Synopsis:

There was a year when the peaceful co-existence of Moslems, Jews, and Christians in the Kingdom of Spain came to a bloody halt. That same year the world's greatest military power launched a daring invasion on foreign soil, and an AIDS-like disease from beyond the ocean erupted and spread biological terror across the globe.

But also in that year, love bloomed, and grew to an epic adventure for a naïve girl who ultimately found herself caught up in the Beauty and the hope for Man's future which was the Renaissance.

Before AIDS, there was another world-traveling epidemic. Before Bill Gates' internet, there was Gutenberg's revolutionary printing press. Before the current scandal in the Catholic Church, there was an infamous Pope of insatiable appetites.

But the human heart hasn't changed much over the centuries: there has always been Romance, always military invasions, always the lust for adventure, always those who would care for the people who couldn't afford physicians.

This is the true history of Syphilis. How it gained its European foothold with Columbus’ returning sailors, then grew into an epidemic among the knights and footsoldiers of the French Army. The true story of how the Army of King Charles (the Big Head) conquered Italy in 1494, discovered the Renaissance along the way, and catapulted a new disease from beyond the ocean into an epidemic that lasted for 500 years. The lessons of the Renaissance are still with us. So is the disease.

We experience all this through the adventures of Pilár, a girl whose love for a young soldier propels her (and us) into the heart of historical events.

Amid the chaos of romance, war, and epidemic, Pilár shows us, by living the adventure, how Reason began to challenge Faith, how the Renaissance obsession with Beauty transformed medieval Europe, and how the terrifying epidemic of a New World disease revolutionized Western Medicine.

 

Book Excerpt:

Chapter 1

Spring, 1493

A Barbary Coast wind, warm with early african summer, washed across the sea into an ancient harbor. It swung a dozen foreign ships by their anchor chains. It wound up the seaport’s narrow alleyways accumulating odors, and swept back the brown and tangled hair of a barefoot girl.

She ran on the sand between old Roman walls on her left and a meandering stream to her right. She ran through the shadows cast by oak trees on the sand, past scavenging dogs that jumped from her flapping skirt, past poor women washing their clothes. She ran until the sea came into sight, then she turned, splashed across the stream, and darted down an alley.

“Martín!” She yelled between gasping breaths. “He’s coming! He’s coming, Martín!”

She gained speed on the downsloping alley, toward a seated figure below. She tried to yell once more, but could only gasp. Momentum took over. She collided into the massive and gelatinous back of the seated man, just as he was pouring a stream of red wine into his mouth. His body lurched forward, driving the table edge deep into his abdomen and the glass spout of his porrone halfway down his throat. Bread, cheese and fish flew from the table. He choked on the wine, gargled it back up, and swallowed. Then he turned to see what clumsy pickpocket had assaulted him so early in the day.

His eyes widened with recognition. “Pilár!” He swept his hand toward the food on the street. “My lunch!” He held up theporrone. “My wine. I was nearly impaled through the throat. What were you thinking?”

She clung to his loose cotton shirt with both fists, jumping up and down by his side. “He’s coming!” she wheezed between gasps. “The man who . . . who sailed to the Indies . . . is coming! With gold . . . and treasures . . . and all his Men of Glory! To see the King and Queen. Here!”

Her jumping slowed, eventually stopped, but she maintained her grip so she could lean on him, heaving, to recover her breathing. Her smile flooded his blank and fattened face.

“Pilár?”

“Yes, Martín?”

“Get me more cheese and bread.”

She lurched into the Inn through the door adjacent to Martín’s table; the same door through which he’d dragged the table out into this warmest day since last September. When she came out again to place a hunk of goat cheese and a fist of bread before him, she was more subdued. He resumed eating. She stood by the table fingering her blue cotton skirt.

“Señor Martín . . .” she ventured.

“Sit down,” he muffled with full mouth, not looking up at her. She quickly dropped into a chair across from him.

