We all fall down, p.29
We All Fall Down, page 29
“Yes.”
“Stefano, I am a doctor,” Alana says slowly. “You understand?”
“You look like the others. The soldiers.” His voice is soft, but there’s menace in his tone.
“I’m not a soldier. I didn’t come here to harm you. Only to make sure no one else gets sick from the plague.”
“That is not the will of God.”
The knife presses even harder. She feels something cool against her back and realizes her biohazard suit is cut. She wonders if the blade has already penetrated her flesh. But she forces herself to focus. She remembers Dr. Lonzo’s description of Stefano’s fluctuating level of belief in his delusions. “It is not God, Stefano.”
“What did you say?” His voice cracks.
“I spoke with Dr. Lonzo,” she says, as she tightens the grip on the spoon, realizing she won’t have time to reach for the gun tucked behind her back. “He is a good man. A smart man.”
“Dr. Lonzo is wrong!”
“In your heart, you know he is right.” She can feel his thigh against the back of her leg. Her mind darts back to her hand-to-hand combat training. One blow to the groin might be enough to immobilize him. She squeezes the spoon tighter and edges sideways, trying to create access. “God is not speaking to you, Stefano. Those voices are inside your own head. They’re part of your illness.”
“No!” he cries.
Alana freezes, expecting the blade to plunge into her back, but the sharp pressure holds steady. “Think about it, Stefano. What kind of merciful God would spread a disease like this?”
“The world is disease now. And He has done so before. Noah and his ark. The ten plagues of Egypt!”
“I’ve seen children dying of this plague, Stefano.”
“Bambini?”
“Yes. A little three-year-old.” She inches over again, testing him. “She was so beautiful—with little blue and pink ribbons in her hair. She would break your heart. She died in her mother’s arms. God is not so cruel. He would never do such a thing.”
“You saw this?” His voice cracks
“Yes, I did. But it wasn’t your fault, Stefano. Don Arturo is responsible!”
“Don Arturo?” he echoes in confusion.
“Yes.” She edges farther away. “We know he was encouraging you. Making you stop your medication. Convincing you to scatter the infected rats. He was only taking advantage of your illness.”
“Don Arturo is a good man,” he says, but she can tell doubt has crept into his tone.
“No, Stefano. He is a bad man. A bitter, angry man. He was filled with fury that they took his monastery away. This has nothing to do with God. Don Arturo only wants revenge. For others to share in his misery.”
Stefano is silent for a moment, but the blade doesn’t budge.
“No, no, no!” he groans. “Lasciami solo!”
For a moment Alana wonders if someone else has entered the room. Then she realizes that he must be arguing with his own hallucinations. “Listen to me, Stefano!” she commands, as she tenses her wrist, preparing to strike. “The voices are not real. Dr. Lonzo has been right all along!”
“And Don Arturo knows this?”
“Yes! He was just using you to settle a score with the Church.”
There’s another combustible silence, then the pressure of the knife’s tip lightens. “What did I do . . .” Stefano murmurs.
“It’s going to be okay, Stefano.”
“The children . . .”
The blade leaves her back. When she’s certain it’s gone, she whirls around to face him, raising the spoon as she does so.
Stefano stands a few feet away from her. Tears stream down his cheeks as he holds the blade leveled against his own throat. “O Lord, take my life instead,” he says.
“No, Stefano!”
She lunges forward, but it’s too late. He has jerked the blade across his neck, splattering her mask in a shower of crimson.
Chapter
Sixty-Four
Today is the fourth day of June. However, I, Gabriella, daughter of Jacob ben Moses, inscribe this journal entry in the place of Doctor Rafael Pasqua.
For weeks I have fought the urge to add my words to those of my beloved Rafael. Today, I could resist no longer. My Rafael was so dedicated to documenting his experience with the pestilence that, in my heart, I know he would have wanted his story completed for the sake of posterity. And I consider it my duty, and my debt, to him to do so.
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.
My poor Rafael had been beaten mercilessly and flogged for two days before Don Marco encountered him. The abbot himself would have most probably died there as well, had the Archbishop not succumbed to the plague, thus permitting one of the other priests to free him.
My tears stain the parchment as I record these last moments of Rafael’s life. He understood that death was hovering over him as he lay on the floor of that dungeon. Still, Don Marco assures me that Rafael died as he had lived, with such bravery and generosity of spirit. He used his final words to implore the abbot to relay the depth of his love for me, and he made Don Marco promise to protect me. Only after the abbot had sworn his word did Rafael close his eyes and inhale his final breath. How the thought of that moment breaks my heart anew.
