16Isabella looked at the door, as if to reassure herself that the heavy chair would keep it well closed. She lifted the lid of her dress chest and started searching around looking for her treasures, letting out a sob of pain in moving arms tormented by bruises.
First, she pulled out a book of sonnets by Petrarch and one by Dante Alighieri, the last one was by the Siena poet Cecco Angiolieri. She shivered at thinking that if her father were to discover she was reading Angiolieri’s poetry, he would beat her with even more ferocity. Luckily, no one in the house had noticed these books had been removed from the library, which, to tell the truth, was scarcely used. Her mother did not even know what volumes were on the shelves while her brothers went searching for their excitement in the tavern