“I was climbing up Montjuic to watch the ships from the top of the mountain and some pilgrims said that the Discoverer is coming with all his Men of Glory and everyone is going to see him and…”

He cut off her renewed enthusiasm with a raised hand.

“The screaming I heard, which I thought was the Old Fish yelling at her husband again, was you, no, little girl?” He looked up at her.

“Yes,” she bubbled. “Yes. It was I. So that you can be the first in Barrio Chino to know. Martín! We must go watch the parade to the Royal Palace!”

“If this Great Man and his gold are at all civilized,” Martín droned, “he will wait beyond the city walls until we’ve had our siesta.” His eyes glanced up to see her reaction to his tease, expecting a small eruption.

“Oh, he’ll wait longer than that.”

“He will?”

“He’s still ten leagues from here on the Coast Road. He’ll be here in two more days. We must watch him when he enters the town, Martín.” She leaned toward him as far as the table would allow. “Never in our lives have we seen an adventurer more famous! You must close the Inn so we can go.”

“I’d like to see this,” the Innkeeper mumbled as if to himself. He looked at Pilár: “We will close the Inn and go, and pray to the Virgin that all the wealthy customers who might come at that time are delayed until we get back.”

She jumped from her chair and enclosed his flabby chins in her arms. “Thank you, Don Martín! The Virgin will delay all our customers and they’ll be even more hungry when we open again. I know it is so. I’ll clean your table now,” she scurried. “Do you want more wine? What should I wear, do you think?”

She stopped at a thought, pulled back the chair, and floated into it like a stray feather. “Martín?” Her eyes and smile were not at the table but halfway out to sea again, as he had often seen them. “Would Men of Glory such as they ever consider allowing a girl to accompany them on their adventures, do you think?”

“Yes, Pilár . . .” he began. She snapped back instantly, beaming. “. . . I would like more wine.”

“Oh. Wine.” Her smile shrank but didn’t disappear. “Yes, more wine.” She took the empty porrone into the Inn, and soon returned with it full of heavy red wine.

“Sit, Pilár.”

He tilted his head back, and aimed a stream from the spout of the glass carafe onto his wine-stained tongue. When his mouth was full, he tipped the porrone quickly, caught the entire stream, and brought his head forward as he swallowed.

“Of course sailors would take a pretty young girl with them. And you’d pass your entire adventure running from their grabbing hands. Imagine how you’d waste away with no time allowed you, even for meals. You wouldn’t be safe. Your honor would be constantly assaulted. And you don’t know yet how to defend yourself. Of course,” he mused, “you’ll learn. You’re not yet seventeen –” a doubt interrupted his thoughts. “Are you?”

She wagged her finger, in response.

“No. I thought not. Anyway. Adventure is for men.”

“I’ll have adventures, Martín. I just know it. Only I don’t know the way they’ll come to me.”

“You’ll be married someday and have the adventure of being a mother. That’s the adventure which awaits all women.” His smile was warm and encouraging.

“Yes, Martín, I will be a mother and have many children –”

“Twelve,” Martín confirmed the oft-quoted number.

“Twelve,” she agreed. “But before that, I want to do other great things. “The French girl, Joan? The one you told me about? She became a soldier. The Moorish princess, Scheherazade traveled the whole world. I’ll pray to the Black Virgin to show me the way to adventure.”

The wine and the considerable task of digestion caused Martín to abandon the discussion. “Pray to whomever you wish, my girl, you’ll be rewarded or punished as God sees fit. Now is the hour of siesta. Close your ears so I may belch.”

She pushed fingers into her ears. His stomach released an eruption of mixed gases, and, thus deflated a little, he pushed the table out of his gut and waddled off down the road to his home and bed.

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Topics/Categories:

Epidemics, Love, Renaissance, War

Genre:

Historical Fiction

Type of Work:

Novel

Purchase From:

amazon

Original Publish Date:

2004-01-31

ISBNs:

ISBN # 0-87714-876-7

Formats:

hardcover