Chapter Three
Early in January in the New Year of 1780, the seventeenth birthdays of Marietta and Elena slipped by. Iseppo and his wife brought Marietta a home-baked cake, as was their custom on her birthday. They sat on one side of the gilded grille in the visitors’ room and she sat on the other, chatting eagerly. Afterward the cake was shared around, but a section with some of the sugar flowers was saved for Marietta to take to the orphans in the nursery section. Among them was five-year-old Bianca, the god-daughter Marietta had acquired soon after her arrival at the Pietà. Adrianna, wanting to help her through the anguish of her recent bereavement, had taken her to see the day-old infant who had been left nameless on the doorstep. Marietta had been drawn immediately to the newborn baby
