Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part three, chapter 9

Italiano

English

The afternoon was a splendor of autumn sky and the sea for all the breadth of the gulf and up to the limit of the horizon was a great blue plane gently rippled to the surface. Cape Saffron suffused with sunlight seemed to be made of roses and violets, while Monte Pellegrino appeared in a big shadow.

The felucas had explained the sails and seemed to glitter over the waves, as light as a large bird. The captain, standing at the stern, set the maneuver and behind him the helmsman ruled the rudder according to the captain's report. Donna Gabriella and Violante had sat over the pillows, inside the cabin of a blanket; the two servants had settled under a tent, next to them. A big black dog had approached them and then the cabin, sniffing seriously and silently and had gone to squat at the captain's feet. The crew of six men, including the hub, waited to maneuver to catch wind. A small flame of white and red, hoisted at the top of the tree, waving, produced a continuous and equal blend. The sergeant who accompanied the women was walking.

As the ship reached the sea, the coast spread before the eyes of Gabriella; and the city began to see clearly from the bastion of Gonzaga to the southern side, from the ramparts of Thunder and Vega, to Porta Felice, up to the fort of the Garita that marked the mouth of the Cala and to the Castle that stood on the other side. Beyond the ramparts stood the bell towers and domes; those of the Cathedral, sharps and yellows were recognized. From here the plain of St. Erasmus with the forts of the Tonnarazza and the Sagrament and then the green of the gardens; at the bottom, the crown of the mountains, a large and magnificent amphitheatre, and Monreale lying on a hill, and in front of the small village of the Park and at the top the ruins of the Castle. Then, falling little by little the sun behind the sharp summit of Monte Cuccio, all this scenery covered itself with a cinereal shadow, from which emerged a few peaks, some pink tips, which became bright copper color, then illanguidiva, re-entered the cinereal shadow. A great melancholy enveloped all things. He used to come in the evening. The sound of the bells came softly and gently from the city by now. Other ships passed silently to return to the port.

The feluca had now reached the height of Capo Saffron and now dubbed its extreme tip, beyond which the wide inlet in which Termini and Cefalù rise opens wider and less quiet. Mount Catalfano, whose extreme boss forms the head, is behind him jagged by boobs and cliffs that appear to hide. A galley could be hidden there without being seen and the barbariscans, who knew it, often lurked there, avoiding the vigilance of the marine guards, scattered along the coast, in the warning towers, of which still here and there are leftovers.

The feluca had bypassed that sort of guinea fowl that forms the extreme tip of the head, and entered, almost skirting, into the great termite breast. The captain had lowered some sails according to the new course and had lighted the light at the bow, although still in the sky dominated the last light of the day; and by now certain of the course he had sat on the bow, where the sailors, lit the fire in a stove of stone, cooked a fish soup. Donna Gabriella had lighted a glazed terracotta skylight and recited the rosary, and Violante was curled up in a corner, without moving or whispering, for the awe she had of her stepmother and for a vague sense of fear that dominated her.

Suddenly there was a great thunder of oars and a boat drove from behind a butterfly, moving quickly on the same line as the feluca. He didn't have a headlight. It looked like one of those high-sea parances, long, capable, and fast in the course. The captain put his eyes in the shadows and said:

Eight rowers and many people aboard... They'll be soldiers. Fishermen don't, of course... Looks like they're on the same course."

The boat, rowing parallel to the port of the feluca, had surpassed it by about forty arms, When instead of continuing, he stopped, turned on board, and placed himself almost on the same course as the feluca as to tighten them on.

The captain stood up and came to the board of the ship, but suddenly there were reeds of rifles, flashes torn the darkness, balls, whistling, piercing, tearing the sail, scorching it in four or five different places.

"Oh!" cried the captain, holding a rifle. The sergeant took it out of his hand and fired it, but a second discharge threw the sail away in other places, stormed the tree and wounded sergeant and sailors. The flash of the shots revealed the men of the boat.

"We are attacked by the corsairs!" cried the captain.

A scent of harpsichord warned that the sail was already burning. "The oars! the oars!" ordered the captain.

