“Of course. But were there any sudden illnesses? Fevers? Rashes? Bad chest infections? And so on.”

He frowns, deep in concentration. “Brother Simone, he died of pneumonia a few years ago. But he was almost as old as me, and he had the cancer. The doctors, they said it was a blessing.”

“No one else you can think of?”

He squints at her. “You believe this plague comes from San Giovanni?”

“You have to wonder,” she admits. “The first two known victims worked at the construction site. They died of the very same infection that almost wiped out the monastery during the Middle Ages.”

Silvio taps his veiny nose but says nothing.

Alana nods toward the bookshelf. “You told me last time that you had historical records of the Black Death in Genoa.”

“I do.”

“Could you show me?”

He spreads his palms in front of him. “Do you read Latin?”

“No, but I can get them translated if necessary.”

“Of course.” Silvio ambles over to the bookshelf and thumbs through the volumes on the shelf. He extracts a leather-bound volume and waves it in the air. “This one. Written by the fifteenth-century Genovese historian Ugo Cavotti. He tells how almost half of Genoa died from the plague.”

“Fifteenth century? So he would have been born after the time of the Black Death?”

“Yes.”

“You mentioned eyewitness accounts?”

Silvio wavers a moment, then he slips the book back into its slot and reaches above him for another volume. It is slimmer and appears even older than the previous one. “This is the diary of a Genovese doctor. Rafael Pasqua.”

She reaches for it. “May I?”

He hands it to her gingerly, as if passing her a robin’s egg.

She accepts it with both hands. The plain brown cover is scratched and stiff as she turns to the first page, which is written in Latin script.

“It is special, this one,” he says. “The other historians like Cavotti wrote about the big details and the tragedies. But Doctor Pasqua, he writes of his own experience. It is very . . . moving.”

“Do you think I could borrow it?”

He seems to hesitate again, but then says, “Yes, of course.” He takes the volume back from her and carefully replaces it on the shelf, and then hurries over to the laptop on the desk that is almost hidden by a stack of papers.

When Alana views him in surprise, he laughs. “Even we monks have had to accept the modern age. We do not transcribe with quill and parchment anymore, Dr. Vaughn. I have scanned a copy of the text into a PDF document. This, I will email you.”

Alana provides her email address and thanks Silvio, then heads downstairs. She flags a passing cab and takes it back to the hospital. Once there, she gowns up and heads straight for Claudio Dora’s private room in the isolation ward.

Claudio sits on the side of the bed. Though his cheeks are still hollow, he is no longer wearing any kind of oxygen tubing. His navy robe makes him look more like a guest at a spa than a plague victim.