We went in the direction of the train station, to where there was a small kiosk and a man making espresso over a gas burner. I sat on a red plastic stool feeling dumb with tiredness. Florence was in a basin and far away I could make out the contours of hills through the clouds over the red rooftops. David came back with drinks and a huge bag of paprika crisps.

“A third coffee, a third milk, a third sugar. He says fifteen, twenty minutes’ walk that way, it’s a totally different story; there’s power for starters. You can charge your phone up. See what you want to do. Well, that’s one option.”

“There are others?”

“There’s something I’d quite like to show you, Andy, now that I think of it. Of course, it may not be possible. Besides”—David, while not looking at me, allowed himself a small smile—“you probably want to get on.”

We went back into the water, away from the people. The day had brightened and light reflected back from the surface of the waters, bobbed in ripples on the facades of the great buildings. David pointed out a statue, a crumbling old tower, a terra-cotta rondel with a man’s face in profile. From a high open window, music poured. Hip-hop. Grandmaster Flash? Something old school, exuberant, and utterly incongruous among the Renaissance palaces.

“Batteries or generator?”

“No idea.”

A helicopter circled. The water, gray brown now, was to my knees. I was more interested in what David was taking me to see than I’d been interested in anything in a long time. We turned off down a narrow street and then into an even smaller lane, where the houses were tall and set no more than five meters apart. Above, the sky was reduced to a scrap of blue and white. It was colder here and dank. We came to a chapel, a tiny thing in dark stone no wider than the house I’d grown up in. The flood had reached only to the top step.

“Here we are,” David said.

“Is it open?”

“The priest is particular about it.”

The door was only latched. David pushed it open and we stepped inside, into the dark interior, where it was colder still, raising goose bumps on the skin of my neck. Little light fell through the windows and with the power out, the electric twinkle of LED candles didn’t do much to pierce the gloom.

David took off his backpack and put it down on a pew. There was a huge painting behind the altar and I moved closer to see it better.

“It is the one I was telling you about. The War in Heaven by Montocci. He was a student of Michelangelo’s. It shows the Archangel Michael leading the angels against the rebel forces of Satan.”

“And the dragon?”