The Archbishop’s misguided vengeance was not confined to my Rafael. He also ordered his soldiers to raze the Jewish quarter. I have heard from one of the other monks that there is nothing left of our village but ash. I only thank God that Rafael had succeeded in convincing my brother and sister to flee eastward with their families prior to the Archbishop’s fit of rage.
In the past three months, Don Marco has been true to his word. I have remained under the protection of the monks here at San Giovanni. I had considered going off in search of what remains of my family. However, two months ago, when the bleeding stopped and the morning sickness descended, I found a new purpose in my existence. For I now carry the child of Rafael Pasqua.
It is fulfillment enough of my life to know that the legacy of this great doctor, a man who showed such courage and kindness in the darkest of times, will live on not only through this written record but also through our son or daughter and, God willing, the many offspring that are to follow.
Chapter
Sixty-Five
Concrete forms still crisscross the pit. Mounds of dirt and rubble are piled higher than ever. But everything else is different. The ground no longer vibrates. The buzz and whir of heavy machinery has been silenced. And the diggers, trucks, and bulldozers are nowhere to be seen. Even the smell of diesel on the breeze has been replaced by an earthy petrichor after the recent rainfall. The construction workers are all gone, too. Only a few white-clad WHO technicians wander the site scouring for last vestiges of the plague and the rodents that carried it.
Alana stands between Justine and Byron at the top of the pit, watching the technicians work below them. “I kind of wish I had seen it,” she says.
“What?” Byron’s brow creases. “The old monastery?”
“Yeah. While it was still standing.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Justine grimaces. “That creepy old church was harboring the next Armageddon under its floors.”
“Maybe so,” Alana says, thinking of the translation of Pasqua’s diary that she just finished reading. “But also a ton of history.”
“Thank God it’s just history now,” Justine says. “Zanetti, too.”
Byron nods. “Sergio told me they’ve arrested Zanetti and his man Paolo. For obstructing justice and tampering with evidence.”
“Good riddance,” Justine says.
“They didn’t plan any of this, Justine, they just panicked,” Alana says. “Marcello is a broken man. I feel kind of badly for him. Nico, too. After all, Marcello is his wife’s uncle.”
Byron glances over to her. “How’s Nico doing?”
She’s glad to realize there’s no jealousy in his tone. “He’s got a lot to sort out. But Nico will land on his feet.”
No one speaks for a moment or two, and Alana watches as a technician crouches down to examine something in the dirt below him. She shakes her head. “For Arturo and Stefano to even believe the rat colony might still exist at the bottom of that chute after all those centuries . . .”
“And then to trap them and deliberately infest the rats with fleas,” Byron says, “without knowing if they even still carried the plague.”
“Oh, my God,” Justine groans. “After all this, I would’ve thought you two would have developed a bit more respect for rodent ingenuity.”
“Trust me, Justine, I’ll never underestimate that again,” Alana says.
Byron shakes his head. “I’ll give Arturo and Stefano this, they were committed.”
“They sure as hell ought to have been,” Justine snorts.
“Poor Stefano. What he needed was help. Instead, the man he trusted most in the world preyed on his mental illness.” Alana exhales. “I keep thinking about him in those final moments. What an awful way to go.”
Byron shakes his head. “I hope Don Arturo realizes the hell he put that kid through.”
“And I hope he rots in jail chewing on it,” Justine says.
Alana glances around the empty site again. “At least we’ve got Arturo’s handiwork under control now.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet, though,” Byron says. “Not even close. The plague is still raging in Naples.”
“There were fewer new cases reported today than yesterday,” Alana points out. “And none here in Genoa.”
He nods. “Let’s celebrate after a week goes by without a new case anywhere. Until then, it still could only take one stray rat—or person—to launch this globally.”
Alana holds his gaze for a moment. “It’s not the same as when Stefano was rogue. We’ve cut off the source now. Also, they’ll be mass-producing antiserum soon. The outbreak control measures you put into place are working. It’s going to settle.”
“Never a good idea to be overconfident,” he says, but his tone suggests that he agrees.
“Well, much as I’d like to listen to more of this awkward self-congratulation that passes for flirtation”—Justine points to the technicians in the pit—“I better go check on the boys’ progress.”
