Plague in the Mirror

by Deborah Noyes

  When Cristofana steps onto the Arno’s other bank, though, May hesitates. There isn’t a cloud in the perfect blue sky today, but it’s hard to believe you’re invisible — when you aren’t used to being — so as she comes into the open, May has to make it unaccosted past one or two bridge-bound travelers before she can relax. When no one notices her on the winding cart road through green and gold hills dotted with cypress and silvery olive trees, she breathes easier, keeping her plum-colored target in view.

  At last Cristofana turns down a scrubby dirt pathway with grass and blue chicory growing around the wheel tracks, startling a wild rabbit or hare out of hiding. She stops at what appears to be a church, if the crude wooden cross out front is any clue, or perhaps a convent. It’s a shabby building with a garden and a small stable off to one side, though there’s something familiar about the layout of the buildings or the angle of the view, and it hits May that the trek she just made follows the same route — through a much-changed, or at least more populated, landscape — that she and Gwen and Liam took down from that bed-and-breakfast in the hills the day they first arrived in Florence City Center. The only difference was that their cab had crossed one of the handful of other city bridges. Future Ponte Vecchio was open only to foot traffic.

  Was this the original “medieval nunnery” mentioned in the B&B’s brochure?

  Her double lurks out front for a long time, pacing back and forth as if trying to make up her mind. The sound of bells nearby seems to trigger a decision, and rather than lift the iron knocker, she slips around the long, low stone building and cautiously approaches a small fenced kitchen garden in back. Here, three women wearing black veils and dresses of rough brown cloth kneel in the soil, weeding.

  Cristofana stands stock-still by the figure nearest the gate, her shadow falling over a woman with hollow eyes and hair pulled back severely under her veil. She looks to be about ten years older than Cristofana but is possibly younger, May thinks, and worn down by what must be a difficult life of labor and sacrifice.

  May floats closer to get within earshot, holding her breath, feeling exposed, though she isn’t.

  It takes the woman a long while to look up, as if she’s delaying on purpose, but the minute she lifts her face, May sees the resemblance. The woman stands, wiping earth-black hands on her sack dress, and under her steady gaze, Cristofana averts her eyes. The two kneeling nuns now stand, too, nodding or bowing as they pass Cristofana, filing out of the fenced-in garden in silence. They disappear inside the convent.

  “Marietta,” Cristofana says crisply. Her gaze is still turned to the ground, from what May can tell, and her knotted hands fidget behind her back. What she’s really doing, May sees, is slipping that honking red ruby off her finger. The ring vanishes into her basket. “I mean, Suor Arcangela, of course.”

  “Of course you do.” The woman regards the girl, who must look garish to her, in her plum-colored dress and ratty ribbons. With a curt nod, Marietta, or Sister Arcangela, walks the length of the fence, her own hands stiff behind her back. “Cristofana.” Her face is hard to read. “You have traveled long?”

  “You are well,” the other asks with a contemptuous wave, “here?”

  “I am always well.” The nun never turns her grave eyes from the other’s dress. “I need for little . . . here.”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Cristofana complains, her voice rising. “I read your letters. With your vow of poverty, you sleep in the straw on the hard ground. You wake in the night for Matins. You pad barefoot to meet your bridegroom Christ by candlelight. You are a slave, and it shows in every line on your face.”

  The nun’s face flushes red. “And you are an aberration.” She breathes deeply, composing herself. “God, who is Master of all, forgives you, sister, as do my thirty true sisters. As do I,” she adds, almost kindly, though the edge in her voice is obvious. “It’s been some time since I wrote to our mother, who for too long didn’t answer. You look ridiculous,” she blurts out, a distracted smile ghosting on her lips, “of course, as always — a preening doll. Like her.”

  Cristofana drops into a curtsy. “There is reason enough Mamma stopped writing, but where to begin. You do not refuse to speak her language, I see.”

  “It is not her language I object to . . . or her nation of origin. Our mother may be vain and foolish, but she turns a pretty phrase, and I welcome the chance to practice the English tongue. My studies occupy me much. Even now. Even . . . here,” the woman adds, parroting her younger sister’s tone. Her face changes — softens. “You have the news, then, you and Mamma?”

