Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part two, chapter 18

Don Raimondo could finally believe that he triumphed over everyone. Although he ignored that Matteo Lo Vecchio had come into possession of those precious documents, yet the tone of the voice and the joy that shone in the eyes of the birro gave him almost the certainty that he no longer had anything to fear from the Beati Paoli.

Matteo Lo Vecchio promised him for the night the capture of Don Girolamo and Andrea, the two dangerous, and the only ones who still possessed his terrible secret. Master of these, he would have sent them on the forks with Mrs. Francesca and with Emanuele and suddenly would have destroyed that hydra from the hundred heads.

He did not doubt the fascinating power of woman Gabriella, for whom the king had shown such a heartfelt sympathy: At that time she was to have come to Messina, before the king himself, and in a couple of weeks she would have come into possession of the reasons why the king had stopped the trial against the wife of the admirer.

He waited on the same night for Matthew the Elder to bring him the news of the capture so long-awaited and desired, and had given orders that, at whatever hour, they would bring in the birro, even if he slept, giving them power to wake him up.

But he did not sleep. The anxiety of expectation, the taste of revenge, the fever of desire held his soul in agitation. With his eyes open in the void of the spacious room, lying on the bed, but standing on the elbow, he followed the course of his thoughts and desires, going back to his turbid past.

The night was running; the clocks were ringing one after the other, the silence was getting deeper and deeper, but the birro was not coming. A vague apprehension took hold of Don Raimondo's soul. Why were you so late? He tried to explain the delay with the distance from St. Cosmo square to the Castle, where he would lead the two arrested and mentally also made the way, asking himself: "Who knows what devilry will have invented that fork piece by Matteo Lo Vecchio, to attract Don Girolamo and Andrea!"

Among these thoughts a lackey, half asleep, came to tell him Matthew the Elder.

"Now!... let him in!..."

In order to hear better, he sat down on the bed, but the appearance of the birro produced the effect of a bucket of frozen water on his head. Matteo Lo Vecchio looked like a general who is forced to confess that he was beaten shamefully, without even having saved the honor!...

"Well?" asked the Duke anxiously. "How'd it go?"

"Your Excellency, take a good look at me."

The birro was placed in full light and Don Raimondo could see on his cheekbone a formidable red bruise, which disfigured him.

"What happened?..."

"Excellency, they have devils at their command. Things were arranged so they had to fall for it. I had sent to say through Antonino Bucolaro..."

"Who is this?"

"And one of the sect... I've found out..."

"Is he with us?"

"Excellency, no. But I showed up under the remains of Mrs. Francesca's confessor... So I had sent to say by means of the Bucolaro that they would come at midnight for... for something very serious, at home, in the square of St. Cosmos, where the Bucolaro would wait for them... Instead, the Bucolaro had driven five of the best soldiers into the house; others were stationed in the painter's house, others had occupied various outlets of the square, hidden perfectly... The effect had to be safe. I watched with a group of soldiers... And behold, at midnight the two scoundrels; but that is, and that is not, before entering into the square, they stand still. I hear a whisper; I put my eyes in the shadows and I think I see another character. I say to myself: "It will be Nino Bucolaro; all the better, we will take three!" And I'm waiting, but..."

"But?"

"But instead Girolamo Admirata and Andrea turned their heels and went away quickly; I puff,! I try not to let them escape me, I urge against that third character to arrest him, he puts himself on the defense... But from the shadows it rains a pebbles... some pebbles, Excellency, that looked like cannon balls!... They rained like a grin, thick, terrible, and they struck just, as your Excellency sees!..."

"And did you escape?"

"And what could be done?..."

"Stop them all, kill them, forgive me!" cried the furious Duke.

"Kill them? You had to see where they were. I tell you, Your Excellency, that the stones came from the air... from the air. They didn't see each other, they didn't hear each other!... That's all..."

"But the other, the third? Don't even grab that!..."

"Of course, in the confusion of that sudden pebblehead, he has disappeared!... The soldiers were thinking about looking at their skin, they were thinking! I couldn't take care of everything... Especially since it wasn't an easy bone to eat... Your Excellency knows him."

"Me?"

"That third character wasn't Nino Bucolaro..."

"Who was he then?..."

"Mr. Don Blasco of Castiglione..."

"He!" cried Don Raimondo, leaping up and forgetting to be only in a nightgown. _ "He? But this one, then, always hunts between my feet?... Is it true, then, what the prince of Iraki said?..."

