The Scribe of Siena

by Melodie Winawer

  Yet another offer I had to refuse. If I knew I could promise Provenzano passage somewhere, I’d take him with me too.

  “I need to go to the Ospedale, to find my . . . my cousin. He is an artist, with a commission there, and we plan to find passage to Siena together. Can you tell me where the Ospedale is?”

  Provenzano provided me with directions, then pulled a key from a ring at his waist. He bent over a large chest, fumbling with the lock, then drew out a leather pouch of coins for me. “Ser Lugani will be most displeased if I leave my post.”

  “You won’t care if he’s displeased if you’re dead.”

  He blinked twice.

  “Or get to your country place as soon as you can, and don’t worry about what your boss will say. And avoid rats and sick people.” No matter where Provenzano went, he wouldn’t escape the Plague. But if he survived here, at least he’d have a job.

  Provenzano seemed accustomed to following directions from those who spoke with authority. “I wish you God’s protection in your travels, Signora.”

  “I will make my way home,” I said with more confidence than I felt, “with this to assist me.” I lifted the bag of coins, hearing them clink against one another. As I left the fondaco office, I realized what I’d said: in returning to medieval Siena, I would be heading home.

  * * *

  I unlaced the pouch and shook its glittering contents into my hand. I hoped it would be enough to buy three berths on the next boat out. If there was a next boat. Clara was sitting on her trundle bed. “Let’s get packing.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “First, I’m going to find Messer Accorsi. Then, a boat out of here.”

  Clara’s eyes widened. “The painter? I will begin assembling our possessions this very moment.” She curtsied and left.

  Outside, I pushed past crowds, wondering if any were already infected, and infectious. The bubonic version was common, with its hallmark lymphatic swellings in the groin and armpits, but the pneumonic manifestation of Plague—rare and rapid—attacked the lungs first, and might be transmitted through the air. All forms were deadly. I held my breath every time I passed someone.

  I didn’t need paranormal abilities to sense that things were starting to go wrong. A woman stood wringing her hands in the entrance to her home, talking to a grave-looking cluster of robed and hatted physicians in long scarlet wool robes with collars of white fur. There were more physicians around than I was used to seeing, and more priests.

  The chilling sound of a funeral bell heralded a procession of clerics followed by pallbearers dressed in black. They were burdened with a wooden coffin, and a group of lamenting family members walked behind. At the end of the train a bunch of curious oglers wound their way up the hill toward Messina’s cathedral—the bell tower loomed over the buildings surrounding it. No one knew enough yet to flee the dead or to shun the grieving families who had tended the sick until their deaths.

  In a side street, a row of large wooden bins overflowed with rotting vegetables, a pile of white and pink turnips at the top of the closest one. But the heap was garnished with a final touch—the carcasses of three crows, their feathers black against the turnips’ pallor. Here was the leading edge of the great pandemic. A narrative spun out in my head, though not from any source I’d ever seen.

  First the birds died in large numbers. Flocks dropped to the earth in mid-flight, stricken with the advancing pestilence, and then the people followed, one by one and then in human flocks to match their winged predecessors, until the cities were stripped of men.

  I ran the few remaining blocks to Messina’s Ospedale.

  * * *

  Other than a tired-looking guard, the entrance hall was ominously empty; my steps made a dull echo as I crossed the room. The door at its other end opened into Messina’s version of the pellegrinaio. It was much smaller than Siena’s, and packed with misery from wall to wall. Some patients lay on cots, but most were in piles of straw on the stone floor. Two black-robed mantellate moved about the room, attending to the sick. Near the door a young man on a cot writhed in agony. He was bare to the waist, and the swellings beneath his arms and at his neck proclaimed his illness. His skin was speckled with purplish spots, and he gasped with every breath. I imagined the miasma of the Plague making its way into my body through my mouth, nose, even the pores of my skin. Every itch sent me swatting at an imagined flea carrying certain death. Nothing I had ever encountered before in medicine or elsewhere could compare to the stench of Yersinia claiming its victims.

