“It has to do with the humors of the body. The mixture— Li Lu curry, he calls it, mixed with pepper—it brings out the heat.”

“There’s more in there than pepper.”

“The goal is to bring out the imbalances and sweat the toxins from the body.”

“Maybe we should call a doctor.”

“I suggested that earlier,” said my brother, though he’d said nothing of the kind. “But Paolo won’t have anything to do with traditional medicine.”

“The herbalist, then.”

My brother wandered onto the deck with his cell, as if to have the conversation in private, or to get better reception.

“Is he dying?” Dazio asked.

“I don’t think so.”

I heard Johnny on the deck, making a show of it. I had no idea who he might be talking to: it was Sunday in Rome—the Emperor would not be in his office—and I knew Johnny well enough to know he might not be talking to anyone at all. By the time he returned, Paolo had fallen still.

“What do we do?” I asked.

“Let him sweat out the night. There’ll be more fits, but let him sweat.”

“Those were the instructions?”

“Then in the morning be sure, by all means, that he takes the restorative.”

27.

Paolo lay quietly for some time, and I climbed into bed beside him. Later he began raving. It’s difficult for me to describe his behavior. He seemed both unable to move, as if held down by a horrible weight, and at the same time possessed by an irrepressible energy. He threw the compress on the floor. “Off!” he cried, then grabbed himself by the scalp, twisting and pulling. “Oh, it burns so! How can this be!” He stared wild-eyed into the shadows, addressing the darkness with a laugh—carrying on like some figure in a play, a king gone mad. “And who is this? What clever disguise?” He peered at me suspiciously. He spoke my name sweetly, then not so sweetly. “You’ve brought them here. You’ve let them in,” he ranted. His enemies had somehow entered his room, using me as a vehicle—issuing forth from my nose, for all I could tell—and fastened to his head a cap whose lining had been dipped in poison. “Remove it from me, please,” he begged. He bargained with the unseen, pleading his innocence. Apparently it did no good. He was going to hell. His entire being was on fire, his skull burning from within. Then he lunged at me as if I were not his wife but one of those demons, those ghosts, who had conspired against him and stood mockingly over his bedside.

I backed onto the bedroom balcony. I stood on the threshold with the moonlight falling all over me and the sound of the black waves crashing against the rocks.

He fell quiet.