When Orsino and Ippolito reached Camaldoli everything seemed to be
quiet, and San Giacinto himself was greatly encouraged by the turn
matters had taken. During the first day or two after Orsino's departure
there had still been considerable curiosity among the people of Santa
Vittoria, and more than once San Giacinto had made little speeches, in
his direct manner, to the peasants and villagers who hung about in the
neighbourhood of the big old house. But after that he had not been
disturbed, and everything appeared to be progressing favourably. The
year was one of abundance, the orange crop, which in Sicily is all
gathered before May, had turned out well, the grapes promised an
abundant vintage, and even the olives had blossomed plentifully, though
it was still too early to make accurate predictions about the oil. On
the whole the prospects for the year were unusually satisfactory, and
San Giacinto congratulated himself on having chanced to buy the place in
a good year. In an agricultural country like that part of Sicily, the
temper of the people is profoundly affected by the harvest.
The outlaws had not been heard of in the neighbourhood since Ferdinando
Pagliuca's death. They were said to be in the region about Noto, at some
distance from Camaldoli, towards the south-west. San Giacinto was
surprised at not having even received an anonymous letter from one of
Ferdinando's friends. He did not suppose that the present pacific state
of things could last for ever, but he had been prepared to meet with a
great deal more opposition in what he did.
On the other hand, he was hindered at every step by small difficulties
which always seemed to be perfectly natural. If he wished to build a bit
of wall, he found it impossible to obtain stone or quicklime, though
there were plenty of masons professing themselves ready to work. He
pointed to a quantity of slaked lime drying in a deep tank near the gate
of Santa Vittoria.
'Eh,' said the head mason, shaking his head, 'that belongs to the mayor,
and he will not sell it.'
And, in fact, the mayor flatly refused to part with a single hodful of
the lime, saying that he himself was going to repair his house.
The masons said that by and by it could be got from the lime-burners,
who had sold their last burning to a man in Randazzo. Stone was to be
had for the quarrying, in the black lands above Camaldoli, but there
were no quarrymen in Santa Vittoria, and the gang of them that lived
higher up Etna had taken a large contract.
'Patience,' said the head mason, gravely. 'In time you will have all you
want.'
As the bit of wall was not a very important matter, San Giacinto did not
care to go to the expense of bringing material from a great distance,
and decided to wait. Meanwhile he hired certain men from Bronte to come
and clear out all the bush and scrub from among the trees. They came
without tools. He gave them tools that belonged to the tenants of
Camaldoli, the same which the latter had lent him on the first day to
make a clearing close to the house. The Bronte men worked for two hours
and then came out of the brush and sat down quietly in the sun.
'The tools are not good for anything,' they said gravely. 'We cannot
work with them.'
'What is the matter with them?' asked San Giacinto.
'They are dull. They would not cut strings.'
'Take them away and have them ground,' said San Giacinto.
'Are there knife-grinders in this country?' asked the men. 'Where are
they? No. They come, they stay a day, perhaps two days, and they go
away.'
San Giacinto looked at the men thoughtfully a moment, then turned on
his heel and left them to their own devices. He began to understand. The
men neither wished to refuse to work for him, nor dared to do the work
they undertook, when its execution would in any way improve the
defensive conditions of Camaldoli. San Giacinto came back when the men
were gone, with two or three of the soldiers, took a hatchet himself,
and leading the way proceeded to cut away the thorns and brambles,
systematically clearing the ground so as to leave no cover under which
an armed man could approach the house unnoticed. He regularly devoted a
part of each day to the work, until it was finished.
As soon as Ferdinando's body had been removed, there had been no
difficulty in getting men to work indoors, and by the time Orsino
arrived, considerable improvements had been effected. But the men would
not have begun work in a house where an unburied dead person was still
lying.
The three Saracinesca strolled up to Santa Vittoria late in the
afternoon, San Giacinto and Orsino carrying their rifles, while Ippolito
walked along with his hands behind him, just catching up his little silk
mantle, staring hard at all the new sights of the road, and mentally
wondering what sort of instrument he should find in the little church.
