Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part two, chapter 2

Italiano

English

The Santa Maria, gala of the kingdom, after a disastrous journey into the Ionian Sea. along the Calabrian and Apulian coasts, returned to Messina in the afternoon of Palm Sunday. The convicts, after the practices of the landing and the health visit, were disassembled and carried out in life, so that they could attend the religious services of the Holy Week, confess and communicate as a precept. The Santa Maria, having need of repairs, had been pulled into the arsenal, and would not have resumed the sea so soon, so that the convicts would have a relatively long period of rest.

Andrea, who had arrived in Messina for over a week, mixed up with the curious to see the convicts disembark and looked at them one by one, as someone who wants to recognize someone. It was a torn, dirty, ruffled crowd, which at every step made the chains resonate leftly; someone went with his head low, dull or sad: the most looked at the crowd with a smile wrinkled on his lips. They hurried at the end of the Palace towards the ancient royal palace in whose ground floor were vast and comfortable prisons.

Andrea wondered who was among those convicts that famous Giuseppico, in search of whom he had been sent. He had seen it a few times in the Albamonte palace, all satin, with the livery of the dukes of Motta, fifteen good years before: now he saw only bearded and hurled faces under shackles and of indefinable color, and could not recognize the fleeting image that he had preserved in his memory. His eye stopped over a tall, boney convict, with a sharp profile, whose cheeks were covered with a thick and steep beard. The bloody blind eye of that convict stirred his blood.

He doubted and wanted to make sure: "Joseph!" he exclaimed.

The convict turned round and looked at Andrea with amazement, frowning on his eyebrows in an effort to refocus his memory.

Andrew had no doubt; he approached him, walking beside him and asked him: "Do you not recognize me, Joseph?."

The convict wanted to say no, but something forbade him; perhaps a distant image began to appear in his memory.

"I'm Andrea... Andrea, the ancient servant of the Duke of Motta..."

Joseph looked at him amazed, and seemed to recognize him: "Ah!... Andrea... That's right..."

"Poor Giuseppico, how I see you again!..." continued Andrea feeling sorry for him: "if you knew how much it pains me!"

"To you?" asked the unbelieving convict.

"Of course. Aren't we Christians? Then it was another thing; you were in the service of Don Raimondo, I had been driven out of it, but now you too are in disgrace and misfortunes grieving. I don't think about the past anymore. If you need anything, say freely..."

Giuseppico did not answer; that unexpected encounter had pushed him fifteen years back, and had quickly reminisced to him the time lived. He did not seem likely that Andrea stretched out a friendly hand to him and was suspicious and guarded, fearing a snare; and throughout the journey to the royal palace he responded with grunts or gestures to Andrea's words.

Before leaving, Andrew said to him: "I will come and see you; but if you can show yourself from one of these windows, it will be good; we can talk to you better. I'll come tonight at 23 hours, walk this way... In the meantime, take it, it'll be good for you."

He put a silver shield in the hand of the convict and went away. At last he had found Maddalena's killer and the instrument of Don Raimondo's crimes: but how to get him out of prison? In fact, how to draw it from yours? Fleeing from prison was not a very difficult thing in those days, if you had not locked yourself in some tower or in the dungeons of some castle. The prisons of the royal palace had windows not very high from the ground, which gave on the navy and on the facade that He looked at the plan, where the suburb of Newfoundland already stood. There were guards, but they did not prevent prisoners from talking to relatives and friends who came from the street, because at that time segregation was not so strict, and in prison one could make his own comfortable, there being no other restriction than that of not crossing the door of the corridors. Only the rei of state and in the matter of faith were locked in cells and separated from others.

When the convicts were locked in the prison rooms and their chains were removed, Joseph looked out at the window, more out of curiosity than because he hoped for something from Andrew and wondered when he saw him come and stop there underneath. They exchanged a few words. Andrea promised him that he would send him a good dessinare and good wine, and left him a little bewildered and hesitant.

So it lasted for two or three days. Andrea had noticed the convict's distrust and felt that it was necessary first of all to win it and gain confidence. And for those days he didn't talk to him about anything. He from the street, Giuseppico clinging to the irons of the window, spoke of a thousand frivolous and different things among which Andrea found the way to insinuate some hints of the ingratitude of Don Raimondo, who should have been in that place. Which allusions lit flashes of hatred in Giuseppico's eyes and sighs of anger.

One day, with a shield given to a caretaker, Andrea got to talk to Giuseppico in a prison room, saying he was related.

