She ought not to have been surprised, for Nico had said she would be sitting with him, but it was a shock all the same. In the scola at home, the women sat in a gallery high above the sanctuary; the stairs were a daunting obstacle to all but the fittest and youngest among them, and there were some who complained. Never her mother, though. Mamma had always insisted they were lucky to have such a view of their magnificent scola. “Only birds on the wing could hope to see as well as we do up here.”

Nico led them to one of the left-hand pews about halfway down the aisle and gestured for her to go in first. “Signora Rossi behind us is deaf,” he whispered in her ear, “and the pew in front is broken, so no one ever sits there. Just remember to copy what I do.”

He took a cushion from its hook on the pew in front and knelt upon it, so she did the same, and then, as everyone else bent their heads in prayer, she looked around discreetly and tried to make sense of the church’s strange interior. She would remember every detail, and one day, when she was again at home with her parents, she would be able to tell them all about it.

There was no decoration to speak of, apart from a series of wall plaques in high relief, their paint badly faded, and several oil paintings so black with age that their subjects were impossible to discern. At the front was an elevated area, separated from the rest of the church by a low wooden rail; at its center was a table draped in an embroidered cloth. Candles in tall brass holders flanked the table, and to the side, in a sort of alcove, was a rather alarming statue of a dying Christ on the cross, larger than life size and naked apart from a small cloth around his midsection, his painted blood flowing from an abundance of wounds. Directly ahead was another elevated statue, this one almost exactly the same as the one in the parlor at the house, only here the woman had a golden crown, and there were rows of candles in a tiered metal frame at her feet.

Bowing her head, Nina tried to arrange her thoughts into something resembling prayer, but she couldn’t find it in herself to concentrate. It was silent in the church, but only superficially so, for around them a constant chorus of whispers and shuffling rose and fell, the counterpoint an occasional deafening sneeze from an older man standing on the opposite side of the aisle.

“That’s my zio Beppe,” Nico whispered. “His hay fever starts in March and doesn’t let up until November.”

Nico had just bent his head again, likely to whisper another diverting comment in Nina’s ear, when a pair of sharply hissing voices pierced the imperfect silence.