City of God by Cecelia Holland Page B

was an old one. In a previous century Cusanus had proposed that the mind of man, being finite, could know nothing of the infinite; man knew nothing but what was relative to him. Cusanus’ liberal and indulgent Church had spared him the heretic’s fire, but he had few followers of any importance.
    Nicholas had applied that thinking to his own work, but with no success. There seemed no such order in human nature as he saw in the swinging of the rope.
    The children sang as they wheeled through the air. Nicholas moved away. He strolled down across the slope, where goats grazed, and the voices of the children faded behind him.
    In the narrow street, going toward his house, he came on old Juan, a shawl over his humped shoulders. The servant had two chickens by the feet and a braid of onions in the other hand. The chickens were plucked from the necks down. Their full-feathered heads were ruffled.
    â€œOld Caterina looked so sad today,” Juan said, just as if he and Nicholas had been in the midst of conversation. “Maybe her husband has left her again. He wasn’t in the butcher’s stall.” He shook his head and gathering the lacy spittle in his mouth spat it out onto the dust in front of them.
    Nicholas walked short to keep from leaving the old man behind. Juan chattered on, full of imagined gossip. After twenty years in Rome he spoke no Italian; he made up lives for all the people around him whose true lives he could not penetrate. There was a parallel between that and the way Bruni made up actions for the stars to suit the caprices of fortune in the affairs of Italy. Ahead was the gate to Nicholas’s house. He slipped his fingers into his wallet for his key.
    Nicholas brought home a friend to spend the night with him. As usual Juan slept in the kitchen. Past midnight, when Nicholas’s friend was asleep and Nicholas was dozing, Juan slipped in through the bedroom door.
    Nicholas sat up. The nightlight was burning a deep saffron flame on the window sill. His friend curled up in the bed beside him, his head on his folded arms. Juan put one finger to his lips and drew the door shut.
    â€œSomeone is trying to force open the pantry window.”
    Nicholas lowered his feet to the floor and reached for his dressing gown. His friend stirred.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œA burglar,” Nicholas said. He opened the drawer in the chest by his bed and groped for the candle he kept there. His friend, immediately awake, sprang out of bed.
    â€œWhere is my sword? Where is this burglar?”
    â€œBe careful,” Nicholas said. He lit the candle from the nightlight, took Juan by the arm, and started him out of the bedroom. “We’ll make a lot of noise—maybe he will run away.” The candle fluttered and he let go of Juan to cup his hand around it.
    â€œNicholas,” his friend said. “Don’t be a fool. Where is he?”
    â€œWe aren’t certain there is only one.”
    â€œIn the pantry,” Juan said past him to his friend. He spoke Spanish, but the words were close enough.
    â€œThen he must come through the kitchen, and the kitchen has no windows. Let’s see if we can trap him.” Nicholas’s friend threw open the window and, plunged out, knocking over the nightlight as he went.
    Nicholas gave Juan a narrow look, which the old man ignored. He marched ahead of Nicholas out to the main room of the house. Only the three candles on the table by the front door were lit. The painted mountains and clouds on the walls had faded into an intense gloom. Nicholas pushed Juan along ahead of him toward the kitchen; the servant’s impudence annoyed him and made him rough.
    As they were crossing the room a huge shape came silently out of the kitchen. Nicholas stopped dead, his scalp tingling with alarm. He clutched Juan’s arm. The gross monster glided forward, and the candlelight resolved it into a man wearing a floppy hat and carrying a sack over his