Marco Lombardi had been working the Genoa docks for twelve years when the galleys came back from Caffa.
There were three of them: the Santa Maria, the San Giorgio, and the Bella Vista. He knew all three. He'd unloaded their cargo before—spices, silk, eastern luxuries. Good work, well-paid. The Caffa route was profitable.
But something was wrong this time.
The ships anchored in the harbor, and nobody came ashore.
Marco and the other dock workers stood on the pier, waiting. The October wind was cold, bringing rain. The ships sat low in the water, fully laden, but the decks were... empty wasn't the right word. There were people moving up there. But slowly. Too slowly.
"Where's the harbormaster?" someone asked.
"Getting the manifest."
They waited. The rain picked up. Marco pulled his cloak tighter and watched the Santa Maria. A figure appeared at the rail—one of the sailors—and waved. The motion was weak, uncoordinated. Then the man bent over and vomited.
"He's sick," Marco said.
"Sea sick. Long voyage."
"That's not sea sick."
The harbormaster arrived with two city officials and a clerk carrying the manifest. They stood at the pier's edge, looking at the ships. One of the officials called out in accented Greek: "Captain! Report!"
No answer.
The official tried again, louder. "Santa Maria! Status report!"
A figure emerged from the aft cabin. Tall, thin, wrapped in a stained cloak. He approached the rail slowly, gripping the wood like a man who might fall.
"We..." His voice was hoarse. "We need a physician."
"How many crew?"
"Started with thirty-eight."
"How many now?"
The captain didn't answer immediately. Then: "Eleven. Maybe twelve."
The pier went quiet.
"What happened?" the harbormaster asked.
"Plague." The captain said it flatly. "Started in Caffa. Spread to the ships. We threw bodies overboard for three weeks." He coughed—deep, wet, painful. "The survivors are... most of us are sick. We need help."
The officials exchanged glances. The clerk made a note.
"You're quarantined," the harbormaster said. "No one leaves the ships. We'll send a physician to assess—"
"We need to unload," the captain interrupted. "The cargo. It's valuable. If we leave it in the hold, it'll—"
"Nothing gets unloaded until we assess the situation."
"Some of us are getting better!" The captain's voice cracked. "It's not... it's not all fatal. Some recover. I'm recovering. Just—please. We've been at sea for two months. We need water. Medicine. Food."
Marco looked at the other dock workers. They were all thinking the same thing: Don't let them ashore.
But the harbormaster was hesitating. "How much cargo?"
"Full hold. Spices, cloth, gemstones. Worth..." The captain stumbled over the number. "Forty thousand florins. Maybe more."
Forty thousand florins.
Marco watched the harbormaster's expression change. Not much. Just a slight shift—calculation replacing caution.
"We'll send physicians," the harbormaster said. "If they clear you, we'll organize the unloading. But nobody leaves the ships until then."
The captain nodded and disappeared back into the cabin.
The physicians arrived the next morning.
Two of them, both wearing long robes and masks stuffed with herbs. They rowed out to the Santa Maria in a small boat and climbed aboard. Marco and the others watched from the pier.
They were aboard for maybe an hour. When they came back, one of the physicians was pale.
"Well?" the harbormaster asked.
"They're dying," the physician said. "Eleven crew still alive. Six are..." He searched for words. "Six are covered in buboes. Swellings. Under the arms, in the groin. Fever, delirium, bleeding. The others are showing early signs."
"Will they recover?"
"I don't know. I've never seen this." The physician looked back at the ships. "Whatever it is, it's... aggressive. Fast. The captain says some men were healthy in the morning and dead by evening."
"Contagious?"
"I don't know."
The harbormaster looked at the city officials. They were all thinking the same thing: forty thousand florins.
"Quarantine them for a week," one official said. "See who survives. If the sickness passes, we unload. If not..."
"If not, we burn the ships," the other official finished.
The harbormaster nodded. "One week. Nobody goes aboard. Nobody comes ashore."
