Whispering Bones (2 page)

“I’ll only be gone for ten days, no more. And I’ll be back to visit the minute I return.”

“No,” the old woman declared, her voice turning imperious. “I forbid you to go.”

Her grandmother’s choice of words caused Anna to become irritated again. “Forbid me? What’s this nonsense? It’s an opportunity of a lifetime. Of course I’m going.”

“Do not go,” she repeated. “There will be other jobs... Leave this one to someone else.”

Anna bit back her rising anger and remained patient, knowing her grandmother’s mental condition might finally be deteriorating.

“I’ve already committed to the job. I’m going. Now, I don’t want you to worry, I’ll be back to see you the minute I return. In ten days.”

Her grandmother attempted to stare her down with a granite look, a tactic she had employed many times in the past. She almost succeeded. Confused and disheartened by her grandmother’s remarks and the way she continued to glare at her, Anna rose. “I’d better go now, let you get some rest. I’ll see you as soon as I get back, all right?”

She kissed the old woman’s cheek and, before another argument could get underway, walked briskly out of the room. Once in the hallway, Anna peeked back in. Her grandmother sat with slumped shoulders, staring out the window, looking sad and lost. Anna almost went back, but decided not to. Once her grandmother fixated on an idea, there was no talking to her. She didn’t want to engage in the silly argument again. Instead, she sent the thought she’d not been able to say out loud.
I love you
.
Stay well until I get home
.

As she stepped out of the building into the muggy heat of the parking lot, Anna looked up at the second floor window of her grandmother’s room. She waved to the motionless form in the wheelchair, but received no acknowledgement in return. Upset by her grandmother’s obvious anger, she turned away and got into her car, the interior of which had already become explosively hot. After rolling down the windows, she rummaged through the dashboard compartment and located the cigarette she kept for emergencies, even though she had quit smoking last year. She looked for a moment at the cigarette then lit it, deciding she needed one before her next stop, her mother’s gravesite.

The glaring sun burned her bare thighs through the open window and the smoke only made her dizzy. She tossed the cigarette before pulling out of the parking lot without a backward glance.

* * * *

Anna crouched and placed two bundles of fresh flowers onto the grave. She ran her fingers across the engraved letters forming her mother’s name on the headstone. It was all she had—a name carved in stone. That, and a vague and terrifying flashback that always haunted her whenever she visited her mother’s grave—a memory of being lifted over a casket by her grandmother to kiss the cheek of her dead mother’s face.

She’d been just three years old when her mother died, but somehow that frightening memory had stuck with her. The disturbing image returned of an unnaturally pale face made whiter by the waves of dark hair surrounding it, a flash of cream-colored silk and rosary beads entwined in dead fingers. Childish terror came rushing back to Anna as she recalled the cold, waxy skin her lips had brushed against, and how she had burst into tears immediately afterward, rendering the remaining memory a blur.

She rose, feeling awkward, like she always did whenever she came here, embarrassed by the conflicting emotions that still ran through her. As a young girl, she’d harbored only feelings of resentment for her dead mother, who had abandoned her so early in life. Her father’s death following a car accident just before her tenth birthday had only amplified that sense of abandonment. It was not until after her twelfth birthday, while visiting her mother’s grave with her grandmother, that Anna had learned the truth about how her mother had died.

“Why isn’t Mamma buried next to Daddy, at St. Michael’s?”

Her grandmother had looked at her for a long while before answering.

“The Catholic church did not permit her to be buried at St. Michael’s,” she finally said.

“Why not?”

Her grandmother remained silent, but her eyes took on a troubled expression.

“Why not, Nonna?” she repeated.

After a moment her grandmother looked down at her and said, “Because she took her own life, Anna. This is a grave sin in the eyes of the Church. Because of it, she was denied a Catholic burial.”

“My mamma killed herself?” Anna felt the shock right down to her feet. “Why? Why did she do that?”

Her grandmother sighed, her face painted with sadness as she drew Anna close. “Your mother was ill, Anna. Her mind, it...”

Nonna’s voice broke, and tears welled up in her eyes. “She was not well. I did not know how bad it had gotten until...until it was too late.”