  My task kept me moving through the maze of bodies until I was sure Gabriele was not among them. The exhausted sisters had not seen or heard anything of a gray-haired painter. I stumbled through the doors at the opposite end of the pellegrinaio.

  I’d entered a gemlike, empty chapel. Tall stained glass windows topped with pointed arches let beams of colored sunlight into the room, slanting red and blue. The air smelled sweet—seasoned wood and the tang of paint. I walked farther into the chapel, past rows of wooden benches carved with twining leaves and flowers. Every detail stood out in this strange, quiet place. At the far end of the chapel was the altar, a large stone table with a crypt underneath, and above the altar, a partially painted altarpiece.

  I stared at the unfinished panel. Was it Gabriele’s? In some places, gold leaf had been applied on a background of reddish brown clay and gleamed in the light from the windows. At the top of the panel were four saints: Christopher, Luke, Placidus, Nicholas. I dropped my eyes to look at the unfinished predella. It portrayed the Annunciation; Mary arched away from the angel Gabriel’s intrusion, her arms warding off the frightening news that she would bear the Son of God. If this was Gabriele’s painting, the model might have been Paola—his late wife. Her fears of childbearing had been justified, I thought grimly. But where was Gabriele? What might be keeping him from his work in the middle of the day—illness, or worse? The wall behind the altar was covered by a blue velvet curtain that I pushed aside with one hand—there was another room behind it, darker than the chapel.

  As my eyes adjusted, I saw brushes in clay jars on a table along with the raw materials to mix tempera-based paints—pigments, a basket of eggs, a mortar and pestle, sheets of gold leaf. Then I looked down. Gabriele lay on the floor on a makeshift pallet with his eyes closed. He was curled on one side, mirroring the arc of Mary’s body in the moment of the Annunciation, warding off suffering to come. I could see every detail of his face as if it were illuminated—his long curved lashes, the slant of his closed eyes, the faint shadow of new beard growth on his cheek. He had to be alive—wouldn’t I have known otherwise? He opened his eyes and his hoarse voice made me jump.

  “I am not dead yet, Beatrice, if that is what you are wondering.” He coughed once, a harsh sound.

  I would have laughed had I not been so afraid. I moved toward him, but Gabriele raised his hand in a gesture of warning.

  “Stay away.” I dropped my hands. “You were quite right about Messina, it seems.” His words trailed off in a spasm of coughing. I wanted to lie next to him and cradle his body in mine. I could almost imagine how his long slender back might feel under my hands, and the rasp of his unshaven cheek against my own—but that was irrational and deadly.

  “Please leave me, Beatrice. Your presence endangers your life.”

  “I can’t.” I stood frozen, drinking in the sight of his face and the sound of his voice. “Can you walk?”

  “I cannot.”

  I imagined picking him up and carrying him out of the tiny room, the chapel, the Ospedale, through Messina’s streets and out into the surrounding contado, as he had carried me, once, from the burning scriptorium. But even if I could, then what?

  “Beatrice, you must leave the city. It will do neither of us any good if you too should fall ill with this malady.” He stopped to cough once more, holding his hands over his face. “I will find you, if I recover. Some do, do they not?”

  Some do, some must. Gabriele looked up ab
ruptly, an odd expression on his face, as if he had heard my unspoken words.

  “Do you know, given your possession of my journal and your place in time, what befalls me? Is it written somewhere in the century you once inhabited?”

  “Oh no, I have no idea what happens to you. I wouldn’t be considering your marriage proposal so seriously if I’d knew you were about to die.” Gabriele smiled weakly. “I accept,” I said, my voice breaking.

  “Not now,” he said. “I cannot bear to think of your precious vows given to a dying man, if that is what I am. I know what it means to have my promise follow someone to the grave.” He looked toward the doorway that led to the chapel and his unfinished painting.

  I reached into my bag and found the five antibiotic tablets I’d brought from my old home. They felt curiously heavy, as if their power had lent them weight. I placed them into Gabriele’s palm without touching his hand.

  “Take one of these now,” I said to him. “Can you swallow?”