The place was a mere village without any mediæval wall, though there was
a sort of archway at the principal entrance which was generally called
the gate. Just beyond the shoulder of the mountain, away from Camaldoli,
and about fifty yards from this gateway of the village, was a little
white church with a tiled roof. It had a modern look, as though it had
been lately restored. Then the village straggled down the rough descent
towards the shallow valley beyond, having its own church in the little
market-place. It was distinctly clean, having decently-paved streets and
solid stone houses with massive mullions, and iron balconies painted
red. There were a few small shops of the kind always seen in Italian
villages. The apothecary's was in the market-place, the general shop was
in the main street, opposite a wine-seller's, the telegraph office--a
very recent innovation--was over against the chemist's and was worked by
the postmaster, and in what had once been a small convent, further on,
at the outskirts of the town, the carabineers were lodged. At San
Giacinto's request, fifty men of the line infantry had been quartered in
the village within the last few days, the order having been telegraphed
from Rome on Orsino's representations to the Minister of the Interior.
The people treated the men and their two young officers civilly, but
secretly resented their presence.
Nowadays, every Italian village has a walled cemetery at some distance
from it. The burial-ground of Santa Vittoria overlooked Camaldoli; being
situated a quarter of a mile from the little white church and on the
other side of the hill, so that it was out of sight of the village. It
was a grimly bare place. Four walls, six feet high, of rough tufo and
unplastered, enclosed four or five acres of land. A painted iron gate
opened upon the road, and against the opposite wall, inside, was built a
small mortuary chapel. The cemetery had not been long in use, and there
were not more than a score of black crosses sticking in the earth to
mark as many graves. There was no pretence at cultivation. The clods
were heaped up symmetrically at each grave, and a little rough grass
grew on some of them. There was not a tree, nor a flower, nor a creeper
to relieve the dusty dreariness of it, and the road itself was not more
dry and arid. The little grass that grew had pushed itself up just in
the gateway, where few feet ever passed, and everyone knows what a
desolate look a grass-grown entrance gives to any place, even to a
churchyard. There were low, round curbstones on each side of the gate.
The three gentlemen strolled slowly up the hill in the warm afternoon
sunshine, talking as they came. Ippolito was a little ahead of the
others, for he was light on his feet, and walked easily.
'That is the cemetery,' observed San Giacinto to Orsino, pointing at the
hill. 'That is where they buried your friend Ferdinando Corleone on the
day you left. I suppose they will put up a monument to him.'
'His brothers will not,' answered Orsino. 'They disown all connexion
with him.'
'Amiable race!' laughed San Giacinto. 'There is a figure like a monument
sitting outside the gate,' he added. 'Do you see it?'
'It is a woman in black,' said Orsino. 'She is sitting on something by
the roadside.'
They were still a long way off, but both had good eyes.
'She is probably resting and sitting on her bundle,' observed San
Giacinto.
'She is sitting on a stone,--on one of the curbstones,' said Ippolito.
'She has her head bent down.'
'He sees better than either of us,' said Orsino, with a laugh. 'I wonder
why nobody ever expects a priest to do anything particularly well except
pray? Ippolito can walk as well as we can, he sees better, he could
probably beat either of us with a pistol or a rifle if he tried, and I
am sure he is far more clever in fifty ways than I am. Yet everyone in
the family takes it for granted that he is no better than a girl at
anything that men do. He was quite right about the woman. She is bending
over--her face must be almost touching her knees. It is a strange
attitude.'
'Probably some woman who has a relation buried in the cemetery--her
child perhaps,' suggested Ippolito. 'She stops at the gate to say a
prayer when she goes by.'
'Then she would kneel, I should think,' answered Orsino.
Almost unconsciously they all three quickened their pace a little,
though the hill grew steeper just there. As they drew near, the outline
of the woman in black became distinct against the dark tufo wall behind
her, for the sunlight fell full upon her where she sat. It was a
beautiful outline, too, full of expression and simple tragedy. She sat
very low, on the round curbstone, one small foot thrust forward and
leading the folds of the loose black skirt, both white hands clasped
about the higher knee, towards which the covered head bent low, so that
the face could not be seen at all. Not a line nor fold stirred as the
three men came up to her.
Orsino recognised Concetta, though he could not see her features. Her
exceptional grace betrayed itself unmistakably, and he should have known
anywhere the white hands that had been lifted up to him when he had
stood at the window in the grey dawn. But he said nothing about it to
San Giacinto, for he understood her grief, and he could not have spoken
of her without being heard by her just then.
But Ippolito went up to her, before his brother could hinder him. She
was a lonely and unhappy creature, and he was one of those really
charitable people who cannot pass by any suffering without trying to
help it. He stood still beside her.
'What is your trouble?' he asked gently. 'Can anyone help you?'
She did not move at first, but a voice of pain came with slow accents
from under the black shawl that fell over her face, almost to her knee.
'God alone can help the dead,' it answered.
'But you are alive, my child,' said Ippolito, bending down a little.
The covered head moved slowly from side to side, denying.
