“This is no plague m’lady. I’ve seen that devil run through a house.” The old woman paused and made the sign of the cross over herself. “Your youngest has been poisoned. Do you see her eyes, as large and black as ripe grapes.” Martinella scrunched her brows together until they looked like one line. “The lady Noemi found an assassin berry just before m’lord left for Treviso, in the house. I threw it in the lagoon. I imagine more found their way through the door. We best put her to bed madam, and see if she wakes in the morning.”

Mirella motioned to the second man, who immediately swooped in and picked up the little mite as if she were a piece of parchment. Paola clasped her arms around his thick neck and laid her head on his brawny shoulder. So this is what it feels like to sway in the branches of an oak, she thought. She’d normally have been mortified to be in the arms of a strange man, the arms of any man, but this was comforting. As the poison like a dagger slashed into her stomach, she cried out into the ruffled collar of his linen shirt. She’d never felt a pain like that before. The man held her more tightly as he carried her down the hall. Too agonized to push off the onset of another faint, the last thing she remembered was the smell of leather and wood smoke from off of the stranger’s doublet.