back to Anna as she recalled the cold, waxy skin her lips had brushed against, and how she had burst into tears immediately afterward, rendering the remaining memory a blur.
She rose, feeling awkward, like she always did whenever she came here, embarrassed by the conflicting emotions that still ran through her. As a young girl, she’d harbored only feelings of resentment for her dead mother, who had abandoned her so early in life. Her father’s death following a car accident just before her tenth birthday had only amplified that sense of abandonment. It was not until after her twelfth birthday, while visiting her mother’s grave with her grandmother, that Anna had learned the truth about how her mother had died.
“Why isn’t Mamma buried next to Daddy, at St. Michael’s?”
Her grandmother had looked at her for a long while before answering.
“The Catholic church did not permit her to be buried at St. Michael’s,” she finally said.
“Why not?”
Her grandmother remained silent, but her eyes took on a troubled expression.
“Why not, Nonna?” she repeated.
After a moment her grandmother looked down at her and said, “Because she took her own life, Anna. This is a grave sin in the eyes of the Church. Because of it, she was denied a Catholic burial.”
“My mamma killed herself?” Anna felt the shock right down to her feet. “Why? Why did she do that?”
Her grandmother sighed, her face painted with sadness as she drew Anna close. “Your mother was ill, Anna. Her mind, it...”
Nonna’s voice broke, and tears welled up in her eyes. “She was not well. I did not know how bad it had gotten until...until it was too late.”
Anna shook off the memory of that long-ago conversation and looked around. The silence of the cemetery, mostly abandoned in the midday heat, was interrupted only by the occasional chirping of a bird from the nearby willow trees. Despite the brilliant sunshine, a sense of gloom stole over her. She wondered for the millionth time what had caused her mother to take her own life all those years ago. Her grandmother either did not know or had chosen not tell her. And, not for the first time, Anna also wondered if her mother’s depression might be hereditary. Perhaps that factored into the melancholy that had plagued her for most of her life, especially after... She tried to push the unwanted thought away, but remembrance flashed through her before she could stop it. She’d been...
* * * *
...riding her bike along the path next to the river, where it would be cooler, even though the fading sun tells her she should be getting home. Sudden shock, as rough hands grab her from behind, jerking her from the bike—shock that turns quickly to terror. Lying on her back on the ground, she looks up at the massive silhouette of a man, his facial features distorted by the nylon stocking over his head. Tape over her mouth, stifling her scream as she struggles to get away. A glimpse of her overturned bike, one wheel spinning lazily in the fading light. Rough ground scraping across her back as he drags her into the nearby trees. Then, the glint of steel and the feel of cold metal against her throat as he...
Stop.
* * * *
Anna willed herself to disconnect from the past, refusing to allow the black memory to have its way with her. She grabbed her purse from the ground and walked away from the grave, back to her waiting car. She hated coming here. Her visits to her mother’s gravesite always churned up emotions better left undisturbed.
Chapter 2
Venice, Italy
1576
Nine-year-old Isabella Moretti raced along the deserted streets toward home and safety. She kept to the main arteries, avoiding the maze of narrow back alleys that would shorten her route but where she would likely encounter the bloated, festering body of some poor unfortunate who had been left to die in the street.
As she turned a corner and veered north along the canal, Isabella skidded to a stop, her heart clenching in terror. On the cobblestone pavement directly in front of her, a stray dog, its dirty fur matted and spiked, looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes. Then it growled deep in its throat before tearing savagely into a foul-smelling corpse, the body of a man which had been tossed like rubbish on the steps of a nearby dwelling. With eyes as round as saucers, Isabella watched the starving animal yank a strip of purple, bruised flesh from the stinking cadaver before hungrily devouring it.
She quickly checked the front door of the residence and saw the clearly marked “X” indicating the presence of pestilence. One hand reached for the crucifix hanging from her neck. The other desperately clutched the satchel of food she’d been dispatched to obtain from her aunt. Isabella uttered a silent prayer, surrounded by the nightmare that had descended over the city in the form of the great mortality, the Black Death.
Her heart suspended in the back of her throat, she slowly backed away from the animal and the infected body, hoping she had not come into contact with contaminated air. No one knew what caused the plague to spread from person to person. The Doge had issued a proclamation that drinking or bathing in the water was forbidden. The priests declared there was no hope. For their sins, the people of Venice were to die. Uncle Francesco, who had travelled to Lutece in France, said the sickness was rampant there too, and it had been determined that touching an infected person was the way the evil spread.
Fear sat like a ball of lead in her stomach as she moved away from the dog and the foul-smelling corpse. When she felt it safe to do so, she turned and ran, and did not stop until she reached the main canal. The only other people she might encounter crossing the bridge were the three physicians who still traveled about the city. And the pizzicamorti, she reminded herself.
Isabella was deathly afraid of the pizzicamorti, the masked men who moved about the city in their long, tarred black cloaks with gloved hands and bells at their ankles to herald their approach, the men who collected the plague-ridden bodies to be buried or burned. Papa had explained to her that the strange white hooked-nose masks worn by the pizzicamorti contained aromatic herbs to counteract the sickness, and were necessary to keep the disease away. But to Isabella, the pizzicamorti appeared nothing short of monsters.
Arriving at the main canal, she slowed to a trot to allow the burning stitch in her side to ease. As she crossed the viaduct, Isabella looked out over the water. A large boat, heaped with the corpses of the day’s dead, emerged from beneath the bridge. The barge and its gruesome cargo, she knew, was headed to the Lazaretto on Santa Maria Island or to one of the other outlying islands, where the disease-ridden bodies would be burned or buried in mass graves.
On the distant horizon, plumes of charcoal smoke had already begun to blacken the sky. The ghastly stench of rotting and burnt flesh hung heavily in the air, an odor that permeated the city daily.
The sickness raged out of control in this, the second summer of the recurrence of the plague. Last week, she had heard Papa say more than five hundred were dying each day in Venice. The wealthy had fled to the countryside last summer, when the first victims had fallen prey to the dreaded disease. The remainder of the port city’s population, including Isabella and her family, did their best to remain indoors as much as possible. Even the churches had closed their doors, the priests refusing to attend at the homes of any who had taken ill. Instead, the dwellings of those who had been infected were marked with an “X”, and no one was permitted to enter or leave, the doors sealed and windows
