Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part two, chapter 20

Where was the abbot? Which way could he go to find him? That race, as long as it had not lasted as a few minutes, had been so crazy and so confused, that Blasco had not been able to mark in his mind any particularity, to recognize the way back. He wandered a bit at random; then he stopped, looking at a network of paths or open passages between the bush, which all offered the image of having been crossed and upset, and perhaps fooling himself among the trees, they had passed there and gone through every place. Which one to take?

Being so, as thoughtful, the eyes stopped on the bag of Matteo Lo Vecchio. A doubt crossed his mind. He was sure that he had recovered what was most interested in the birro, what he supposed was the treasure. He walked outside and seemed to him that there was nothing hard or hard under his hand. A bag of money would have been recognized, but it seemed that there were only cloths in the bag.

"That the bad guys took away the money?"

Then he threw his hands in, searching in the clothes. He felt something, like an edge; he felt better and dug from the opening a cloth roll: a colored handkerchief, inside which it was a rectangular object. "Will this be the treasure?"

Curiosity pricked him. He turned the handkerchief and found the envelope that Matteo Lo Vecchio had carefully wrapped up in a new sheet of paper.

"Look!," he said to himself; "do you want to bet that here is the secret of the disguise and mission of Matteo Lo Vecchio?"

For a moment he stood between yes and no: After all, that secret did not belong to him; but, what if the surprise could save someone? Matteo Lo Vecchio was the instrument of justice, especially against the Beati Paoli, and he went to Messina after the attempt to arrest the admired, sent to empty by him, Blasco. He rejected all scrupulousness and loosened the string that tied the envelope.

Never before have the astonishment and horror had such a profound expression as they had it on Blasco's face, at that moment and at that solemn hour of dusk, in the silence of the woods. He put those papers in the paper, tied them with the string, wrapped them in the handkerchief; but instead of putting them back in the bag of Matteo Lo Vecchio, he threw them into the right heart: Then he pushed the horse to the wind.

Matteo Lo Vecchio had arrived to get rid of the horse and got up, all pesto and sore, unable to move. He was alone; around him there was the mule moaning, a wounded Milite who blasphemed and tried to drag himself, and a dead man with a frightening face soaked in blood. Further on, among the twisted roots of a tree, another milite lay, motionless, unconscious. The birro watched that blood show thinking of the danger he had been running and feeling a deaf and poisonous anger against that scoundrel. Meanwhile Blasco did not return; he heard the two distant blows, almost suffocated by the thick of the branches, but waited in vain. Had Blasco recovered the bag? Did he fall? A lively apprehension tormented him and increased the poison against those bandits, in whom he had put trust and with whom he thought to make a blow over Blasco. Luck, on the other hand, had reversed the parts; those bad guys had tried to assassinate him, they had stolen his bag, and he, at least to that point, owed his life to Blasco!... But Blasco wasn't coming.

The wounded fellow armored man tried to drag himself to him; groaning by a plague, he could utter a prayer:

"His Riverenza... for pity's sake!... I'm a Christian!... Sacraments! Sacraments!"

Then the fury of the birro overflowed:

"Ah, dog!" he cried: "Do you have the courage to ask me the sacraments?.. I will give you the sacraments!..."

And when he had made an effort, dragging his sore leg, he bowed down on the ground, and picked up his rifle. of the dead and approached the wounded milite, who looked at him with fear in his eyes, burned his brains point-blank, saying:

"Toh! This is the Holy Spirit, piece of gallows!..."

That blow directed Blasco; shortly afterwards he came to the place, greeted with a cry of joy by Matteo Lo Vecchio who was already desperate.

And almost immediately he added:

"Ah, praise God! There you are!..." "Well?"

Blasco took the bag out of the arch.

"Here's your bag..."

Matteo Lo Vecchio stretched out his arms, almost forgetting the pain of his leg.

"Ah!"

And he ran with his hand into his pocket, and searched, and drew it with a scream of sorrow and fear:

Robbed! Stolen!..."

"What?" asked Blasco, pretending surprised; "What?"

