Every few days, bodies were pulled from the marked houses by the pizzicamorti and taken to one of the islands for disposal. Those who were found alive in the pest houses were brought to the Lazaretto, the quarantine hospital on Santa Maria Island, although it was said few, if any, survived.
Papa had turned to his sister, hat in hand, in the spring, when procuring food for the family had become a problem. Isabella’s aunt had a connection to one of the men who operated the delivery barges, and the man had been conscripted to obtain supplies for them. Still, no one in her aunt’s household dared venture out to deliver the supplies to Isabella’s family. Usually Papa, but sometimes her older brother, Roberto, made the weekly trip to pick up the food. By remaining indoors and rationing their food, the Moretti family had managed to keep from contracting the sickness for the past year.
Then, yesterday morning, disaster struck. Death had pried its way into their home, placing its hand upon Roberto. Isabella had awoken to the sound of her mother’s bitter weeping, and Papa had taken her aside to explain Roberto had taken ill during the night.
Standing in the doorway of her brother’s room, Isabella had seen her mother placing a wet rag on his fevered brow, while Roberto shivered uncontrollably on his bed. Mamma immediately ordered her out of the room, but not before Isabella glimpsed the walnut-sized lump on her brother’s neck, and the purplish splotches already covering his exposed skin. The stench of his sickness soon filled the house. All that day, her mother burned incense and kept a roaring fire going, said to be beneficial. But Roberto only worsened by the hour, the pus-filled lumps on his neck and under his arm growing larger, his delirium increasing. Toward evening, he began to vomit blood, and Isabella knew what that meant. The widow next door had begun to vomit blood on the day before she died. It was the tell-tale sign death was imminent.
Before the sun had risen this morning, not knowing what else to do, her frantic parents bundled Roberto up, and Papa himself had taken her brother by boat to the plague hospital, the Lazaretto on Santa Maria Island, in the hope he might recover there. If Roberto remained with them, Papa argued with her mother, the house would surely be placed under quarantine and they would all be dead within the week. Isabella had not been allowed near her brother, not even to say goodbye, and she had cried broken-hearted tears long after the boat bearing Roberto disappeared on the horizon at sunup. With her father and brother gone, and her mother too grief-stricken over Roberto’s fate, it had fallen to Isabella to make the trip to her aunt’s house to pick up the week’s supply of food.
Despair washed over her as she picked up her pace again. The thought of dear Roberto, alone and dying among strangers at the Lazaretto, was just too much to bear. Tears stung her eyes, momentarily blinding her as she reached the other side of the bridge, and she did not see the staggering man who stumbled toward her. Sometimes the sick, in their delirium, left their homes before they were targeted as plague houses to wander the streets. Only the man’s mad ranting alerted her to danger in time. Fresh fear bit into her as she took in the man’s watery eyes and dirty clothes, encrusted with blood and vomit. He teetered back and forth along the edge of the canal, shouting loud curses at no one and waving his arms. From where she stood, Isabella could see pus oozing from the sores on his face. She watched as he bent and vomited viscous blood onto the pavement. When he began to cough, expelling phlegm and spittle into the air around him, she ducked away and ran for her life. She had not much farther to go, but her breath seared her lungs as she ran and the stitch at her side grew worse.
When she could no longer continue, Isabella stopped and leaned against the wall of a nearby building to catch her breath. The stench of carrion had firmly entrenched itself in her nostrils, making her stomach roil. A wave of bitter anger suddenly swept through her at her predicament. She was only a child and should not be traveling the dangerous streets alone. Why had God permitted this sickness to ravage them?
When her pounding heart slowed and her breathing returned to normal, she continued on the last leg of her journey, her anger spent. As she ran, she prayed again, asking God to deliver them from the evil pestilence which he had seen fit to rain down on the city.
Chapter 3
Toronto, Canada
Present Day
Anna woke up with a start and sat up in bed. She’d had the dream again. It always reared its head when she became stressed or anxious. Her pillow was wet, and she knew she’d been crying in her sleep. Anna waited until the nightmare and the unsettled feeling it always left behind dissipated.
The last time she’d been plagued by the dream was about a year ago, and she felt sure her visit to the cemetery earlier that day had triggered it. The dream was always the same. In it, she stood alone in a forest late at night. In the sky above her, a pale full moon shone blue-white light. The sound of a crying infant reached her and she turned to see a wooden cradle sitting on the forest floor, inside it a wailing baby. She moved toward the infant to comfort it, but her movements were sluggish, like walking under water. Before she reached it, something winged and sinister swooped down from out of the darkness, snatching the crying infant from its cradle and carrying it away into the black night.
In her apartment high atop the glass tower she called home, Anna turned and gazed out the wall of windows at the glowing orb of a moon in the velvety sky, unformed worry nagging at her. Just a case of nerves, she told herself. That’s why the dream had returned. Tomorrow evening she’d be on a plane bound for Venice, ready to start the most important project of her career.
She threw back the covers and padded to the adjoining bathroom, retrieved a sleeping pill from the medicine cabinet and downed it. Anna studied her reflection in the mirror over the sink, relieved to see the dark blue eyes staring back at her did not reflect the tiredness she felt. Her skin, although a bit pale, remained unlined and the chestnut-colored curls falling past her shoulders showed no hint of grey. High cheekbones, an aquiline nose and generous lips lent her a decidedly Renaissance appearance. She could easily be mistaken for someone ten years younger. Thankfully, she had inherited her grandmother’s good genes. She would look presentable enough tomorrow, she decided.
Back in her bedroom, Anna paused at the window before returning to bed. In the distance, the water of Lake Ontario sparkled in the moonlight. Directly below her, a well-preserved collection of Victorian industrial architecture sprawled along cobblestone streets. She never tired of the view, even after five years of living here. The contemporary tower housing Anna’s condominium overlooked the carefully restored buildings of the old distillery, which had once produced some of the finest whiskey in the country. It was this blending of past and present which had attracted Anna to the prestigious address, and she’d never regretted it, even though the place had come with a price tag of close to a million dollars. She could afford it. She’d done well for herself over the past fifteen years at Linley.
A huge international architectural firm, Linley boasted design studios in London, Paris, Dubai, Rome, New York, Los Angeles and Toronto. Anna had jumped at the chance when she’d been offered a job at the Toronto location when it first opened. Since then, she’d worked her way up to becoming a Canadian leader in the architectural design field. Even so, it had come as a complete surprise to her when, after the company had been awarded the Venetian hotel contract, Anna had been requested by the CEO in London, England, to travel there for a meeting. Then, earlier this week, he’d informed her of his decision. She’d been chosen to head the design team for the project and was to fly to Venice to meet with Paolo Falcone, the head of the Italian firm financing the construction of the hotel.
Anna talked herself into returning to bed. If she didn’t get some sleep, she’d be a jet-lagged mess tomorrow, and she wanted to put her best foot forward when she met with Falcone. She closed her eyes and allowed the little white pill to do its job.
* * * *
The
