Why did it look different, sitting on a heap of clothes, than it had in the reliquary? I’d seen it so many times when I was a girl: the blessed and sacred hand of Santa Marta, carefully preserved and displayed in the convent of the same name in Venice. Not the largest and most illustrious of Venice’s many convents, not by any means—but one where my father said most of his infrequent prayers. It made sense to a thrifty soul like his that Santa Marta was the one to intercede if you wanted to cook for the Doge at Carnival or were hoping to be hired for the wedding banquet of the latest Foscari heiress. What does the Holy Virgin know about the desperate prayers that come from a kitchen, after all? No one ever saw the Holy Virgin cooking. So when my father felt the need of a little divine assistance in his work he would take us—my mother, my sister, and me—to the Convent of Santa Marta, to pray at the altar of their church. And on that altar you could very clearly see the severed and preserved hand of the patron saint of cooks herself.

Of course, I never laid much faith that it was the saint’s true hand. There’s nothing more practical than an order of nuns with choir stalls to repair, and with so many convents in Venice competing for well-dowered novices, an abbess needs a little something extra to bring the wealthy families flocking to her doors. San Zaccaria had countless relics; Santa Chiara had one of the nails that had pierced the hands of Christ; and they had rich young girls lining up to join. So, some long-ago abbess of the Convent of Santa Marta might well have shrugged her worldly shoulders and made a discreet perusal among those purveyors of relics who can get you anything from a fragment of the True Cross to a lock of Mary Magdalene’s hair as long as you’re not too fussy. And lo and behold, the Convent of Santa Marta had a relic of its own to display: the hand of its patron saint, which was said to come to life and make the sign of the cross whenever it granted the prayers of the faithful. Not a famous relic; I doubted anyone had heard of it outside Venice. But it brought a cluster of novices with hefty dowries, and the hand soon had a beautiful new reliquary of silver and ivory, studded with garnets and pearls along its sides and set with a rock crystal viewing window through which the worshippers could see the hand itself: a little withered, a little dark and dried, but still boasting a carved gold ring on one small curled-in finger.

I shivered, looking at the hand now in the heap of my clothes. Maybe it looked different now because I’d stolen it.