LOGINPOV: Isabella“Open the doors. All of them, the big ones and the little ones. If this council is going to argue about my secrets, it will do it where the whole city can hear.”I am Isabella, and I said it at noon on Wednesday, from a chair at the side of the Hall, with a blanket on my knees and Renzi’s hand clamped on my wrist like a vice. He had given me one hour. He had said it with the face of a man agreeing to be hanged. I had kissed his cheek, and he had told me to stop being charming.Giulia sat in the Speaker’s chair, small and upright. In front of her, on the long council table, lay the box. The little bow of twine. The drop of black wax. The envelope with my card beside it. Behind me the great doors swung wide, and warm air rushed in, smelling of salt and fish and baking bread. The benches filled in a rolling wave of coats and shawls. The old, the young, the curious, the afraid.I saw Pina Bellandi in the front row, small and straight, with Cosimo at her elbow. I saw Rosa wit
POV: Matteo“Tell me plainly, Orsolo, before I forget I am an old man with two canes. Did you want my wife dead?”I am Matteo, and I said it at six in the morning on the doorstep of a neat gray house on Cooper’s Lane, with a cold wind in my beard and no sleep behind my eyes. I had not meant to say it so. I had meant to knock, and be civil, and ask a question. But I had spent the night on a hard chair beside Isabella’s bed, listening to her breathe, and counting every breath as if it were a coin I might lose.Renzi had come at two. He had said very little. He had looked at her for a long time, and listened to her chest, and then taken me out onto the landing and said three sentences. It was not the heart. It was exhaustion. If she does that again, I will not be able to promise. Then he had gone downstairs and put his head in his hands.Now Orsolo stood in his open doorway in a dressing gown, silver hair uncombed, and looked at me as if I had struck him.“What?” he said.“You told your
POV: Isabella“Put it down, Fabrizio. Slowly. You have never once been brave enough to steal anything alone, and I would like very much to meet whoever sent you.”I am Isabella, and I said it at one in the morning, from the shadow behind the Speaker’s chair, with a blanket around my shoulders and my husband’s arm like a wall at my back. I had promised Renzi I would stay in bed. I had promised Matteo I would not climb a single step. I had broken both promises by ten o’clock, and I did not feel in the least sorry.We had waited four hours. Matteo, Elia, Giulia’s old night watchman Bruno, and I, huddled in the dark behind the great carved chair like children playing at robbers. The Hall was cold and smelled of stone and candle smoke. A mouse had been very busy in the wall. And at ten minutes past one, the great doors had creaked, and soft footsteps had crept down the center aisle, and a lantern had swung into view.He came on his toes, in his good boots, as if the floor might wake. A sli
POV: Matteo“My father carried your guns up that hill, Lord Matteo. Where is his name? Say it out loud, in front of everyone, or admit it was never written.”I am Matteo, and Cosimo Bellandi said it on Tuesday at noon, in the middle of the Hall, with two hundred people holding their breath. It was the public hour, the one time each week when any citizen may speak to the council without a ticket. Usually the benches are half empty. People bring complaints about drains and dogs and the price of fish.Today the benches were crammed. People stood along the walls. The air smelled of wool and sweat and nervous perfume. Somebody had brought a baby, and it whimpered into a shoulder.Cosimo stood alone in the center aisle, in a clean gray shirt buttoned to the throat. His hands hung at his sides. They were not shaking. Everything about him was perfectly still, and that frightened me more than shouting would have.I sat at the front, on a hard chair beside Isabella. Renzi had given her exactly
POV: Isabella“Hold the lamp lower, Ines. There. Do you see it, Matteo? Twenty seven names, cut small, on the back of the stone where the sun never reaches. I put them there. Please do not hate me yet.”I am Isabella, and I said it at dawn on Monday, on the hill, on my knees in the wet grass. I had no business being there. Renzi had forbidden it in three languages. But I had told Matteo on Sunday night, in the dark, that I had one more thing to show him, and that it could not wait for the council. He had looked at me a long time. Then he had gone to find his boots.Now the three of us crouched in the gap behind the Memorial stone, with the hillside pressing on one shoulder and cold granite on the other. Ines held the lamp. She is seventy now, broad and gray and silent, with the strongest hands in Marabella and a face like a closed door. Matteo lowered himself beside me with a grunt. Behind us, standing on the path with his hat in his hands, Elia waited, pale and watchful. I had not as
POV: Matteo“Sit, Matteo, and do not ask me anything until I finish this row. If I stop now, the whole sleeve will unravel, and so will I.”I am Matteo, and Rosa said it on Sunday morning in her kitchen, with her needles clicking like tiny swords and a pot of coffee going cold on the table. She looked smaller than I remembered. Her hair had gone white as salt, and her fingers, which once kneaded dough for half the harbor, now moved in short stiff jerks. But her eyes were as sharp as ever. They flicked up at me and down again.Nico sat across the table, big and gray and silent, his hands folded around a cup he was not drinking. He had not met my eye since I came in.“I will wait,” I said.“You are a good man.” She clicked a stitch. “You are also a terrible sneak. You have been looking at the clock since you sat down.”“I have not.”“Twice. Nico counted.”“Three times,” said Nico, to his coffee.I laughed. I could not help it. For a moment the kitchen was warm, and smelled of cinnamon a