When they were together, Andrew quickly said to him in a low voice: "I bring you two things, choose you: one is this: Do you want to be denounced for the attempted poisoning of the Duchess and for the murder of Maddalena? The other is this: Do you want to regain freedom, a sum of money and boarding in a ship going to Sardinia? Choose."

Joseph laughed woefully, and said, "What proposals! Is there any doubt about the choice? The second, I choose the second, for Saint Efisio!..."

"He's fine, but there's a condition."

"Huh?... A condition? What do you mean?"

"A thing of nothing. You will obey me blindly, and you will come with me to witness before a person the murders of the duke..."

"Pomegranate! You call it a nothing thing? It means putting me in the hands of justice..."

"No: it means freedom, wealth and revenge. No one will know this witness; you will be led with the greatest mystery, in all secrecy, and as soon as your testimony has been given you will be accompanied aboard and placed safe. Think about it..."

"No, no... I don't accept..."

"So that means I'm going to report you to the captain governor."

Giuseppico had his back.

"You should try..."

"And the easiest thing. Peppa la Sarda is not dead; she is alive, very alive, and she is in my house."

Giuseppico paled.

"I'll leave you. Think about it. I didn't come to me, but to some very powerful people. Tomorrow you will give me the answer."

Andrea left, leaving the convict in a sea of thoughts.

The next evening, from the street, he asked Giuseppico: "Yes or no?"

Joseph answered, "Yes, and let the devil bring you..."

"He's fine. The day after tomorrow, you're all going to the citadel to work on the moats. I'll be there. Be careful and second me."

The same evening, with a feluca - who left for Palermo, Andrea sent a letter to Zi' Rosario, to warn him.

Joseph waited impatiently on the day of work at the moats of the citadel recently built on the arm of St. Raineri: the idea of escaping, of having money, of returning to the native island, and at the same time of taking revenge, without risk, of the duke who had abandoned it, excited him. It is true that from time to time there was a doubt as to whether Andrea had deceived him? If that was a plot to drop it? But he wondered, "What's the point? If they wanted to lose me, they would have to denounce me for those facts... What if Andrea was a Duke's emissary? Bah! The duke would not have allowed fifteen years to get rid of him, and getting one killed in jail was the easiest thing in this world: the convicts always had weapons on them, despite surveillance, and for three Tarì they were willing to slaughter their father."

Thus, building up hypotheses and suspicions and destroying them to rebuild others, Joseph spent those two days. He was the first and most lary to jump into the boat, who had to carry them to St. Raineri's arm and all the way went looking around, spying on all the boats, questioning with his eyes all the people he met. Andrea couldn't see.

Giuseppico began to work in a bad mood, fearing some setbacks. At midday a salesman of melarance came with two baskets in the midst of the convicts, who crowded around him. Joseph approached him, but as soon as he looked at them, he turned with joy, recognizing Andrew. A look of which he asked for caution.

"Take care to come to the cliff. I have hidden what we need from you," he said quickly and softly as soon as he had his right hand.

"All right."

Andrea spent the crew and emptied the two baskets; gradually he was reduced on the eastern side of St. Raineri's arm, defended by artificial cliffs, against which the waters of the Strait were broken. The cliffs formed coves, cavities, where it was easy to hide. He fell down there, as if he needed to be lurked: no one looked at him, for the convicts had taken up the work; only the eyes of Joseph followed him with the most keen interest. He understood that Andrew had to be reached at that point. Without an opinion, following the work, gradually he also approached the rocks bending so as not to point out his tall person, looking around with the tail of the eye, with the cunning of a cat. Then, almost crawling, he also let himself fall into the rocks, hid himself there, and waited a minute to see if anyone had noticed his maneuver.

Andrea called him in a low voice: "Come on!... there is no time to lose. Come here: no one will see us."

In fact, three or four huge boulders formed there a large room, open on one side and completely hidden from the citadel and the crew. Giuseppico went there.

"Let me do it," said Andrea, and with a pair of scissors he cut his beard long and steep, in a few strokes, almost to the blossom of skin.

That slight correction was enough for his appearance to change.

"Throw away that coat and put on this other one. But quick."

Giuseppico did not have it repeated twice; without that beard, with those different garments, one could hardly recognize in him the convict a quarter of an hour ago. Andrea led him among the meati that the huge boulders left among them, beyond the line of the cliff, where, swinging a gulet, tied to a rock by a rope.

They freed him, jumped into it, held the oars, and away, quickly.