Three days later, the quarantine broke.
Not officially. The harbormaster didn't give permission. But one of the sailors from the San Giorgio—the youngest one, maybe sixteen—jumped into the harbor at dawn and swam for shore.
Marco saw it happen. He was coiling rope near the pier when the boy surfaced, gasping, struggling toward the dock. He made it. Climbed out, dripping. He was thin, shaking, covered in bruises that didn't look like bruises. More like... stains. Dark patches under the skin.
"Help," the boy said. "Please. I need—"
Two guards ran up. "Get back in the water!"
"I'm not sick. I'm fine. I just—"
One of the guards grabbed him. The boy tried to pull away and the guard's hand came away wet. Red. The boy was bleeding. Not from a wound. Just... bleeding. From his nose, his gums, the corners of his eyes.
The guard dropped him and stumbled back.
The boy collapsed on the dock.
Marco didn't move. Nobody moved. They all stood there, watching the boy bleed onto the stones.
He died before the physician arrived.
The official decision came that night: burn the ships.
But Marco heard the argument in the harbormaster's office before that. He was waiting outside—he'd been summoned to discuss the unloading schedule—and the door was thin.
"Forty thousand florins," one voice said. "Possibly more. We can't just burn it."
"We can't unload it if everyone who touches it dies." That was the physician.
"The boy wasn't carrying cargo. He was sick when he jumped. That's different from handling sealed crates."
"You don't know that."
"We can take precautions. Masks. Gloves. Minimal contact. Unload to a warehouse, keep it sealed for a month, see if anyone gets sick."
A pause. Then the physician: "And if they do?"
"Then we burn the warehouse."
Another pause, longer this time.
"This is a bad idea," the physician said. "We don't understand this disease. We don't know how it spreads. Burning the ships is the safe choice."
"Burning forty thousand florins," the other voice said, "is not safe for Genoa's economy. We've already lost revenue from Caffa. If we destroy this cargo, the merchants—"
"The merchants will be dead if this spreads."
"If it spreads. You don't know that it will."
Silence.
Then the harbormaster: "We unload. Precautions taken. Quarantine protocols for the workers. Sealed warehouse. One month observation period."
"I'm noting my objection," the physician said.
"Noted."
They started unloading the next morning.
Marco wasn't selected. The harbormaster picked volunteers—younger men, desperate for the pay. Ten of them. They wore masks and gloves, moved quickly, didn't touch the sick crew.
It took three days. Crates of silk, sacks of spices, barrels of wine. All moved from the ships to a warehouse on the east side of the harbor. The workers were paid double and told to report any symptoms.
Two weeks later, four of them were dead.
The physician reported it to the harbormaster. Then to the city council. By then, it was too late.
The workers had gone home. They'd touched their families. They'd bought food in the market. They'd sat in taverns, slept in boarding houses, walked through crowded streets.
The disease was in Genoa.
Marco got sick in early November.
He woke up with a headache and thought it was just lack of sleep. By noon, the headache was worse. By evening, he could feel the swelling under his left arm—hard, hot, painful to touch.
He knew what it was.
He stayed home. Sent his wife and children to her brother's farm outside the city. Told them not to come back. They argued. He didn't have the strength to argue back. They left.
He lasted five days.
On the third day, the fever began. On the fourth, he started bleeding. On the fifth, he stopped being able to tell what was real and what wasn't. He saw his wife, but she wasn't there. He saw the ships in the harbor, burning, but they'd already been scuttled weeks ago.
He died on the sixth day.
By December, a quarter of Genoa was dead.
By spring, the plague had reached Florence, Venice, Rome. By summer, it was in France. By autumn, it crossed the Alps.
Historians would later call it the Black Death. The worst pandemic in European history. Between 1347 and 1353, it killed somewhere between 75 and 200 million people—roughly a third of the continent's population.
It started in October 1347, when three galleys returned from Caffa carrying forty thousand florins worth of cargo.
And a city official decided it was worth unloading.