The Knights Without Fear And… (1)

 

Every castle has its ghost. At Castellengo, the ghost isn’t a specter drifting through corridors in the small hours — it’s a political tragedy, sealed into the limestone like a man walled up alive.

Before the grand balconies, before the cellars heavy with wine, there was only a cliff, a river, and a man with a loyalty that would cost him everything.

Part I: The Exile’s Gamble — From the Tiber to the Alps

The story does not begin here.

It begins five hundred kilometers to the south, in the sun-hammered hills of Umbria, where a man named Alberico stood in the shadow of the Castello di Monterone and grasped, with the cold clarity that only younger sons ever know, that none of this would ever be his.

Continue reading https://exegi.substack.com/p/the-knights-without-fear-and-1

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Fog

 Winter has finally arrived in Biella, and I find myself in the peculiar position of wanting snow. After 22 years of southern living, this is character development I never saw coming.

Snow in Biella is a rare guest — arriving perhaps once or twice, staying for a polite day or two before disappearing, as if it had forgotten an important appointment elsewhere.

But this year? This year, I’m craving it

The Almost-Adventure

The walking group chat has been exploding with snow photos — gorgeous, postcard-perfect shots that make you want to lace up your boots immediately. So last Saturday, after a fresh snowfall dusted the city, I thought: Today’s the day. I’m going to the mountains.

I had errands to run first. No problem. Plenty of time for a little mountain walk afterward. Then I looked up.

Above the peaks: massive, brooding, seriously uninviting dark gray clouds.

My enthusiasm deflated like a sad balloon. Where exactly was I planning to go in that?

Continue reading https://exegi.substack.com/p/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and

The Pagan Magic of the Walnut Tree

 There’s something about Italy that makes people want to believe in magic again. On witch-hunts, wish-granting, and what happens when modern women chase ancient magic

There is a walnut tree that grows over a gorge in the mountains between Salerno and Benevento. I know this because I danced around it with four other women on a Thursday afternoon, and the universe answered back.

The Ghost World Between Mountains

Formula 1 track in the fog

The weather in Biella was miserable—not just cold, but the kind of cold that settles into your bones and whispers that winter has come to stay.

The Shepherd's Mathematics or The Miracle of Natural Food

I was writing a text for prospects, agricultural companies, offering them a promotion of their products – vegetables, meat, honey, wine... Suddenly, I had the idea to tell it to you as a parable...

The old woman at the market in Biella counts differently than you or I.

She doesn’t count in euros or dollars. She counts in hours—the hours between when her husband’s hands pulled a zucchini from the earth and when it lands, still warm from the morning sun, in your canvas bag.

“Quarantotto,” she says. Forty-eight.

This is the number that matters. Not the price per kilo, but the hours. Because science has proven what these mountain people have always known in their bones: a vegetable begins to forget itself the moment it leaves the soil. Vitamins flee like swallows before winter. The life force drains away, oxidizing into something lesser, something that merely looks like food.

At forty-eight hours, half the vitamin C has vanished into thin air. The folates—those delicate compounds that build our blood—scatter like autumn leaves.

But here, in this corner of Piedmont, where time moves differently, =>>>

Continue reading https://exegi.substack.com/p/the-shepherds-mathematics-or-the

 

Snowlit Milan City Chant

Milan, in this post’s focus, is a beautiful, snowy city, and its secrets are revealed here.

We created this winter song inspired by photos of Milan and Moscow, me and Perplexity

Snowflakes dance on lamplight gold,
City veins in silver cold.
Windows glow, a whispered spell,
Evening’s beauty, pure and fell.
Breathe the frost, embrace the night —
Winter’s kiss, pure delight!

Continue with me on our discovery Milan walk here:

https://exegi.substack.com/p/snowlit-city-chant

To Pass Through the Fog

I wrote this story many years ago, when I was (yet again) in the situation described here. It's happened to me many times. But I still believe it's written accurately.

A small, small, impossibly small man stood before a wall of fog.

It seemed the entire world lay ahead of him—a vast, impossible Universe rising from the earth at his feet and stretching into infinity. These clouds, so voluminous, like immense feather pillows, these billowing masses of fog.

Around him and behind, there was nothing. No one. He stood alone before the infinite. Leaving everything THERE.

There, far away, where no road led back, remained earthly life—so simple, so flawed, so comprehensible and familiar.

He caught himself not fully grasping the finality of this step.

Continue reading https://exegi.substack.com/p/to-pass-through-the-fog

The Land Where Survival Was an Art Form

Life in Italy was never easy. Virtually every place and every period could be included in a survival manual. Let's talk about castle secrets again. Once upon a time, there was a castle... “How do we get into that castle?”

“You can’t,” I said.

The car had stopped beside us on the hill. We looked up at the ruin—another forgotten Avogadro fortress, crumbling behind rusted gates and NO TRESPASSING signs.

The driver nodded and drove off, but the question stayed with me. How do you get in? And more than that: why are there so many castles here that nobody can get into, that nobody even knows about?

It was one of those winter days you wait for all season—actual sunshine, breaking through weeks of fog and rain. I had maybe three hours before the light died, and I was desperate to escape my own head. So I did what any reasonable person does: I opened Google Maps and typed “castles.”

Three popped up. Close together. A loop I could drive in an afternoon.

I grabbed my keys.

Continue reading https://exegi.substack.com/p/the-land-where-survival-was-an-art

A Tale of Tiny Steaks and Smaller Pastries

 Every year between Christmas and New Year's, my friends and I engage in what has become our sacred ritual: eating our way through Piedmont while pretending we're not just avoiding their in-laws. 

Through the Frosted Door: The Scandalous Skirts of Saint-Pierre

Guarded by carved oak against winter's bite, a bas-relief freezes 1400s nobility: stern lords flank ladies in shockingly short tunics. No trailing velvet trains; these hems skim the knee. Why? 

 This story is my interpretation of the Saint-Pierre bas-relief on a door in the castle. Tourists visiting the castle do not notice its protagonists, and the guides don’t know what to say to you. They did not see it really. But there is an answer: medieval life was not quite the same as we imagine it from the ceremonial medieval pictures.

The October wind had teeth that morning when Caterina de Challant slipped through the postern gate of Ussel, her mare already saddled and stamping in the shadows. Behind her, in the castle’s great hall, her uncle’s men would be arriving within the hour, riding up the main road with documents and armed escorts, ready to strip her of yet another inheritance. But Caterina had learned to read the rhythms of ambush and lawsuit as other women read psalters.

Continue reading this story https://exegi.substack.com/p/through-the-frosted-door-the-scandalous