Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part three, chapter 23

Italiano

English

Blasco remained on the ground, with his elbows on his knees, his head hidden between the palm trees, dumb, with his eyes pierced by tears of anger and pain, preying to a deep slaughter. His efforts had not saved the man who, on the other hand, despised, and had detached him from the sect and Coriolano; between him and the knight had dug an abyss, while recognizing that Coriolano had had a great tolerance for him and that he had spared him. He was isolated and lost in the world: the night surrounded his person and his soul.

It began to rain; cold drops fell on his neck, descended by the neckline, which his attitude left undiscovered. That sense of cold took him; he lifted up his head and looked around. The first dawn broke the shadow, spread a glimmer full of sadness, made visible the tears coming down from the trees. Blasco was in a low garden, embedded between a hill and the city walls. After a moment of concentration he recognized one of those gardens that lie outside the door of Ossuna, on the ancient bed of the marsh of the Papiret. He stood up, and realized that he had no hat, no weapons, and that his clothes were in a mess; to go and return to the city in that clothing was the same as to be noticed and, perhaps, to deliver into the hands of justice. He knew he was still under ban and could no longer count on anyone's help; falling into the hands of the guards was not his intention. So it was necessary to hurry, to find a shelter and a means to withdraw his things from the Floresta palace, and to provide for his future.

Slowly he took the way out of the garden, looking with the look on which side they brought him to you and tidying up his ideas. The first one that came to his mind was that, already caressed at other times, to find a vessel and leave, to go to France or Spain, to throw himself into the adventures of wars, to resume his wandering life, without tomorrow, until a stocked or a ball took him away from the world, but, as soon as this idea was defined, an imperious question leaped: "And Violante?"

And behind the maiden's name appeared to him the image of Don Raimondo: a tangle of cloths, piled on the ground, in the gloomy and gruesome immobility of death. He felt an outrage, a mortification, an anger against himself, accusing himself of not being able to defend enough that miserable that his own vileness and inflexible humanity of his judges made him appear worthy of pity. Now he also seemed ungodly to abandon that bleeding corpse there, taken away from the tears and filial piety. Death wiped out the crimes and made it sacred. Oh, could she, at least, deliver that strip to Violante, because she couldn't keep her father alive!

This idea troubled him, tormented him.

The Albamonte palace was not far away and it came to it that it was still dark, nevertheless it found the door open and the servitude in great consternation. The two porters, after waiting for more than an hour at the corner of the road, no longer seeing the master return, began to feel a little 'apprehension that was increasing with the crossing of the night. They pushed themselves, looked at the doors of the houses, stretching their ears, but the houses were immersed in the deep silence of sleep, and no door gave any indication that there were people on vigil. They turned to the ascent of St. Cristina, to the vicoletto of the Pilgrims, to the descent of the Cathedral; everywhere the same solitude, the same silence.

"What does that mean?"

They couldn't explain it; if Don Raimondo had gallant habits, they would have laughed at it, but he, on this side, had never given the shadow of a suspicion, and made an austerely chaste life; therefore it had to be some misfortune.

"That he came home?"

One more piece, by good servants faithful to the delivery. A gunshot, which made the night even stronger, caused them to turn away; they were afraid of some sinister, and searched for them, calling:

"Excellency! Excellency!..."

So they went to the square of St. Cosmos, where they saw lanterns and armed people; trepidating they approached, but as soon as they were seen, they were arrested and bound.

"Who are you? What are you looking for?"

The livery saved them: The officer recognized by the light of the lantern the shield from the green gangs. They reported that they had left at the corner of the road under St. Cristina their master and that they had never seen him again; they had waited two hours for him, they had searched for him, they feared some sinister, but they could not explain his disappearance. They wanted to go to the palace: Who knows, he didn't come back any other way? The officer held them a little, then resolved to let them go, accompanied by a birro. They went to the palace with a trembling soul.

At the tower of Montalbano no one had seen the duke; the arrival of the two servants, their loss, the blows of a gun or of a focile that had broken the night's silence, put into orgasm the servitude; they spread through the innermost alleys, in doubt that the bad guys had murdered him to rob him. And all the rest of the night they went around the neighborhood, stopping in front of the theater where the underground duel had been held between the guards and the Beati Paoli, without thinking that precisely down there, in the darkness and in the mystery, the fate of the man they were looking for was decided, and while they were looking from here and there, Don Raimondo was agonizing under their feet.

From the road of St. Cosmo, from the alley of the Orphans, the guards came out, black of smoke, dirty, colorful for the useless of the searches, infusing against the servants, against the curious who looked out from all sides, who rushed. They had searched the roundabout, the two corridors and the niches, not persuasing themselves from whence those men in black had fled. They had seen them at the dim reflection of the flames, through the smoke, wandering like ghosts and wandering at the bottom, one by one, wrapped in smoke: Scary spectacle, which in those crude and superstitious souls had evoked hellish visions.

