by Anne Rice
I realized one of them was a Franciscan, a very kindly-looking priest, poorer it seemed than the Dominicans, which was logical I suppose, and the other an elderly man with little twinkling eyes and long stiff white eyebrows, sticking up as if with glue, as if he were costumed as a cheerful elf to delight children.
"We saw you go in to the Dominicans," said the Franciscan quietly and politely and smiling at me. "You didn't look so happy when you came out." He winked. "Why don't you try us?" Then he laughed. It was no more than a good-natured joke and I knew it, about the rivalry of the two orders. "You're a fine-looking young man; you come from Florence?" he asked.
"Yes, Father, traveling," I said, "though where exactly, I don't know. I'm stopped here for a while, I think." I was talking with my mouth full, but I was too hungry to stop. "Sit down, please." I started to rise, but they sat down.
I bought another pitcher of red wine for the table.
"Well, you couldn't have found a finer place," said the little old man, who seemed to have his wits about him, "that is why I am so happy that God sent my own son, back here, to serve in our church, so that he could live out his days by his family."
"Ah, so you are father and son," I said.
"Yes, and I never thought I'd live so long," said the father, "to see such prosperity come to this town as has come. It's miraculous."
"It is, it is the blessing of God," said the priest innocently and sincerely. "It's a true wonder."
"Oh, really, instruct me in this, how so?" I asked. I pushed the plate of fruit to them. But they said they had eaten.
"Well, in my time," said the father, "you know we had more than our share of woes, or that's how it seemed to me. But now? It's utter bliss, this place. Nothing bad ever happens."
"It's true," said the priest. "You know, I remember the lepers we had in the old days, who lived outside the walls. They are all gone now. And then there were always a few really bad youths, young men causing trouble, you know, the really bad sort. You had them in every town. But now? You couldn't find one bad man in all of Santa Maddalana or in any of the villages around. It's as if people have returned to God with their whole hearts."
"Yes," said the old elfin man, shaking his head, "and God has been merciful in so many other ways."
I felt chills on my back again, as I had with Ursula, but it was not from pleasure.
"In what way is that, in particular?" I asked.
"Well, look around," said the old man. "Have you seen any cripples in our streets? Do you see any half-wits? When I was a child, why, when you, my son, were a child"—he said to the priest— "there were always a few unfortunate souls, born ill formed, or without good brains, you know, and one had to look out for them. I can remember a time when there were always beggars at the gates. We have no beggars, haven't had any for years."
'Amazing," I said.
"Yes, true," said the priest thoughtfully. "Everyone here is in good health. That's why the nuns left so long ago. Did you see the old hospital shut up? And the convent out of town, long abandoned. I think there are sheep in there now. The farmers use its old rooms."
"No one ever takes sick?" I asked.
"Well, they do," said the priest, taking a slow drink of his wine, as though he were a moderate man in this respect, "but they don't suffer, you know. It's not like the old days. It seems if a person is like to go, then he goes quickly."
"Yes, true, thanks be to God," said the elder.
'And the women," said the priest, "they are lucky here in birth. They are not burdened with so many children. Oh, we have many whom God calls home to himself in the first few weeks—you know, it's the curse of a mother—but in general, our families are blessedly small." He looked to his father. "My poor mother," he said, "she had twenty babies all told. Well, that never happens now, does it?"
The little old man stuck out his chest and smiled proudly. 'Aye, twenty children I reared myself; well, many have gone their way, and I don't even know what became of ... 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 whisper I could scarcely hear him.
"You don't need to worry about me, Father," I said. "Pray for me," I said. "That's all."
I saw in him a species of fear as real as that which I had seen in the young priest, but it was even more innocent, for all his age, and all his wrinkles, and the wetness of his lips with the wine. He looked fatigued by that which he couldn't comprehend.
I stepped free of the bench and was on my way when he grasped my hand. I bent my ear to his lips.
"My boy," he said, "there's something... something ..."
"I know, Father," I said. I patted his hand.