"My cards!...my cards!...my cards!" screamed the birro, beating his thighs with fists.

Blasco said inside himself: "Latras all you want, dog you are! The cards are all right now. Oh, how right I was to take them off and take away your means of committing some other bribery!"

Matteo Lo Vecchio seemed inconsolable; the pain made him ruthless and fierce. An impetus of inhuman and sacrilegious hatred took him against the bodies that surrounded him.

"Because of you! Because of you!..."

He took the rifle for the reed and took note of striking those bloody bodies. Blasco paled; cried to him:

"Ah goddamn it! You will not do this, or I will kill you like a dog!..."

The birro let his arms fall for fear.

"Shame!" said Blasco. "These are cowardices that not even the savages would commit! And with cotest'dress then!"

"What do you want? You do not know what they have taken from me; you cannot know it!..." If he knew!... But in the meantime, he wrote it down.

"We don't want to spend the night here in the woods," Blasco observed.

He was right. There it was, nibbling the leaves of a plum, one of the horses abandoned by the armored companions. Blasco took him, helped Matteo Lo Vecchio to mount, and they resumed the way. After more than an hour they arrived in S. Agata di Militello, where they spent the night.

There was no accident until Messina. Matteo Lo Vecchio, inconsolable for the loss made, had closed himself in a dark and suspicious silence. He wondered what those mischiefs of those cards would do, which for them certainly did not matter to him. Where were they at that time? Did they destroy them? He regretted not having buried them under the altar of St. Antoniello, as he had divided, believing that it was safer to carry them with him: And instead!...

And that Blasco who had also done wonders, agreed, and saved him, why had he been so stupid as to have that treasure taken away? How come he didn't notice that those scoundrels had taken anything out of the bag? So valiant and so imbecile, then?

The fury filled his mouth with bitterness even against his young savior. Salvatore? Up to a certain point; because he had defended himself in the end, so as not to be stumbled by those brigands. Ah!... as soon as I set foot in Messina, he would have made a report of what happened and wanted to see if they would just give him good words.

But in the meantime those cards!... From time to time he asked Blasco:

"But didn't you see if that bandit had the cards?"

"No, what else did I know about it? Did you tell me they were pressing your cards? She shouted only for the bag and I tried to bring it back to her..."

"But for God's sake, you killed three of them, why did you let the fourth one slip away... just the fourth one!..."

"What do you want me to say? He had wings and I couldn't run after him all night. After all, since I had taken away his famous saddlebag, what reason did I have to pursue it?"

They were the only words that were traded every once in a while during the trip. Actually, Matteo Lo Vecchio had the suspicion that Blasco could have stolen the cards. Was he not in relationship with the Beati Paoli? Didn't he have the prince of Iraki beaten? Nothing, therefore, improbable or strange that, having the saddlebag in his hands, had searched it. However, he did not dare to express that suspicion.

You should go through his saddlebags when he's asleep.

In Patti, staying in the bishopric, he could rummage you, but in vain; he found nothing. The fear of awakening Blasco kept him from digging through his clothes, but even if he had, his research would have been fruitless. Blasco, fearing the snares of the birro, had tied the plico to the cord of the relics he wore around his neck, under his shirt, and there no one would go looking for them.

Matteo Lo Vecchio of the rest, furious to discuss mentally and to deduce logically, was almost To rule out the fact that Blasco stole those documents: and only for that residue that the suspects, even if unfounded, leave in the bottom of the soul, kept an eye on him.

So they came to Messina, where they separated. Matteo Lo Vecchio went to disassemble at the inn of the Giant behind the Duomo; Blasco, who had no intention of stopping in Messina, but intended to leave for Catania, made himself indicated some foundation to let the horse rest; and found one in the vicinity of the Imperial Gate, where the Catalans and the inhabitants of the Etna coast usually went to stop.

