Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

prologue, chapter 6

In the day, warned, he had seen Maddalena who had told him the terrible discovery she made, and that still made her tremble. Andrew was not less frightened, thinking that there was no means of preventing or preventing a misdeeds, which sooner or later would be carried out in impunity. Accusing Don Raimondo? This idea, the first to appear and the simplest, seemed then a madness: no one would lend faith to an accusation made by servants who, for having been fired, could even invent a crime against the masters, and that accusation would fall upon them. There was nothing but to watch and resort to cunning, but to be careful, because the slightest imprudence, discovering them, could have deprived Aloisia woman of that godly and mysterious protection.

They resolved to be on guard a few more days and then, if necessary, warn the Duchess.

They agreed: that Andrea would not move away from those places; without being seen, he would keep an eye on the "tower of Montalbano" ready to run to an agreed signal: a towel lying on the windowsill of the window of the closet, if by day, or three bars of hand, if at night.

So that evening, from his observatory the faithful servant had seen Fr. Raimondo and Giuseppico coming out, walking, intabarrati and this had aroused his curiosity. Where were they going? He wanted to follow them. And he had kept them behind, cautious, unseen, for those alleys.

Now with his ear at the door, he heard what they said; not all the words came clear and precise to him, because they spoke softly, but perceived something sufficient to comprehend and shudder.

Don Raimondo seemed stuck.

"You have deceived me, you slut!" he said.

"Excellency, what does he ever say!... I swear..."

"Shut up, witch!... Ella drank the whole bottle, you know? He drank it during the night and this morning he didn't even have the mildest sickness; he seemed to be better..."

"But, Your Excellency, I composed the mixture... it's safe..."

"You didn't put the bottle!..."

"I swear to him, Your Excellency; I put it with my hands on the small table and took what was there... May she be deprived of the grace of the soul!..."

"So, how do you explain that it's no good at all?..."

"What do I know? Maybe the lady's complexion is strong... you have to double..."

"Be careful that if you deceive me, I will hang you..."

"Excellency, I have never deceived anyone... I am an honest woman..."

Don Raimondo could not hold a grin to this affirmation of honesty.

"Give me, then, what I need," he ordered, "I'll think about administering it... But make sure it's safe, infallible..."

A minute of silence passed. Andrea heard a door open and close.

"Excellency," said Peppa la Sarda, "this is a powder of Tofana; your Excellency knows, by saying, that Tofana is infallible..."

"I know, well..."

"Just a pinch in the broth instead of salt..."

"He's fine. But take care of yourself: you are in my power, you know it." Andrew just had time to throw himself into a dark goddess where he could not be seen, which the little door reopened. He went out before Joseph, turned around the lantern to make sure that in the vicolet there was no one and made a sign to Don Raimondo. Both of them were back on the road. Andrew followed them with his eye from his hiding place; when he saw the lantern turning from the corner of the alley towards Pannaria he went out, he in turn approached the little door and hit three times, as Giuseppico had done.

The voice itself asked who it was. He answered quietly, so as not to make his voice recognize: "It is I, Peppa the Sarda; the master has forgotten to tell you one thing..."

The door will be opened as carefully as before, but Andrea impetuously pushed her, jumped into the room, and closed by snapping the door before Peppa the Sarda had recovered from the surprise: then, quickly drawn from the pockets a knife and approached with murky eyes to the woman, said to her: "Say a little, you prefer to die hanged like Tofana or slaughtered like a lamb?..."

Peppa la Sarda was still standing still, surprised by that unexpected attack, ignoring that the man unknown to her, already knew the secret with the knight Albamonte.

Peppa the Sarda was still young: perhaps she had just passed the thirty; she had near little the size of Maddalena and did not look unpleasant. Only his eyes looked like those of a cat, clear, phosphorescent, wild, and his lower jaw wide and strong had something belluin. That in his little earthly room, one of those "catoji" - as Greek are called the ground floors in which the poor people of Palermo live - set aside the formidable poisons that made famous the seventeenth century, no one would have believed it.