But the boat had gripped on him; men armed with rostrums and crampons, encamped him. Twelve men, of whom some dressed at the shape of the barbarians, others in a strange form, but armed with poplars and clubs jumped on the feluca throwing themselves over the captain and the sailors, whom the fear of that assault had nailed almost on their ship.

Those shots had frozen the blood in the veins of Lady Gabriella and Violante; they did not know what it was, but feared some sinister. The captures of the wood were not in those times so infrequent as not to fear, on the journey, to make some encounters and the captain had preferred to sail at night along the coast because in the dark there was greater probability of safety. Donna Gabriella, therefore, ran with her mind to the terrible danger of falling into the hands of the barbarians and the terror that had it was so great, that it almost fainted. She knew the fate of young and beautiful women: The harem. Yes, it tasted like maidens sold in the markets of Constantinople, Algeri, or Tunis and then taken to the sultan or the Bey.

By instinct she drove herself to the bottom of the cabin, curling up to hide herself, believing she could escape in search of those bandits, but at that point two men showed up at the door of the cabin, shouting:

"Not a gesture or you're dead!..."

But they could not move; terror had tightened their tongues and numbed their limbs. And two men took them, and put them on their arms, and carried them into their boat: And the others, having beaten and bound the sailors, and the servant, and the waitress, searched the feluca, and took away their weapons, and took away a tent, and pillows, and baggage, and with this spoil they returned to their parable.

The two women were curled up, mute, terrified; in the common peril they clinged to each other, as if it gave them comfort. And the captains pitched the tent upon the stern benches, and put them under the pillows, and made the two women lay there: and when they had taken hold of the oars, they sailed in the way of the feluc, which they left at the mercy of the wind and of the waves, with his men bound, and scattered on the castle.

At that moment, behind the back of the mountains, the moon spread its mild light over everything.

The boat, surpassed Capo Saffron, instead of returning to the city, as for a foolish hope had believed woman Gabriella, ran quickly off; the eight oars at the same pace slit the waves, breaking in a thousand reflections, like white sparks released by a brazier at the rimescolio of the palette.

At the bottom of the benches, under the tent, the two women held tight, watching the rowers bend with uniform motion on the oars, staring at the armed men, who stood here and there with rifles on their arms, watching and spying on the sea around. Donna Gabriella could not see them on her face; some of them had a black mask; others were hiding in a kind of hood. This care of hiding her face suspected the Duchess: Did the corsairs need to not be known? And they weren't supposed to have a racing ship? That was more of a fishing boat than a racing ship. The corsairs used galleys or three-tree brigs and no one was seen in the large pool of water. Who, then, were the kidnappers? Those oriental robes, with which some had disguised themselves, weren't they a trick? Conducted by thought in thought, between doubts and suspicions, one flashed that made her shudder and that seemed to her, more than suspicion, certainty: Beati Paoli! They had failed the first attempt at Blasco's intervention; they were now able to make a better blow, taking two people instead of one. A senseless terror invaded her and spread a great tremor to all her limbs; she began to beat her teeth, with a convulsive gnashing that frightened the maiden.

"What is it, madam?" she stuttered, feeling lost.

Donna Gabriella didn't answer. He would now look at those men, fearing that they would suddenly fall upon him and be ruined. She was reminded of her husband's words, the account of all the persecutions that, out of vengeance of faults of which they accused him, gave him no rest and imagined that, if such and so was the hatred of the sect, she was certainly destined to be sacrificed to him. But what did she have to do with it? Why make her pay, who had no part in it, the crimes Don Raimondo was accused of? Violante... but Violante was his daughter, and it could be understood to a certain extent that he punished his father in his children. But she was not of her blood; they had tied her to him reasons of convenience rather than sympathy, and she could also say that until that time, she had also almost divided her from the life of Don Raimondo. She regretted having associated herself with him and, with the defense, assumed a part of her husband's responsibilities: Certainly the Beati Paoli knew what she had done in Messina and took revenge for it. This idea filled her breast with hiccups, because she was not so strong as to impose courage and to dominate herself; instead, she abandoned herself to fear.

Violant said nothing: The fear of her stepmother overwhelmed her too with a dread all the more indomitable, as she did not know from what new ideas the fear of woman Gabriella came from.

