of the Favara.[7]
[7] Pronounced Făváhră.
One of the earliest and most impressive things which happened to us in
Palermo, was our visit to the Favara, the ancient Arabo-Norman palace
of Donna Rusidda's brother. She invited me to go with Will, and sent
her rumbling old coach to fetch us, for it was a little way out of
Palermo. The horses were sorry nags, and the coach had been painted so
often (by the coachman) that it had almost lost its shape; but the men
had on gorgeous liveries, much decayed, and apparently handed down
from former servants, whom they had fitted better.
We two boys, almost lost in this huge conveyance, abandoned ourselves
to the novelty of the situation, until we came to a great saddle-back
bridge, with nothing but dry land underneath it, and apparently
crossing nothing. This the coachman, who could speak a little Italian,
informed Will was the bridge of the Admiral: he did not know who the
Admiral was, though he was sometimes spoken of as the Greek Admiral,
and the bridge was built long, long ago, even before the time of the
great Emperor Frederick, who had built the Favara, and was the
ancestor of the present Prince--"in a particular way, of course,"
added Will to me as he translated his words. The river Oreta had in
those days run under it, and was so fierce a torrent, and had drowned
so many people when the storms came, that the Admiral had been
canonised by the villagers of S. Giovanni of the Lepers, to which we
presently came, and peered with curiosity at its ancient church, the
most ancient above ground in all Sicily.
The road now became very bad, lying for the most part between high
walls of rough plaster, enclosing orange groves or lemon gardens. We
passed, too, many clumps of the Indian fig, an extraordinary thorny
cactus which bears a delicious crimson fruit; and the lean Sicilian
bamboos, more like whipping-canes than the solid jointed trunks
brought from the East.
At length we came to a place where there must have been a park gate,
though it had now been removed, and replaced by doors of a common
character. These were opened on our arrival by an old man with his
head tied round in a red handkerchief, and we found ourselves in the
midst of a very large grove of lemons, incomparably beautiful, I
thought, with their dark green foliage studded with the pale gold
globes of the lemons, and the ground at their roots covered with a
crop of weed with a leaf like the trefoil, and a brilliant yellow
flower somewhat like the musk.
From this at length we emerged in front of an enormous palace, built
of a yellowy brown stone, with a turret in the centre, and very fine
Arab or Norman windows: I am not architect enough to say to which
these splendid mouldings belonged. But the palace, which seemed as
great or greater than the King's, was sadly decaying, some parts being
no longer inhabitable, and the windows of such rooms as were used
being filled in till they held modern panes.
A more picturesque object it is not easy to imagine, than this huge
mellow pile, with its weather-softened turret in the centre, standing
under the shadow of the grim brown rock of Monte Griffone, and almost
buried in a prodigal wealth of lemon trees.
Our coach lumbered in through an old gate into a huge sort of
castleyard, from whence we were taken by a dark and very narrow stair
into the part inhabited by the family. Between our leaving the
miserable old coach, which had brought us, and reaching the salon,
where the Prince and his sister were awaiting us, we were handed on by
a dozen broken-down servitors, who looked as if they had been taken
out of the fields, and thrust into the liveries of other days. But we
were mistaken perhaps about the fields, because Donna Rusidda, with a
mixture of frankness and pride and shame characteristic of her, soon
informed us that the ground up to their very doors was let to a
farmer, who also occupied the parts of the palace which had the barred
windows, he being more fearful for thieves of his lemons, than they
for thieves of the heirlooms which had come down in the family, some
of them from the days of the Hohenstaufen Emperor--and the precious
tapestries woven on Sicilian silk looms in the fifteenth century which
were hanging round the chamber where we were received.
