Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part four, chapter 19

She was a Gabriella woman.

With his face altered by anger, jealousy, wonder, he looked around and repeated his question:

"Where is he?... What does that mean?"

But Emanuel, who had already closed the door, answered with a grin:

"I didn't expect you so soon. You must have killed the horses!..."

"I don't understand you..."

"Madam, madam, save me!" begged Violante.

Donna Gabriella really didn't understand anything. A letter, a few hours before, had made her lose almost her mind. It was conceived as follows:

"Ma'am, a friend who desires your happiness and disdains the faces you receive, warns you that you are vilely betrayed: If you want proof, have your carriage attached, run to Bagheria, you will find Mr. Blasco in the arms of a Violent woman."

Like a crazy woman ordered her carriage.

"Let the horses die!" he said to the coachman.

The road seemed very long and the horses were slow. His brain was hammered by a murky and ferocious thought:

"I'll kill them! I'll kill them both at once!"

As soon as he arrived, jumped from the car, without noticing that no servant had rushed to receive it, he entered, opening the rooms to one by one, throwing a glance at you, until a confused cry was led to the room of Violante. But there was no Blascus; and the words of Emanuel, dark, full of a meaning that his clouded mind did not penetrate, threw it into a suspicious irresoluteness.

He looked at Violante with his arms tied, on his knees, lost, anxious; he looked at Emanuele, grinning, bold, fierce; he sensed something. There was a trap underneath it. But why did she attract you too if the victim, as it seemed, was Violante?

He asked again:

"But what is it?"

Then Emanuel drew near to her, and said, Without changing a grin,

"The Duchess perhaps expected to find another person here; I regret her disappointment, but that person has for now given way to me. Donna Gabriella, it's revenge time. And I wanted you to participate in the joy of my vengeance, witnessing to my wedding!..."

Donna Gabriella took a step back, blushing; she glimpsed that she had been the victim of a deception, but did not suspect that Emanuele plotted something against her. There was only one victim: Violent, who pale, amazed, looked at her with eyes in which were gathered all the prayers, all the hopes, all the terrors; Violant who watched anxiously every gesture, every look, every trembling of her who had been the wife of her father, who was lover of the beloved man, her most ferocious enemy.

There are moments in which the perception, the association of ideas, the succession of memories take place with a miraculous abundance and which sum up in itself a lifetime. Violant and woman Gabriella lived this moment.

Something treacherous, the voluptuousness of unhoped for revenge, but desired and accomplished by others, passed for a moment in the heart of woman Gabriella and flashed in her face. Violante Gemette: In his mind he emerged this thought: "They agree; and I am lost!..."

Emanuel, satisfied with his words, leaned toward Violante, lifted her from the ground, rested her on the bed.

"Madam! ma'am!" cried the desperate maiden.

Donna Gabriella suffered and, yielding to a new impulse of her heart, she said:

"What you do is not worthy of a gentleman... I have nothing to do with this... At least let me go..."

But Emanuel, stopping her and laughing grayly, exclaimed:

"Go away? oibò!... But you, too, are my slave now! Oh, for God's sake! I have suffered too much to give up this hour of revenge. You are both in my power and I will have you..."

Then what was still confused and obscure to the mind of woman Gabriella appeared clear in all her filthiness. She saw Emanuel looking around the room, as if to look for something; she feared for herself, she opened herself up in the window, and she saw there underneath a man; believing him to be a helper, she cried out:

"Run! Run!..."

But the man lifted up his arms armed with a stumbling block and threatened her:

"Shut up, or I'll shoot you!..."

The instinct of life rejected her: Emanuele received her and wrapped her in her arms, to reduce her to impotence. Donna Gabriella saw all the danger she was exposed to, she sensed that if Emanuele came to imprison her, to bind her as she had done with Violante, both would be subject to an infamous outrage; the fantasy exaggerated her danger and the anger that was still burning in her veins flared up: in his excitement he exalted himself.

Emanuel, victorious, dragged her to the bed, saying:

"Look!... you are reasonable, dear Duchess!... Give an example to your stepdaughter!..."

But in the act of bowing down to embrace her, he screamed and pressed his chest back and staggered. Quick as the lightning, Gabriella woman, pulled a dagger from her breasts, dipped it in her chest.

"William!..." stammered Emanuele with a greed and fell heavily groaning: "I die!..."

Donna Gabriella seemed amazed and dismayed at her boldness.

Violent terrified, weeping, he exclaimed:

"God! God! Madam Mother, what have you done?"

