Biography of an Angel

When he closed the door tight behind the priest, Davide was a few paces from the narrow entrance hall that led up the steep flight of stone steps to the tower.  He climbed it and observed the small window that gave light to the stairway as it bent sharply to the left in its ascent.  At the top, on the left side, a short wooden door lay ensconced within a frame while the space on the landing was suffused with a faint light that fought to pierce through the cracks higher up on the wall.  Often as a child he played on those cold steps when his father was behind the door...yet never had he been allowed entrance.  He shivered from nervousness, breathed shallowly, gripped the key, inserted it into the small hole, and turned it all the way to the right until the lock clicked.  He pushed on the weight of the carved oak door.  It swung in with a loud creak, allowing him his first glance of the inner sanctum of the fifth tower. 

The room, as he stepped inside, had a strong odor of stagnation or mold.  He exhaled as if to purge the smell, leaned back hard against the door to ensure it was secure, and stood for the first time in the private space to which his father had often retreated.  Against two walls stood huge cases laden with boxes and papers neatly arranged.  In the midst of the room was a desk that faced a stone fireplace with a wooden mantel and a blackened chimney flue rising up into the smudged charcoal ceiling; a small ladder rested against a wall; a lantern with extra candles lay across a round table; old boots hunched in a corner over which was a window that, in place of glass panes, had slabs of wood that plugged the opening, yet outlines of light seeped through the gaps.  Davide walked toward the aperture and sneezed.  On everything was a heavy coat of dust, a sign that no one, since his father died, had entered the solemn area.  He removed the blockages and sun cascaded happily into the room for the first time in years. 

   “Not one soul after my passing shall step foot into my tower until Davide becomes of age,” his father had commanded from his deathbed.  Everyone understood, including Anne-Marie.  The time had come.  The fourteen-year-old son of the Marchese Luca Barbina began to feel the responsibility that his title carried.  Everything was his: the castello, the land, the exporting business and hundreds of workers.

On the desk he found inkhorns, fine quills sharpened with a thin knife, pumice stones for smoothing the parchment, rulers for drawing the lines that the writing would follow, and a thick stack of unbounded paper.  Curiously, right in the center of the desk, exactly where his father would sit, contemplate, and write, Davide recognized a wooden box identical in size and shape to the one the priest had just given him from his mother.  He trembled as he sat in the chair, as if drenched by an icy winter rain, when he realized his foresighted father had intentionally left the box in that precise spot for him to find many years later.  With numb fingertips, he gently opened the hinged top and distinguished therein a piece of yellowed parchment.  Folded in thirds, on the outside was clearly written, in Luca’s distinguishable handwriting: To the Marchese Davide Barbina of Mercatale.  It was as if Davide could feel his father’s presence as tears streamed down his cheeks.  He swallowed and opened the letter written for him ten years before, barely able to make out the dried ink because it had faded.

To my son, the noble Davide... 
From out of the Barbina lineage have you come,
And back into your own roots will you one day return.
With your birth come responsibilities...
As a nobleman, a marchese, and a Barbina.
The Castello delle Rondine is your birthright.
Follow the way of your heart, ignore not the call of the poor.
When a lesson is learned...do not tempt fate. 
And, twice a year when the swallows return, remember how
The Castello delle Rondine derived its name. 
But most important remember this:
Life is a great cycle.  Everything comes back...
 and all is right now.
Your father,
The Marchese Luca Barbina of Mercatale,
Winter, 944