though listening. He turned and snapped his fingers, drawing to attention the two guards 
slumbering at the ends of the hall.
  "Go through the house, see to everything," he said in a soft voice. "I think I hear 
birds which have entered the house. It's the warm air, and there are many open windows."
  These two went off, and immediately two other soldiers appeared to take their place. 
That in itself was not usual, for it meant that there were many men on duty.
  The Captain came back alone, and once more bowed.
  "My Lord, he will not come into the light, he says, but that you must come out to him, 
and he has little time to wait on you."
  This was the first time I had ever seen my father really angry. Even when he whipped me 
or a peasant boy, he was rather lazy about it. Now the fine lineaments of his face, so 
given to reassurance by their very proportions, became absolutely wrathful. "How dare 
he?" he whispered.
  Yet he strode around the table, came in front of it and marched off with the Captain of 
the Guard hastening behind him.
  I was out of my chair at once and after him. I heard my mother cry out softly, 
"Vittorio, come back."
  But I stole down the stairs after my father, and into the courtyard, and only when he 
himself turned around and pressed my chest hard with his hand did I halt.
  "Stay there, my son," he said with his old kindly warmth. "I shall see to it."
  I had a good vantage point, right at the door of the tower, and there across the 
courtyard, at the gates in the full light of the torches, I saw this strange Signore who 
would not come into the light of the hall, for he did not seem to mind this outdoor 
illumination. The huge gates of the arched entrance were locked and bolted for the night. 
Only the small man-sized gate was opened, and it was there that he stood, with the 
blazing crackling fire on either side of him, glorying in it, it seemed to me, in his 
splendid raiment of dark, wine-red velvet.
  From head to toe he was dressed in this rich color, hardly the current style, but every 
detail of him, from his bejeweled doublet and blown-up sleeves of satin and velvet 
stripes, was this same hue, as though carefully dyed in the best fullers in Florence.
  Even the gems sewn into his collar and hanging about his neck on a heavy golden chain 
were wine red - most likely rubies or even sapphires.
  His hair was thick and black, hanging sleekly onto his shoulders, but I couldn't see 
his face, no, not at all, for the velvet hat he wore overshadowed it, and I caught but a 
glimpse of very white skin, the line of his jaw and a bit of his neck, for nothing else 
was visible. He wore a broadsword of immense size, with an antique scabbard, and casually 
over one shoulder was a cloak of the same wine-dark velvet trimmed in what seemed to my 
distant eyes to be ornate gilt symbols.
  I strained, trying to make them out, this border of signs, and I thought I could see a 
star and crescent moon worked into his fancy adornments, but I was really too far away. 
The man's height was impressive.
  My father stopped quite far short of him, yet when he spoke his voice was soft and I 
couldn't hear it, and out of the mysterious man, who still revealed nothing now of his 
face but his smiling mouth and white teeth, there came a silky utterance that seemed both 
surly and charming.
  "Get away from my house in the name of God and Our Holy Redeemer!" my father cried out 
suddenly. And with a quick gesture, he stepped forward and powerfully thrust this 
splendid figure right out of the gate. I was amazed.
  But from the hollow mouth of darkness beyond the opening there came only a low satin 
laughter, a mocking laughter, and this it seemed was echoed by others, and I heard a 
powerful thundering of hooves, as though several horsemen had commenced at once to ride 
off.
  My father himself slammed the gate. And turned and made the Sign of the Cross, and 
pressed his hands together in prayer.
  "Dear Lord God, how dare they!" he said, looking up.
  It was only now, as he stormed back towards me and towards the tower itself, that I 
realized the Captain of the Guard was paralyzed with seeming terror.
  My father's eye caught mine as soon as he came into the light from the stairs, and I 
gestured to the Captain. My father spun round.
  "Batten down my house," my father called out. "Search it from top to bottom and batten 
it down and call out the soldiery and fill the night with torches, do you hear? I will 
have men in every tower and on the walls. Do it at once. It will give peace and calm to 
my people!" We had not yet reached the supper room when an old priest living with us 
then, a learned Dominican named Fra Diamonte, came down with his white hair all mussed, 
and his cassock half unbuttoned, and his prayer book in his hand.
  "What is it, my Lord?" he asked. "What in the name of God has happened?"
  "Father, trust in God and come and pray with me in the chapel," said my father to him. 
He then pointed to another guard who was fast approaching. "Light up the chapel, all its 
candles, for I want to pray. Do it now, and have the boys come down and play for me some 
sacred music."
  He then took my hand and that of the priest. "It's nothing, really, you must both of 
you know that. It's all superstitious foolishness, but any excuse which makes a worldly 
man like me turn to his God is a good one. Come on, Vittorio, you and Fra Diamonte and I 
will pray, but for your mother put on a good face."
  I was much calmer, but the prospect of being up all night in the lighted chapel was 
both welcome and alarming.
  I went off to get my prayer books, my Mass books and books of other devotions, fine 
vellum books from Florence, with gilt print and beautifully edged illustrations.
  I was just coming out of my room when I saw my father there with my mother, saying to 
her, "And do not leave the children alone for a moment, and you, you in this state, I 
will not tolerate this distress." She touched her belly.
  I realized she was with child again. And I realized, too, that my father was really 
alarmed about something. What could it mean, "Do not leave the children alone for a 
moment"? What could this mean?
  The chapel was comfortable enough. My father had long ago provided some decent wooden 
and velvet-padded prie-dieux, though on feast days everyone stood. Pews didn't exist in 
those times.
  But he also spent some of the night showing me the vault beneath the church, which 
opened by means of a ring handle on a trapdoor, faced in stone, the ring itself fitted 
down flat beneath what appeared to be only one of many marble inlaid ornaments in the 
floor tiles.
  I knew of these crypts but had been whipped for sneaking into them when I was a child, 
and my father had told me back then how disappointed in me he'd been that I couldn't keep 
a family secret.
  That admonition had hurt far more than the whipping. And I'd never asked to go with him 
into the crypts, which I knew he had done over the years now and then. I thought treasure 
was down there, and secrets of the pagans.
  Well, I saw now there was a cavernous room, carved high and deep out of the earth, and 
faced with stone, and that it was full of varied treasure. There were old chests and even 
old books in heaps. And two bolted doorways.