Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

prologue, chapter 8

Midnight was played then. Everyone in the palace slept, and the rooms were dark and deserted.

Don Raimondo carefully came out of his room with a blind lantern and, standing on the threshold, called quietly: "Joseph... Giuseppico..."

He heard in a corner a low and long snoring; in fact the servant slept on a chair, wrapped in his cloak, with his head bowed down on his chest and his legs stretched out. Don Raimondo approached him and shook him slightly for a shoulder: "Come on, let's go..."

The servant leaped up, wrinkled his eyes wounded by the bright light of the lantern and stuttering a few words. In silence, both of them crossed the rooms, like two guarding thieves, avoiding the slightest noise; they entered a corridor and crossed it all the way down. There was a door, Giuseppico dragged a device out of his pocket, threw it into the lock to force it, but the door collapsed immediately and opened.

Don Raimondo lifted up the lantern, the servant looked and said: "There is no..."

"Isn't he here?"

"Excellency no; look..."

It was a bedroom with a bed, a dresser and a few chairs: from nails planted here and there hung women's clothes; the bed was empty.

"It must be from the Duchess; almost I was sure of it;" murmured spitefully Don Raimondo.

He reflected the corridor, followed by Giuseppico; at the other end there was the door of the closet where Maddalena had already spent some nights guarding the mistress. From the closet, slightly closing the door he gave in the room of woman Aloisia, he could see himself if there was Maddalena. The closet door was locked inside, a clear sign that there was someone: no matter how much they pushed without making a noise, it did not yield, nor was Giuseppico's iron more fortunate: the door had to be closed with a lock.

"Damn it!" murmured Don Raimondo.

Obstinating and trying to force the door was the same as raising Aloisia woman and denouncing herself: it was necessary to put the game back. Meanwhile all those clues: the unusually locked door inside, the presence of Maddalena in the room of the Duchess, that having taken away the tray with dinner, all this became more and more certain her suspicion, that Maddalena was the owner of her secret and reconfirmed it in her design, that it was necessary to rid the way of that dangerous witness.

"Let's go," he gloomily said.

But they had not yet moved, that Don Raimondo as struck suddenly stopped, and quickly closed the lantern, pushing Giuseppico against the wall. In fact, in the closet there was a slight noise, like a short and guarding step approaching the door. Don Raimondo held his breath and with his hand open, stretched out, pressed Giuseppico's abdomen, as if to prevent him from speaking. It was heard slightly pulling the lock and the door succumbed gradually. In the deep darkness of the corridor, it was guessed that the door opened from a dim glimmer, like reflected light, which lightened the darkness. It seemed to Don Raimondo that a shadow was opposed to that glimmer; evidently someone looked out and could not be other than woman Aloisia or Maddalena; more likely this. In either case the opportunity to act without being seen, mysteriously, in the shadows, was offered to him, when he was already desperate. He was almost leaning on the clipboard, he had to stretch his arm, and he could suddenly gaze at that shadow. But luck seemed to want to second him. The door was opened even more: the shadow moved ahead and there was hardly the slightest sound of the cautious and circumspect foot. Don Raimondo felt the closeness of a body; then crawling along the wall he interposed between the shadow and the compartment of the door and opened the lantern.

It was Maddalena.

She sent a cry of fear, which immediately turned into a strangled chant.

Joseph had leaped over her, grasping her throat; it was a brief, violent, distressing debate; under the grip, the root became more hoarse, and the body wrinkled, wrinkled terribly.

"Hurry up!" growled Don Raimondo.

"The beast has hard leather!" answered the servant who, thrown to the ground, Maddalena was mounted on her belly with her knees.

From there, from the room, the voice of woman Aloisias called: "Maddalena!"

"Come on, hurry!" incited Don Raimondo.

"It's done," answered the other rising.

The voice of woman Aloisia called again: "Maddalena!..."

"Take her away!" ordered Don Raimondo, fearing that the Duchess, suspicious, would surprise them.

"Take her to her room now!"

But Joseph had just bowed down, that woman Aloisiah stood on the threshold, and her cry of fear caused the two men to come up; Don Raimond promptly closed the lantern, and the corridor fell into the thick shadow, but not so quickly that Aloisiah woman did not recognize Magdalene lying down for earth and didn't see that man bent over her.

He did not recognize the two men well, but he sensed, that they were committing some foolishness. Terror invaded him. The sudden passage from light to the deepest darkness seemed to her as if a frightening void was suddenly made around her, in which she was thrown. The darkness was filled with mysterious and terrible dangers, of which Maddalena's view was an example. But he did not only see himself, among those dangers, he also saw his creature. This thought, that in the shadows a horrid, monstrous, bloody hand could have fallen over the cradle, infused the courage of fear. He rushed into his room closing behind him; he took from the cradle the little Emanuele who slept quietly and wrapping him in a shawl went out in the anteroom, with the idea of fleeing without knowing where or at least to raise the palace. He crossed two or three dark rooms, stumbling in the furniture, lost in the darkness that had disoriented him. Turning around he found himself in front of his room: she had gone back, believing she was always going ahead. She stopped: she seemed to hear voices of people in her room. He held his ear: a thrill the races through the veins. He took refuge behind a large tent, letting himself fall on the ground, remaining entirely hidden and looked from a window inside his room. She saw distinctly two shadows wandering around and approaching the cradle...

Don Raimondo and Giuseppico entered the bedroom, laid on the Maddalena bed, which no longer gave a sign of life and had the face paonazzo, the tongue swollen and protruding, the eyes out of the orbit. It was disgusting and terrifying.

"Are you sure she's dead?" asked Don Raimondo, illuminating that face with the light beam of the lantern.

