she asked anxiously.
“No, Mamma, no one,” Isabella lied, not wanting to upset her mother further. “When will Papa return?” She wanted desperately to talk to her mother about Roberto, but Isabella sensed it would be better not to. She had never seen Mamma look so wretchedly sad.
Her mother only shrugged in response and turned back to her work, although fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. Isabella retreated to her bedchamber, where she could shed her own tears for Roberto without upsetting Mamma.
As it turned out, her father did not arrive home until late that night. After watching her mother wander around the house like a wraith all day, Isabella had gone to bed early. A few hours later, she heard the latch at the front door lift, and Papa’s heavy footsteps as he entered.
Silently, she crept out of bed and cracked open the door to her bedroom so she could listen as he spoke to her mother in the kitchen.
At first, she could hear only the sound of Papa’s muffled crying. Somehow, the idea of her strapping, broad-shouldered father weeping seemed far worse than the grief she’d seen in her mother’s eyes earlier.
“Is there hope for him? Will he be taken care of?”
Papa didn’t answer, and Mamma raised her voice. “Tell me. I must know.”
“The Lazaretto—it is worse than hell,” came Papa’s strangled voice. “Thank God I thought to take his mattress with us. The sick are three and four to a bed, others lying on the bare ground. Some of them have gone insane, roaming about naked, tearing at their own flesh. The place is filled with foul odors and the cries of the dying. The dead are taken from their beds and thrown into the pit, or their bodies burned on the other side of the island.” He stopped and Isabella heard him crying. When he spoke again, he said, “After witnessing this, I knew I could not leave Roberto in such a place and tried to take him back with me, but I was not permitted to, upon threat of death. I stayed for as long as I was able, until I was told to leave at dark. Some of the dying—God help them—some were not yet dead when they were taken to—”
Here her mother let out a desperate wail. “Stop. No more... No more.”
The mental picture conjured up by her father’s words filled Isabella with unspeakable horror, even as her heart broke for Roberto. She scrambled back to bed, pulling the covers over her head, not wanting to hear or know anything more. She cried for what seemed like hours, hugging herself in the dark until her tears were spent. At some point during the night, she fell asleep.
* * * *
Isabella awoke the next day to silence. The angle of the sun entering her room from the window looked wrong, and she realized she’d slept through most of the morning. Why had Mamma not awakened her? She listened, but did not hear her parents moving around. It’s because of Roberto, she reminded herself. The thought immediately caused sadness to rush back.
She rose and moved to the basin of water in her room, washing only her face. Her family heeded the advice that bathing increased the risk of contamination. Still in her nightgown, she traveled to the kitchen. Her mother was not there, nor her father. As she was about to go wake her parents, who must be still sleeping, she heard the distinct sound of a rasping cough coming from behind the closed door of her parents’ bedroom. Isabella stopped in front of the door and listened. More coughing, followed by the sound of a low moan.
Intuitively, Isabella knew what she would find when she opened the door, and the knowledge rested heavily on her. Even so, she hesitated only a moment. Worry for her parents overrode her fear. She opened the door and entered. Her mother and father lay next to each other in bed. Both of them looked flushed with fever. Papa’s eyes appeared watery and frightened as he did his best to stifle the cough that wracked him.
Her mother spoke to her in a weak voice. “Isabella.”
She turned to her mother and saw it, the tiny lump that had begun to form on Mamma’s neck, just below her ear. Isabella’s gaze travelled up to her mother’s eyes, which no longer seemed grief-stricken, only desperate.
“Mamma...”
“Isabella, listen to me.”
“Mamma—”
“No. Do not speak, only listen, and do exactly what I say. Gather what you need, and leave. Now. You must go to Zia’s house and remain there.”
“No!” The thought of leaving her parents and asking her aunt to take her in terrified Isabella.
She could see her mother struggle with her own emotion then heard her father’s stern voice in between his fits of coughing. “Isabella! Do as your mother says. Your mother and I will take care of each other, and when we are well, we will return for you. But you must go... Now.” He sank back down in the bed, as if speaking the few words had utterly exhausted him.
Isabella ran from the room, found the aromatic herbs her mother had used when Roberto had become ill and placed them in a bowl, lighting them. She stacked logs on the fireplace grate, using kindling to get the fire going. Isabella had watched Mamma make broth many times and knew what to do. Broth would help, maybe. Hurrying to the kitchen, her mind racing as she set about her task, Isabella was sick with fear at the prospect of leaving her parents when they were ill. Having already lost Roberto, the thought of losing her parents terrified her. She prayed in earnest as she worked to prepare the broth. Surely God would hear her, if only she prayed hard enough.
While the soup simmered, she returned to her parents, carrying a washbasin of water and rags to place on their heads, as she had seen her mother do with Roberto. Her mother moaned and opened her eyes when Isabella placed the cloth on her fevered forehead.
“You…must not come near us, Isabella. Do you hear me? You must leave.”
“Shhh... I will go, Mamma, but not yet.” The heat emanating from her mother’s body alarmed her, but she continued sponging her face and fever-chapped lips. Then she moved to the other side of the bed to minister to her father. Papa did not open his eyes, even when she placed the wet cloth on his head. His skin, she noticed with growing alarm, was covered in a blistery rash, and a purplish bruise had begun to blossom on his arm.
Three hours later, Isabella carried two bowls of broth into the sweltering bedroom. She did her best to wake first her mother, and then her father, but neither of them responded.
“Mamma, wake up.” When Isabella tried to prop her mother up in bed to feed her the broth, her mother moaned and began to cough. Isabella could see Mamma was burning up with fever, and the same rash she had seen on her father earlier had begun to blister her mother’s skin. The boil on Mamma’s neck had gotten bigger as well, and another lump had already begun to form under her arm. The air in the room was saturated with the same foul odor as when Roberto had become sick.
“Papa?” She moved to the other side of the bed to try rousing her father. He cried out loudly in his sleep, words that made no sense to Isabella. The tips of his fingers, she noticed, had turned black in the past few hours. She did not detect any boils on his neck, but when she gently lifted his arm, she could not help but see the huge lump that had formed there. Pus oozed freely from it, giving off an overpowering stench of infection.
Isabella knew she had to get help—she would not be able to do what needed to be done alone. She had to get to her aunt’s house, and plead with her to return here to help. Papa was her only brother. Surely Zia would come once Isabella explained how things were.
She
