Bianca's Cure, page 1
Praise for Bianca’s Cure
“A masterful storyteller. Berardi’s narrative is both imaginative and persuasive—a tale relevant to women in science today, and with a plant that still attracts considerable scientific attention: Artemisia annua.”
—Ruth Lydia Richter, botanist in the natural science section at the Goetheanum (CH)
“Navigating the Medici court in Renaissance Florence was not for the faint of heart. Neither was curing malaria. Determined to prevail in both despite threats and innumerable obstacles, Bianca in Bianca’s Cure inspires those who dare!”
—Esther Erman, author of Rebecca of Salerno
“Gigi Berardi’s voice-driven narrative skillfully describes the tortuous path a woman scientist takes to do her work and at the same time manage children, household, and realm. Readers of both historical fiction and science will enjoy this unforgettable tale.”
—Ruth Sofield, professor at Western Washington University and coauthor of Introduction to Environmental Toxicology
Copyright © 2026 Gigi Berardi
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for brief quotations in reviews, educational works, or other uses permitted by copyright law.
Published in 2026 by
She Writes Press, an imprint of The Stable Book Group
32 Court Street, Suite 2109
Brooklyn, NY 11201
https://shewritespress.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2025918831
ISBN: 979-8-89636-070-4
eISBN: 979-8-89636-071-1
Interior Designer: Kiran Spees
Printed in the United States
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be used to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) models. The publisher and author reserve all rights related to the use of this content in machine learning.
All company and product names mentioned in this book may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. They are used for identification purposes only and do not imply endorsement or affiliation.
To my children, Ian and Emily, wondrous artists and scientists.
1
Venice
A Death and a Beginning
1558
No one heard Bianca as she moved on her stockinged feet to the sickroom where her mother lay dying. She’d practiced walking through her aunts’ palace like a cat, softly, silently. Cats had a good sense of smell, too, and could recognize chemical changes in the air, maybe even disease. The same way she could tell, from the woody fragrance of the root she’d been simmering for hours, what the broth she’d created could do.
Yesterday her aunts forced Bianca out of the room before she could give her mother a steeping cure. Tonight, she had made herself wait until the clock struck three, then four, before slipping down to the cellar where the women in her family had made alchemic recipes, using dried herbs, for generations. Once there, Bianca had removed her shoes, leaving the door ajar so it wouldn’t click, placing the copper pot on the iron ring over the fire without making a sound. After adding some of her mother’s wormwood extracts, she crept upstairs. Now, she slid around a corner into the dark hallway, finding her way by pressing a palm against the cold frescoed walls. Her other hand clutched the cup that held her herbal brew. Her aunts mustn’t see the light of a tallow candle or smell its burning fat. If they caught her, they’d stop her. A sickroom is no place for a girl of ten. You’re underfoot, Bianca. A priest was poking his nose in here again. If he sees you and your “cures . . .”
Bianca was closer to being able to cure malaria with her herbs than the aunties had ever been. Her mother had taught her to see the rhythms of plants growing and creating seeds, writing their biographies in the shape and curl of the leaves that opened and closed each day. This herb, artemisia in the deep fall and just at the start of flowering, was the most expressive of all. And it had gestured to her. The bitter plant was the medicine her mother needed. Mama had shown the aunties, too, but they didn’t believe her, or they didn’t care.
Mama practiced science, testing ideas and writing about new cures in her notes. Mama knew about how the plants interacted with each other, and how she could extract their healing substances, one by one, with her new alembic. But she’d gotten sick, and no one would help Mama with her ideas except Bianca. According to the aunties, distilling extracts was men’s work, an insult to the remedies they’d been making for generations. The aunties followed recipes, but didn’t understand the chemistry behind them. Mama did. They’d want to become scientists, too, once they saw what Bianca’s cure could do.
Pausing outside her mother’s door, Bianca cracked it open wide enough for a cat to slip through. The room smelled of acid vomit. Her mother lay in the bed, unmoving, her breathing ragged. Almost all the thick dark hair was gone from her head, and shadows made caves of her closed eyes. Bianca set the brew on a small table by the bed so she could raise her mother up on the pillows. Her skin was hot to the touch. When Bianca lifted the bitter broth to her swollen lips, her mother groaned. Was she trying to say her daughter’s name? Bianca hardly breathed. Her mother’s eyelids flickered.
The door behind Bianca slammed open.
No time to hide, let alone run. Bianca’s aunt burst into the room. Just a few years older than Bianca’s mother, she was tall and had the same dark hair. But never had her mother looked this furious. Bianca’s aunt reached her in two strides, swiping the cup out of her hand. Warm liquid splashed onto the bed and stone floor. Sniffing, her aunt looked around the room. “What are you doing, stupid girl?”
Bianca curled her hand into a fist around the root in her pocket, all that was left from her night’s efforts. The woody plant bit into her skin. Good. Its strong oaky fragrance would help her focus. She tried to make her face hard. Her aunts’ were like stone, from years of fighting with each other. Was her mother the only kind one? Maybe they wanted her to die?
Her aunt didn’t wait for Bianca to answer. “So, we’re playing with roots again? What damage have you done now?”