Alana laughs. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m actually going to miss you, Justine.”
“They always do,” Justine says as she turns away.
Alana watches her descend the wooden steps into the pit and disappear behind one of the concrete forms. “I just finished reading the translation of Rafael Pasqua’s diary, Byron.”
“And?”
“It was sadder than I expected.”
“You’re surprised a diary about the Black Death turned out to be sad?”
“I just didn’t expect it to be a love story.”
“The doctor and the Jewish woman you mentioned before?”
Alana nods.
Byron reaches over and gives the back of her neck a quick squeeze. “Who knew the Black Death could be so damn romantic?”
“Funny.” She elbows him in the side. “We’re not so different from them, you know?”
“How so?”
“Once fear took hold, their society crumbled. People just turned on each other.”
“People were scared this time, sure, but I wouldn’t say we turned on each other.”
“It’s just been a week or two, Byron. Imagine if it had gotten anywhere near as bad as it did in the fourteenth century. Who knows where it would’ve ended? Back then, they scapegoated the Jews. This time, it could’ve been the Muslims.”
“I suppose.” He chews his lower lip. “By the way, that was when I realized you were kind of worth it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“After I decided to release Yasin Ahmed’s photo to the media—”
“Oh, yeah.” She stretches the words. “That I do remember.”
“You could’ve thrown me under the bus, but instead you blamed yourself for those hate crimes.” He lays his arm across her shoulders. “That’s when I realized you’re quite something.”
Alana rests her head against the crook of his neck. “Rafael Pasqua . . . now, he really was something. A hero.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Alana. The way you stared down Stefano when he was wielding that knife—”
“Stared him down? He was behind me. I couldn’t even see his face.”
“You were also the one who figured out where he hid the rest of the rats.”
“The dogs sniffed out the last two rats in the galley.”
“But if it weren’t for you . . .”
“Yeah, I guess.” She feels her cheeks warm. “We did okay, huh?”
“Yes, we did.” There’s genuine pride behind his small grin.
“Listen, Byron, I have to leave for Brussels in a couple hours.”
“I’ve got to stay here. There’s still a ton left for us to do.”
“I wasn’t inviting you.”
He looks down with obvious embarrassment. “Oh, I . . . I see. I was just—”
She leans forward and skitters kisses across his cheek and onto his mouth. “I’m teasing. Come visit me once you’re done. I’ll give you the whole Belgian experience.”
“Which is?”
“No idea. Waffles in bed?”
Laughing, he wraps her in a tight hug.
Alana squeezes back. She feels comfortable in his arms. She thinks of Pasqua’s final entry in his diary. She, too, feels renewed hope for tomorrow. She also hopes it isn’t misplaced.
Acknowledgments
While my story is fictional, the science and the history behind it are anything but. And I needed help to accurately envision a world where the Black Death—the most deadly natural disaster ever to devastate humankind—recurs in contemporary times. Two esteemed colleagues, Drs. Victor Leung and Marc Romney, provided me with fascinating insights into the microbiology behind this enigmatic and, at times, terrifying plague. And I learned much more from several excellent books, including The Great Mortality by John Kelly, The Black Death by Philip Ziegler, In the Wake of the Plague by Norman F. Cantor, and The Decameron by fourteenth-century author Giovanni Boccaccio.
I’m also blessed—in the fortunate, not religious, sense—to have the support of friends and family members who read my books, often in the form of the unpolished first draft, and provide useful feedback, along with tons of encouragement. I would list each one individually, but I worry I might leave out a significant name, so I’m going to play it safe and thank them as one. But you know who you are!
There are a few people I do have to single out for their unique contributions. I am deeply indebted to the wonderful Kit Schindell, a freelance editor and friend, whose detailed feedback always helps to improve my stories. Glen Clark has been a champion for my writing. My mom, Judy, is a stalwart of support and a constant inspiration on living to the fullest. And, as always, I rely heavily on the wisdom of my agent, Henry Morrison.
I am excited to launch into a publishing relationship with my new friends at Simon & Schuster. The support and feedback from Nita Pronovost, Anne Perry, Adria Iwasutiak, and, especially, Kevin Hanson, have proved invaluable. And, finally, I owe a huge thank-you to my wonderfully talented editor, Laurie Grassi, who has helped to transform this novel from rough first draft to final product, improving it vastly with each dedicated editorial pass.
