"Those lead to old burial places that you don't need to go to," he said, "but you need 
to know of this place now. And remember it."
  When we came back up into the chapel, he put the trapdoor right, laid down the ring, 
relaid the marble tile, and the whole was quite invisible.
  Fra Diamonte pretended not to have seen. My mother was asleep and so were the children. 
We all fell asleep before dawn in the chapel.
  My father walked out in the courtyard at sunup, when the cocks were crowing all over 
the villages inside the walls, and he stretched and looked up at the sky and then 
shrugged his shoulders.
  Two of my uncles ran at him, demanding to know what Signore from where dared to propose 
a siege against us and when we were supposed to have this battle.
  "No, no, no, you've got it all wrong," my father said. "We're not going to war. You go 
back to bed."
  But he had no sooner spoken these words than a ripping scream brought us all around, 
and through the opening courtyard gates there came one of the village girls, one of our 
near and dear girls, shrieking the terrible words: "He's gone, the baby's gone, they've 
taken him."
  The rest of the day was a relentless search for this missing child. But no one could 
find him. And it was soon discovered that one other child had also vanished without a 
trace. He had been a half-wit, rather beloved because he caused no harm, but so 
addle-brained he couldn't even much walk. And everyone was ashamed to say that they did 
not even know how long that half-wit had been missing. By dusk, I thought I would go mad 
if I didn't get to see my father alone, if I couldn't push my way into the locked 
chambers where he sat with his uncles and the priests arguing and fighting. Finally, I 
hammered so loudly on the door and kicked so much that he let me in.
  The meeting was about to break up and he drew me down by himself, and he said with wild 
eyes:
  "Do you see what they've done? They took the very tribute they demanded of me. They 
took it! I refused it and they took it."
  "But what tribute? You mean the children?"
  He was wild-eyed. He rubbed his unshaven face, and he crashed his fist down on his 
desk, and then he pushed over all his writing things.
  "Who do they think they are that they come to me by night and demand that I tender to 
them those infants unwanted by anyone?"
  "Father, what is this? You must tell me."
  "Vittorio, you will tomorrow be off to Florence, at the first light, and with the 
letters I mean to write tonight. I need more than country priests to fight this. Now get 
ready for the journey."
  He looked up quite suddenly. He appeared to listen, and then to look about. I could see 
the light was gone from the windows. We ourselves were just dim figures, and he had 
thrown the candelabra down. I picked it up.
  I watched him sidelong as I took one of the candles and lighted it by the torch at the 
door and brought it back, and then lighted the other candles. He listened, still and 
alert, and then without making a sound he rose to his feet, his fists on the desk, 
seemingly uncaring of the light that the candles threw on his shocked and wary face.
  "What do you hear, my Lord?" I said, using the formal address for him without so much 
as realizing it.
  "Evil," he whispered. "Malignant things such as God only suffers to live because of our 
sins. Arm yourself well. Bring your mother, your brother and your sister to the chapel, 
and hurry. The soldiers have their orders."
  "Shall I have some supper brought there as well, just bread and beer, perhaps?" I asked.
  He nodded as though that were scarcely a concern.
  Within less than an hour we were all gathered inside the chapel, the entire family, 
which included then five uncles and four aunts, and with us were two nurses and Fra 
Diamonte.
  The little altar was decked out as if for Mass, with the finest embroidered altar cloth 
and the thickest golden candlesticks with blazing candles. The Image of Our Crucified 
Christ shone in the light, an ancient colorless and thin wooden carving that had hung on 
the wall there since the time of St. Francis, when the great saint was supposed to have 
stopped at our castle two centuries ago.
  It was a naked Christ, common in those times, and a figure of tortured sacrifice, 
nothing as robust and sensual as those crucifixes made these days, and it stood out 
powerfully in contrast to the parade of freshly painted saints on the walls in their 
brilliant scarlet and gold finery.
  We sat on plain brown benches brought in for us, nobody speaking a word, for Fra 
Diamonte had that morning said Mass and bestowed into the Tabernacle the Body and Blood 
of Our Lord in the form of the Sacred Host, and the chapel was now, as it were, put to 
its full purpose as the House of God.
  We did eat the bread, and drink a little bit of the beer near the front doors, but we 
kept quiet.
  Only my father repeatedly went out, walking boldly into the torch-lighted courtyard and 
calling up to his soldiers in the towers and on the walls, and even sometimes being gone 
to climb up and see for himself that all was well under his protection.
  My uncles were all armed. My aunts said their rosaries fervently. Fra Diamonte was 
confused, and my mother seemed pale to death and sick, perhaps from the baby in her womb, 
and she clung to my sister and brother, who were by this time pretty frankly frightened.
  It seemed we would pass the night without incident.
  It couldn't have been two hours before dawn when I was awakened from a shallow slumber 
by a horrid scream.
  At once my father was on his feet, and so were my uncles, drawing out their swords as 
best they could with their knotted old fingers.
  Screams rose all around in the night, and there came the alarms from the soldiers and 
the loud riotous clanging of old bells from every tower.
  My father grabbed me by the arm. "Vittorio, come," he said, and at once, pulling up the 
handle of the trapdoor, he threw it back and thrust into my hand a great candle from the 
altar.
  "Take your mother, your aunts, your sister and your brother down, now, and do not come 
out, no matter what you hear! Do not come out. Lock the trapdoor above you and stay 
there! Do as I tell you!"
  At once I obeyed, snatching up Matteo and Bartola and forcing them down the stone steps 
in front of me.
  My uncles had rushed through the doors into the courtyard, shouting their ancient war 
cries, and my aunts stumbled and fainted and clutched to the altar and would not be 
moved, and my mother clung to my father.
  My father was in a very paroxysm. I reached out for my eldest aunt, but she was in a 
dead faint before the altar, and my father thundered back to me, forced me into the crypt 
and shut the door.
  I had no choice but to latch the trapdoor as he had shown me how to do, and to turn 
with the flickering candle in my hand and face the terrified Bartola and Matteo. "Go down 
all the way," I cried, "all the way."