No one noticed them; in that hour the Strait was traveled by boats of all kinds, large and small, and the caicco could not arouse the attention of anyone. They rowed south, with the intention of escaping the sight of the citadel and the fortifications that looked at the sea. Andrea had all predicted and calculated. They would not have landed on the beach between Contesse and Tremestieri, abandoning the gulet to themselves and would soon have been thrown out among the gorges of the mountains that form the group of Antennammare, where, even if desired, it would have been very difficult to search them.

And everything followed by a dot. Andrea had hidden a bit of food at the bottom of the boat, a couple of guns for himself, his sword, a file, capes and big boots. He girded his sword, put his guns on his belt, and, before he landed, he followed with the file the iron rings to the malleole and the belt that they needed to chain Joseph to the jail counter. He threw that revealing stuff at the bottom of the sea. Joseph felt happy and for the first time, perhaps, felt a feeling of gratitude to his liberator.

They took the way of the mountains, escaping the small villages and the farmhouses scattered on those coasts laughing with vegetation and only stopped at night, in a country house near Rometta.

At small stages, along the district of Messina, they arrived in Milazzo where Andrea bought two horses. During the journey, he insinuated in the heart of Joseph the most rosy hopes, making him understand that, obeying and offering his small testimony of what had happened in the Albamonte palace, he earned the protection of very high characters who would save him from all persecution, not only of the private, but of the same justice.

"Imagine serving the state. And I say the State, because it is at the bottom of something that concerns the State."

And with these speeches, and teasing him, he was tearing from his mouth the unknown details that Andrea recorded in his brain, so that now no detail of the drama that took place in the winter of 1698 was unknown or poorly known to him.

After two days they arrived at Milicia, then a small farmhouse of a few hundred souls, around a church and a foundation. It was already beyond the Avemaria and in order not to arrive at night in Palermo (there was still fourteen miles to travel) it was convenient to stop. Andrea thought it would be useful to send a courier to Zi' Rosario to warn him and wait for instructions. It wasn't hard to find one. That foundation was frequented by "canceddi" or cartoons carrying wheat, wines, oils, cheeses in the capital of the kingdom and someone would certainly offer himself, behind a small compensation. Moreover, he had recently acquired a great renown of the image of Our Lady of Loreto, to whom the church of Milicia was dedicated, and for the miracles it did, he was the goal of more votive pilgrimages; in order to be sure of find in the base some groups of devotees. And in fact, there were. A family of villagers, a kind of good boy, and one of those medium priests who dressed the short dress and wore the collar of the clergymen and were commonly called by the name of "abbots," production proper of the eighteenth century.

When Andrea and Giuseppico arrived at the bottom, the abbot made those villagers laugh, telling jokes. They took part in the joy, while in a stall there they watered hunger with bread and fresh ricotta, watered with an amber-colored wine; and it was enough that they laughed, so that the cheerful abbot would also turn to them and draw them into the group.

The words drew words and so, from half sentences, from brief hints, Andrea could guess that those villagers would return to Termini and that the abbot instead went to Palermo.

"Well!" he thought, "here's my courier."

"And you go to Palermo, don't you? Tomorrow morning? We'll make the way together..."

"Ah no," answered Andrea. "We must stop here tomorrow, to fulfill our vow; we will leave tomorrow. But your Lordship could do me a favor, if you don't mind..."

"Go ahead..."

"I promised one of my buddies that I would warn him that I was coming... If your lordship wants this punishment... It's easy to find..."

"Ah, tell me who he is and where he is, and realize that he will be warned before noon."

"Thank you, Mr. Abbot. Do you know the parish of St. Margaret at the Conceria?..."

"I know, I know..."

"A little bit higher... there is the tavern of the "Masticoso," Zi' Rosario il Masticoso... everyone knows it..."

The abbot's eyes sparkled.

"Zi' Rosario il Masticoso... I understand."

"Good. Vossignoria will tell him: "Your partner Andrea will arrive tomorrow at the tip of the day with his cousin"."

"Tomorrow, point of day. I understand. Do not doubt that you will be served..."

Andrew went to sleep satisfied, the abbot father pretended to do the same; except that he slept from one eye; with the other he watched at the bottom, and waited. When he was sure that everyone was sleeping deeply, snoring high and low, he stood up, without making a noise, walking barefoot slowly down into the stable where the good man slept and approached him gently by an arm. He jumped surprised and was about to shout, but the abbot put his hand on his mouth, whispering to him, "Shut up, it's me!"

