“She is ill,” Alana says. “Very ill. She needs surgery.”

“What happened?” the woman demands. “She was well yesterday. Her arm, it swelled so fast!”

“You were with her?” Alana asks. “When she came in?”

“I brought her. Now they stop me at the doors. Figli di puttana!”

“And you?” Alana asks. “Are you feeling all right?”

“I am good,” she says defensively. “Lalia is the sick one.”

“Was anyone else with Lalia?” Alana asks.

The woman shakes her head.

“What is your name?” Byron asks.

She thrusts her hands on her hips. “Who needs to know?”

“We want to help,” Byron says kindly.

“Juliet,” she says, pursing her lips.

“Has Lalia been to Genoa in the past week or two, Juliet?” Alana asks.

“Genoa? Of course not!” Juliet laughs dismissively. Her eyes narrow. “Why would you ask such a thing?”

“Lalia has the plague.”

“Dio mio!” Juliet backpedals in shock. “How can she have this?”

“That is what we are trying to figure out,” Alana says.

Juliet throws up her hands. “It was him, wasn’t it?” she cries.

“Who?”

“Il lunatico religiosa,” Juliet says.

“A religious lunatic?”

“Yes! In Scampìa, we met him. Lalia and me. He was very nervous. He looked guilty. He was saying some prayer to us. But it sounds more like a curse!”

“Uno paziente mentale?” Sergio suggests to Juliet, and then turns to the others. “Many mental patients live in that particularly neighborhood.”

“No, no!” The woman shakes her head wildly. “I know paziente mentale. He was not one of them. He dressed clean, with short hair.”

Sergio speaks rapidly to her. She appears increasingly irritable, and, eventually, she throws her hands up again and snaps in English, “No, there was no sex! We never saw him again.”

Juliet spins and stomps off for the hospital door. Sergio hurries after her.

Alana feels her phone vibrate. When she sees the name on the screen, she answers it. “Yes, Claudio?”

“You need to come see me, Alana.”

“I’m in Naples.”

Claudio laughs. “I thought I’d heard every excuse a woman can make to avoid me.”

Alana’s thoughts are still on what Juliet just told them. “I should be back in Genoa this evening.”

“Good. I will be finished translating the diary by then.” His voice is uncharacteristically somber. “But I can tell you already, we need to discuss it.”

Chapter

Forty-Five

Today is the twenty-seventh day of February. As I write by candlelight my hand trembles, not from illness or fever, but rather from the horrors I have witnessed this day. In an age where shock, suffering, and grief have lost most of their currency, I still quake from an abundance of all three.

My day began hopefully enough with the arrival of Gabriella, even earlier than usual. I should have recognized something was amiss since she carried no food with her. However, it was not until I could see her face up close that I appreciated the extent of her distress. In a heartsick voice, she informed me that her father had developed a fever overnight. I donned my cloak and grabbed my instruments before she said another word.