Giana returned to Venice. While the quarantine was not as effective as it was in smaller cities that had acted earlier like Ragusa, requiring merchant ships to bid their time outside the city walls until they knew they brought no plague with them did prove somewhat effective in preventing future outbreaks.
The world slowly moved on. No one batted an eye when Giana resumed operation of the bakery without a father or a husband to look after her. As the city crawled back to life, business expanded and she was able to afford a nicer home than the small one room apartment she and her father had shared. Her friend Marina, who'd opted to stay in the country, found that she could charge almost ten times her pre-Mortality wages. Lady Francesca was forced to pay up since she would have a hard time finding help if Marina went elsewhere. Finally, the church didn’t have quite the sway over the people that it used to. In fact, Gianna had stopped going almost entirely. It was Lady Francesca who had saved the baker from ending up like her poor Papa, after all, not the Lord Almighty.