  He brought one tablet to his mouth and chewed it, grimacing. “Is your century this bitter, Beatrice?”

  “I usually swallow them whole.” I didn’t know how to answer his bigger question. “Take one every time the bells ring the hours, until they are all done.”

  “I shall, sweet Beatrice, until either the tablets are gone, or I am.”

  “Gabriele?” He raised his eyes to look at me. “Please don’t die.”

  “I will do my best,” he said, “and I hope you will do the same.” I nodded. “Leave me now, Beatrice.”

  “Can I touch you first?”

  “You are the physician. You know how the disease passes from one body to another.”

  This was probably the pneumonic form, with all that coughing. Both of us were probably doomed. Fifteen years of training die hard—I couldn’t bring myself to touch him. But my head filled with unexpected images—burning gold and red and blue, a shimmering sweep of fabric, the glitter of outstretched wings. He’d let me see the visions in his head.

  “If we survive, I will call upon you to keep your promise,” he said, so quietly I could hardly hear him. “Now, for the love of God, please leave me.”

  I left the tiny room and began to run. I ran around the unfinished painting, ran through the bright gleaming chapel, ran out of the Ospedale. I kept running, running while crying, until my lungs burned and my legs ached, running without knowing where I was going.

  * * *

  Clara finished packing, but her mistress had not returned. She went to look for Messer Provenzano, who was loading trunks into a cart behind an irritable-looking horse. He was going to the country, he said, and she’d be wise to do the same. Feeling desperate, Clara watched Messer Provenzano hoist the last of his belongings into the carriage.

  “Can you help me find my mistress, Ser?”

  “I can’t imagine how I could help, Signorina,” he said, not unkindly. Clara put her face in her hands. “Now, now, don’t despair. I do hate to see a young girl cry.” He patted her shoulder awkwardly, apparently unaccustomed either to young girls, or crying, or both.

  Clara attempted to calm herself; she hadn’t survived as an orphan this long without learning to make her rescuers feel at ease. Her throat ached, but she managed to produce a smile. “Will your travels take you past the Ospedale?”

  “I’m bound for my lodgings in the contado. But I can take you on my way.”

  Clara was not even certain of her mistress’s whereabouts—perhaps she was wandering through the streets, lost or ailing. Clara looked up at Messer Provenzano’s round face and felt the panic in her throat.

  “Monna Trovato is so wise, and so kind. What if I cannot find her? What will become of my poor mistress, alone in this terrible place?” Clara’s voice broke in a wail, the sound of the child she had so recently been.

  Provenzano reached out and brushed the tears off her cheek with his plump fingers. “I am sure she will be found. How hard could that be? She stands out in any crowd like a Moor among maidens. Or no, that is not quite right, more like a maiden among Moors. Never mind the comparisons. And I shall leave a note here with directions to where we’ve headed, should she return and find us gone.”

  When Provenzano was done writing, Clara took the piece of parchment and, as they left the fondaco, affixed it to the front gate. It looked forlorn there, pale against the dark iron. Clara climbed up with Provenzano into the cart, and leaned up against his ample side, finding comfort in his bulk and constant conversation. But as they headed into the city streets she heard the cathedral tolling funeral bells, and the sound made her shudder.

  When they reached the Ospedale piazza the sun was nearing the horizon. At the Ospedale entry, the guard did remember a woman with blue eyes and black hair who had come and eventually gone, toward the city gates. There was nowhere else to look.

  “I must be on my way,” Provenzano said at last, “before the roads become too dangerous to travel.” Clara imagined being left here, alone in Messina with a pestilence raging. Desperate, she reconsidered her approach. An idea came to her with sudden clarity: food, of course. His width proclaimed his propensity to give in to that temptation, one Clara was well-equipped to deliver.

  “If, heaven forfend, we fail to find my mistress, and it is to your liking, I will serve you in the capacity of cook and maidservant in your country home. Perhaps you have tasted a bit of what I have to offer?” She held her breath, watching his face.

