There was a noise from downstairs and then the doctor appeared. He was a thin man with a long face and extended chin that made it seem as if his jowls had been dragged down and hooked around it. He was a local practitioner, used to treating snake bites, and he went straight to where the patient lay. Luna noticed his hands were large and marked with scars as he lifted Elisabetta’s leg and peered at the wound.

Professor di Novara came rushing into the chamber. The men surrounded the bed and spoke so softly Luna couldn’t hear. The fire in the hearth had dwindled and she went in search of a servant to stoke it with more wood. When she returned, the doctor was applying a liniment to the wounded area. The smell was powerfully foul.

‘It’s a traditional remedy,’ Nicolaus told her quietly. ‘You did well to get the hearth seen to—the fire will warm her body temperature and any sweating will aid the expulsion of the poison.’

‘It smells like meat left out too long, gone green and rancid.’

‘Fresh sheep-droppings cooked in wine. This is a strong potion.’ He sounded hopeful.

‘How bad is she?’

‘If she survives the night, then she will live, God willing, though the doctor says he may yet have to amputate her leg.’

Luna made the Sign of the Cross. Nicolaus was standing very close.

‘If you had not sucked out some of the poison she would be dead already,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised you know of Avicenna’s treatment. I thought the Mussulman’s medical text was only ever read by university students.’

‘I came to it through reading his philosophical work. He was an Aristotelian. My education was as thorough as any university student’s,’ Luna answered and her voice was more abrupt than she’d meant it to sound but her mind was elsewhere. She went to the chair beside the sick bed from where she planned to keep vigil and pray for her friend. She felt Nicolaus’s eyes follow her but she had not the focus to engage in any more conversation. A terrible keening had taken hold within her, the ache of grief she knew only too well. She could not lose Elisabetta as well.

Chapter Twenty-Three

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

February 1497

When dawn broke the following morning and Elisabetta still breathed, however weakly, Luna went with the professor and Nicolaus to the family chapel and knelt in the dusty first light and made prayers of gratitude. Luna used a padded square to take her weight and was glad of the thin layer between her and the hard cold stone. Her breath hung in the air as she whispered the rosary and passed the string of gemstone beads through her fingers. Professor di Novara lit a candle at the altar and then returned to kneel beside her.