I have heard that more than half of the city’s inhabitants have succumbed to the plague. I cannot recall the names of all those I have lost over these cursed months. It pains me too much to remember any one of them, let alone to think of them all. However, the pestilence has finally blown through Genova like the worst of storms passing. People are returning to the streets and markets. Life will never be as it was, but the city has endured, which is more than most expected.

Three months have passed since Rafael left San Giovanni to deliver his hastily improvised remedy, if it can be even considered as such, to the Archbishop. When he did not return home as promised that evening, I stayed up all night praying for his safe return. My prayers, as they often do, went unanswered. The next day, I implored Don Marco to inquire after my Rafael. The kindly abbot assured me that God would watch over him and he would come back soon. When two more days passed without any sign of Rafael, Don Marco set off to visit the palace of the Archbishop.

Don Marco would not return to San Giovanni for three more days. When he finally did, he was alone. He limped heavily, and his right eye was swollen shut. Before he would recount the events that unfolded at the Archbishop’s palace, he invited me to sit with him in the Warming House and insisted we share a skin of wine together, an occasion that would have been unthinkable under almost any other circumstance.

Once we had finished our drink, Don Marco asked me how much of Rafael’s ordeal I wished to hear. I begged him to share every last detail, regardless of how painful or indelicate. However, I have come to regret such vehemence, as my tears have hardly abated since.

Upon reaching the palace, Don Marco learned the Archbishop was gravely ill. Inside his chambers, the Archbishop was too weak even to rise. His breathing was ragged with pestilence. So incensed was the man that Don Marco could not discern whether he shook with fever or rage. Not only did the Archbishop falsely charge my kindhearted Rafael of being a heretic and a sorcerer, he further accused Don Marco of colluding with him. When Don Marco mustered the courage to ask what had become of Rafael, the Archbishop only said he would learn soon enough and then called for his guards.

They dragged Don Marco to the dungeon. It was there that Don Marco found my Rafael, curled up on the cold stone floor. His face was so swollen that Don Marco struggled to recognize him. At first he believed Rafael to be already dead. It was not until my beloved spoke that the abbot realized otherwise.

Rafael’s voice was no stronger than a whisper, but his wits were still about him enough to describe his experience to Don Marco.

The Archbishop had manifested the first signs of the plague only hours before Rafael arrived. He hungrily consumed Rafael’s remedy and commanded him to remain at the palace as his personal physician. Over the next day, Rafael drained his sores and fed him more of the medicine. However, the Archbishop’s fever did not break. And how he blamed my Rafael! In his outrage and delirium, the Archbishop even accused him of instigating the infliction through sorcery. He ordered the guards to torture Rafael.