  Cristofana turns away, shading her eyes against the glare, bracing herself, probably.

  “Babbo is dead.”

  There’s nothing in her expression to suggest that this news upsets her. No surprise. No change in her posture. But by now, May knows Cristofana well. Something has collapsed in her. Broken.

  “Taken by the Scourge at sea,” continues Suor Arcangela, who was once plain old Marietta, somebody’s big sister. Cristofana isn’t quite an orphan, after all. “So many long years at sea, and this as his homecoming. Ludovico, his loyal servant, survived — one of the few aboard who did — and delivered Sire’s diary. He could not find Mother to notify her, and later I will ask you why not.”

  Cristofana waits intently, hands limp at her sides. May has never seen her so mute and still.

  “He died in the dark of night — or so in my solitude I imagine, for here his book turns silent, its pages mute — huddled in his own arms in a corner of a sloshing galley ship.” Sister Arcangela speaks in a low, lilting voice, like someone entranced. “Their galley put in at Genoa in January, driven by a fierce wind from the East. Sire wrote of how spices and silks from the East reached the markets of Europe via Baghdad. They moved along the Tigris through Armenia to the stations of our merchants in the Crimea. It was no wonder, he observed, that the pestilence — some said it cloaked itself in a poison cloud, a very corruption of the air, a miasma born of the filth of toads, lizards, and rats — should take these trade routes, too. That the great caravans would spread disease first among the Tartars and then the Genoese. Night and day, he wrote, while fearless rats sniffed from their holes to lap at vomit and waste and were kicked dead against the walls, men whispered it. The ship was cursed. The Pest was a punishment from God, they said, against those who make hay with the Turks and Saracens who raze Christian cities.”

  “Did Babbo raze cities?” Cristofana accuses, her voice shrill. “No . . . like those others crowded aboard a curse, he rocked and retched and was baffled and terrified of God. Your precious God.”

  “If you do not walk here with Him, sister, then walk away.” Suor Arcangela motions toward the silent, hulking convent. “The orphans behind those walls, their numbers growing every day, still court His grace. You would deny them?”

  Cristofana paces the fence line, her pale hand tracing splintered wood. “I will walk, Marietta, and do not for a moment suppose I’ll look back. . . . I came only to say good-bye.”

  “If you go, take care. This disease spreads so quickly. . . . It seemed to our father that the end of the world must be near, for the horror no one spoke aloud on that ship was that people, other people, are the biggest threat of all. Death travels in the kindly stroke of a forehead, in a kiss or a sigh, in the fingernails of a pained man digging into his wife’s wrist. You have heard the same rumors in Firenze? That pigs snuffle human garments only to topple down dead? It lurks in a lover’s breath or a mother’s lullaby, and in Christian courage — for the monks and priests die by the day, and our own ranks here, before we know to cross ourselves. Worst of all, it lives in a look, a look alone.

  “Babbo, before he died, blamed the dour old man in the corner, the first aboard to sicken and die, who had fixed him with that blank stare that promises, Here I am, and here, too, you will be.

  “Our father was tossed unceremoniously overboard like the others, so many others, food for sharks. Though the ship’s belly was bloated
with silks and spices, riches beyond measure, every belly on that vessel was empty. The food ran out, and the living were turned away from port after port, the galley driven away by flaming arrows and diverse engines of war. For no man would touch them. Ludovico and three fellows stole away at night in a rowboat.

  “You need not go,” she segues almost gently. “Mother Abbess and the sisters would welcome your help and give you refuge. It is a dangerous time.”

  “So that I might live for broth and pealing bells? For Matins and Lauds and Terce? So that I might speak of nothing but alms and intercessions and touch my forehead to the cold stone? Never.”

  “Never is a long time.”

  “Never is never.”

  “You are stubborn, Cristofana, and young.”

  “You are stubborn and old.”

  “Come back, then, and tell me your news. Bring some bread for the children. Another day.”

  “Another day.”

  May is shocked, when Cristofana turns in profile, to see her twin’s dirty cheeks streaked with tears. She swipes them away fiercely, frozen to the spot like startled prey. Swiping again, Cristofana strides away, and May knows she’ll have to overtake her on (or off) the road, beat her twin back to the city and the alley and hustle through the portal, but for an instant she’s too stunned to move.