"No, you don't. Listen. When you leave, take the main road south, even if it's out of your way. Don't go north; don't take the narrow road north."
"Why not?" I demanded.
Doubting, silent, utterly stricken, he let go of me.
"Why not?" I said in his ear.
He was no longer facing me. "Bandits," he said. "Toll bandits who control the road; they'll make you pay to go through. Go south." He turned sharply away from me and began to speak to his father in a soft gentle scolding manner as if I was already on my way.
Heft.
I was stunned as I set foot in the hollow street. "Toll bandits?"
Many shops were shut now, as was definitely the custom after the heavy meal, but others were not.
My sword weighed a ton on my hip, and I felt feverish from the wine and dizzy from all these people had revealed to me.
So, I thought, my face burning, we have a town here with no young men, no cripples, no half-wits, no diseased people and no unwanted children! And on the road north we have dangerous bandits.
I moved downhill, walking faster and faster, and went out the wide-open gates and into the open country. The breeze was at once magnificent and welcome.
All around me lay rich, well-tended fields, vineyards, patches of orchard and farmhouses—lush and fertile vistas which I couldn't see when I had come in by darkness. As for the road north, I could see nothing of it due to the immense size of the town, whose uppermost fortifications were northward.
I could see, below on a ridge, what must have been the ruins of the convent and, way down the mountain and far off to the west, what might have been the monastery.
I made my way to two farms within the hour, having a cup of cool water with both farmers.
It was all the same, talk of a paradise here, free of miscreants and the horror of executions, absolutely the most peaceful place in the world, and only well-formed children everywhere.
It had been years since any bandits had dared to linger in the woods. Of course you never knew who might pass through, but the town was strong and kept the peace.
"Oh, not even on the north road?" I asked.
Neither farmer knew anything about any north road.
When I asked what became of the unhealthy, the lame, the injured, it was the same. Some doctor or other, or priest, or order of friars or nuns, had taken them off to a university or city. The farmers sincerely couldn't remember.
I came back into the town well before twilight. I went poking around, in and out of every shop, in a near systematic manner, eyeing everyone as closely as I might without attracting undue attention.
Of course I couldn't hope to cover even one street of the place, but I was determined to discover what I could.
In the booksellers, I went through the old Ars Grammatica and Ars Minor, and the big beautiful Bibles that were for sale, which I could only see by asking that they be taken out of the cabinets.
"How do I go north from here?" I asked the bored man who leaned on his elbow and looked at me sleepily.
"North, nobody goes north/' he said, and yawned in my face. He wore fine clothes without a sign of mending, and good new shoes of well-worked leather. "Look, I have much finer books than that," he said.
I pretended interest, then explained politely that all were more or less what I had and did not need, but thank you.
I went into a tavern where men were busy at dice and shouting over the game, lustily, as though they had nothing better to do. And then through the bakers' district, where the bread smelled wondrously delicious, even to me.
I had never felt so utterly alone in my life, as I walked among these people listening to their pleasant talk and hearing the same tale of safety and blessings over and over again.
It froze my blood to think of nightfall. And what was this mystery of the road north? Nobody, nobody but the priest, even raised an eyebrow at the mention of that point of the compass.
About an hour before dark, I happened into one shop where the proprietor, a dealer in silks and lace from Venice and Florence, was not so patient with my idle presence, as others had been, in spite of the fact that I obviously had money.
"Why are you asking so many questions?" she said to me. She seemed tired and worn out. "You think it's easy to take care
of a sick child? Look in there."
I stared at her as if she'd lost her mind. But then it dawned on me, clear and cold. I knew exactly what she meant. I poked my head through a curtained doorway and saw a child, feverish and sick, slumbering in a dirty narrow bed.
"You think it's easy? Year after year she doesn't get better," said the woman.
"I'm sorry," I said. "But what's to be done?"
The woman tore out her stitches and put down her needle. She seemed past all patience. "What's to be done? You mean to tell me you don't know!" she whispered. "You, a clever man like you!" She bit into her lip. "But my husband says, No, not yet, and so we go on with it."