They had found nothing; the basement was short and it didn't take long to search it. They put Baldi on top of the house, opened the poor houses on adjacent ground floors. In vain. Were they demons? Were they spirits? Were they enchanted? There were many and so extraordinary stories of spirits that disappeared at the touch of a finger, or that one could never grasp. This belief began to enter into everyone's soul, and that underground, which perhaps was a mouth of hell, seemed so full of mysteries and fears that, in order to get out of it, they judged every search useless.

So they abandoned the undertaking, leaving guards at the two entrance doors, that of the alley and that of Baldi's house, and re-focusing in the square of St. Cosmos, to await the orders of the city captain.

The servants returned to the Albamonte palace, despondent, terrified, not knowing what to think; the day that looked melancholy and rainy found them oppressed by that painful silence full of dismay, which is almost afraid to break with voices too loud. They looked and whispered, in that great palace, from which all the masters were missing, as if a great punishment had fallen upon the family, to scatter it and annihilate it.

So Blasco found them, showing up in a mess as he was, pale and lost. His appearance in that state aroused apprehensions and fears; they crowded around him; he ignored what scene had taken place between Don Raimondo and woman Gabriella; he said:

"Wake up the Duchess; tell her that I need to see her now!..."

"The master?... The Duke?... His Excellency?..." they asked him anxiously.

"Go and warn the Duchess!" insisted Blasco.

"But Mrs. Duchess left from tonight!..."

"Partita!" exclaimed Blasco; "game? Where to?"

"In the house of relatives, of the Prince of Carini..."

"And... Woman Violante?"

"In the monastery... But the master?"

Blasco shook his head in the hand. He said:

"Give me a hat and a sword! And two men of good will come with me..."

Several of them took offense. Blasco chose two and set out for the alley of Orphans, but found the guarded door. He turned on the road to St. Cosmos, and the door to the Baldi house was also guarded. Entering could not be done; what to do? He came back almost defeated, with his head down: The servants followed him in silence, not knowing what that return meant. On the way, Blasco remembered some words heard down in the basement. Don Raimondo was murdered under his own house... Here's a way. Which way and how, though, to descend? And what part of the house did it match on the basement?

He remembered again that the soil on which the rapid and gloomy scene had taken place was lubric for mud, and that from the vault dripping of the water infiltrated through the meanders of the tuff. So above they had to correspond tanks, or sources, and, in any case, structures subject to water infiltrations. He entered the court, at the bottom of which, leaning on the wall, was a bathtub, on which the water flowed perpetually from a bronze cinnamon. The tub was full and from the edges the water ran down on the floor. The wall and the ground were covered with a green, limpid layer, in which there was growing some faint hair frond.

"Maybe there," thought Blasco; and turned to the servants: "Close the door, and let no one enter. of shovels and picks."

A minute later, he and his servants were furiously digging around the bathtub, tearing up pebbles and slabs, hollowing out earth and earth. They've been working for an hour. The day had risen and illuminated those feverish faces. The picks hit in the tuff; a blow resonated gloomily, retrieving with an indefinite sense in the soul of all. Blasco felt the blood stirring in his hair. It was empty down there.

Blasco began to feel the ground, as if to search where he resonated more; between the corner of the court and the bathtub, the blows gave a sounder noise, then he furiously struck the tuff, to open a vain space; one of the blows sank, there was a loam; at a second stroke of the stones fell off, and they sank.

Blasco sent a cry of joy and rested feverishly at work, helped by the servants. A large hole opened suddenly, at their glance, for the sinking of stones and loam that fell down with the gloomy noise of a basket of wreckage falling over. It was perhaps an ancient skylight that gave light to the underground, in ancient times, walled and masked by debris and earth, accumulated, and buried under the pebbles. "A rope and a lantern!" cried Blasco.

The servants were amazed at what they saw; they flocked and obeyed every nod. They ran to the stables and returned with what had been asked. Blasco leaned on the floor and plunged the lit lantern into the hole to observe it. It actually opened wide under a vast cavity, of which the darkness did not let see the bottom and the walls. Was it a well? A tank? Was that the basement? He did not doubt it; he took a long pole, resting it across the opening, bound a head of the rope in the middle and dropped the other end of it; he dropped, the bottom was not so low as to arouse apprehensions. He said:

"Be careful what I command you."