The stable had been illuminated by two oil lamps, which as soon as the darkness was spread out; but the good man recognized his voice and stood up suddenly, saying, "What is it?"

"Shut up, come out here, and I'll tell you."

The other did not wait for the order to be repeated, unceasingly opened the barn door and went out with the abbot. A horse nitrò slightly.

"Damn beast!" muttered the abbot.

Outside it was a magnificent moon; all the countryside was flooded with it; the chief Saffron stood out clearly on the sparkling sea. The abbot whispered a few words to which the good man replied absently, with a wrinkled rice: then the abbot went up, barefoot, up in the room where everyone was still sleeping. The good man, who had returned to the stable, unleashed a horse, picked up the saddle and the headboard, if he pulled it out, away from the bottom, and, saddlelolo, mounted there and left with a good trot for Palermo. The abbot stretched out his ear when he no longer heard any noise he also fell asleep, as a man satisfied with himself. At dawn he woke up, got up and went down to the barn. The backdrop was already there and looked with amazement at the horses and mules that dived the snout into the cribs.

"We're missing one," he said; "why is it missing?"

"Someone who has left," said the abbot, "it doesn't take long to guess."

"I know, but that's exactly what doesn't convince me! To leave without my knowledge... before I open the base... It must be that face of evil Christian who never spoke!..."

"It's easy to verify."

The baseman went up into the room and came back shortly after blaspheming.

"I said so, the brigand."

The abbot shook his shoulders: "Things that happen in this world without fear of God!... I feel sorry for you and for me too..."

"What does it have to do with your lordship? The damage has done to me; between bran and straw for the horse, stable and food are almost two tari! Do you understand? Thief! bandit!..."

"And you're right... But I thought I'd be accompanied by him; the streets are so unsure... and then this morning I'm so unfamiliar, I wouldn't venture on a horseback trip, just... If I could find a litter!"

The abbot sat before the bottom door, showing great suffering in his face. Gradually they all woke up, descended on the road to breathe the morning air.

And Andrew asked the abbot, "Is your lordship not yet gone?..."

"Sometimes... I have a certain ailment, which... If I could find a litter!..."

"It's better to wait a little," said one; "it's not hard to pass any of them, coming from Termini..."

Andrea was displeased, but he calmed down. The abbot pressed his belly from time to time, murmuring a oh! and meanwhile threw down the street look investigators, muttering between himself incomprehensible words. Andrea looked at him with spite and corruption; that sudden sickness spoiled his design; he wondered if it was not appropriate to leave, without waiting for instructions, leading Joseph with him. And he was about to carry out his purpose, when a chisel of horses drew everyone's attention and made the abbot stand up with vivacity, whose face took an expression of ferocious joy.

They were eight Milites of rural companies, coming from the bottom of the road, trot, with the carabines on the thigh.

Giuseppico paled; for an instinctive motion he pulled back, inside the bottom.

"The birri!"

Andrea saw the abbot crawling his hands and grinning with a short, dry rice. He Aggrotted his eyebrows, not explaining the reason for that rice and joy, but suddenly, he saw the first two Milites a few steps from the bottom, stopping the horses and flattening the carabines against him shouting:

"Return! Surrender!"

A moment of unspeakable confusion happened; the three or four people who stood there on the door rushed into the bottom screaming, while the abbot rose up against Andrew, with his hands stretched out. It was a moment and in the moment a revelation and a resolution. Andrea was ready to throw himself in, close the door and open it with the big wooden bar. Then he went up into the room with Joseph, and went and opened the windows to see if there was any escape. Down with the soldiers disassembled from the horse, they had set out to prevent the escape, while the corporal, the abbot and the two militias stormed the door, shouting:

"Open up! Open up!..."

But Andrea had the gun threatened whoever dared to take the bar off and nobody moved. From the windows that gave on the road it was not possible to escape, because there were the Militi; on the opposite side a small terrace gave on the slope of the hill, on which Milicia stands. The bottom was built on the edge of the hill, which at that point was almost cut to the bottom and fell below for a height of thirty reeds and more, covered with thick bushes, up to the slopes, which then yielded to the sands of the next beach. This topographic condition prevented that the base could be surrounded also from behind: the way was therefore free from that side, but, except to have the wings, it was not possible to escape without breaking the neck. And yet salvation was there.

Andrea measured the height that gave him vertigo.

Meanwhile, steps resonated down in the room and they would be taken in cages. He looked at Giuseppico: the convict was digging his teeth. The footsteps rumble on the wooden ladder; one blow caused the door to go through. Andrea ran to the balcony dragging Giuseppico.