Bianca shook her head. “I wasn’t hurting her.” Which was more than the aunties could say. Their purges and sulfur poultices had made her mama bald and left her pale and shaking. But Bianca bit her tongue. “I just thought . . .” No, she knew. She knew what she was doing because her mama had shown her.
Mama was going to use artemisia to end the heat disease.
Your aunties are clever. Never doubt that, Mama had told her. But they are only as clever as every woman who’s come before them. Anything they see as new is a threat. That’s why they won’t use artemisia extracts the way I do. Someday I’ll take you to Florence and we can learn more from the alchemists there how to distill the herbs, separating out their purest essence. For now, we do what we can, one day at a time. Mama hadn’t settled on a cure yet, but she had said she was close, and close was better than the aunties’ treatments. If her aunties couldn’t see that, they weren’t clever at all.
“You thought?” Her aunt stiffened. “You’re ten, Bianca. Too young to think anything.” The slap hit her on the cheek and Bianca tumbled sideways, her forehead cracking against the wet flagstone floor. The cold stone numbed the pain. Whimpering, she sat up, pressing her hand to her head. But it was no more than she deserved. She’d gotten caught again, without any hope of getting the brew to her mother. Dabbing the corner of her eye, Bianca blinked back a tear. Couldn’t her aunt hear her mother gasping? Bianca got to her feet, swaying. Mama’s breathing was too fast. She needed Bianca.
“This is not a game, girl.” Her aunt’s fingers gripped Bianca’s elbow. “You challenge us?”
“My mother would, if she wasn’t sick.” Bianca tugged her sleeve out of her aunt’s bony grasp. She shot a glance at the few sticky black hairs matted together along the side of her mother’s head, and the many sores from the smelly, stinging poultices. “Mama was making a cure. A cure that saves lives. She gave it to the gardener’s son, remember? And he got better.”
Her aunt followed Bianca’s gaze, moving her eyes from her niece to her sick sister. “That boy was barely ill. And what about the man last month? She treated him and he died.” With one arm, she pulled Bianca toward her. “Listen, when your mother could still think, she welcomed our treatments. She begged us—not some child—to save her.”
Bianca lifted her chin. “Auntie, no—”
Her aunt touched a cold finger to Bianca’s face. “There, there—copper-gold hair, pearl-like skin, but such an empty look in your eyes. I can’t see why she entrusted any cure to you, pretty girl.” She brushed Bianca’s cheek with her palm. “She spoiled you, too.”
Jerking her head away from her aunt, Bianca fell back a step. “Mama loves me whether I’m pretty or not.” What Mama had really said was that some people would hate Bianca for being pretty, and some people would love her for it, but that pretty was just like anything else, something she could use. All Bianca knew was that she couldn’t use it to make friends with her cousins. They’d stopped wanting to be seen with her because they said she made them look ugly. “I don’t care about pretty. Once I’m a scientist, I’m going to cut off all my hair and cover my face with clay.”
“Hmm.
Her mother’s breaths were getting quicker. Bianca’s own chest grew tight. “Yes. Artemisia will save her. I’ve simmered the roots as strong as I could, with Mama’s extracts in it.” She swallowed. Her mouth had gone dry. “Mama said it has to be pure.”
“Pure?” Her aunt’s eyes narrowed. “We Cortese blend ingredients that heal, recipes passed down from plants grown here over generations. Over centuries.”
“There’s a different way, Auntie. And some of our plants come from the ships in the port. Mama knows how to use alchemy to unlock the secrets of one plant at a time. Mixing so many brews the way you do weakens the medicine. Strong extracts with the wormwood helps the body to heal itself. And so—”
“A different way?” Her aunt leaned in, her voice a hiss. “Meaning better? Better than what we have created here since the Cortese name graced Venice’s streets?” They stood inches apart, her aunt’s moist breath warm on Bianca’s face. “All this talk of ‘purity.’ That’s a man’s alchemy of metals. Men separate. Women blend.” She stepped back, but spoke again before Bianca could draw a breath. “Listen to me: strong gets noticed. When we make a little noise, we’re seen, then we’re vulnerable. You may be young but you can’t pretend you don’t know what people call her.” She tilted her head toward the woman in the bed. “I know you think Pellegrina had a cure for malaria, and you wanted to use it to save her. But Bianca, you know nothing. People are afraid of your mother and her ideas. If you use her spells to save her, they’ll say the devil brought her back. We must heal her in the ways we’ve used for centuries. If this disease takes her now, after all our treatments, at least she doesn’t burn at the stake. Have you thought of that? We don’t need the alchemy of men, their costly equipment, their forges and distilleries. We have our methods. We work in our own ways.”
Had her aunt’s chin and cheekbones always jutted so sharply, or had meanness shaped her face? Bianca met her gaze just for a moment, those eyes gray like Mama’s, but so much colder. “What you’re doing isn’t helping, Auntie.”
“Your mother still lives, doesn’t she?”
Barely, Bianca wanted to say.
“I suppose next you think you’re going to discover some laboratory to work in—like your mother tried?” Her aunt snorted. “To share our recipes with outsiders? Give away our secrets? Study side by side with men?”