Meanwhile, the boat flew. The coast appeared far away and the mass of Monte Pellegrino, black and sharp, now discovered behind itself, lower, erect on the sea, Monte Gallo. The valley between the two mountains was diffused by the soft moonlight. Now at the bottom of the horizon, uncertain in the shadow of the sky, the spot of an isolated mountain appeared and it seemed that the boat directed its prora. Donna Gabriella recognized Ustica.

So they went to that lonely and deserted island, shelter and pirate nest? There one could be killed and abandoned, prey to birds of prey, without that living soul knew anything about it, because at that time the island was not inhabited. He looked at the far bank of the rugged Sicily of mountains, and thought that a few miles, at the bottom of a wide beach, on a hill, there was the castle of Carini, where no one would attempt to harm them, because it would be defended by the vassals of his house. How come he didn't think to take refuge in that castle? And then came to her mind the reasons that had moved her to Termini, and she saw in her stepdaughter the source of that jealousy that blinded her; and the hatred suffered by fear resurrected, blazed. She thought with ferocious joy that even the stepdaughter would be killed, and before killing her, those men would certainly make a mockery of that still bitter body; Violant would pass from the arms of one to those of the others, shameless, puffed up by obscene and different kisses, before dying: And no one would save her, no one!

So he spent the night; the moon was already high in the sky and spread its light everywhere. Ustica clearly appeared, with its deep and black valleys, the rocks furted with blossoms of water, the banks edged with a foam that whitened like silver in the moonlight.

The boat finally stopped in a small natural harbor, formed by rocks that sheltered it from the winds. Then one of those men stood under the tent and said,

"Get up, we're here."

Donna Gabriella came her hands begging:

"Gentlemen, gentlemen... have mercy on me... I will give you whatever you want, but you do nothing to me... I didn't do anything... I don't know you!... have mercy!"

The man reassured her:

"Do not be afraid: You will not be harmed and no one will be disrespectful... But you have to land..."

"Are you leaving me on this island?"

"No, ma'am... But let's hurry."

Violant followed those trembled dialogues, eagerly waiting for a word to comfort her. She, too, was now afraid of falling to the mercy of the men who had kidnapped her the first time, and she was like a knife-knife-knife-knife-knife-knife-knife-knife-knife-knife-knife-knife-knife-knife-kicking. It was necessary to obey and land. Those armed men had stood before and behind them, as to prevent even an act of madness. They helped them to set foot on the ground and drew them on the coast, among some rocks, where they stopped. Four men sat down, with rifles between their legs, their faces covered in the mask, silent and rigid; the others returned to the boat. Donna Gabriella saw that those who had barbaric robes were rid of them, burdened them and hid them at the stern and that the others took off their hoods and masks trusting in the distance that made it impossible to see them on their faces. He also saw with a string of heart that the boat turned away from the shore and took off. Shortly thereafter, he began to dawn and breathe out a sparkling breeze that made the skin cling.

One of those men noticed that the two women felt cold and gave them coats, without saying a word. Around midday there was a small two-tree vessel, with sails spread out, approaching the coast. Donna Gabriella and Violante looked trepidating, not knowing if it was some hopeless rescue, but instead soon, disantangled, they shook at the idea of a new danger.

From the ship, in fact, a sort of red flag waved again at the top of the tree; one of the men standing next to it, pulled a red handkerchief out of his pocket, tied it to the barrel of the rifle like a flag and, mounted on a rock, three times, at times, waved it. It didn't take long to guess they were signs.

"They come to get us," said one of the masked men to woman Gabriella.

"To go where?"

"We don't know..."

"How? Do you not know?..."

"We don't know," the man repeated in a tone that meant: It is useless to ask; shut up!...

Shortly after the ship reached a short distance from the coast and dropped a gulet into the sea, with a rower. They brought in the two women with one of those masked men, who accompanied them aboard the ship; the gulet returned to the ground to board the others, and an hour after the ship turned on board, took wind and ran like a bolt.