Anna shook off the memory of that long-ago conversation and looked around. The silence of the cemetery, mostly abandoned in the midday heat, was interrupted only by the occasional chirping of a bird from the nearby willow trees. Despite the brilliant sunshine, a sense of gloom stole over her. She wondered for the millionth time what had caused her mother to take her own life all those years ago. Her grandmother either did not know or had chosen not tell her. And, not for the first time, Anna also wondered if her mother’s depression might be hereditary. Perhaps that factored into the melancholy that had plagued her for most of her life, especially after... She tried to push the unwanted thought away, but remembrance flashed through her before she could stop it. She’d been...

* * * *

...riding her bike along the path next to the river, where it would be cooler, even though the fading sun tells her she should be getting home. Sudden shock, as rough hands grab her from behind, jerking her from the bik
e—
shock that turns quickly to terror
. L
ying on her back on the ground, she looks up at the massive silhouette of a man, his facial features distorted by the nylon stocking over his head.
Tape over her mouth, stifling her scream as she struggles to get away.
A glimpse of her overturned bike, one wheel spinning lazily in the fading light.
Rough ground scraping across her back as he drags her into the nearby trees.
Then, the glint of steel and the feel of cold metal against her throat as he...

Stop.

* * * *

Anna willed herself to disconnect from the past, refusing to allow the black memory to have its way with her. She grabbed her purse from the ground and walked away from the grave, back to her waiting car. She hated coming here. Her visits to her mother’s gravesite always churned up emotions better left undisturbed.

Venice, Italy

1576

Nine-year-old Isabella Moretti raced along the deserted streets toward home and safety. She kept to the main arteries, avoiding the maze of narrow back alleys that would shorten her route but where she would likely encounter the bloated, festering body of some poor unfortunate who had been left to die in the street.

As she turned a corner and veered north along the canal, Isabella skidded to a stop, her heart clenching in terror. On the cobblestone pavement directly in front of her, a stray dog, its dirty fur matted and spiked, looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes. Then it growled deep in its throat before tearing savagely into a foul-smelling corpse, the body of a man which had been tossed like rubbish on the steps of a nearby dwelling. With eyes as round as saucers, Isabella watched the starving animal yank a strip of purple, bruised flesh from the stinking cadaver before hungrily devouring it.

She quickly checked the front door of the residence and saw the clearly marked “X” indicating the presence of pestilence. One hand reached for the crucifix hanging from her neck. The other desperately clutched the satchel of food she’d been dispatched to obtain from her aunt. Isabella uttered a silent prayer, surrounded by the nightmare that had descended over the city in the form of the great mortality, the Black Death.

Her heart suspended in the back of her throat, she slowly backed away from the animal and the infected body, hoping she had not come into contact with contaminated air. No one knew what caused the plague to spread from person to person. The Doge had issued a proclamation that drinking or bathing in the water was forbidden. The priests declared there was no hope. For their sins, the people of Venice were to die. Uncle Francesco, who had travelled to Lutece in France, said the sickness was rampant there too, and it had been determined that touching an infected person was the way the evil spread.

Fear sat like a ball of lead in her stomach as she moved away from the dog and the foul-smelling corpse. When she felt it safe to do so, she turned and ran, and did not stop until she reached the main canal. The only other people she might encounter crossing the bridge were the three physicians who still traveled about the city. And the
pizzicamorti
, she reminded herself.

Isabella was deathly afraid of the
pizzicamorti
, the masked men who moved about the city in their long, tarred black cloaks with gloved hands and bells at their ankles to herald their approach, the men who collected the plague-ridden bodies to be buried or burned. Papa had explained to her that the strange white hooked-nose masks worn by the
pizzicamorti
contained aromatic herbs to counteract the sickness, and were necessary to keep the disease away. But to Isabella, the
pizzicamorti
appeared nothing short of monsters.

Arriving at the main canal, she slowed to a trot to allow the burning stitch in her side to ease. As she crossed the viaduct, Isabella looked out over the water. A large boat, heaped with the corpses of the day’s dead, emerged from beneath the bridge. The barge and its gruesome cargo, she knew, was headed to the
Lazaretto
on Santa Maria Island or to one of the other outlying islands, where the disease-ridden bodies would be burned or buried in mass graves.