  Sister Arcangela watches her sister go with sorrowing eyes, making the sign of the cross over her heart.

  May knows she is dreaming, for real this time, safe in bed.

  She wakes, in the dream, under a rough blanket, tangled in a crimson gown, her chest tight with dread. A baby is crying, somewhere, and the sound holds the night like an egg in its palm. It rakes the brain like blades, and there are no slamming doors or searching voices. No reassuring sirens. No noise of rescue. Only a lone, intermittent cry of pain and outrage that echoes everywhere.

  May has no idea how or when the cries sounding from all sides and none began to saw at her sleeping thoughts.

  Gone are the soft cotton bedclothes, the scalloped plaster walls, the hemp robe and plush towel hanging on the door hooks, the switch for the overhead light. Her hand gropes stone as she pads through hollow rooms she recognizes by their contours only. She makes her way to a shutter flapping in a damp wind. Slumped over the terrace ledge, she looks out over the sparkling river and the torch-lit bridges punctuating it at intervals, at a bright half-moon.

  Wherever it is, the child is hungry, wet, possibly sick. The sound seems to come from everywhere at once but mainly from behind the building, in the tangle of crooked streets far below. May’s nerves scream with panic. How can you help someone you can’t find?

  Coming, she pleads in mind. I’m coming. Please stop crying.

  Feeling her way in the dark through the front room to the door, May knows she has to get outdoors and find this small, needful thing whose hiccupping cries have grown jagged and pitiful.

  May.

  She is running in bare feet over sharp, damp cobbles, running blindly. They collide when she turns into the alley in the artists’ quarter, and May feels an animal rush as sinewy arms close round and contain her. Crushed against his chest, she feels fear and safety, heat and sorrow, and when she looks up, falling into the well of those eyes — a well echoing with promises in another language — he takes her breath in a deep kiss.

  The wailing child stills, and it’s a long, sweet silence, but beyond the city walls of Old Florence, a collective howl builds slowly, brimming like a too-full glass, and in reply, one baby becomes many, a shrieking cacophony.

  May.

  “Hey,” Gwen urges softly, her eyes startled and concerned in the halo of lamplight around her reading chair. “Wake up. You’re sleepwalking again.”

  “Again?” May blinks, confused. They roam like the ravenous wolves that circle the city walls at night, smelling death.

  “Second time this week. Liam found you last time on his way to the bathroom. You were headed for the terrace. Um, he was supposed to talk to you about it.”

  May sits down at Gwen’s feet and lays her head against the older woman’s bony knees with a sigh. “I’m sorry.”

  Gwen strokes her hair from behind, leaning in. “Look, kiddo. I know you don’t want to”— she tries to lift May’s stubborn chin —“but maybe we need to call Ann. Maybe we should call your parents.”

  May shakes her head violently. “You’re right. I don’t want to.”

  “Really? Or you’re just being a martyr?”

  “Really.” May looks up quickly. “Listen, we will. I will, but not now. I’m just thinking it through.”

  “It?”

  May wonders what, if anything, Liam has told Gwen about May’s behavior — his theories about it, anyway. She’s tempted in that moment of comfort to spill everything, all of it, relent and let them get her a counselor, get her some meds, get her better, get her over it. Him. Over fear and fascination and lust and rapture.

  But some instinct prevents her. “I just need a cup of tea,” she says coyly, looking away, and Gwen brightens, setting her book aside on the coffee table.

  In May’s experience, grown women, especially insomniacs, can’t resist the healing properties of tea.

  Distracted at dinner the next night, May tries to smile when Gwen pokes her with the handle of her spoon.

  “I’m glad to see you two are back on track. I was beginning to get worried.” Mother and son have been grappling over tiramisu at Caffagio, and Gwen’s contemplating the last spoonful, turning it this way and that. “Now I’m worried I ought to be worried about something else instead.”

  May and Liam both glare at her. “Didn’t your mother ever counsel you not to talk with your mouth full?” May complains.