Donna Gabriella and Violante were brought into the captain's cabin, on the aft castle, where there was a sort of bed and a coffee table. They could not see anyone, but they immediately realized that those who commanded the ship and the masked men all belonged to the same group. In fact, a man, who until then had not seen, but with a masked face too, had looked out at the cabin, and after having laid a basket on the table by a sailor, he had told Gabriella woman, with a courteous accent:

"Your lordship will probably be hungry; there's some cold stuff in this basket... Your lordship, eat and be quiet."

But she wasn't hungry, or perhaps the fear that she had taken over, didn't make her feel the stimuli of her stomach. She was amazed at those courteous manners and visible signs of respect, for which it seemed that she was not a prisoner, but a woman traveling for pleasure in her own ship. A sailor, with a cap in his hand, told her:

"If your lordship needs anything you call by beating on the wall."

Need? Oh, he only had one, bullying: To know where they were taking her and why they had captured her. He hit. The sailor showed up on the door:

"Are you in charge?"

"Call me the captain, the committee, the master, who commands the ship..."

"Now."

An old sea wolf, all satin, the face tanned and wrinkled, came shortly after, with the hat on his head and the sleeves rolled up.

"Do you want me?"

"Sorry, good man: You are the captain."

"Very illustrious, yes."

"Well, please tell me where we're going..."

"I don't know, they rented my ship... I command the crew, I know I have to make this route, but I ignore the landing point, again."

"But where are we?"

"At the height of Chief S. Vito..."

"How come, if you're the captain, you don't know where it lands?... Is there others, then, in charge?"

"Very illustrious, yes..."

"You are a good man, and I will remember you; I beg you to call me this one who commands..."

"If it is not that I serve it at once."

She waited, anxious to know this leader and to know the reason for his capture. Violent, though he did not speak, he followed her with his soul suspended in a uncertainty full of mysterious terrors. But both were disappointed when they saw the masked man entering the cabin who had asked them to eat.

"I know your lordship wishes to speak to me," he said.

Donna Gabriella got her hands:

"If you are the head, if it is you who command, sir, I beseech you, I beseech you for what you have most sacred; tell me why you have seized me, tell me where you lead me... what you want from me..."

"Nothing, Mrs. Duchess: We don't want anything. We have the order to guard it with all! regarding the. his condition and to disembark it in the navy of Girgenti...."

"Aren't you the ones in charge?"

"No, ma'am..."

"Who then?"

"God only knows him..."

"O Lord, don't take pleasure in me; do it for the souls of your dead... Who ordered you to do this?..."

"I told you, our boss..."

"But..."

"I thought your lordship had understood in the power of those who are..."

She trembled; she stuttered: "The Beati Paoli..."

"To serve her," he confirmed bowing down, but smiling ironically under the mask.

"The Beati Paoli..." murmured Violante felt faint and remembered the first rat. This time she was in their hands, with no hope of being saved by anyone. Blasco, mighty and valiant, emerged from the bottom of the heart to his eyes: So where was he? And why didn't he watch over her?...

An oppressive silence fell upon the two women, who knew not what to say and what to do and their terror was so alive and distressing, that the masked man seemed moved by it.

"Your lordship be assured that you will not be wronged by a hair, and that you will lack nothing of what is needed by a lady of quality of her rank; and the same as Mrs. Duchessina... They have faith. The orders are strict and precise, neither their people nor their belongings nor their honor will have to fear. Only that they will stand as prisoners, and therefore obligate you not to do any acts of resistance, to arouse no suspicion, because in this case we have orders to kill them immediately..."

The tone of his words, at this point, had a cruel hardness, which appeared greater at the sight of the kick of a gun, which he carried stuck to the belt.

"But I am sure," he added softer "that we will not be forced to this penalty. After all, why should your lordship scream? All we do is please her. Your lordship wanted to stay in the castle of Termini; well, instead, we will hospitalize her in another castle, where she will be better served and safer, because she will have nothing to fear..."

"But it is a captivity!... a perpetual imprisonment!" cried desperately Gabriella woman.

"Oh no, ma'am; it will last as long as your lordship and the illustrious Duke of Motta, your husband, please."