For the next day it was announced the arrival of the king and queen and the road from Porta Imperiale to the Royal Palace was decorated with every kind of apparatus and some triumphal arch erected at the expense of the colonies or Catalan, Florentine, Genoese "nations." The city magistrate, who after the revolution of 1674 had been stripped of his ancient prerogatives, of his magnificence, and the citizenship had not warmed up too much for the arrival of the sovereigns: First because from the new king they had not received any of those certificates of benevolence that could have earned him the sympathy of the people, not yet freed from the vexations and the Spanish revenge; and secondly because Vittorio Amedeo had landed in Palermo and there had been crowned king, which reconfirmed to the city malvista the title and the prerogatives of capital of the kingdom, which the Messinesi thought owed instead to Messina. It was the old municipal hatred, fueled for two hundred and more years by the Spanish monarchy, to keep divided the two major cities of the kingdom, which now repulsed and, if not hostile, made cold and sustained their respective citizens.

Blasco was therefore able to see the great difference between the preparations of Messina and those of Palermo, not without surprise; but because those silly vanity rivalries did not interest him any more than much, he thought rather to be refreshed by the discomfort of a long journey full of accidents, proposing to leave for Catania after the king's entry.

Meanwhile, since he had nothing to do, after lunch he went walking along the Palazzata, admiring that haughty stretch of sea, as the citizens called it, and stopping in front of the Montorsoli fountain, enchanting over the sea.

Elegant carriages, no less rich than those of Palermo, golden and impenacchiate carriers went up and down the wide road, offering a double and antithetic show: on the one hand, in fact, the Palace stretched out in its aristocratic magnificence of public walk; on the other, the vessels, moored and anchored on the shore, joined to it by long tables cast like bridges. Ropes, chests, barrels, heaps of sacks, garbage, sailors, porters and port guards transformed that same road into a port of traffic. The contrast was so striking that Blasco was struck by it, though again, but under different conditions of spirit and habits, he had come to Messina.

Indugated before the Neptune of Montorsoli, Blasco looked at the carriages preceded by the flyers, judging the horses, mostly of the Frisian race, as he wanted the fashion of those times, with villous legs, curled manes and long swinging tails. It was an occupation that gave his idle spirit, which had no other more serious and serious object of thought. And being in these observations, he saw Gabriella of Motta passing by, whose sight, although not unexpected, also caused him a mess.

The Duchess was quite pale and it seemed that a shadow of sadness obscured her forehead and gaze; she seemed so worried, that she didn't notice Blasco, except in revisiting before the statue.

His cheeks colored hard with a bright redness and his eyes turned on. Blasco noticed that impression; but he did not neglect his duty as a gentleman, to deeply revere the beautiful lady.

Why did Gabriella stop the carriage? She could not explain that impulsive order, which she soon repented of: Perhaps the sight of a well-known face, which reminded her of Palermo, perhaps a sum of indefinite and confused feelings and memories made her establish that order on the mouth. Blasco approached quickly and kissed the hand that Gabriella, taken up her coolly courteous attitude, presented to him from the door.

"Do you want to go to Messina?" he asked.

"For a few days and passing through," he replied; "but glad to have been able to kiss your hand and confirm my bondage to you."

He exchanged a few words with him and dismissed him without, however, inviting him to visit her, or to show any interest in seeing him again. Mistress of herself, she corrected that instinctive and oblivious lightness with a cold, though most courteous attitude. Inside, now that she knew the secret of the Duke of Motta, Blasco felt a kind of compassion for that beautiful, yoked woman. to the life of a man, of whom he certainly ignored the evildoings.

"If he knew what I carry in my bosom!... If he knew that the noble gentleman, so powerful and so revered, is a murderer and a raider worse than those of the highways!.. Poor Duchess!..."

And returning to the inn, that night he was thinking of the diversity and multiplicity of those facts, of the ignorant and unpunished infamies, of the mysteries of life; and he also thought of that terrible sect, which had accumulated all those trials against the duke, and that servant, that Andrew so pertinacious in hatred as in faith in the memory of his master; to Don Girolamo, who became giant in his mind as the figure of a vigilante; and to that child thrown to the wind, orphaned, nameless, poor, whose destiny had some point of contact with his. Even little Emanuele had been gathered from the bosom of his dying mother, bred for charity by strangers, ignoring his name, his origin, even though he was so close to wealth!