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the hill at nine sharp,” Jean said brightly, “so please finish up your breakfast and start making your way up there. We’ve got a busy day ahead!”
    That sounded like an understatement.

Chapter 4
     
    The day proved to be as long as I had expected, but far more interesting. The visit to the monastery surprised me, and by the end of the day I was still trying to figure out why it was also disturbing.
    When the name Medici came up, as it did so often in this part of the country, I had expected grandeur and opulence, but the monastic establishment itself was surprisingly small and modest. Of course, in the past its wealthy patrons had embellished it with works from the best possible artists available at the time—for the patrons’ private pleasure—but that didn’t quite compensate for the small size, and the “good stuff” looked incongruous inside such a plain and simple space. At least they had survived the changes of the centuries, including the ultimate decline of the Medici. I told myself to stop being so critical; it was peaceful and charming and unspoiled.
    The most surprising part of the visit was the tour guide: a young monk in full habit, who talked knowledgeably and comfortably about the artworks and artifacts we were looking at. It was only after a few minutes, in response to Jane’s direct question (in Italian—he spoke no English) that he told us that he was only seventeen. That hushed a lot of us. I found it hard to imagine many seventeen-year-olds who were so self-possessed, especially when faced with a crowd of ladies old enough to be his grandmother in some cases, and few speaking Italian. But what was more startling was his assurance—and his commitment. He had chosen his path, he told us through Jane, before he entered his teens, and had stuck to it. He’d even convinced the rest of his family to rejoin the Church. Would it, could it last for him? Or at some point would he yearn for a wider world? After all, he had seen so little of life. I had no answer. I just knew that I wouldn’t have trusted any path I had chosen at his age to be permanent—and I would have been right, about myself at least.
    But the most unsettling part of the discussion came last, translated for us by Jane, whose Italian sounded fluent and authentic to my ears. If Jane had it right—and from the look on her face I wasn’t sure if she believed her own translation—the young monk was describing the “discipline” that he imposed upon himself, which appeared to consist of daily flagellation, and maybe worse. In the twenty-first century? From the expressions of the others who were listening, and their sudden silence, it seemed that everyone was having trouble grasping the idea. And the boy—seventeen!—seemed so sure … We moved quickly to the cloister and began to take pictures of the ancient well in the center and the cat sleeping in the sun.
    When we had seen our fill, our drivers herded us back to the vans. They had told us before we started out that morning that whichever van we chose, that would be “our” van for the rest of the trip. In other words, that group of nine or so people would be our travel buddies. I’d meekly followed Brenda to her van and waited to see who else climbed on board. I saw Cynthia heading off in another direction, but I didn’t feel slighted. I wanted to talk to more than one person over the next few days.
    Once loaded on board, we set off for the next stop: a (surprise!) Medici villa. Apparently the Medici had roamed the countryside around Florence, picking off nice properties as they went. I had to admit they had good taste. Getting to this villa proved to be something of a challenge: the only road that led to it was barely one lane, but more important, it sloped upward, all the way. If any van showed the slightest hesitancy and slowed, it was an iffy proposition whether they could resume the climb without backing up to a relatively flat section and taking a run at it.