cold, but it was a gay time.
  It was on that night before Ash Wednesday that I had the terrible dream in which I saw 
myself holding the severed heads of my brother and my sister. I woke up in a sweat, 
horrified by this dream. I wrote it down in my book of dreams. And then actually I forgot 
about it. That was common with me, only it had been truly the most horrid nightmare I'd 
ever had. But when I mentioned my occasional nightmares to my mother or father or anyone 
else, they always said:
  "Vittorio, it's your own fault for reading the books you read. You bring it on 
yourself." To repeat, the dream was forgotten. The country was by Easter in great flower, 
and the first warnings of horror to come, though I knew them not to be, were that the 
lower hamlets on our mountain were quite suddenly abandoned.
  My father and I and two of the huntsmen and a gamekeeper and a soldier rode down to see 
for ourselves that the peasants in those parts had departed, some time before in fact, 
and taken the livestock with them.
  It was eerie to see those deserted towns, small as they were and as insignificant.
  We rode back up the mountain as a warm embracing darkness surrounded us, yet we found 
all the other villages we passed battened down with hardly a seam of light showing 
through the chinks of a shutter, or a tiny stem of reddened smoke rising from a chimney.
  Of course my father's old clerk went into a rant that the vassals should be found, 
beaten, made to work the land.
  My father, benevolent as always and completely calm, sat at his desk in the 
candlelight, leaning on his elbow, and said that these had all been free men; they were 
not bound to him, if they did not choose to live on his mountain. This was the way of the 
modern world, only he wished he knew what was afoot in our land.
  Quite suddenly, he took notice of me standing and observing him, as if he hadn't seen 
me before, and he broke off the conference, dismissing the whole affair. I thought 
nothing much about it. But in the days that followed, some of the villagers from the 
lower slopes came up to live within the walls. There were conferences in my father's 
chambers. I heard arguments behind closed doors, and one night, at supper, all sat 
entirely too somber for our family, and finally my father rose from his massive chair, 
the Lord in the center of the table as always, and declared, as if he'd been silently 
accused:
  "I will not persecute some old women because they have stuck pins in wax dolls and 
burnt incense and read foolish incantations that mean nothing. These old witches have 
been on our mountain forever."
  My mother looked truly alarmed, and then gathering us all up - I was most unwilling - 
she took us away, Bartola, Matteo and me, and told us to go to bed early. "Don't stay up 
reading, Vittorio," she said. "But what did Father mean?" asked Bartola.
  "Oh, it's the old village witches," I said. I used the Italian word strega. "Every now 
and then, one goes too far, there's a fight, but mostly it's just charms to cure a fever 
and such."
  I thought my mother would hush me up, but she stood in the narrow stone stairs of the 
tower looking up at me with marked relief on her face, and she said:
  "Yes, yes, Vittorio, you are so right. In Florence, people laugh at those old women. 
You know Gattena yourself; she never really did more then sell love potions to the girls."
  "Surely we're not to drag her before a court!" I said, very happy that she was paying 
attention. Bartola and Matteo were rapt.
  "No, no, not Gattena, certainly not. Gattena's vanished. Run off."
  "Gattena?" I asked, and then as my mother turned away, refusing, it seemed, to say 
another word, gesturing for me to escort my sister and brother safely to bed, I realized 
the gravity of this.
  Gattena was the most feared and comical of the old witches, and if she had run off, if 
she was afraid of something, well, that was news, because she thought herself the one to 
be feared.
  The following days were fresh and lovely and undisturbed by anything for me and my 
Bartola and Matteo, but when I looked back later, I recalled there was much going on.
  One afternoon, I went up to the highest lookout window of the old tower where one 
guardsman, Tori, we called him, was falling asleep, and I looked down over all our land 
for as far as I could see. "Well, you won't find it," he said. "What's that?" I remarked.
  "Smoke from a single hearth. There is no more." He yawned and leaned against the wall, 
heavily weighed down by his old boiled-leather jerkin, and sword. "All's well," he said, 
and yawned again. "So they like city life, or to fight for Francesco Sforza over the 
Duchy of Milan, so let them go. They didn't know how good they had it."
  I turned away from him and looked over the woods again, and down into the valleys that 
I could see, and beyond to the slightly misty blue sky. It was true, the little hamlets 
seemed frozen in time down there, but how could one be so sure? It was not such a clear 
day. And besides, everything was fine within the household.
  My father drew olive oil, vegetables, milk, butter and many such goods from these 
villages, but he didn't need them. If it was time for them to pass away, so be it.
  Two nights later, however, it was undeniably obvious to me that everyone at supper was 
perpetually under a strain of sorts, which went entirely unvoiced, and that an agitation 
had gripped my mother, so that she was no longer engaging in her endless courtly chatter. 
Conversation was not impossible, but it had changed.
  But for all the elders who seemed deeply and secretly conflicted, there were others who 
seemed relatively oblivious to such things, and the pages went about serving gaily, and a 
little group of musicians, who'd come up the preceding day, gave us a lovely series of 
songs with the viol and the lute.
  My mother couldn't be persuaded to do her old slow dances, however.
  It must have been very late when an unexpected visitor was announced. No one had left 
the main hall, except Bartola and Matteo, who had been taken off to bed by me earlier and 
left in the care of our old nurse, Simonetta.
  The Captain of my father's Guard came into the hall, clicked his heels and bowed to my 
father and said:
  "My Lord, it seems there is a man of great rank come to the house, and he will not be 
received in the light, or so he says, and demands that you come out to him."
  Everyone at the table was at once alert, and my mother went white with anger and 
umbrage.
  No one ever used the word "demand" to my father.
  Also it was plain to me that our Captain of the Guard, a rather prepossessing old 
soldier who'd seen many battles with the wandering mercenaries, was himself overvigilant 
and a little shaken.
  My father rose to his feet. He did not speak or move, however.
  "Would you do that, my Lord, or should I send this Signore away?" the Captain asked.
  "Tell him that he is most welcome to come into my house as my guest," said my father, 
"that we extend to him in the name of Christ Our Lord our full hospitality."
  His very voice seemed to have a calming effect on the whole table, except perhaps for 
my mother, who seemed not to know what to do.
  The Captain looked almost slyly at my father, as if to convey the secret message that 
this would never do, but he went off to deliver the invitation.
  My father did not sit down. He stood staring off, and then he cocked his head, as