“Perhaps three days ago.” Zanetti nods to the trailer. “Yes. She sat down with me and the architects. To review the plans.”

“Inside?” Alana frowns.

“Of course.” Zanetti glances over to Nico. “Where else?”

“How did she look?” Nico asks.

“The same as always. So serious, Vittoria. So focused.”

“You didn’t hear her cough?” Alana asks.

“No. Not at all.” Zanetti’s voice is calm, but his eyes are calculating. “You think she might have already been contagious?”

“No, Marcello,” Nico reassures. “Not if she wasn’t coughing.”

“We have asked everyone here. No coughing,” Zanetti says. “Vittoria was well one moment, and . . .” He snaps his fingers.

It seems appropriate to pause, so Alana waits a little while before she asks, “Marcello, have you heard of anyone else at the site falling ill? With a fever? A cough? Even just a rash?”

“Nothing.” Zanetti turns to the man in the overalls and converses with him for a few moments before reverting back to English. “No. Not so much as a sneeze. Paolo says he has checked with all of the crews.”

“Still, why not just stop work here for a few days?” Alana suggests. “A week at the most. Until we know the risk is completely gone.”

Zanetti squints at her. “The other doctors, from the government—”

“Public Health,” Nico offers.

“Sì! Public Health. They assured us there was no more risk. Besides, my dear, a week . . .” Zanetti flutters a hand up and over his head. “You have no idea what that might cost.”

Less than what an outbreak of the plague would. Alana keeps the thought to herself. “Marcello, on our way in, we passed a monk. He was being escorted away—”

“Brother Silvio! Such a character! Funny little man. He comes every day.”

“Why?”

Zanetti taps his temple and laughs. “He is losing his mind. Senile, yes? Sometimes he gets in the way. It’s not his fault.”

“Is that so?” Alana says.

“Do not worry about our little monk, my dear. He will be back tomorrow! That is one thing he never forgets!” He exhales again. “It’s such a shame, you know.”

She assumes he is still talking about Brother Silvio, but instead he motions toward the construction site. “We tried to save her. The old monastery. We were going to turn her into a beautiful museum. As part of the complex.”

“What happened?” she asks.

“The engineers. They took their magical measurements. They tell us she was—” He turns to Nico and switches to Italian again.

“Structurally unsound,” Nico translates.

“Unsafe. Yes. We had to take her apart. But we will build a memorial to the monastery right here on the ground floor. Something special. It will make even Brother Silvio proud.” He kicks at the loose soil by his foot. “Trust me, the spirit of San Giovanni will soon rise again.”

Chapter

Six

Today is the twenty-seventh day of January, in the year of our Lord thirteen hundred and forty-eight.

Had you asked me a week prior whether the suffering could worsen or the sorrow deepen, I would have told you it was not humanly or divinely imaginable. How wrong I would have been. No person is left unscathed, no family untouched. Death grows insatiable.