that everyone in your town died, you had to go and destroy the protection of our saints?”

“But, Dama, I did think of it! I was trying to stop death, not give him an invitation. This is why I asked your bishop to lend them willingly.”

“But instead he made you steal them, let the rest of us believe we were forsaken.”

“I did not like that idea. I refused, at first, to go along with the bishop’s request that I steal them away in the dead of night. But then he told me to leave the bottles of water—he said that if I poured it over their blessed remains, the water would hold the same power as the relics, and I would not be taking anything from anybody. And at Miniato, I took only the last bit I needed! I left practically the whole relic there!”

“Well, whatever you did, I don’t think it worked,” she said.

Giancarlo wiped away a sniffle under his blindfold.

Lucia reached and took hold of his hand. After tomorrow, this strange man might be her only friend left in the world. She would not press him. “It’s alright, Giancarlo. I have been lonely here, but to be the only living person in your town... What was it like?”

“Terrible. I went a bit mad, I think.”

She politely refrained from comment.

He told her how after he had gotten everyone he could find into the crypt, he spent his days looking through books in his library. One day, he found a book hidden within a book, and it was full of magic spells.

“And that is how you learned to turn iron to rust?”

“Oh, no—that is but a secret of my shop—a trick taken from alchemists. I applied a burning liquid known as Aqua Regia , it dissolves metal but not glass and creates the shimmery gold glaze used for the little chickens on our pottery.”

“Those chickens are my favorite part.”

“I wish I never had seen the book, for it is the source of my deranged behavior. The spells were all nonsense, and for this, your Ginevra and Fra Michele are in prison. I thought—I thought since the bishop agreed with me, it was sure to work! But he is a liar, and I am a fool. A blight. A curse. Doomed to a sad life, a...”

“A what?”

“A jettatore ,” he whispered. “I am loath to say it. Even though my mother told me, even though I bring destruction to everyone I know. But Monna Ginevra knew. She knew before she met me; her magic coral told her.”

Lucia was fascinated. “Do you know why the malocchio chose you?”

The mouth under the bandages frowned. “I was cursed before I was born.”

He told how his parents were poor and lived on the valley floor, outside the walls of San Romolo. When his mother was pregnant, a party of free lances came to their village, eager for plunder. Giancarlo’s mother found a clever hiding spot, and from her place, she watched the terrible things that were done to her neighbors. Because she was too stunned and frightened to look away, the abominations she witnessed were seen also by her fetus, and this was when the Eye marked him a jettatore .

From the beginning, other babies cried if Giancarlo was placed among them. When he was old enough to work at farming, the milk of cows would dry up and any plow he used would hit a rock and break. His mother knew what had happened and told him so, told him what he was but cautioned him to keep the secret or he would be shunned wherever he went. So after he failed at farming, she begged a ceramics master to take him as an apprentice. The master took pity on her, and took Giancarlo as his own son, teaching him the trade and to read and write. For ten years, Giancarlo labored under him and the Eye lay dormant, biding its time.

When Giancarlo had at last learned all the secrets of the factory, the Eye made it so the master and all his sons died, one right after the other until Giancarlo, as apprentice, was next in line to inherit the business. It thrived under him; the Eye saw to that, too. A shiny lure that drew people close and then ruined them. Employees suffered terrible accidents—kilns exploded, acids spilled onto hands, men tripped and paintbrushes jammed up their noses. But the people of the valley were poor, so they always came back to work for him.

Still, no matter how much Giancarlo paid them, they never got any richer. Coins fell from holes in their purses, they grew ill and spent all their money on doctors, and the free lances returned to burn their fields. Even as Giancarlo wept and prayed for his people, glorified the humble church in their town with gold and glazes and towers, and did his best to be a good and generous man, he carried inside him a terrible guilt, knowing that the good he did could not outpace the bad—and that it was his curse that had brought about all the misfortune. When the plague came to San Romolo, terrible and strong and early, he knew, he knew it was all his fault, and he had to make it right somehow.

Through his story, so enraptured was Lucia in listening and Giancarlo in telling that they did not notice how a bit of his blindfold had come unwound and the kitten was playing with the end. All of a sudden, the cat had it off completely and man and animal stared into each other’s eyes for a brief moment. The poor cat puffed up into a giant ball and bolted through the open window. Lucia covered her eyes and screamed at Giancarlo to fix his blindfold.

“What have I done, what have I done??” he cried, frantically wrapping his head.

Lucia ran to the window. “Cats are good at falling, I’m sure she’s—oh. Oh, no.”

Maybe if it were a normal fright, the cat would have remembered her tricks and landed on her feet, but it was the stare of a jettatore , so she landed instead on her back, and when Lucia looked down, she lay still, four little paws straight in the air.

“Tell me she is alright!” wailed the thief.

“She is dead, Giancarlo,” Lucia said, wringing her hands.

The jettatore pulled at his hair and began to weep anew. Never had animals trusted him, and now he killed the first one that ever came near him.

Lucia ran out to the street to pick up the dear little body, but as soon as she touched it, the cat gave a funny twitch and rolled over. Then she did a sort of shiver that began at her nose and ended at the tip of her tail. She arched her back, rubbed up against Lucia’s leg, and walked back into the house. Lucia stood still a moment and then she laughed and bounded back up the stairs—“Giancarlo! Our cat! She has used but one of her nine lives! She is well, she is well, give her some cheese.”

Still weeping, Giancarlo felt around and picked up the last remaining cheese end from the table, breaking it into crumbs and admonishing himself for his carelessness. The cat jumped on the table, eating the cheese crumbs and purring, butting her head against him. Tears streamed from under his blindfold. “What—h-have—I—done to deserve such kindness from this creature?”

“Giancarlo, stop crying,” commanded Lucia. “Our kitten’s fall has given me an idea. We must make you a hood.”

“A hood?” he choked.

“Yes. A hood so you can see neither right nor left but only what is right in front of you. And you will wear it to the trial tomorrow.”