  Gwen goes on smiling with her eyes in a really infuriating way. “Madlenka’s treating me to a night out, remember? I trust you two have plans?”

  Liam rolls his eyes. “Yes, Ma, we do, or I do, and I figured May might tag along, not that we’re joined at the hip or anything —”

  “What else would I do?” May interrupts, leaning forward on her elbows. “Do what?”

  Gwen dabs at the edges of her mouth with her napkin to hide her smile. She’s way too happy about this “worry” of hers, which tempts May to rebel against the whole prospect in advance.

  She picks at her dessert and lets her mind drift to Marco for spite. She hasn’t been through the portal in days, partly because of a succession of dream/sleepwalking incidents like last night’s. It just feels too risky, with the dates matching up the way they do. The plague is in full force. May can only imagine what’s happening back there, and it terrifies her.

  Tonight, everything’s blurry and blended. Plague or no plague, she feels fat and full and reasonably content, or at least grateful to be alive, which is saying a lot — but is she watching Liam’s mouth this way because she can’t watch Marco’s? Is she that fickle? Does Li mean that little to her? Or that much? And which is it?

  Liam doesn’t seem to want any part of Gwen’s smirking, either. He answers her question in a bored voice, his eyes trained on some invisible point across the room. “This Austin band’s playing downtown. They’re here on a European tour, real hick-downer, shoegazer shit.” He pauses a second, looking at Gwen, but she doesn’t object — she’s in a good mood, evidently, having paired off her two favorite young people and moved on with her stimulating life post-parenthood. Her and everyone else, May thinks, petulant.

  “The guy has a voice somewhere between honey and rust,” Liam’s saying, and May wonders if he gets this kind of talk from his father. She always forgets that their family is musical. For a lot of years, before the court-appointed visits ended, Mr. Macintyre (though he wouldn’t let anyone call him that; he was always “Billy”) gave Liam guitar lessons. They even wrote a couple of songs together. “It’ll make you want to drink yourself to death,” Liam says, “which is my kind of fun. And they have a great fiddle player.”

  Gwen offers May a pitying smile but doesn’t c
omment on the booze concept, so Liam hurries on. “I know it’s cheating”— he sighs —“and that we should go find dudes doing accordion or opera or the strobe-trance European thing or something, but I’m homesick. There. I said it.”

  “Sounds fun,” May says sincerely, dropping her spoon into her empty dish with a groan just before the waiter swoops it up, eager to turn his table, no doubt. She means it, and Liam settles back, his persuasive work done. He plows the salt and pepper shakers to the edge of the table with his forearm, rolls Gwen’s receipt into a compact puck, and bats it over with his fork. “Hockey?”

  “Geez,” May says, fishing the receipt out of her lap and batting it back with her butter knife. “You are homesick.”

  Gwen heads to the restroom, and the game continues in that soothing, halfhearted way such games do. May, meanwhile, considers how going out to see some band from Texas in a bar in Florence is a reasonably ordinary “young adult” thing to do if you happen to be in Florence. As it turns out, she has next to no experience being an ordinary nocturnal high-school student. Home in Vermont, she almost never went out, even on weekends. Unless her school friends rallied hard, she didn’t feel the need. May was content at home, unlike most kids her age. Home with her parents and True — each of whom was quiet in the same essential way and respectful of the others’ quiet — was enough. But that home didn’t exist anymore. At the moment, it had to be a gaping shell, with all Mom’s stuff trucked off to Boston and Dad’s in a funk of neglect. What would her mom’s new place look like? Would Dad hire a housekeeper?

  A week ago, these questions would have nagged at her in the worst way, the choice they’re forcing her to make would have wrenched her insides, but Liam’s invitation (if you can call it that) reminds her that there’s a world out there. There’ll be college in that world and concerts and maybe boyfriends. A boyfriend, May thinks, glancing up at Liam involuntarily when Gwen leaves for the coatroom and thinking at the same time that boyfriend is a stupid word, childish — how do you cram the big bad rush she feels for Marco into a word like that? The artist seems to have woken something up in her that was sleeping, something she didn’t know was there, and even if he won’t be in her world, can’t be in it, this brave new tomorrow of hers seems poised and electric, full of possibility.