Chapter 16: The Old Law

Nobody spoke for the length of three breaths.

Then the oldest of the four family heads put his cane into the grass and took one step forward.

He was eighty, with a face like a walnut, and he had sat at the Commission table since before my father had a beard.

"Say that again," he said to Ciro. "The name."

"Ciro Landi. My father held a christening for his daughter, and seventeen years ago forty men came through the doors."

"I remember the fire."

"Do you remember who sat at the Commission that spring and voted to burn the Landis out?"

The old man's eyes moved, slowly, to the Don.

"I remember that Barsanti voted loudest," he said.

The hill had begun to murmur.

The Don straightened his coat.

He did it the way he did everything.

"This is a stranger's story," he said. "He walked in my gate with a sick girl and a bag of lies. He is a Landi in name only."

"Then show us the child," the old man said.

"What child?"

"The Landis had a daughter. The christening was hers." He tapped his cane. "She was never found. People said the fire took her."

I felt Ciro go still at my side.

At the edge of the crowd, behind the last row of stones, the gray coat had not moved.

The Don saw where I was looking.

Slowly, over his shoulder, he saw her too.

I watched him understand that every man on the hill was about to follow his eyes.

"Don," the second of the four said quietly. "Were you at that christening?"

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