all around and panic she couldn’t control raced through her. The darkened house made it impossible to tell how long she remained sitting there, but eventually a miserable, retching sound reached her and she got weakly to her feet. Mamma. Her mother needed help. Isabella fumbled her way around the dark kitchen, lit a candle and carried it with her to her parents’ room. Both her mother and father lay unmoving on the bed. Isabella placed the candle on the night table and checked for breathing. Her mother was still alive but, oh, the way she looked. Her once-beautiful face was now a grotesque mask of sores. Her head had tilted to one side as a result of the large lump on her puffy and swollen neck. Isabella’s gaze traveled downward and took in the blood stains covering the front of her mother’s nightgown and the bedding.
She cursed herself for having fallen asleep earlier. Had she remained awake, they might have been spared. Perhaps the men who had sealed off the house could have been persuaded to take her parents to the Lazaretto, where they might at least have a chance of recovery.
Isabella moved to the other side of the bed. Unlike Mamma, her father did not appear to be breathing. Heeding some instinct that rose in her, Isabella did not touch him. Papa was dead. She just knew.
She stood at the end of the bed, inhaling the foul stench of disease, mesmerized by the dim light of the candle glinting off fresh blood at her mother’s mouth. She listened to the low death rattle coming from her mother’s throat.
A strange numbness penetrated Isabella. When finally she left her parents’ room, she moved like a phantom, instinctively heading to her own bedroom, where she crawled into bed. Isabella curled into a tight ball, consumed by the horrific images of her lifeless father and sick mother, knowing that within hours her mother would also be dead. The understanding reached deep into the marrow of her young bones—she was alone. Alone in this house of death.
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