"For Saint Jacopo" grunted the evildoer: "Do you not see, Your Excellency?"

He leaned his ear to Maddalena's heart, and he noticed his shoulders collapsing.

"More than dead!" he added.

Don Raimondo could not take his eyes off that monstrous and terrifying spectacle, as if that image of violent death chained him. He thought. It was necessary to make disappear that corpse that could call justice into the house, and lead to the discovery of his crime; it was necessary to make it disappear within the night itself.

Yeah, yeah. It was necessary. Wasn't the gardens just a short distance away, where a corpse could be buried? The gardens? No; there was better. In his citrus grove, outside the Ossuna Gate, had he not discovered a vast and deep underground? On a Sunday when he had gone to pleasure there, because it was a real place of delight, he had noticed that a hole, in a corner, had been, perhaps for the rains or otherwise, enlarged, appearing of circular shape and as dug into the tuff, of which the subsoil was formed. He bowed, he saw that it was empty down there. Perhaps a natural cave, or one of those Troglodytic caves, of which in the surrounding countryside there were some examples. Who would go looking for Maddalena in that cave, of which he could cover the only visible opening? Who would have imagined the mystery that the bowels of the earth would bury forever?

Meanwhile, he looked at Maddalena, illuminating her with the lantern. It seemed to him that those horrible and bloody eyes looked at him, with a sense of terror and at the same time of fierce irony.

He was scared.

"Let's go," he said to Joseph, "let's go to the other; it's better to hurry now that he's seen us."

They rehearsed the corridor by walking cautiously, so as not to make noise, they penetrated the closet, stopping every moment and stretching their ear to make sure they didn't fail. Don Raimondo had closed the lantern; he pushed the door of the room slightly and leaned his head. Then he went in: Giuseppico kept behind him.

They were amazed. Don Raimondo believed that he found the Duchess uplifted, ready to defend herself, or to shout; but he saw no one.

"There is no," he murmured.

At that point, Aloisian woman hid behind the curtain frozen by fear, for from the opening she had recognized the two unholy.

Holding his breath, pressing his son to the chest almost to protect him, and at the same time to curb the violent beats of his heart, he saw Don Raimondo approaching the bed, and heard him murmuring: "There is no..."

Then he saw him approaching the cradle, bowing down, exclaiming amazed: "There is not even a child!..."

To woman Aloisia raised her hair on her head: if her creature at that time had vagated or given a sign of life, they were lost: all her will had thickened almost to impose on that little body dormantly the deepest silence. In order to cushion the breath he had almost hidden his head under his arm, and she herself held her breath.

Don Raimondo and Giuseppico looked at each other with an indescribable amazement. Where'd she go? He certainly knew them and understood what they had done. This idea made Don Raimondo even more fierce and resolute. It was necessary to track down Aloisia woman and suppress her if they did not want to be lost. Turning the lantern Don Raimondo realized that the door of the apartments was open.

The most natural assumption was that woman Aloisia had come out of there, perhaps to escape.

"Let's go find, it can only be for the rooms!"

He was trying to find her. A kind of fever had taken hold of him; there was fear, spite, desire to kill, merged together. Every minute he spent seemed to him an hour and the length of time made him believe that he was facing an irreparable catastrophe.

Holding the lantern high he approached the door, projecting the light around the room on the threshold. Donna Aloisia, when he saw him approaching, felt himself dying: now they would notice her. He curled up even more behind the tent, clinging to the wall, tightening the teeth they wanted to beat, for fear they would hear it.

Fortunately she remained in the shadow circle that the lantern left from the sides. They didn't see her.

"Let's go!" incited Don Raimondo.

They crossed the room; Joseph overtook the tent behind which Aloisiah was a woman, to whom terror seemed to have arrested life. She saw them passing through the other room and saw them disappear; and then she went out like a mad woman from her hiding place, went back into her room, locked the door by pushing a high chair behind you, then ran to lock the door of the closet that she gave on the hallway, served the door of the room, and feeling that the danger had gone away, hugged and kissed sobbing her Emanuele.

So they were looking for him too! The words of Maddalena, her acts that seemed inexplicable, everything that had happened in those days, everything was now explained, and the embodiment of a high fear. Maddalena! What did they do with her? He was horrified and he felt he was failing to imagine it; but certainly the same fate was waiting for her. Why else would they suppress poor Maddalena?

"Ah, poor son, only without help, without protection, in the vast paternal house! How to save him? How?"

A sudden and terrible thought enlightened her mind: more than a thought, perhaps one of those quick and complex intuitions, which enclose all a reasoning.

He ran to open the balcony; everything was deep darkness and silence. From the dark sky a few droplets fell from time to time; the cold was sensitive. She slid the height, then in a feverish hurry she came back, pulled four or five of those strong and long bands from the chest of drawers that served to bind the newborn, tied them together, formed a quite long rope, and secured one of the heads at the iron railing of the balcony. Then he wrapped Emanuele in a woolen cloak and tied him to the other end of the rope.

The little wanderer.

Donna Aloisia turned off his vagitives with kisses and sweet words, as if that flesh of a few days could understand it. She was afraid that that vagary would find out. He marked himself devoutly, called upon God, and began to gently descend the little one, down, into the shadows. He was still wandering.

Donna Aloisia felt the little one hit the bottom. Then, moved, he felt the knot on the railing, made sure that it was solid; he climbed over the railing, and let himself slip along the rope that vibrated at its weight. He almost crushed Emanuele.

He freed the little one from the ligature, kissed him, suffocating a hiccup of joy, and clutching him in the chest, to cushion his vagitives, he wandered along the road that stretched out before her, black, deserted, cold, frightening.