The Descent

The summer heat had given way to a cool breeze by the time we stepped outside.

San Prospero was quiet and dimly lit, with a lamppost appearing only every fifty meters or so. Behind us, the glow of the Fortezza rose over the darkened neighborhood. From somewhere in the distance came the occasional shout of a man disappointed in France.

Clay and I walked toward the city.

Neither of us carried a map. I had no written directions. We had only the path Signora Bandinelli had recovered from sixty years of memory, which I repeated silently so it would not disappear.

Begin in the Piazza del Campo.

Cross into the Onda.

Follow the road toward the Tartuca.

Left. Right. Down the ancient steps.

The city walls appeared ahead of us, warm and golden beneath the lamps. After perhaps fifteen minutes, we reached a ledge overlooking Siena and stopped without saying anything.

The city lay below us in layers of roofs, towers, and stone. The cathedral rose pale against the darkening sky, its striped walls seeming almost silver in the moonlight. Beyond it, the top of the Torre del Mangia emerged like the hand of a clock from behind the clustered buildings.

I remember that view more clearly than many things that happened years afterward.

Whenever life has felt crowded or uncertain, I have returned to it in my mind: nineteen years old, standing above Siena on the first night of a life not yet lived. Everything seemed possible then. Not easy, exactly, but open.

Clay exhaled beside me.

“Beats my morning view of I-10.”

I laughed.

Interstate 10 ran through both Florida and Houston, connecting two distant homes with the same endless highway. Somehow, in that unfamiliar city, it made him feel immediately less like a stranger.

I pointed toward the tower.

“That’s where we need to go.”

We began descending.

The cobblestones were uneven, and Clay moved carefully, swaying slightly with each step. I slowed my pace without mentioning it. The streets narrowed as we entered the old city, the buildings rising so closely around us that only a thin ribbon of sky remained overhead.

About ten minutes later, Clay stopped.

“Do you hear that?”

At first, I heard only our footsteps.

Then came the faint sound of voices.

They were singing.

The melody drifted through the streets in fragments, disappearing behind walls and returning from another direction. The voices sounded distant and strangely clear, as though they belonged less to a choir than to the city itself.

We followed them.

The singing grew louder near a narrow path descending to our right. Above its entrance stood a plaque:

Santuario-Casa di Santa Caterina.

I stared at it.

This was the house of Saint Catherine of Siena.

She had been born there nearly seven hundred years earlier, the daughter of a wool dyer, in a city that had survived plague, war, famine, and the passing of empires. Somehow, from this steep little street, she had become a counselor to popes, a patron saint of Italy, and a Doctor of the Church.

A doctor.

The word caught my attention.

At that time, medicine was not yet part of my life. I had come to Siena as an engineering student and assumed I would return home to become one. A doctor, to me, was someone who studied disease, treated patients, and wore a white coat.

Saint Catherine had done none of those things.

Yet the Church had called her doctor.

The singing continued from inside.

We approached the gate and found a small group of pilgrims preparing for a candlelit rosary in the chapel.

Clay looked at me with the expression of a man trying very hard not to abandon our adventure for something he wanted even more.

“Shall we enter?” I asked.

“You don’t mind?”

What future Jesuit priest could be expected to pass the house of Saint Catherine while pilgrims prayed the rosary inside?

“Of course not.”

The Maiden’s Fountain could wait.

We entered quietly and took two seats near the back.

The chapel was small and dark except for the candles held by the pilgrims. Their flames trembled in the still air, illuminating faces from different countries and casting long shadows against the walls.

The singing stopped.

A prayer leader raised her hand.

“Nel nome del Padre, del Figlio e dello Spirito Santo.”

Together, the pilgrims made the sign of the cross.

Clay did the same.

So did I.

The rosary began.

At first, I tried to follow every word. Clay, despite knowing almost no Italian, quickly found the rhythm of the responses and joined the others with surprising confidence.

“Tu sei benedetta fra le donne, e benedetto è il frutto del tuo seno, Gesù…”

His pronunciation was imperfect, but his devotion was not.

My own mind began to wander.

I wondered what Siena had looked like when Catherine was alive. Perhaps the streets outside had changed less than I imagined. Perhaps she had walked the same steep paths, passed beneath the same arches, and heard the same bells sounding over the rooftops.

I wondered what my life would have been had I not applied for the scholarship that brought me there. Perhaps I would have remained in Houston that summer, interning at an engineering firm, driving each morning along I-10 beneath a white and empty sky.

Then the word returned to me.

Doctor.

Why had it been given to her?

She had not discovered a cure or performed an operation. She had not measured her worth in knowledge alone. Whatever she had offered the world must have belonged to an older meaning of the word—one I did not yet understand.

The pilgrims continued:

“Santa Maria, Madre di Dio, prega per noi peccatori, adesso e nell’ora della nostra morte.”

Now and at the hour of our death.

The candles flickered.

For a brief moment, I became aware of how many people had prayed those same words before us: the sick, the frightened, the dying, those who loved them, and those who could do nothing but remain beside them.

Then the response ended.

“Amen.”

Half an hour passed before the final prayer was spoken.

The pilgrims remained in silence. Clay bowed his head. I inhaled slowly and took in the stillness of the chapel one last time.

Then we slipped quietly through the back and returned to the streets.

The fountain was waiting.