“There must be a reason for this blessing, Stefano,” Don Arturo had told him one evening, a few weeks before they were evicted from their home.

“Which blessing, Don Arturo?”

“Your ability to commune directly with the Lord.”

“Dr. Lonzo tells me that none of it is real, only a symptom of my disease.”

“Doctors!” Don Arturo scoffed. “Such arrogance. They are as flawed as every other man. They simply do not recognize it. And those poisons he feeds you . . .”

“Dr. Lonzo says the medicines stabilize my mood.”

“Nonsense, Stefano!” Don Arturo shook his head gravely. “They dull your mind and cloud your soul. They separate you from God.” His brow creased as if he were in pain. “Is that what you want?”

“No.”

“You have stopped taking the medicine, as we agreed?”

Stefano nodded.

“Good boy.” Don Arturo gripped his arm.

Stefano hesitated. “But, Don Arturo . . . what if Dr. Lonzo is right?”

“He is not!” The abbot squeezed his arm until it ached. “God speaks to you! I have never been more certain of anything in my life!”

“But what He is asking—”

“Is to make His Kingdom whole again.”

“By bringing back the Black Death?”

“Even the most merciful reach a breaking point. Remember the Old Testament? Noah and the flood?”

“Yes.”

“There are times when God must cleanse the world of evil, regardless of the cost.”

“Yes, but—”

“Think of it, Stefano! They will soon tear down San Giovanni. Our home. A house of God!” The abbot’s voice quavered with passion. “It is no coincidence. This is precisely why Don Marco and the medieval monks buried those creatures there all those years before. So that if the faithful were to ever come under attack, we would have a way to strike back. To unleash all God’s fury.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I know so.” Don Arturo smiled encouragingly. “Besides, if not us, then those bulldozers, diggers, and other infernal machines would free the creatures anyway. We are simply expediting the inevitable.”

Even months later, the memory of Don Arturo’s conviction is reassuring to Stefano. But the guilt is near-crippling. So is the fear.

Stefano gave Nino the antibiotics as promised. But he was so afraid his roommate might still try to go see the ship’s doctor that he also crushed ten pills of the sedative trazadone, which Dr. Lonzo had prescribed him, and slipped the powder into Nino’s orange juice. Stefano can’t tell whether Nino has succumbed to an overdose or the plague.

Stefano checks his watch again. By his calculation, the freighter will reach Port Said in less than eighteen hours. The moorage will only complicate matters. It is one thing to smuggle a live rat out with the restocking crew, but the same strategy will not work for a dead sailor. Stefano wonders if he could toss his roommate’s body overboard before they dock. Nino is slight, but even if he could possibly lug him all the way above deck, how would he throw him into the Mediterranean without being spotted?