Chapter 34: The Sinful Saint
The doctors wearing bird-beaked masks and large hoods began to splash vinegar water again. The strong, pungent smell was carried by the wind to this small, barren hillside. Rafael, who had a keen sense of smell, sneezed twice. Ferrante glanced at him and silently changed his position, blocking a little of the wind for him.
“Look, Florence is dying.” Rafael didn’t notice his movements, but just looked at the sprawling and rugged buildings and said softly.
On the specially opened narrow road, carts carrying corpses passed one after another. The corpse bearers hunched over, sending the corpses with their miserable deaths into a unified tomb for burial. However, they might also fall to the ground on the journey, becoming a part of the cargo on the cart.
Some carts were parked outside houses, while the corpse bearers were nowhere to be found. The priests no longer entered to check, but knocked on the door. If there was no response, they would seal the door and wait for manpower to be available before dealing with it again.
“Has God abandoned Florence?” No matter how many times he saw it, even the most hard-hearted person cannot remain indifferent when facing the death of his own kind. Ferrante was only a sixteen-year-old boy, and he had never seen such a living hell. The Holy See had an atlas obtained from an island country in the East, which recorded the people of that country’s imagination of hell: twisted and terrifying demons dancing on corpses, with flames and sulfur burning in the stone mountains. When Ferrante looked at the scene in front of him, the chill of facing hell rolled down his spine again.
Rafael curled his lips in mockery: “God has never abandoned Florence. This is the evil deeds of greedy people.”
Ferrante turned abruptly.
As just a member of the papal guard, he was not qualified to know the true secret of the plague in Florence. Until now, he still thought that this plague was an accident, just like any other tragic story of coincidence, death and disease always fairly favored every person and every piece of land.
So when Ferrante saw the desolate and miserable lower city, his only feeling was sadness. He was born here, and although this place was despised and hated by everyone, even the residents here hated it, but when this land really died, the children who were fed by its smelly and shriveled milk would also be sad about it.