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doubt, and no description would serve. But the name was correct. Bianca, aname referring to the polished whiteness of her skin, almost a marble from the Carrara region; and de Nevada, the father’s family name, betraying his own humble status in the outlands of Aragon, but pertinent here: of the snowy slopes.
    And Bianca saw her father too, his wavy chestnut hair standing almost straight up in the wind. She couldn’t see her mother in him, but she could see something that she guessed he might have learned from poor dead María Inés: a habit of love. So maybe growling Fra Ludovico was right about the contagious quality of blessings in human affairs.

Don’t leave, don’t follow

    C AN’T I go with you? I’ll be still and say my prayers.”
    Her exposure to other girls limited, Bianca nonetheless had learned to sulk prettily enough. It didn’t work, though. Her father wouldn’t let her off the property. She could go no farther than the orchards and the higher of the hay meadows. Only as far as the bridge, and onto it, but not across it.
    â€œThe weather is terrible,” he said, and shivered, though it was high summer and the goats sat panting in the shadows, too tired to bleat. “Beyond the bridge a dreadful snow falls. My beard crusts over and in minutes my cloak is stiff as a cuirass. I can’t turn at the waist. If you were walking behind me and you fell and called my name, I wouldn’t hear you: plugs of ice form in my ears.”
    â€œYou would always hear me,” she said, laughing. “You hear me when I wake up to go in the night, though my water is less than a spoonful.”
    He tried again. “I tell you, the world is a terrible place to be. I don’t want you to come with me until you’re older, for if something happened to me, what would become of you?”
    â€œWhat could happen to you?” she asked.
    â€œWell, a tree might fall on my head and turn my brains into whisked eggs.”
    His drollery was ineffectual. “ Papà, really.”
    â€œLook,” he told her, “here at Montefiore, Fra Ludovico and Primavera Vecchia can keep you safe. But should anything ever happen to me, you are not to come looking.”
    â€œI don’t understand why.” She lowered her chin and glared at him with a severity uncommon in a child.
    â€œBecause anything that could happen to me could happen to you. If I was in trouble somehow, it would be a comfort to know you were safe here, and not getting into mischief on my behalf. I lost your mother, through no fault of my own.” His voice was stern. “I won’t lose you too, nor even waste my time worrying about it, providing you obey me.”
    â€œYou go and come, and go and come, and nothing ever happens to you.”
    â€œI go and come, and play my games, and stroke my beard and nod my head and hold my tongue, all to keep us safely overlooked up here. These are boisterous times, and too many men are greedy for everything. You stay here. You give me your word?”
    She wouldn’t.
    â€œBianca,” he said, “this bridge on which we stand. Up there is Lago Verde, and the stream runs out, beneath this bridge, to water our lower fields, and eventually to join the other rivulets and power the mill at the edge of the village. You can see the noisy stream, the rushes, the wrens at their work, the hills beyond. But what don’t you see?”
    â€œI don’t see why you have to leave again,” she said.
    He snapped at her, “You don’t see men thieving for riches. You don’t see the cavalry or the foot soldiers. You don’t see”—here helowered his voice, trying another approach—“you don’t see the ornery creatures who live under the bridge.”
    She looked at him with suspicion and mock contempt, but he could tell he had found his weapon.
    â€œIf you come down here alone, a little slip of a thing as you are, one