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of them will leap from their damp burrow and snatch you away. And then I’ll come home, and cry, Bianca, Bianca! And you’ll be gone, and no one to tell me where you went. But I’ll know, Bianca. I’ll know. You disobeyed your father. ”
    â€œWhat do they look like?” she asked.
    â€œScarier than Primavera,” he said. “I don’t want to terrify you, so that’s all I’ll say. Now kiss me, and let me be on my way.”
    She kissed him and let him go. And, more or less, she believed him that the weather in the world was brutal. Every time he came home, it took longer and longer for him to shake off the frozen look on his face, and thaw at the sight of her. Then, when summer had passed and the autumn rushed goldenly in, he was gone again, and this time for a long time—more than a week. Long enough for the staff to relax into mild disbehavior.
    â€œThe wall by the back stairs wants a coat of lime wash,” said one of the maids. Someone had been drawing instructional diagrams for the others and the male figure looked rather too much like a naked Fra Ludovico for anyone’s comfort.
    â€œYou’re lucky the old fool doesn’t take this staircase,” muttered Primavera. “He’d collapse in mortification and brain himself on the stone landing, and go on to swell the community of souls in heaven and bore them eternally. No, Bianca, you are forbidden to go look. When the time comes to tell you the glorious nonsense of sex, I’ll do it with the help of a carrot and a soft loaf of bread folded in two.”
    â€œI know about sex,” said Bianca. “I’ve seen the ram and the ewe.”
    â€œAnd what precisely can you see about the romance between the ram and the ewe?”
    Very little, as it turned out. But Bianca was crafty enough to disguise her ignorance and wouldn’t say.
    The girl had all too few amusements, sequestered as she was. The gooseboy was friendly but vague, and preferred the company of geese. The servant girls from the village thought Bianca was too young for her friendship to be worth cultivating. So needling Primavera or Fra Ludovico was one of Bianca’s rare entertainments. At lunch:
    â€œI want to see the funny drawings. Why can’t I?”
    â€œWhat funny drawings?” asked Fra Ludovico.
    â€œSomeone has sketched schemes of sex between whores and morons,” said Primavera.
    â€œOnly a moron would have sex with a whore,” said Fra Ludovico. “Bianca, I forbid you to examine these diagrams. You would weep with fright and grief.”
    â€œI can see her laughing herself sick,” said Primavera. “Or getting ideas. Usually, for the sake of honesty, I have to chop the carrot in half so as not to get a young girl’s hopes up.” A pause. “There’s really nothing to compare to a squid.”
    â€œI see a horse,” cried the gooseboy, who frequently cried what he saw, though most often it was shapes in the clouds. But today he was right, and Don Vicente would arrive by nightfall.
    Fra Ludovico posted himself in a chamber to pray that Don Vicente might bring good news to their windswept perch, though he would never elaborate the nature of the hopes he had; his was too lofty a station for him to descend to common gossip. “You don’t know what you pray about,” snorted Primavera, “that’s why you won’t tell us. You pray for a reason to pray, that’s all. And it doesn’t come.”
    â€œIt’ll come soon enough,” said Fra Ludovico bitterly. “I’ve been to Rome, after all; I know how quickly peace concludes.”
    â€œIf I fell asleep into my grave now, I’d have nothing to think about but the children war has taken from me,” snapped Primavera. “No one survives in times of war unless they make war their home. How did I get so old and wise, but for welcoming war into my house and making friends with