I do not presume that I will live long enough to fill many pages of this diary. Perhaps there will be only this single entry. However, as long I draw breath, I carry an obligation, for posterity, as well as all the lost and wasted lives, especially that of my precious Camilla, to record how this pestilence has leveled my once-great city.

Perhaps, as many of the priests and bishops pontificate, the apocalypse has already arrived, summoned by our own sins. But I must record what I see. I have dedicated my working life to science, and what more is science than carefully documented observation?

Like all things to reach Genova, this plague swept in southwest by sea. It was no demon or ghoul who transported the pestilence. It was Genovese-born merchants and sailors. They carried this curse all the way from the East, from Caffa, beyond Asia Minor.

The first of the plague-infested ships appeared on the horizon in late autumn. We had been forewarned by Neapolitan traders of their approach, and our soldiers were able to turn the vessel back with flaming arrows and other onslaughts. At the end of December, only days after the celebration to mark the birth of our Lord, another infected ship slipped into harbor. The treacherous captain hid the dead and dying belowdecks. He greedily sold his infested wares to unsuspecting traders in the port, poisoning our noble city. Once the damage was done, he sailed his cursed ship away, and is rumored to have spread the pestilence throughout Sicily and Greece.

Within days, the dying began. The rotting carcasses of pigs, goats, rats, cats, and dogs were the harbingers of the pestilence.

Now that the plague has reached us, there is no escaping death in any walk of life. It is not only the gravediggers who put themselves at terrible risk. Doctors who tend the sick, priests who offer last rites, and lawyers who draw the wills, they, too, all perish.

Earlier today, as Jacob and I dug my wife’s grave, he muttered away in his unintelligible tongue. I asked him what he was chanting, and he replied that it was a Hebrew prayer for the dead. When I suggested that he would be wise to save his prayers for the living, he laughed and pointed out that the dead were the only ones who still had hope.

I asked him why he would continue to work if he believed this to be so. He replied that he was old and should have died several winters before. Medicine was all he had ever known, and it was too late for him to stop now, despite the futility of the work.

Jacob lowered his shovel. He told me he understood what it meant to bury a wife, as he had lost his Miriam ten winters before. He assured me that the pain lessens, but the loneliness persists. He asked me why I intended to remain in Genova after burying Camilla. Why would I risk certain infection when I could escape north for France or the Holy Roman Empire, where so many of our colleagues already have gone?