So it was that Clarice Medici’s woman had assisted at Giulia’s birthing. The midwife said that a baby born under the eye of a full Moon carried dangerous possibilities of godless dark magic and a lifetime of ill health. The portent in her words had scared Giulia so she’d pushed as hard as she could to get her baby out before that ominous Moon glowed whole. But her baby did not come quickly. She ignored the woman’s entreaties to stop pushing; this was what she’d been born to do and her absolute conviction of bearing a son and heir for her master kept her focused through the increasingly frequent bouts of agony. Still she could not force her son into the daylight, and when the dusk closed in on the night of the Moon’s fullness, Giulia felt an overpowering dread. She cried out unremittingly as the pain consumed her mind and body, and when her daughter was born malformed and small, she cried out again with disappointment and horror at the thing that slipped from between her legs.

The candles lit to help the midwife through the final stage of birthing gave off a cloying heat. Giulia’s fresh nightgown was already wet with sweat and blood. She called for assistance but the midwife was yet to return from emptying the pail of dirty water. Giulia tugged the linen sheet up around her throbbing breasts, recoiling at the fetid smell; how fast the sheets had soiled again. She pulled her nightshirt over her head, letting it drop to the floor. Then she reached for one of the folded lengths of linen on the table beside her bed and slowly wrapped it around her chest. She pulled another length of linen to her and stuffed it between her legs. There was one more clean nightshirt hanging from a hook on her bedhead. She managed to tug on it till it fell into her hands and was grateful to the generosity of her hosts for such fine cotton. At last she could lie back again, exhausted but infinitely more comfortable.

The last of the dusk light slipped away in the square of sky Giulia could see through the window. Hurrying to make space for the impatient Moon, she thought, so that its glow might bewitch them all. She shifted onto her side and watched the door instead. Vincenzio must surely arrive soon.

From somewhere outside, there was a whistle and the rumble of barrels rolling across the courtyard. She thought of her own empty house and wondered how her husband had managed without her housekeeping skills. For a moment her mind turned to the horrible possibility that Vincenzio had another woman in her place. She shook her head; her husband loved her, of that she was sure, though would any man wait for a sickly wife who bore him crippled offspring? She must get back to Florence as soon as she could.