They made slow progress through the city centre. Merchants loitered across the path through the main square where the fortress tower of the town hall cast its afternoon shadow over them. They travelled down the narrower lanes and were forced to stop more than once whilst carts, empty after a day at market, passed by. Finally they turned into Via Fusili. There was much commotion in the piazza ahead. Luna saw an extraordinary halo of deep orange and red around her home. She felt the heat before she saw any flames.

The wagon was forced to stop a distance from the house. The noise of stone cracking and wooden beams crashing was thunderously loud. It stilled Luna’s heart. Her home burned as easily as a bonfire of paper.

She fell from the wagon in her haste to get to her family. Friar Bartolomeo helped her up and forced a path through the crowd that had gathered to watch the spectacle. The building rumbled under the pressure of the heat. Flames flew from the windows and licked the already scorched corners where the gargoyles’ mouths sat open to guide the rainwater. A group of the preacher’s fanciulli threw sticks at the house, swarming ever closer to the heat in excited skips of daring. A cold dread flushed through Luna so that she called out like a madwoman to her step-mamma and Maria. For a dreadful moment she couldn’t remember little Pippo’s name, instead calling out, ‘Brother, my brother, where are you?’ She stared up at the windows and prayed Livia would protect Pippo and Maria.

People had begun to gawk. Luna felt them turning towards where she stood with the friar. Her heart pounded. ‘Find them, friar; they must be about here somewhere.’

Friar Bartolomeo disappeared into the crowd. Bright sparks of red and cinder shot up. Luna looked around frantically at the faces mesmerised by the dancing flames, some even shouting encouragement, but they were all strangers. She stared into the blaze engulfing her house till the heat burned her cheek and stung her eyes and she was forced to turn away.

Friar Bartolomeo returned soon after, his face mired in ash and gleaming with sweat. ‘I could not get close enough to go inside; the fire is too hot. But I found this.’

He handed her a dirty parchment and opened his mouth to speak, but no further sound came. The authority of the Great Council and the Signoria was stamped upon the proclamation and below it the judgement against Vincenzio Fusili.

‘I don’t understand,’ Luna managed to say. She sobbed as a thick beam of wood crashed noisily into the burning core of the fire. It was the courtyard, where she’d sat with her step-mamma and watched Pippo play, where the sunlight had warmed the stone.