On the distant horizon, plumes of charcoal smoke had already begun to blacken the sky. The ghastly stench of rotting and burnt flesh hung heavily in the air, an odor that permeated the city daily.

The sickness raged out of control in this, the second summer of the recurrence of the plague. Last week, she had heard Papa say more than five hundred were dying each day in Venice. The wealthy had fled to the countryside last summer, when the first victims had fallen prey to the dreaded disease. The remainder of the port city’s population, including Isabella and her family, did their best to remain indoors as much as possible. Even the churches had closed their doors, the priests refusing to attend at the homes of any who had taken ill. Instead, the dwellings of those who had been infected were marked with an “X”, and no one was permitted to enter or leave, the doors sealed and windows bricked up, imprisoning the sick inhabitants. Every few days, bodies were pulled from the marked houses by the
pizzicamorti
and taken to one of the islands for disposal. Those who were found alive in the pest houses were brought to the
Lazaretto
, the quarantine hospital on Santa Maria Island, although it was said few, if any, survived.

Papa had turned to his sister, hat in hand, in the spring, when procuring food for the family had become a problem. Isabella’s aunt had a connection to one of the men who operated the delivery barges, and the man had been conscripted to obtain supplies for them. Still, no one in her aunt’s household dared venture out to deliver the supplies to Isabella’s family. Usually Papa, but sometimes her older brother, Roberto, made the weekly trip to pick up the food. By remaining indoors and rationing their food, the Moretti family had managed to keep from contracting the sickness for the past year.

Then, yesterday morning, disaster struck. Death had pried its way into their home, placing its hand upon Roberto. Isabella had awoken to the sound of her mother’s bitter weeping, and Papa had taken her aside to explain Roberto had taken ill during the night.

Standing in the doorway of her brother’s room, Isabella had seen her mother placing a wet rag on his fevered brow, while Roberto shivered uncontrollably on his bed. Mamma immediately ordered her out of the room, but not before Isabella glimpsed the walnut-sized lump on her brother’s neck, and the purplish splotches already covering his exposed skin. The stench of his sickness soon filled the house. All that day, her mother burned incense and kept a roaring fire going, said to be beneficial. But Roberto only worsened by the hour, the pus-filled lumps on his neck and under his arm growing larger, his delirium increasing. Toward evening, he began to vomit blood, and Isabella knew what that meant. The widow next door had begun to vomit blood on the day before she died. It was the tell-tale sign death was imminent.

Before the sun had risen this morning, not knowing what else to do, her frantic parents bundled Roberto up, and Papa himself had taken her brother by boat to the plague hospital, the
Lazaretto
on Santa Maria Island, in the hope he might recover there. If Roberto remained with them, Papa argued with her mother, the house would surely be placed under quarantine and they would all be dead within the week. Isabella had not been allowed near her brother, not even to say goodbye, and she had cried broken-hearted tears long after the boat bearing Roberto disappeared on the horizon at sunup. With her father and brother gone, and her mother too grief-stricken over Roberto’s fate, it had fallen to Isabella to make the trip to her aunt’s house to pick up the week’s supply of food.

Despair washed over her as she picked up her pace again. The thought of dear Roberto, alone and dying among strangers at the
Lazaretto
, was just too much to bear. Tears stung her eyes, momentarily blinding her as she reached the other side of the bridge, and she did not see the staggering man who stumbled toward her. Sometimes the sick, in their delirium, left their homes before they were targeted as plague houses to wander the streets. Only the man’s mad ranting alerted her to danger in time. Fresh fear bit into her as she took in the man’s watery eyes and dirty clothes, encrusted with blood and vomit. He teetered back and forth along the edge of the canal, shouting loud curses at no one and waving his arms. From where she stood, Isabella could see pus oozing from the sores on his face. She watched as he bent and vomited viscous blood onto the pavement. When he began to cough, expelling phlegm and spittle into the air around him, she ducked away and ran for her life. She had not much farther to go, but her breath seared her lungs as she ran and the stitch at her side grew worse.