Veiled by some trees and power lines, it soon emerges dramatically in the midmorning haze. “Nice,” Scott keeps saying, “nice,” but truth be told, I am beginning to doubt
his sincerity. “The roads here are really wide, too. Nice.”
Up close, the tower is a hulking four-tier of eroded bricks and mossy crevices. Says the marker, it is one of the tallest and most massive in the country, built by Augustinian friars in early
seventeenth century. Back then, a man on horseback could enter the vaulted entrance; now, Scott and his five-foot-eleven frame must stoop to do so. “Nice,” he says again, inspecting the
remaining archipelago of original red bricks on the lowest tier. The rest of the bricks have visibly crumbled, surrendering to long-ago earthquakes and conflagrations, to the combination o