The next day Gabriella and Violante landed at a remote point on the southern beach, in a sandy site, rising in the hills of Giallorossi, here and there scattered with lentisks and palms from brooms, green islands in a yellow sea. The beach was deserted, nor was it marked by any path. Five men landed with the women and put them in the middle; they had beards and wigs, which made them unrecognizable; only one kept the mask on his face, and it was the head with which Gabriella had spoken.

They slowly climbed the hill, on the top of which were seen scattered on the ground large boulders and trunks of immense columns, on which still stood, like a shipwreck stretching out his hand over the wave above it, a dead column. They were the leftovers of Selinunte, mostly still buried under the soil. At those ruins they met a car that was drawn behind, tied to each other, five horses and two mules, guarded and saddled.

Donna Gabriella and Violante were made to mount on the mules, and placed among the men who were already on the saddle, and the group, led by the car, started. All around it was a uniform countryside, with no vegetation, deserted, never ending. Far away, ceruleans were drawn on the backs of the mountains, behind hills and arid hills, or covered with wild herbs and lentisks. And they met shepherds, who leaned upon the staff, and sounded a soup of reed, and kept watch over the sheep that were scattered among the herbs and the bushes: The scalpithius made them turn their heads: And they recognized two ladies, and were drunken, and imagined that they were two lords who went to their land, and were accompanied by fieldmen. It was the only meeting; the lands were deserted: Not a farm, not a house, not a pometo, not a cistern. The fief, the broadside, in all his squalor.

Above a hill there were the warning towers built since the 1500s throughout the coast, which were mainly used to warn the approach of barbaric jails.

They rode in silence for that wide solitude; to the car certainly that silence seemed overwhelming, because it began to sing one of those pathetic Sicilian airs, which seemed groaned of passion and pain.

That song went down into the heart of Violante as an invitation to weep: in those solitudes, in the midst of those people, in front of the unknown of his distant destiny, in an unknown region that could be for her so Sicily as Africa, deprived of a heart that understood her, of a bosom on which to take refuge, next to that stepmother who gave her awe, she felt more and more transported to Blasco, and in the vision of that image felt as a relief. That song that expressed the pain of distance with an expression that responded to the state of her soul with a desire and passion that she now felt within herself, moved her deeply. She felt like she was listening to her own voice.

Donna Gabriella, instead, was mute, with her eyebrows frowned, pale, fighting internally between two feelings, one of fear, the other of hope. The fear of a terrible unknown, such as the execution of a long-time premeditated vengeance and which now fell on his head, not being able to fall on Don Raimondo's head; the hope that it would be a cowardly thing to take after her and that, judging by the manners respectful of those men and by the fairly precise assurances of what their leader seemed, they did not really want to use any violence.

She thought only of herself, now, and did not care about her stepdaughter, rather reflecting that that retaliation was directed against Don Raimondo found it almost reasonable that Violante suffered her. Moreover, the danger that was upon both of them did not have the bite of jealousy in her; she thought with ferocious pleasure that perhaps Violante would come out of that misguided and ugly adventure. Ah, if that could have happened!... She would no longer have had such a dangerous and hateful rival.

They rode almost all day, giving themselves only some rest, in the shadow of a lonely tree, to take a bite. They had reached the line of the mountains and now for deep and wooded gorges, now for steep chins, or climbing up paths on the edge of precipices that made the dizzying had gone forward, without meeting a city, a village, a castle. Sometimes, at the foot or on the sides of a mountain they saw more or less distant whitening of the confused mass of a city; the two women believed that that was the goal of the journey, but to a new group of hills, the city disappeared in their eyes.

Finally, on the crest of a high cliff, they saw a castle, similar to a perched hawk, with its tall, crenellated tower, the massive walls.

The guide said, pointing it to the leader of the group: "That's it."

Donna Gabriella heard and looked at her too, wondering how she would climb that cliff, on which no path seemed marked.

But the path was there, turning to the other side, serpenting; the beasts, a little tired, went up with difficulty; after half an hour they came before the door where other armed men seemed to wait.

A woman, an old manorous and humble woman, came to receive the women, at the foot of the ladder that ran externally along the wall of the court and had an honest and reassuring appearance, but the appearance of the men, though respectful, seemed to say: "Look out, you don't run away from here."