  “Ah, yes. You are the author of that lovely breast of pheasant.” He closed his eyes and she prayed the memory of the pheasant would do its work. To Clara’s great relief, Messer Provenzano’s face softened into a smile, and as he opened his eyes he patted the seat beside him. “Jump up here with me. I daresay there’s room for your small self, and perhaps we will find your mistress on our way. If not, I will welcome your company and talent in the kitchen.”

  “I shall come,” Clara said, relieved but also despairing at the thought of leaving her mistress, wherever she might be. She climbed back up beside Provenzano, closing her eyes with fatigue. When she opened them again she saw the high walls of the city with the hills looming beyond them. She said a quiet prayer for Monna Trovato and herself as the cart rumbled out of the gates.

  They had traveled no more than a few minutes before she saw a woman dressed in blue, slumped under a tree by the side of the road.

  “Stop your horse!” she cried shrilly, feeling her heart begin to pound. Clara clambered down from the high seat, nearly falling in her haste, and ran across the grass to the base of the tree. Small brown pears still hung from the branches.

  Her mistress leaned against the tree’s trunk, her eyes closed and face flushed. Was it heat or fever? The blue eyes opened, grave and deep, those remarkable eyes that made loyalty inevitable.

  “I thought I’d lost you! Why are you here? Did you find the painter? Why is your face so red?” The hint of a smile briefly curved her mistress’s lips.

  “I found him, yes. You have so many questions.” Her answer was unusually short. “I had to leave him there—he’s sick.”

  “Will he recover?”

  “I don’t know, Clara, I don’t know.” Her voice trailed off. “Clara, I’m so incredibly thirsty . . . can you please find me something to drink?” Her mistress closed her eyes again. This was very strange—in all their time together Monna Trovato had never stayed still while asking anything of her. And she never complained of anything affecting her own self—decidedly strange, and troubling.

  “Are you ailing, Signora?”

  “Ailing? I hope not. I don’t know.” She did not look at all well; sweat had started to collect at the line where her black hair met her smooth brow.

  “I shall go and fetch you water straight away,” Clara said breathlessly. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  “Where would I go?” Signora Trovato opened her eyes again. “The water bottle is in my bag, there.” Clara reached into the bag and found a peculiar flask, perfectly cylindrical and made of a hard
, shining metal—could it be silver? Her mistress had never shown it to her. It felt cool in her hands.

  “I will be back soon. The fountains are not far from the city gates.” Her mistress nodded listlessly. Clara said another prayer, imploring all the saints she knew, and the Virgin, to protect them both. Provenzano stepped down from the cart.

  “She’s thirsty, have you any water, Ser?” Clara asked anxiously. Provenzano shook his head.

  “I’ve just finished the last bit of wine. May I offer you an oat cake, Monna Trovato?”

  “No, thank you. I’m too thirsty.”

  Provenzano’s horse whinnied loudly, frightened by a few wild dogs who had come too near. As he lumbered back to his cart to deal with the beasts, Clara walked back to the city gates. The guards remembered her and let her through. By the time she’d found the fountain, filled the curious vessel, and passed through the gates again, the light was fading. Provenzano and his cart were still waiting. He’d pulled off the road, and he and his horse had both fallen asleep. But when Clara returned to the base of the pear tree, her mistress was gone.

  PART VIII

  THE RIVAL

  Giovanni de’ Medici’s confraternity, the Brotherhood of San Giovanni Battista, met in an underground chamber of the Medici palazzo. Iacopo sat uncomfortably in his father’s chair and gripped the wooden armrests until the decorative scrolls etched themselves into his palms. The scribe beside him penned the date on a sheet of parchment, quill scratching audibly. Iacopo watched the black letters spidering across the page: In the year one thousand three hundred and forty-eight, this month of February . . .

  The light from golden sconces flickered on the walls, illuminating tapestries that depicted the life of San Giovanni Battista. Named for Firenze’s patron saint, the Brotherhood included some of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the city. Eight of them sat around the long table, and to Iacopo they seemed to evaluate and dismiss him with one communal glance. His breastbone barely cleared the top of the massive table in the center of the room.