but never mind. No, families are small here now."
  The priest looked slightly troubled. "My brothers, maybe someday God will grant me some 
knowledge of what became of them."
  "Oh, forget about them," said the old man.
  "Were they a spirited bunch, might I ask?" I said under my breath, peering at both of 
them and trying to make it seem quite natural.
  "Bad," muttered the priest, shaking his head. "But that's our blessing, see, bad people 
leave us."
  "Is that so?" I asked.
  The little old man scratched his pink scalp. His white hair was thin and long, sticking 
in all directions, rather like the hair of his eyebrows.
  "You know, I was trying to remember," he said, "what did happen to those poor cripple 
boys, you remember, the ones born with such miserable legs, they were brothers..."
  "Oh, Tomasso and Felix," said the priest.
  "Yes."
  "They were taken off to Bologna to be cured. Same as Bettina's boy, the one born 
without his hands, remember, poor little child."
  "Yes, yes, of course. We have several doctors."
  "Do you?" I said. "I wonder what they do," I murmured. "What about the town council, 
the gonfalonier?" I asked. Gonfalonier was the name for the governor in Florence, the man 
who nominally, at least, ran things.
  "We have a borsellino," said the priest, "and we pick a new six or eight names out of 
it now and then, but nothing much ever happens here. There's no quarreling. The merchants 
take care of the taxes. Everything runs smoothly."
  The little elfin man went into laughter. "Oh, we have no taxes!" he declared.
  His son, the priest, looked at the old fellow as though this was not something that 
ought to be said, but then he himself merely looked puzzled. "Well, no, Papa," he said, 
"it's only that the taxes are... small." He seemed perplexed.
  "Well, then you are really blessed," I said agreeably, trying on the surface to make 
light of this utterly implausible picture of things.
  "And that terrible Oviso, remember him?" the priest suddenly said to his father and 
then to me. "Now that was a diseased fellow. He nearly killed his son. He was out of his 
mind, roared like a bull. There was a traveling doctor who came through, said they would 
cure him at Padua. Or was it Assisi?"
  "I'm glad he never came back," said the old man. "He used to drive the town crazy." I 
studied them both. Were they serious? Were they talking double-talk to me? I could see 
nothing cunning in either one of them, but a melancholy was coming over the priest.
  "God does work in the strangest ways," he said. "Oh, I know that's not quite the 
proverb."
  "Don't tempt the Almighty!" said his father, downing the dregs of his cup. I quickly 
poured out the wine for both of them. "The little mute fellow," said a voice.
  I looked up. It was the innkeeper, with his hands on his hips, his apron stretching 
over his potbelly, a tray in his hand. "The nuns took him with them, didn't they?"
  "Came back for him, I think," said the priest. He was now fully preoccupied. Troubled, 
I would say. The innkeeper took up my empty plate.
  "The worst scare was the plague," he whispered in my ear. "Oh, it's gone now, believe 
you me, or I wouldn't utter the word. There's no word that will empty a town any faster."
  "No, all those families, gone, just like that," said the old man, "thanks to our 
doctors, and the visiting monks. All taken to the hospital in Florence."
  "Plague victims? Taken to Florence?" I asked, in obvious disbelief. "I wonder who was 
minding the city gates, and which gate it was by which they were admitted."
  The Franciscan stared at me fixedly for a moment, as if something had disturbed him 
violently and deeply. The innkeeper gave the priest's shoulder a squeeze. "These are 
happy times," he said. "I miss the processions to the monastery - it's gone too, of 
course - but we have never been better."
  I let my eyes shift quite deliberately from the innkeeper to the priest and found that 
the priest was gazing directly at me. There seemed a tremor to the edge of his mouth. He 
was sloppily shaven and had a loose jaw, and his deeply creased face looked sad suddenly.
  The very old man chimed in that there had been a whole family down with the plague out 
in the country not very long ago, but they had been taken to Lucca.
  "It was the generosity of... who was it, my son, I don't..."
  "Oh, what does it matter?" said the innkeeper. "Signore," he said to me, "some more 
wine."
  "For my guests," I gestured. "I have to be off. Restless limbs," I said. "I must see 
what books are for sale."
  "This is a fine place for you to stay," said the priest with sudden conviction, his 
voice soft as he continued to gaze at me, his eyebrows knitted. "A fine place indeed, and 
we could use another scholar. But -"
  "Well, I'm rather young myself," I said. I made ready to rise, putting one leg over the 
bench. "There are no young men here of my age?"
  "Well, they go off, you see," said the elfin one. "There are a few, but they are busy 
at the trades of their fathers. No, the rapscallions don't hang around here. No, young 
man, they do not!"
  The priest studied me as if he didn't hear his father's voice.
  "Yes, and you're a learned young man," said the priest, but he was clearly troubled. "I 
can see that, and hear it in your voice, and all about you is thoughtful and clever - " 
He broke off. "Well, I guess you'll be on your way very soon, won't you?"
  "You think I should?" I asked. "Or stay, which is it?" I made my manner mild, not 
unkind.
  He gave me a half-smile. "I don't know," he said. Then he looked dour again and almost 
tragic. "God be with you," he whispered.
  I leant towards him. The innkeeper, seeing this confidential manner, turned away and 
busied himself somewhere else. The old elfin one was talking to his cup.
  "What is it, Father?" I asked in a whisper. "Is the town too well-off, is that it?"
  "Go on your way, son," he said almost wistfully. "I wish I could. But I'm bound by my 
vow of obedience and by the fact that this is my home, and here sits my father, and all 
the others have vanished into the wide world." He became suddenly hard. "Or so it seems," 
he said. And then, "If I were you, I wouldn't stay here." I nodded.
  "You look strange, son," he said to me in the same whisper. Our heads were right 
together. "You stand out too much. You're pretty and encased in velvet, and it's your 
age; you're not really a child, you know."
  "Yes, I see, not very many young men in the town at all, not the sort who question 
things. Just the old and the complacent and those who accept and who don't see the 
tapestry for the one small monkey embroidered in the corner."
  He didn't answer this overzealous streak of rhetoric, and I was sorry I'd said it. In 
that little lapse perhaps my anger and my pain had flashed through. Disgusting! I was 
angry with myself.
  He bit his lip, anxious for me, or for himself, or for both of us.
  "Why did you come here?" he asked sincerely, almost protectively. "By which way did you 
come? They said you came in the night. Don't leave by night." His voice had become such a