Surely that would be better than keeping silent, or keeping secrets that revealed nothing about cures. Her aunts’ recipes were odd combinations of things, more superstition than anything else. Bianca dug her hand into her pocket, her fingers catching on the scratchy root.
“Why not just run away to Florence and be done with it?” Bianca’s aunt folded her arms. “Whore yourself out to one of those Medici. Men of science, but what kind of genius needs fancy equipment to create a cure? They call themselves alchemists, with their laboratories and charts of the night stars, but none of them have cured anything, have they? Men build themselves big workspaces like in Florence so the world will think they’re doing something, and your mother, she was always just like them, with that studio in the annex of your father’s palace. Bored of the old ways that actually work. Afraid she’d fail if she followed in our own mother’s footsteps. And she taught you the same. Well, let me save you some time and heartache, Bianca. You’ll fail. We would have taught you here, but you insist on going your own way. Your mother is ours, and there is nothing for you to do. If I catch you in this room again, your father will hear of it. He’ll lock you up in one of those big houses of his, Bianca, and we won’t plead for your release—certainly your mother won’t.”
Bianca bit her lip. She tasted blood.
Her mother lay still, save for her heaving chest. The aunties couldn’t save her. And the puddled mixture that might have helped her now stained the bedsheets. It would take Bianca days to make more. And even if she could . . . Your father will hear of it. She couldn’t come back. But how could she leave?
“Go.” Her aunt placed her hands on Bianca’s shoulders, forcing her backward, step by step, until she stumbled out into the hall. The door slammed in Bianca’s face.
“No, please.” She beat on the heavy wood until her hands burned. “Open the door.” What if her mother called out and Bianca wasn’t there? And her aunt ignored it? She pressed her ear against the door. Silence.
There hadn’t been silence in that sickroom for days, not since the fluid had entered her mother’s lungs. Something was wrong.
Bianca ran to the stairwell and then up the stairs, up farther, into the stuffy attic, through the piles of stale-smelling books and musty canisters. Carefully she climbed out the window onto the rotted, narrow ledge, following it step by step. Soon she was peering down into her mother’s room. A crack in the bleached boards covering a small window showed her aunt bent over her mother’s bed. Bianca pounded on the boards, each blow becoming fainter as her hand began to throb. Her aunt’s shoulders stiffened, but she never turned around. Instead she took a cotton flannel and covered her sister’s face. The image before Bianca blurred. Her eyes stung. Grabbing the artemisia from her pocket, she shredded the failed root till the last earthy flake fell from her fingers.
She had nothing.
Bianca stood rigid in the last place she’d ever stand in a world where her mother had lived. Move, and Mama’s death would be real. Bianca would leave here half an orphan, in a city where the sickness already had killed so many. How did this happen? Her mother knew things, her mother could have cured the heat disease, in time. But she hadn’t been given time, not even another day. She’d been given Bianca, and Bianca hadn’t saved her. No one had.
The reddening sky lit the glass in the window. Bianca remained still. The sun’s reflection caught in one of the frames in the hazy morning. With the back of her hand, she wiped away a tear. It didn’t matter what her aunts said about men’s work or her mother’s infusions. The aunties had let Mama die, but Bianca would finish what her mother had begun. Walking back along the ledge, she clenched her teeth till her jaw ached and shook her hand at the brightening sky. She’d find a cure. Her aunties couldn’t stop her, nor her father. Nothing would.
2
The Sick House of Venice
1563
The stench from the Sick House still filled Bianca’s nose, even here in the palace annex that had once been her mother’s. It was the odor of illness, of fear and of hope, of some people getting better, and others not. It meant her bitter brews might help as healing remedies. It meant that Bianca was doing what her mother would have wanted.
Since her mother’s death five years ago, she’d made recipes in the annex, and often in darkness. In the early morning, Bianca wouldn’t light a candle. Better if no one noticed she was up. The aunties would have thought this bigger than any workspace they’d need. But then, what work did they actually do? People came to her aunties not only to be healed, but more often, to change the way they looked—from wan to fair, from freckled to glowing. Those were the arts her cousins were learning. Bianca had been banned from such lessons, but she didn’t care. Her aunties brought no one from dying to living, but Mama’s alchemy could. Making the infusions was a first step. The next: to find the dying.
It had taken a long time, but she’d found them in a Sick House. A hopeless place, yes, but her mother wouldn’t have called it that. It held the possibility of, with the right cure, recovery. Bianca didn’t have that cure, not yet, not one that could save all or even most of the feverish patients who wound up at the Sick House. But she had her mother’s notes, and she’d filled almost a whole book with her own. Bianca grabbed that book now, stashing it in her basket. What else would she need? She’d made a tincture from artemisia leaves based on notes her mother had left behind, and brews from several other wormwoods. She gathered the carefully labeled bottles, adding a jar of the extract from the santolina leaf. Soaked in cotton, it made the insects in her wools disappear. If she found the right dose, in the right dilution with water, the santolina might repel disease as well. Bianca packed the jars into her basket, going over her latest infusions and extracts in her head.