"Come on! Let us fall from here; the bushes will protect us."

But Giuseppico returned horrified.

"No, no..." and, turning around, saw a stool, he branded it.

The door to a new blow opened wide; the soldiers slammed with the flattened carabines: Andrew climbed over the railing, dangled there, let himself fall into the void, while the abbot shouted,

"Fire!"

Four shots filled the room with flames and noise. Giuseppico who was curled up in a corner, near the terrace, fell supino with his arms wide open. The Milites ran to the balcony, looked stunned down into the abyss, saw a tramstio in the bushes, pulled some shots.

The abbot who had bowed down to Joseph, who whispered in the blood, looked intently at him.

"This is beautiful and gone. I'm sorry: there was perhaps some tasty confidence to be gained. But Mr. Duke will be happier: "or alive or dead."

Dead, he won't be able to open his mouth anymore! But that other one... He must have broken his legs, if not his neck."

Outside had gathered a great crowd of villains who invaded the bottom, curious, amazed, asking, commenting; someone had even advanced to the room to see the dead. The whole village was up and about. The abbot, who had taken on imperious and rude ways, was intimidating, looking like a mysterious character and everyone turned away to let him pass.

He was now sending soldiers into the bushes, not doubting whether Andrea was dead or seriously injured there.

The search was vain: at one point under the balcony, you could see broken branches, and like a void, a hole between the fronds; but nothing more. The thing was amazement, it seemed truly extraordinary.

"That man must have a devil in his body!" said the soldiers.

The abbot swore at them. They were imbeciles: with the Milites of that coin it was clear that the countryside was infected with malaria: wings did not have Andrea, and even if the thick of the bushes had cushioned the fall, the height was such, that at least it would have to produce a stun. They had not been able to search. Andrea had to to be there, among the stains: he would go and search. Followed by the Milites and a tower of villains, he descended to the slopes of the hill.

All those people spread among the bushes and stones, like a mute of dogs, searching for everything, driven more than by interest, by curiosity aroused by that unlikely fact. For over an hour all the stains, the holes, the bushes, were searched, probed, searched, but in vain. They were found here and there, where the land was soft, of the slopes, then they were lost in the land that became gravel, towards the stream that bears the same name of the village.

And Andrew therefore was alive, and fled from there: and this was a miracle.

They came back up. The abbot had Giuseppico's body taken, he had him loaded on a mule, and with the Milites, between the hustle and bustle of the Villains, he resumed his way to Palermo, where he arrived shortly before the Avemaria.

That sad procession, with that cross-body on the mule, the soldiers, the abbot, drew behind the brunettes and curious men he met on the street. They wanted to know who that dead man was; but no one knew it: it was supposed to be some dreaded bandit, and the names of the most famous country fatters flew among conjectures.

The abbot had the corpse laid in the church of St. Antoniello, commonly called the Sicco, where there was a small cemetery of the executed; he fired the soldiers, saying that he would think of reporting everything to the captain executioner, and hastened to go to the palace Albamonte, where he asked for the duke.

Don Raimond peeked at that abbot full of dust, without immediately recognizing him; but when he opened his mouth, he could not hold back from smiling, and exclaimed:

"Are you, then?... I didn't recognize you... Well?" "Well, Joseph... it was!..."

"How?"

"If your Excellency wishes to deign to come to the cemetery of S. Antoniello lo Sicco, before they bury it, he can recognize it."

"Tell me, then..."

And Matteo Lo Vecchio, whom others were but the abbot, told him how luck had assisted him and had made it less difficult for him to complete his assumption: sorrowing that that devil of Andrew had escaped him.

"But in the meantime," he said in the end, "we know who this Uncle Rosario is. Your Excellency should give me an order to arrest him this evening and arrest the sacristan as well. Now we must act with energy."

"And you don't have a blank card? Serve it."

"He's right: I didn't think about it. Then let me do it. I hope he'll be happy..."

In response, Don Raimondo took two rolls of shields and gave them to the birro.

"It's a small down payment," he said, "and now go, and wait for me at St. Antoniello."

The same evening, while teams of birri were unleashed for various points of the city, Don Raimondo told the king that he had discovered and laid his hands on the leaders of the formidable sect that caused so much terror, and that he had freed the kingdom from a continuous and terrible calamity. He was silent, of course, and it is understood, that he provided more for his safety than for the salvation of the kingdom.