These words shook the Duchess: pale, with furry hair, with wet forehead, trembling lips, still holding the bloody dagger, for a minute looked Violante; then, suddenly threw the weapon, loosed the towels, violently took the maiden by the hand and pulled it out shouting:

"Come on, let's run!"

A confused noise came from under the window, frightening the two women: And they went out through the hallway, and came to the entrance, where the horses that were attached to the carriage were trodden. Donna Gabriella pushed you inside Violante, she threw herself there, shouted to the coachman:

"Shoot, kill the horses!... but fly!"

He told his dealer that he had accompanied her:

"Kill those who try to stop us."

The chariot left loudly, while there was an extraordinary outburst around the building and a few shots of rifle retorted.

Upon leaving the villa, a man drove towards the carriage, shouting:

"Excellency!... Excellency!..."

But to the threat of the builder who, faithful to the order, had spread a rifle, the man pulled aside hiding behind a tree.

"Who was it?" asked Gabriella from inside.

"Excellency, it was Matteo Lo Vecchio."

"Ah!"

He was in fact the birro that stood at the lookouts, waiting for Emanuele, sure of the blow; but seeing the carriage of the Duchess back running, amazed, not knowing what to attribute what visibly was a flight, and not having seen well who was inside, he tried to inquire. But the carriage wandered off the road. Matteo Lo Vecchio headed towards the villa but had not moved ten steps that he saw fleeing, chased by shouts, three or four men, who in haste, threw their weapons and coming out of the villa were wandering through the farms.

"Ah! some omelettes must have happened!" thought the birro, and as soon as one of those men passed before him, recognized him, he called him: "Oh!... wait... what happened?..."

"They killed the master!"

"Huh?"

Almost at the same time, two more shots of a rifle are rumbled. Matteo Lo Vecchio saw some men appear from the bottom of the avenue.

"Here, - he thought - we must recommend ourselves to the holy feet!"

And sometimes his shoulders fled too, ambushing himself among the orange groves to escape sight.

Inside the villa was a confusion, a rumor, a set of people going, coming, pushing, upset by the event, uncertain about what could be done.

The lamentation of Emanuele had drawn the attention of the man who was under the window, who nodded to a companion standing in the trees, climbed up to the windowsill, to look into the room and, at the sight of the master who whispered, had sent a cry of terror: But almost at the same time, from the thick of the trees, two shots had gone away; other good men who had staked there had staggered with fear on the esplanade of the villa fleeing.

Their fear had infected the other two and without knowing why nor where the danger was, they had fled. Behind them the castle and a few cottages, after which they had pulled more shots, then they had returned to the building, where the two old ladies arrived, shocked by the blows.

Since the hunt was prolonged and the hunters calmly lay in chains preventing the ladies from retreating to the villa, the castle, suspicious, made a nod to his men and told the ladies, respectfully, that it was late and the young lady was alone in the house. So they walked; the castle and a mansion before, the ladies behind, other mansions in the tail. Almost at the mouth of the bush, the castle He saw a man climbing up the window of Violante's chamber and shooting, shouting; the effect of that shot was wonderful. When caught off guard, the scumbags who were flat, believing they were attacked, fled, and the lords and the peasants, fearing some sins, rushed into the house; but in their eyes a miserable sight appeared: The young man on the ground, a lump of blood in his mouth, his eyes wide open, lost by the spasm.

The dead or dying, the disorder of the chamber, the absence of Violante, filled the two old ladies with fear who cried out: They all spread from here and there to look for the maiden, while the castle and some of the peasants were chasing the fugitives.

"Violant! Violant!..."

"Excellency!"

No one answered. An unspeakable anguish took hold of the hearts; the eyes, which in vain had sought, looked with amazement full of anxiety and fear; the old ladies wept and that young man on the ground, unknown to all, immobile in his tragic and gruesome abandonment, that no one knew how it had come in, and who had killed him and why, that young man increased the terror with the mystery that surrounded him. Everyone crowded to see him, they were watching him for a moment, spying on him with a silent curiosity, full of assumptions and questions. And the castle bowed down beside him, and said,

"He's still alive."

One entry added:

"Run and call the pastor father."

Cautiously they lifted Emanuele from the ground and laid him on that same bed where he had planned to celebrate his double vengeance. He did not give signs of life: His wrists barely beat. Suddenly his limbs were shaken, his body stretched out, his head reclined slightly on his shoulder.

"Mother's rule!" murmured the castle with a solemn and messed-up voice, discovering and kneeling. And all those villains with august and wrinkled faces knelt also around the bed, repeating more fervently, in their crippled Latin, the invocation of eternal peace to the soul of that unknown young man:

"Mother's rule!"