‘“The old chronicler was not present, but he claims he heard what happened from many sources. Hearing the mob coming, the three acolytes threw ragged blankets over their shifts and fled for safety. Caterina stayed. The mob burst in, beating the men, women and children they found there, hounding them out beyond the city walls to live or die on the starving countryside.

‘“But they reserved their special rage for Caterina herself. She was almost certainly a virgin, but they held her down and violated her many times. Among them must have been soldiers of the bishop’s guard. When they had done with her, they crucified her on the timber door at the end of the yard and there she finally died.”

‘That was the story,’ said the faded man, ‘that Fra Domenico told me in the hotel coffee room seven years ago.’

‘That was it?’ asked the American. ‘There was no more that he had to say?’

‘There was some more,’ admitted the German.

‘Tell me, please tell me everything,’ asked the tourist.

‘Well, in the words of the old monk, this is what happened.

‘“The very night of the murder there came upon the city a terrible storm. Thunderheads rolled up at last beyond the mountains, so dark that the sun, then the moon and stars, were blotted out. Soon it began to rain. It was rain like no-one had ever seen. It had such a force and fury that it was as if all Siena were being subjected to a pressure hose. It went on all night and into the morning. Then the clouds rolled over and the sun came out.

‘“But Siena had been cleansed. All the accrued filth had been scoured from every crack and crevice and washed away. Torrents ran down the streets and out through the venting holes in the walls to cascade down the mountainsides. With the water went the filth and the rats, washed away as the sins of a bad man in the tears of Christ.

‘“Within days the plague began to abate, and soon passed away. But those who had taken part in the mob felt ashamed at what they had done. Some of them came back to the courtyard. It was empty and deserted. They took down the torn body from the door and wished to bury it in the Christian tradition. But the priests feared the bishop and his accusation of heresy. So a few braver souls took the body on a litter out into the countryside. They burned it and threw the ashes into a mountain stream.

‘“The father confessor of the house of Petrucci, who wrote all this down in Latin, did not give the exact year, and even less the month and the day. But there is another annal which mentions the time of the Great Rain most exactly. It was in the year 1544, the month was July and the rain came on the night of the second day.”’

CONCLUSION