It had been my former bodyguard’s gift to Laura just a month or two before he stormed out: a little book he’d bound together out of good parchment and silk ribbon, copied out in his own hand with simple stories from Homer and Virgil and a variety of Greek myths. “She’ll hate it,” he said, tossing the book rather casually in Laura’s lap. “There are no illustrations, and that child of yours won’t look at anything unless it has pictures of ladies in fine gowns.” But she’d doted on it at once: all those gory old tales of battles and gods, written up in large clear print that she could sound out slowly. At four and a half my daughter was beginning to piece her words together very nicely, and Leonello’s book had sped her along far faster than the pious verses Fra Teseo advised.

Really, priests. Did they sincerely think stupid little platitudes made anyone thirsty to learn? I remembered the texts I’d been given as a child: Put on the slippers of humility, the shift of decorum, the corset of chastity, the garters of steadfastness, and the pins of patience. How many times had I dutifully copied out that little gem? Since I never did put on the corset of chastity or any of the rest of it, I saw no reason why my daughter shouldn’t practice her reading on Leonello’s less pious but far more interesting Perseus slew the sea monster with one stroke of his sword, and then he unchained Andromeda from the rock and kissed her.

I ask you. Which would you rather read?

Laura hugged her little parchment book. “When is Leo coming back?”

“I don’t know,” I said lightly. “Now, if you read the story of Troy and the great big wooden horse all by yourself—”

“I like the big wooden horse!”

“Yes, so read about him while I talk with Fra Teseo, and I’ll let you take the pony out to the lake this afternoon.” I clapped the straw hat back over her little head. “And keep your sun hat on!”

My daughter bent her head over the book, feet swinging again from the stone bench under the shade of the hazel tree. A very old hazel tree, Orsino had told me proudly when he first showed me the castello garden. Grown from a nut off the very first hazel tree in Carbognano, if you believed the stories. Carbognano was famous for its hazelnuts; I could eat them by the basketful as I sat under that tree and looked out at the blue surface of Lago di Vico.