'Who are you, that speak of life?' asked the sorrowful young voice. 'Are
you the Angel of the Resurrection? Go in peace, with Our Lady, for I am
dead.'
Ippolito thought that she must be mad, and that it might be better to
leave her alone. His brother and cousin had gone on, up the road, and
were waiting for him at a little distance.
'May you find peace and comfort,' said the young priest, quietly, and he
moved away.
But he turned to look back at her, for she seemed the saddest woman he
had ever seen, and her voice was the saddest he had ever heard.
Something in his own speech had stirred her a little, for when he looked
again she had raised her head, and was lifting the black shawl so that
she could see him. She was about to speak, and he stopped where he was,
two paces from her, surprised by her extraordinary beauty and unnatural
pallor.
'Who are you?' she asked slowly. 'You are a stranger.'
'I am Ippolito Saracinesca, a priest,' answered the young man.
At the name, she started, and her sad eyes opened wide. Then she saw the
other two men standing in the road a little way off. Slowly, and with
perfect grace, she rose from her low seat.
'And those two--there--who are they?' she asked.
'They are also Saracinesca,' said Ippolito. 'The one is my brother, the
other is my cousin. We are three of the same name.'
He answered her question quite naturally, but he felt sure that she was
mad. By this time San Giacinto was growing impatient, and he began to
move a few steps nearer to call Ippolito. But the latter found it hard
to turn away from the deep eyes and the pale face before him.
'Then there were three of you,' said Concetta, in a tone in which scorn
sharpened grief. 'It is no wonder that you killed him between you.'
'Whom?' asked Ippolito, very much surprised at the new turn of her
speech.
'Whom?' All at once there was something wild in her rising inflexion.
'You ask of me who it was whom you killed down there in the woods? Of
me, Concetta? Of me, his betrothed? Of me, who prayed to your brother,
there, that I might be let in, to wash my love's face with my tears? But
if I had known to whom I was praying, there would have been two dead men
lying there in the Chapel of Camaldoli--there would have been two black
crosses in there, behind the gate--do you see? There it is! The last on
the left. No one has died since, but if God were just, the next should
be one of you, and the next another, and then another--ah, God! If I had
something in these hands--'
She had pointed at Ferdinando's grave, throwing her arms backwards,
while she kept her eyes on Ippolito. Now, with a gesture of the people,
as she longed for a weapon, she thrust out her small white fists,
tightly clenched, towards the priest's heart, then opened them suddenly,
in a despairing way, and let her arms fall to her sides.
'Saracinesca, Saracinesca,' she repeated slowly, her voice sinking;
'three Saracinesca have made one widow! But one widow may yet make many
widows, and many mourning mothers, and the justice of Heaven is not the
justice of man.'
San Giacinto and Orsino had gradually approached Ippolito, and now stood
beside him, facing the beautiful, wild girl, in her desolation. Grave
and thoughtful, the three kinsmen stood side by side.
There was nothing theatrical or unreal in the situation. One of
themselves had killed the girl's betrothed husband, whom she had loved
with all her soul. That was the plain fact, and Orsino had never ceased
to realise it. Unhesitatingly, and in honourable self-defence, he had
done a deed by which many were suffering greatly, and he was brought
face to face with them in their grief. Somehow, it seemed unjust to him
that the girl should accuse his brother and his cousin of Ferdinando's
death.
As she paused, facing them, breathless with the wave of returning pain,
rather than from speaking, Orsino moved forward a little in front of
Ippolito.
'I killed Ferdinando Corleone,' he said, gravely. 'Do not accuse us all
three, nor curse us all three.'
She turned her great eyes to his face, but her expression did not
change. Possibly she did not believe him.
'The dead see,' she answered slowly. 'They know--they know--they see
both you and me. And the dead do not forget.'
A flying cloud passed over the sun, and the desolate land was suddenly
all black and grey and stony, with the solemn vastness of the mountain
behind. Concetta drew her shawl up over her head, as though she were
cold, and turned from the three men with a simple dignity, and knelt
down on the rough, broken stones, where the blades of coarse grass shot
up between, close to the gate, and she clasped her hands together round
one of the dusty, painted iron rails.
'Let us go,' said San Giacinto's deep voice. 'It is better to leave her,
poor girl.'
She did not look back at them as they walked quietly up the road. Her
eyes were fixed on one point and her lips moved quickly, forming
whispered words.
'Maria Santissima, let there be three black crosses! Mother of God,
three black crosses! Mother of Sorrows, three black crosses!'
And over and over again, she repeated the terrible little prayer.