of Giuseppe’s left boot slipped upon the freshly oiled third stair from the bottom, pitched his legs out from under him and sent his buttocks spectacularly crashing into and through that very third stair, well, the racket did also bring Mari and Davido crashing back to earth.

And as suddenly as their lips had met, they also parted, breathless and gasping and stinking of muck and merda. The couple looked toward the mill, where the racket had come from, and then back at each other. A delirious moan came from inside the barn, prompting Mari to bite her lip and raise her eyebrows. Then, her lip slid from under her tooth and her mouth stretched into a wondrous, bewildered and embarrassed smile that in an instant had Davido smiling too. Neither Mari nor Davido knew what to do or say and somehow they both had the awareness and good grace to do the exact same thing at the exact same moment. The only thing one really could do after such a first kiss. They ran; Mari into the orchard of her father, and Davido down the road to where his wagon and sleeping uncle waited.

13 A Tuscan specialty: pork blood pudding flavored with anise, cinnamon, cloves, raisins and pine nuts.

in which We Learn

the Fine Art of

Steam Distillation

Giuseppe moaned. It all happened so fast. The onslaught of curses from outside the mill that caused him to drop his apparatus and rush down the stairs; the sudden burst of panic as his feet slipped out from under him; the awful jolt of pain; and then, darkness. He was not sure how long the darkness lasted, but within the darkness, there it was, gleaming like a gem. He was at the Feast of the Drunken Saint, watching the men race their donkeys round and round the piazza, stopping only to drain their goblets of wine. Wine that he’d provided for this year’s race, wine that was laced with Fungi di Santo.

Earlier in the day, he and Bobo the Fool had traveled to Lucca to visit with the owner of a local perfumery and see about acquiring a steam distillation apparatus. It was not an entirely unexpected visit, as Giuseppe had a business relationship with the perfumery. Each December, for the last six years, Giuseppe had sold the perfumery of Lucca the vineyard’s pressed grape skins that were left over from the wine-making process. The perfumery would separate the tiny grape seeds from the skins and then press a delicate oil from the seeds. The oil was then used in the making of fine soaps, cosmetics, body lotions and shaving creams.

For Giuseppe, selling the grape skins was an excellent way to squeeze every ounce of profitability from the land. While pressed grape skins were not hard to come by, the owner of the Lucca perfumery deemed the oil from Giuseppe’s seeds exceptional and was therefore more than happy to barter an old and rarely used steam distiller for the coming season’s grape skins.

As a teenager, Giuseppe had frequently distilled mushrooms, barks, roots and other poisonous compounds. Hence, as he arranged the steam distiller in his office, the whole poison-making process returned to him in a flash of memory. 1) Crush the dried fungi into a fine powder with a mortar and pestle. 2) Set the fungi dust into the copper distillation kettle along with a bottle of red wine and a spoonful of honey. 3) Set a fire underneath the kettle and bring the honey, red wine and mushroom dust to a slow boil. 4) Wait for the liquid to turn into steam. 5) Trap the steam and run it down the steam-distillation tubing so that it may cool just enough to form droplets of liquid. 6) Collect the liquid into a glass bottle at the device’s other end. 7) Test a drop on the tongue to make sure all bitterness and mushroom flavor has been removed so that not even the most skilled food-taster—Giuseppe recalled his uncle’s words with a clarity that startled him—could tell the wine was tainted.

Yes, Giuseppe knew exactly what he was doing when it came to distilling the Fungi di Santo mushrooms he had chanced upon last Sunday whilst foraging for truffles with Benito. He just wasn’t certain why he was doing it. Of course, he reasoned, a non-lethal yet debilitating toxin might come in handy at some time or another, possibly even in his current scheme to usurp the Ebrei land. However, he had no specific plan in mind