It was a poor room with smoked walls, naked of every ornament even coarse, except for an image of the Virgin, blackened and ugly. In one song there was the stove and there at a poor scansia with a few pots, terracotta pots, some dishes. Some other pot was on the stove. A table anointed, tarlata leaned on a wall and on it burned a skylight of ordinary earth; on the other hand, a cleft. The bed, if it could be called a strawberry thrown over two axes, was at the bottom, almost protected from the semi-darkness: an investigating eye could see under the bed, in the most placed corner, almost hidden by a case, shine some strange-shaped glass.

Peppa the Sarda, regained her dominion, asked in spite: "What do you want?"

"I told you. I can get rid of you now, and no one would save you, and no one would know who and how... And I can go to the captain of justice and give him the key to so many mysterious assassins..."

"I don't understand you; I don't know what you mean... Get out of here, or I'll call for help."

Andrea jumped on her, grabbed her by the throat, pushed her to the wall holding her nailed and, putting the tip of the knife between her eyes, said to her: "I know the knight who came out of here now: I know what he came to do; I know that you gave him now the dust of Tofana to kill the Duchess of Motta; I know that last night you, infamous witch, entered the Duchess' room and placed a bottle of water poisoned on the night table...; that poison did not have any effect, because someone who saw you rushed to take it away... Do you understand now? You realize that I know everything and that you are in my hands, you and your accomplices; and that the Duchess will not die, because there are those who watch over that innocent one?."

As Andrea spoke accompanying the words with strobes that almost choked the poisoner, Peppa the Sarda paled, became bruised, sweating, shaking. Who was that man who knew everything, who had seen everything? How did he see?... It seemed so extraordinary, almost out of the natural, as if something impenetrable and eternal, threatening and inevitable, appeared above her. Not knowing, nor being able to react any more, he ended up yielding to terror; he stuttered a few words reaching his hands.

The act more than the words demanded mercy. Andrea, without leaving her, loosened the grip of her fingers.

"Piety... pity!..." murmured with a voice extinguished Peppa la Sarda.

"Now you call for mercy? And did you have any for an innocent woman who never hurt you? If the Duchess dies, your life will pay for her..."

"Have mercy on me... I will remedy..."

"Come on, give me the counterwave..."

"I'll give it to you... but leave me!..."

Andrew left her; Peppa the Sarda passed her hand over her neck, she rested; her face was frightening; still bruised and counterfeited, she had a fierce expression of hatred and an ardour of vengeance.

Suddenly, taking heart, leaping like a cat and rejecting Andrea, he tried to gain the door, but the young man, who perhaps expected a surprise, stood on guard, her weeded for hair, threw her on the floor with a bad word, and in a rush of anger he lifted up the knife to kill her. A sudden thought stopped him. Who would give him the counterwave? Peppa la Sarda saw herself lost now.

"Ah! were you trying to make it for me?" grinned Andrea by holding back the anger; "Would you try to escape me? Feel how it stings, bad girl!"

With the tip of the knife, she clipped her neck slightly, making her shiver; the cold of the blade, some lukewarm drop of blood that swarmed on the flesh, put in her veins the terror of death.

"Grace!" he murmured again!

But Andrea didn't leave her. To every prayer of the woman he responded with a denial of the head. He finally seemed to give in.

"Yes," he said, "I will grace you with life... but in my own way."

Threatening always with the knife, with his free hand he removed her apron and placed the knife between her teeth solidly tied her arms around her life, so tightly, that almost suffocated her; then he searched around, found a rope and then remade the ligature.

She shook her hands behind her kidneys, turning the rope around her hips and belly: with her womb twisted like a rope, she tied her legs and when she had reduced her to impotence, she asked her: "Where is the counterwave?"

"There, in that closet..."

Andrew opened the closet; it was full of bottles, paperwork, and dried herbs.

"What is it?"

"There, in the second scan, next to that green bowl..."

"This bottle?"

"Yes."