And, taking the lantern, he went down the hole, holding on to the rope. He touched the ground, and measured the height: It wasn't more than two reeds. Then he glowed round about, and a great joy spread his heart: he recognized the underground, and precisely the roundabout where the bush and ferocious scene had turned: Don Raimondo had to be there, or not far away. He turned the lantern on the ground and saw him, still curled up on himself, immobile, as he had left him. And he bowed himself to him, and lifted up his arms, and turned his head, and tried to put him on supino: the body did not yet have the stiffness of the corpses, and it yielded; and although it had already been spent five hours and found itself in that basement, it did not have the cold diaccio characteristic of death.

He leaned his ear on his heart and exclaimed, rising up.

"God! He's still alive!..."

Then he tried to lift it up and bring it under the hole and hugg it by the armpits, tried to put it back straight, so that he could load it; at that move Don Raimond's head reclined on one side and found two deep wounds between the neck and the nape, and another long, creeping on the skull.

Blasco made an effort and, carrying it on his arms, he approached under the skylight, shouting:

"Another rope and a sheet."

They threw them away. He laid the body of Don Raimondo in the sheet, and tied together the four cocks, so as to form a sack; he passed through the rope that they had thrown at him, and placed the other end of the belt, he climbed up the rope that hung from the pole, he leaped into the court, he removed the pole, and held the head of the rope that he had stopped at the girdle, he said to the servants:

"Come on, easy, you gotta pull...

It's there!..."

Did they shudder there? Was their master there? Who brought him to you? How did he find it? Alive? Dead? They began cautiously, in four, to pull, without shaking, until the gloom turned, that had already stained with mud and blood reached the edge of the hole, too narrow to let pass the voluminous burden. Then Blasco ordered:

"Hold still."

He and another servant kneeling on one side and the other of the skylight, bowed down on the roll; they drove their hands into the opening from whence they saw Don Raimondo's hair, and took him by the armpits, gently pulling him out. A moment later that body was lying on a bed, stripped and washed.

"And still alive," said Blasco; "send for a cerusic."

In fact, perhaps because of the impression of the cool and the movements suffered, his chest seemed to shake slightly.

"Now that I have given it to you, I have nothing more to do here; go and warn the lady Duchess and woman Violante; goodbye."

He picked up his hat, took a cloak in the antechamber, wrapped himself in it, pulling his lapel over his eyes and went out, but instead of heading towards the interior of the city, he took the direction of the walls, went out of the Gate of Ossuna and regained the countryside. Where to? Where to rest after so many concussions and labors? Now he felt crushed and eager for loneliness: He had a great pain, holding his soul in a grip of ice and at least wanted to be able to give him free running.

By drawing Don Raimondo from the bottom of the basement and returning him to the daughter, so that he had at least from his mercy the extreme tribute, he seemed to have accomplished everything he could.

He had been disgraced, had been defeated; his hopes, his dream had faded before the might of the most. Now he had nothing to do.

Nothing?

The vision of Violante rejected as a stranger from the house where she was born, covered with infamy by the revelation of paternal faults, which seemed inevitable to him, passed before the imagination. After all, wasn't the maiden a Albamonte? And did he not have the right and the duty to defend her, to protect her now that she remained an orphan?

He thought that perhaps it would be a consolation for the maiden to bring in a word, a sign, and this thought softened him. She also wept at that hour and felt alone and lost in the world; she too, who at that time wept over the paternal corpse, perhaps turned her mind to him and sought a comforter.

So thinking, through gardens and paths, he had come to the Capuchin monastery and it seemed to him that God's hand had guided him. He entered the small porch, whose walls were covered with numerous votive tablets, with arms and legs of wax, smeared with red, and sat on the small wall between the pillars, perhaps waiting for some friars. Little by little the sleep won him; he stretched his legs over the wall and fell asleep; a friar, in the act of closing the door of the church, saw him, approached him and shook him gently, then a little stronger:

"Sir!... Sir!..."

Blasco opened his eyes.

"If you need anything," said the friar, "you can enter the concierge."

"Eh! really now I just need a bed, good father..."

"There is no shortage of them in the stranger. If your Lordship" (look at him well he realized he was dealing with a gentleman) "if your Lordship needs... I don't know if I understand... Sometimes you know... Here is a sacred place and there is a right of asylum."

"Yeah, she's fine, but she doesn't have to. Just, I'm a little tired, that's all."

"Vessignoria favours in the guesthouse. Is it from afar your lordship?".

"Yes..."

"On foot?..."

"By vow to Our Lady," Blasco said a bit crudely, who was annoyed by the friar's curiosity.

"Ah! per vote?... To the Blessed Mother Assumption!... I can't believe he brought the flashlight. Isn't that right?"

"We'll buy it..."

They had come before a room; the friar opened it.

"Your Lordship, please; I will go and warn the guardian father..."

