They nearly fell, trying to move backward down the steep narrow steps that were by no 
means easy to descend, their faces turned towards me.
  "What is it, Vittorio, why do they want to hurt us?" Bartola asked.
  "I want to fight them," Matteo said, "Vittorio, give me your dagger. You have a sword. 
It's not fair."
  "Shhh, be quiet, do as our father said. Do you think it pleases me that I can't be out 
there with the men? Quiet!"
  I choked back my tears. My mother was up there! My aunts!
  The air was cold and damp, but it felt good. I broke out in a sweat, and my arm ached 
from holding the big golden candlestick. Finally we sank down in a huddle, the three of 
us at the far end of the chamber, and it felt soothing to me to touch the cold stone.
  But in the interval of our collective silence I could hear through the heavy floor 
howls from above, terrible cries of fear and panic, and rushing feet, and even the high 
chilling whinnies of the horses. It sounded as if horses had come crashing into the 
chapel itself over our heads, which was not at all impossible.
  I rose to my feet and rushed to the two other doors of the crypt, those which led to 
the burial chambers or whatever they were, I didn't care! I moved the latch on one, and 
could see nothing but a low passage, not even tall enough for me, and barely wide enough 
for my shoulders.
  I turned back, holding the only light, and saw the children rigid with fear, gazing up 
at the ceiling as the murderous cries continued.
  "I smell fire," Bartola whispered suddenly, her face wet at once with tears. "Do you 
smell it, Vittorio? I hear it." I did hear it and I did smell it.
  "Both of you make the Sign of the Cross; pray now," I said, "and trust in me. We will 
get out of here."
  But the clamor of the battle went on, the cries did not die out, and then suddenly, so 
suddenly it was as wondrous and frightful as the noise itself, there fell a silence.
  A silence fell over all, and it was too complete to spell victory. Bartola and Matteo 
clung to me, on either side.
  Above, there was a clatter. The chapel doors were being thrown back, and then quite 
suddenly the trapdoor was yanked up and open, and in the glimmer of firelight beyond I 
saw a dark slender long-haired figure. In the gust my candle went out.
  Except for the infernal flicker above and beyond, we were committed unmercifully to 
total darkness.
  Once again distinctly, I saw the outline of this figure, a tall, stately female with 
great long locks and a waist small enough for both my hands as she appeared to fly down 
the stairs soundlessly towards me.
  How in the name of Heaven could this be, this woman?
  Before I could think to pull my sword on a female assailant or make sense of anything 
at all, I felt her tender breasts brushed against my chest, and the cool of her skin as 
she seemed to be throwing her arms about me.
  There was a moment of inexplicable and strangely sensuous confusion when the perfume of 
her tresses and her gown rose in my nostrils, and I fancied I saw the glistening whites 
of her eyes as she looked at me. I heard Bartola scream, and then Matteo also. I was 
knocked to the floor. The fire blazed bright above.
  The figure had them both, both struggling screaming children in one seemingly fragile 
arm, and stopping, apparently to look at me, a raised sword in her other hand, she raced 
up the stairway into the firelight.
  I pulled my sword with both hands, rushed after her, up and out into the chapel, and 
saw that she had somehow by the most evil power all but reached the door, an impossible 
feat, her charges wailing and crying out for me, "Vittorio, Vittorio!"
  All the upper windows of the chapels were full of fire, and so was the rose window 
above the crucifix.
  I could not believe what I beheld, this young woman, who was stealing from me my sister 
and brother.
  "Stop in the name of God!" I shouted at her. "Coward, thief in the night."
  I ran after her, but to my utter astonishment she did stop, still, and turned to look 
at me again, and this time I saw her full in all her refined beauty. Her face was a 
perfect oval with great benign gray eyes, her skin like the finest Chinese white enamel. 
She had red lips, too perfect even for a painter to make by choice, and her long ashen 
blond hair was gray like her eyes in the light of the fire, sweeping down her back in a 
pampered swaying mass. Her gown, though stained dark with what must have been blood, was 
the same wine-red color I had seen in the apparel of the evil visitor of the night before.
  With the most curious and then poignant face, she merely stared at me. Her right hand 
held her sword upraised, but she didn't move, and then she released from the powerful 
grip of her left arm my struggling brother and sister. Both tumbled sobbing to the floor.
  "Demon. Strega!" I roared. I leapt over them and advanced on her, swinging the sword.
  But she dodged so swiftly that I didn't even see it. I couldn't believe that she was so 
far from me, standing now with the sword down, staring at me still and at the sobbing 
children.
  Suddenly her head turned. There was a whistling cry, and then another and another. 
Through the door of the chapel, seeming to leap from the fires of Hell itself, there came 
another red-clad figure, hooded in velvet and wearing gold-trimmed boots, and as I swung 
my sword at him, he threw me aside and, in one instant, cut off the head of Bartola and 
then severed the head of the screaming Matteo.
  I went mad. I howled. He turned on me. But from the female there came a sudden firm 
negation.
  "Leave him alone," she cried in a voice that was both sweet and clear, and then off he 
went, this murderer, this hooded fiend in his gold-trimmed boots, calling back to her.
  "Come on, now, have you lost your wits? Look at the sky. Come, Ursula." She didn't 
move. She stared at me as before.
  I sobbed and cursed and, grabbing my sword, ran at her again, and this time saw my 
blade descend to cut off her right arm, right below the elbow. The white limb, small and 
seemingly fragile like all of her parts, fell to the paved floor with her heavy sword. 
Blood spurted from her.
  She did no more than look at it. And then at me with the same poignant, disconsolate 
and near heartbroken face.
  I lifted my sword again. "Strega!" I cried, clenching my teeth, trying to see through 
my tears. "Strega!"
  But in another feat of evil, she had moved back, far away from me, as if pulled by an 
invisible force, and in her left hand she now held her right, which still clutched her 
sword as if it were not severed. She replaced the limb I had cut off. I watched her. I 
watched her put the limb in place and turn it and adjust it until it was as it should be, 
and then before my astonished eyes, I saw the wound I had made utterly seal up in her 
white skin.
  Then the loose bell sleeve of her rich velvet gown fell down again around her wrist.
  In a twinkling she was outside the chapel, only a silhouette now against the distant 
fires burning in the tower windows. I heard her whisper: "Vittorio." Then she vanished. I 
knew it was vain to go after her! Yet still I ran out and swung my sword around in a 
great circle, crying out in rage and bitterness and mad menace at all the world, my eyes