The Plague Doctor's Daughter

9. Giovanna

Giovanna had managed to convince the sisters of the Lazzaretto that her father was merely exhausted. That his loss of consciousness at the burying ground was from a lack of proper sleep, and his sickly pallor was due to a need for a hearty, home cooked meal. But even as the oarsman helped him into the boat to take them across the lagoon, she feared the worst.

Unfortunately, her instincts turned out to be correct.

By the time she'd dragged Agostino up the three flights of stairs to their tiny loft apartment off a landlocked square in Campo San Polo, he was shaking in spite of the sweat dripping from his face. And when she attempted to cool his skin with a wet cloth, Giovanna finally saw the tell-tale signs: swelling at the base of the jaw, previously hidden by the doctor's high collar.

"Lord have mercy," she had whispered before getting to work. Her father wouldn't fall victim to the plague. Not if she could help it.

All day she had kept vigil, probably the same way he had done at that boy's bedside. Knowing that the first hours after manifestation of symptoms were critical, she daren't let him out of her sight. That decision not only endangered her own health, but it was also unlawful. Anyone diagnosed with the plague was obliged to be handed over to the proper authorities, in this case to a gondolier headed straight back to Lazzaretto Vecchio. For those harboring the sick without placing them in the prescribed quarantine, prison awaited.

Giovanna had every intention of returning her father to the Lazzaretto. She truly did. Its existence and the strict enforcement of rules around handling and caring for the sick had kept Venice from being ravaged even more than it had been already. Yet as the hours passed and her thoughts wandered back to the stench and wretchedness, she became less and less sure about the wisdom of sending him back to the island of death.

Instead, using hourly precision kept with the help of the bell from the neighboring church dedicated to Saint Paul, she urged Agostino to drink a concoction of his own invention. The tea made with chamomile flowers infused with dry ginger eventually stopped his shivering and allowed him to sleep. Giovanna did not have that luxury.

Her stock of elixirs had to be replenished, and only after she had boiled all of her Angelica root and ground up the remaining bay laurel did she notice that the sun had set once more. She was wiping off her bronze pestle—a family heirloom handed down through the generations—when her eyes fell upon the beam of moonlight through the dormer window, reminding her of a standing obligation.

Ottavia! With the distractions brought on by her father's sudden illness, Giovanna had nearly forgotten an earlier promise to her friend. Tossing the pestle aside, she rummaged through a collection of glass vessels on a high shelf before finding the one she sought. The iridescent green bottle only had two fingers-worth of liquid at the bottom.

It would have to do. Giovanna had neither time nor resources to brew another batch of the potion, and it would still need to sit untouched for a few days to properly mature. Left with no other choice, she poured the precious medicine into a small vial and corked it closed. After one more peek at her father to confirm he was now comfortably resting in the bed behind a fabric partition hung from the rafters and could do without her for the next few hours, she donned her mask and cloak, and set out on her way.

Because of the mandatory curfew prohibiting anyone other than doctors of the plague, ferrymen of the sick, and soldiers of the watch from traversing Venice at this late hour, the city was practically deserted. Giovanna kept to the shadows and made as little disturbance as possible while hurrying across the city. She timed her sprint across the Rialto bridge to avoid an armed patrol, getting to the other side of the Grand Canal and disappearing into an adjacent alley before the two men doubled-back on their rounds.