So help me, I didn’t mean to. I only wanted the reliquary. I was desperate to get out of Venice, desperate to get to Rome, but not so desperate that I would have stolen a sacred relic (or even a not-so-sacred one). I’d needed money, and I reckoned the reliquary would be worth a good three hundred ducats after I broke it down to its anonymous components of cabochon jewels and carved silver panels. I should have had three hundred ducats as a dowry from my father—three hundred ducats he’d given to the convent of Santa Marta instead as an offering, once it was clear I’d never marry. That convent owed me. And what with one bit of bad luck after another, it was really the only place I could go for quick money after I’d stolen my father’s recipes and bolted. The only place with anything valuable at all, anything that might stake me enough for my journey south.

So I took the reliquary, but I’d never have taken the hand. I broke the rock crystal viewing window with the heavy base of an altar candlestick, looking desperately about the empty church as I shook out the shards. I couldn’t bring myself to reach inside and touch the relic itself, so I just muttered an incoherent prayer of “Santa Marta, please forgive me” as I shook her hand out of the reliquary. I meant to wrap it respectfully in the embroidered altar cloth, but I heard a noise from the nave and panicked. I’d managed to distract the nuns, get in alone, but I’d known I’d only have moments, if not seconds. I just snatched the reliquary box and ran.

The box was empty when I took it. I’d have sworn an oath on that. But the hand’s dried palm must have caught on the broken edges of the viewing window as I bundled everything up, because later I found the dark curled thing tangled in my cloak at the bottom of my pack, after I’d sold the pieces of the reliquary for far less than they were worth. I’d stared at it in horror, but what was I supposed to do then? I’d already taken ship, the cheapest passage I could find from Venice to Ferrara. Even if the boat had turned around on the spot, I couldn’t have taken the relic back—I’d have been arrested for desecration of a church.