Andrea put her eyes in search of her face; then, after a minute's rest, she said to her: "Take care, you bitch, that I will not leave you... I'll take the bottle, but I'll take you with me, I'll lock you in a place. From whence thou shalt not escape, and I will leave thee until I see that thou hast not deceived me... Your life will tell me about the life of the Duchess and the little one... Do you still claim that this is the bottle of the counterwave?"

Peppa the Sarda didn't answer right away.

"Well?" said Andrea.

"You won't get what you hope for, you won't get to save the Duchess," said the poisoner.

Andrea lifted the armed fist, but Peppa did not show any dismay.

"It's not because of me, but because of you..."

"Mia?"

"Of course! Don't you realize, you idiot, that with all the counter-poisons you will not be able to steal the duchess from death because the rider of Motta will find other means to dispose of his sister-in-law?"

Andrea paled and looked at the sad female, struck by the rightness of that observation. What to do?

"You can only delay death."

It seemed that he triumphed in the tone of his voice and in the ferocious flash of the eye, and that he tasted the satisfaction of having thrown Andrea's soul into that sea of doubts, fears and uncertainty. But the young man took a resolution.

"It doesn't matter!" he said, "for now you have to stop your work; the rest you will think about later. Is this the bottle of the counterwave?"

"Yes."

Andrea put it in his pocket; then removed a handkerchief strongly gagged Peppa la Sarda, put it on as if it had been a child, turned off the lamp, went out behind him closing the door and went towards the road of the Guardian Angel where his little house stood.

The night was gloomy, starless, cold, the late hour, the deserted streets. He had the politeness not to cross the broadest roads where he could meet some late patrols, but to drive out through the alleys; this lengthened the way, but made him safer from every encounter. From time to time he was forced to stop, tired of the way and the weight; he laid that living burden behind a few doors, rested a minute and resumed the journey. When he got home, he couldn't take it anymore.

He lived in a sort of poor and sad mezzanine, of two rooms, the second of which had a window over a garden, equipped with very solid iron bars. There was the bed; he laid it down for you, and loosed her gag.

"I'd also take these pastries from you, if you were reasonable," she said, "but I'd rather leave you like this for every good end. And don't worry, you're not gonna get out of here until I save the Duchess. Now tell me how to use this powder."

Shortly afterward he went out by locking the room and the front door and ran to the Albamonte palace to see Maddalena and give her instructions.

On his way back into the house, Don Raimondo ordered Giuseppico to bring him some milk and a bitch.

"If that cow has deceived me, I will send her to the Holy Office for inventiveness!..."

When he had milk, he mixed some of that powder in it, tasted it with the tip of his tongue, and as he seemed satisfied he offered the drink to the unfortunate animal, who was enticed by the flavor of the milk he drank greedily, curling the bowl with his long tongue and licking his satisfied lips.

Don Raimondo and Giuseppico were watching and waiting. The bitch took two or three laps around the room, approached the boss by boning, stood up, put his forelegs on his breasts as if to look for a caress; then he again wandered through the room sniffing, and stopped bowing his head, as assaulted by an invincible drowsiness. Slowly he let himself fall on the ground, lying long. Don Raimondo called her with a particular sound; the beast picked up, lifted up a little' the head that fell heavily, and shook a little slowly with an effort.

Gradually his limbs stiffened, lay down, without convulsions, without spasms, and his life died out like a flame on which the shutter fell gently.

The knight Albamonte seemed satisfied. With a diabolical smile he thought: "Is it not obeying the divine precept to reunite Aloisia woman to her husband's duke? Let us therefore hasten to deliver her from this valley of tears."

He was a little thoughtful; the clock of the nearby church rang three hours at night. Soon Aloisia would have had dinner. This thought made him shudder: the mysterious dust was there, before him, and the sure effects; he had to throw a pinch of it in the cup of broth and she would turn off like the little dog. However, to the idea of going to the kitchen or waiting in the anteroom, to find, in a word, the possibility of fulfilling his misdeeds, one felt less courage.

He made an effort, threw a map in his pocket with a little dust and went, as usual, to revere woman Aloisia before retiring in her bedroom to sleep.