"What did Mr. Prince say?"

"The prince of Iraki knows more than you that you would have an obligation to investigate and report... The prince of Iraci knows that there are relations between Blasco da Castiglione and the Beati Paoli!..."

Matteo Lo Vecchio opened his eyes, blushing for spite and fury. How could the prince know? How could he say that? That he had suffered a defeat, yes, he admitted it, but that that vanesio knew more than he did, no, it was not admissible!

The duke sat back on the bed. Those two robbers escaped from him, and more they were in contact with the bastard that the devil had brought between his feet, and that bastard was an Albamont!...

One thought crossed his mind; he seemed to have the key of the deaf, continuous and relentless war of the Beati Paoli. They were but the bastard's allies; war had but a motive: rip something out of his inheritance. And of course it was the Beati Paoli who had carefully placed the bastard in his house to throw the shot!... All this seemed clear to him, obvious...

Meanwhile, even though Blasco da Castiglione was in his hands, he was able to arrest him red-handedly, without the need for orders, and let him escape!

"You were an idiot!" he exclaimed, closing his teeth for "You've been an idiot! With twenty soldiers, you have not been able to arrest three bandits, and you have let them slip away!... it is a shame for the service of His Majesty! A shame for me, that I have committed myself to this matter, a shame for you that I believed and had guaranteed as the most skillful, the most suitable, the safest of birri..."

"I thank your Excellency for this good opinion;" replied humbly Matteo Lo Vecchio, under whose nose he trembled a slight ironic smile; "but finally also Orlando, who was that paladin that everyone knows, sometimes he took it!... That doesn't mean Orlando was a good-for-nothing!... This time I was defeated because of that intruder; another time I will be able to take revenge. Why does your Excellency want to lose faith in me? I think I've shown you how to do, and you can say that, if the discoveries made by me have been of little account!..."

It was true: and in his heart Fr. Raimondo had to confess that without Matthew the Elder he could not get rid of Giuseppico, Peppa la Sarda, Zi' Rosario and the sacristano of St. Matthew; neither would he have had in his hands the ranks of the sect, nor knew that Fr. Girolamo Ammirata and Andrea were the organizers of that conspiracy, nor that the royal counter order that had placed in his soul so much fear, was the effect of the supplication given to the king by Pellegra Bongiovanni. Yet his desire to end it at once, to get rid of that frightening nightmare as soon as possible and the hope, disappointed, could in him more than reason. It seemed to him as if he had missed that blow, had canceled the effects of the previous victories; he was like an army, which, winner in a series of partial fights, comes out of a decisive and decisive day thrown away so that he can no longer hold the field.

He fired Matteo Lo Vecchio and ordered him to return after noon, eager to remain only to coordinate his ideas and study a new plan.

The thread that he thought he was discovering and that seemed perfectly logical and natural, oriented his thoughts differently; it was necessary to hit Blasco, who according to him was the apex around which all that intrigue was wrapped: He had against him the denunciation of the prince of Iraci for the beating, but he thought that a trial against Blasco would probably lead to the other for the attempted assassination of him and the discovery of the authors, producing a huge scandal; that from this process would come out the origin of Blasco himself that the duke feared.

He therefore rejected the idea of an arrest and trial: You had to hit that bastard in a safer, faster and quieter way, so no one could see it. And the ways of elimination were many!... And no one would accuse him, who, at least for the public, had no resentment or revenge to exercise. If the suspects ever fell on the prince of Iraki.

An infernal smile struck him at this idea, on his pale and subtle lips and had a kind of relief; he lay down, mingling it in his mind, and fell asleep with the image of the prince of Iraki, on stage, thrown before the stump by the hand of the executioner, as a guilty of murder, or at least persecuted and vexed by justice, and forced himself to redeem himself with large sums, but certainly not purged by the accusation.

Matteo Lo Vecchio, meanwhile, had gone home, unsuspected against the duke.

"But look at this... gallant man! - he muttered among himself; - what does he expect? What are you gonna do about your pretty face? But if there is anyone who must leave us even more than the skin, my lord, it is indeed your Excellency! Do you know that I have enough to send you right where your Excellency wants to send Don Girolamo? Ah, Mr. Duke, Mr. Duke, you have to be careful and don't scratch your belly at the cicadas!... Meanwhile the duke is angry with me, and he probably no longer trusts in my work, but word of honor is wrong. Orders? What orders can you give me?... Arrest Don Girolamo? Take him, don Girolamo!..."