Blasco went in and threw himself on a high chair. He could have stayed in the convent, undisturbed at least until justice, ascertaining it, had ordered the guardian to evict him; moreover, he did not count on staying there for a long time, just a few days to rest, to get back in order, to withdraw his stuff, and to find a vessel to leave.

"The police friar, - he thought, - will do me this pleasure."

The pleasure was to go first to the Palazzo della Motta and then to the Palazzo della Floresta; another place emerged in his mind, but he dared not stop there.

"What do you really need of me? The Branciforti are his relatives, finally, on his mother's side, and they are a vast and powerful family of feuds and friendships; they will not leave Violante at the mercy of chance, and they will take care of it... They will defend her... of course, they will defend her!..."

The guardian father was reviewing the accounts, and he didn't think it necessary to get in trouble to receive the stranger: And he commanded that they should give him food and sleep, as it was sunny, and that they should know whether he was a lord: perhaps in this case some other kindness should have been used to him. So Blasco was lucky enough to be left quiet, in those moments when his soul was agitated by different and conflicting thoughts and affections; he could rest a few hours, deeply.

The friar woke him up.

"If your lordship has any command to give me, I'll go to town..."

Of course he had assignments to give him. He'd thought about it a lot. There were his things to pick up and ask for news of Violante. He quickly wrote a short and dry letter, in which he prayed to Coriolano to have his clothes delivered and what belonged to him to the cave of Denisinni, at a certain hour. Not a word more, not a greeting, not even an indication of his hospitalization.

"Since you are so kind, you will do me a favor, bringing this letter to the knight of Floresta..."

"Ah, the knight? I know him. is a good benefactor of the convent."

"I'm so much better, but... I want you to leave this letter without even saying that I'm sending it... He doesn't have to know that I'm here either. Can I hope?"

"Your Ladyship do not doubt."

"And there's another small commission... Go to the Motta Palace."

"I know. To the chief."

"Very good. You will be courteous to ask the news of Mr. Duke, and if the Duchess woman Violante is already in the palace."

"Your Ladyship will be obeyed. Is there anything else?"

"Nothing, thank you."

The friar left, and Blasco followed him with thought along the way, By calculating the time it would take him to travel to the city, perform errands, do his other chores and return. He did not want to leave the cell all afternoon, waiting and wandering of thought in thought, and no longer finding in his life a goal, a dream, a hope that would illuminate the future. So everything was over?

"Bah!," he said, raising his shoulders with a carelessness that concealed the intimate bitterness - ah! what did I put in my head at the end? Look at me, I was wiser when you thought I was crazy, crazy! crazy!... Get back to yourself, Blasco. Didn't you live well before you met the knight of Floresta and the Duchess of Motta and Woman Violante and all this world full of mysteries, of artifices, of cowardice, of guilt, of badness, of hypocrisy? Why did it occur to you to come to this town, which looks like the nest of all the evils? Are you anything more now that you know you are the illegitimate son yes, but the firstborn of the Duke of Motta? Firstborn? And who knows that suddenly there is no other place for my father to sow children on the ground and on the sea? Let go. Life is a very sad thing and the reasons for its sadness must not be increased. Take it like a joke, my Blasco, and you'll find it better!..."

But all this philosophy fell when the friar returned to the Avemaria. He had left the letter at the Floresta Palace; - but it mattered to Blasco to a certain point; - he had gone to the Tower Palace... Ah what a disgrace! Mr. Duke was between life and death: They murdered him at night, three stab wounds!... terrible... An extraordinary thing! There was the palace full of people; all the court, all the nobility, the captain of just aunt; also the Viceroy, even the Viceroy!...

All Palermo was said and said nothing else. What was most astonishing was the site where they miraculously found it! They all wanted to see that hole, well or cave that was: And he had to close the door, because the court was full of crowds. There were the Duchess and the Duchess, yes, sir, and also the relatives. An extraordinary thing, in believable... Who took him down there? And how did they know?

Blasco let it be said; what interested him to know was that Violante was in the palace: why his interest was not clearly evident in his brain. Perhaps the reasons were several; perhaps of the purposes not yet well defined, of vague hopes, of indeterminate intuitions, wandering, floating in his soul.

When the friar had finished his nursery rhyme, Blasco said to him:

"Now do me a favor..."

"Go ahead."

"I'd like a safe man..."

"I've got it... The cartman, here..."

"Can you trust me?"

"As your lordship itself..."

"Call him, please."

The friar carried out the assignment; Blasco gave instructions to the carter, who had such a characteristic aspect of the man who knows how to assert himself and knows how to impose himself: and two hours later he received his suitcase, his weapons, and his clothes.

Then he took off his muddy robes and spoiled them from that night's affairs; and he groomed himself in a more convenient manner, and girded his sword, and wrapped himself in his cloak, and went out.