He made an obscene gesture, vigorously, as if the duke were before him, but immediately looked around fearing to be seen. Now he felt a certain pain on his cheekbone and leaned on the handkerchief.

"This, - he said to himself - I have earned it for the sake of your Excellency! And you want the rest, will you? Ah no, my lord! Matteo Lo Vecchio does not let himself be carried away by the enthusiasm of serving, to the point of breaking his neck..."

He came home, opened; as soon as he lit the candle, his first thought was to verify whether those precious cards, which for him represented a real treasure, were in their place.

He had hidden them in a locker dug into the wall and closed by a door disguised by whitewashing. He drew them, sat down at the table and, loosed the envelope, looked at them one by one, rereading them, savoring them and commenting on them! But in putting them in the closet, a fearful thought passed through his mind: Were those documents safe there? And if the Beati Paoli had come, during his absence, to search his house, and were able to do so, of course they would have taken them back and he would have lost everything. Where to hide them, then?

It was necessary not to change hiding place in his own home, but to change house even, to find a faithful and secure depositary, who, without asking what they contained and without trying to shove your eyes inside, assumed, under his responsibility to guard them and not to hand them over only to him and only to him. He began to think about it, evoke in his memory the names and images of his acquaintances and make each of them a quick process. One by one, he discarded them; the birro was wary of his friends and collaborators. There was only going to bury them somewhere known to him only where no one would go, for no reason. Find that place! and go there without fear of being spied on!...

He fell asleep with that idea in his brain and dreamed of hiding places, escapes and finds, dragons throwing up flames, those cards, the famous cards, the cards, the cards, the cards, the cards, the cards, the cards, the cards, the ones that became frightening, the ones that seemed to have to wrap him up at any moment: And suddenly they turned into a golden stream, here and there, reddening like blood. Then he saw inside a cave, intent on digging a pit to bury you Don Raimondo with all those cards, and suddenly a gang of masked men attacked him and they all looked like Don Girolamo Ammirata; and they took to stab him and killed him. He felt that he was dead and thought that if he had gone to bury Don Raimondo he would not die; and he would not regret it. But, behold, it was all gone, and stood before a burning furnace.

He woke up. The sun was beating on his face.

He rose up with his mind worried by the thought of hiding the cards; the images seen in the dream, returned to his memory, confusedly, but above all dominated that of the cave and the hiding place.

Caves around Palermo were there; he knew them, but often shepherds were hospitalized there, and dogs, shaving on the ground, could well discover the cards. Another must have been the hiding place! What if he had hidden them in the cemetery of St. Antoniello al Secco, the small and desert cemetery of the executed, which stood not far from the church of St. Anthony of Padua on the path that led to Oreto? There no one went; there was a small chapel where no one said Mass and a keeper, a lay friar, lit a perennial lamp on the one altar; under the altar, a treasure could also be buried well, with the certainty that no one would go and search you.

Stand still in this idea, on the middle of the day he went to the Duke of Motta, who had him find a envelope and said to him:

"You will leave for Messina..."

"Me?"

"You, yes; you will go to the Marquis of St. Thomas to bring this envelope, and you will seek an audience from the king..."

"Excellency, yes."

"You will tell the marquis to persuade his majesty about what we have done for the tranquillity of the kingdom and the need to have full confidence in me, and that if the trial against the admired family is not pushed forward, we will not come to the head of anything... tell him how unexpectedly the arrest of the greatest culprits went to nothing. In short, from this your bait with the Marquis of St. Thomas will depend the reconquest of my trust and your fortune."

"I will do anything, Your Excellency."

"You will leave today. Here is an order for all the captains of arms of the kingdom, that they may give you a strong hand and protect your journey, at every request."

"Excellency, yes..."

"Make sure no one knows your mission."

"Your Excellency do not doubt."

"In Messina you will find the Duchess my wife, you will come and kiss her hands for me, and you will make yourself available to her during your home."

"It will be a duty and a pleasure for me to serve His Excellency."

"Here's some money..."

He gave him a full bag. Matthew went down thinking that, after all, that trip was convenient to him, because he could take those documents away, with him, without leaving them to anyone and anywhere.

An hour later, disguised as an abbot, armed, riding a strong mule, he also crossed the bridge of the Admiral, following the same road that six hours before had beaten Blasco from Castiglione and the Messinese.