This at any rate was princely, for it was of great size and had a
vaulted ceiling, with moulded ornaments in the peculiar inverted
Arabic style, which looks not so much the design itself as the mould
in which the design was executed; while at intervals round the chamber
were pairs of columns with marvellously carved capitals, supporting
large vaults filled with wonderful mosaics representing hunting
scenes. The walls in between these columns consisted of large slabs of
porphyry divided by slenderer columns; or the rich mosaic borders
known as the Cosmato work. This we saw when Donna Rusidda drew aside
the famous silk tapestries. The chairs, too, and the couches, which
ran all round the walls, were ancient and magnificent; though the
brocade, with which they were covered, was in many places threadbare
or even split. The floor was covered in the Sicilian fashion with
tiles, a hundred or more of which went to form each of the great
arabesque patterns, which looked like vast love-knots tied with orange
and blue ribbons. There were no carpets, and there was a general
appearance of decay, even of mould, in the room, in spite of its
princely proportions and priceless tapestries. But the youthful pair
who were there to receive us, for all the decay of their house and the
rustiness of the faithful servants who surrounded them, looked princes
every inch, worthy descendants of the mighty Frederick.
For one thing they were but recently back from long attendance at the
Court, and were dressed accordingly. For another it was at the Court
that Will and I, though we were but junior lieutenants in His
Britannic Majesty's ship the _Vanguard_, and not long since
midshipmen, had met them. The flavour of royalty therefore was strong,
and there was in them both an innate princeliness. I am sure that
Donna Rusidda, as she came forward to welcome us to the poor house, in
which she had been born, and her ancestors before her, for five
hundred years, looked as fit to be a queen as any woman in Europe: she
was so beautiful, her nostrils, her mouth and chin were so delicately
cut. I have seen no cameo of antiquity equal in beauty of outline to
that which she had executed and presented to Will the time we sailed
away to the reconquest of Naples--the cameo which every day is pinned
on black velvet upon Katherine's wrist, for she is a gentler memory to
Katherine than even to Will. And her slight figure had the
self-reliant elegance of the women of her country.
"Welcome to the Favara, W-Will!" she cried gaily, "and you,
Signor--Tubbie"; and then she broke off into a little peal of
laughter, while the Prince frowned at the liberty she was taking with
His Britannic Majesty's Lieutenant Trinder of the _Vanguard_. But
seeing that I took it as a good jest, he laughed too, a charming
Italian laugh.
"The Palace of the Favara," said Donna Rusidda, "has a great many
doors and windows, but only one chamber that you can call a room.
Ruggiero has his little sleeping closet, and I mine, and our faithful
servants have a roof over their heads--some of them; but the palace
consists not of rooms, but of rats and passages. There is a place in
which we have our frugal meals, but the plaster has worn off the walls
until you lose the decorations; and there is the chapel. Yes, there is
the chapel, with relics of I know not what value--the palate of one of
the Apostles, and even a little piece of St. Veronica's handkerchief,
as thick and strong as the sacks with which our good farmer loads his
ass. But these one could never sell, and indeed, though they are of
the highest value, no one would give anything for them. And so they
remain in the chapel, and serve no purpose but to frighten thieves
from the gold in which they are enclosed. Are we to chase the rats
until it is time for the _colazione_?"
This meant, of course, my following with the Prince, while she tripped
lightly about the enormous old palace, calling to Will to see that and
the other feature, which had played its part in her childhood, such as
the carved figures on each side of the great fireplace in the
banqueting hall, which had been real giants in her fairy tales, but
now had the daylight from the hole in the roof exposing them. There
were, I suppose, a hundred or two rooms in the palace, connected by
stairways innumerable, and galleries hung with portraits of no great
value, representing the Admirals and Condottieri, and Statesmen of the
house, but no Cardinals with diplomatic faces and purple mantles--no
Cardinals.
I daresay Will found the _colazione_ unmercifully long, though it was
none too long for me, for I could appreciate all the good things--the
best to be had in Palermo--which the pride of the Prince had compelled
him to provide for us, with incomparable wines which had been maturing
in his cellars for half a century. The price of that "collation"
would I daresay have kept their larder going on its ordinary terms for
more than a month. To be at once a boy and a sailor gives one a proper
appetite for such things. And I ever had as keen an appreciation of a
beautiful woman as most men; and these Italian and Sicilian women,
when they choose, can be so infinitely alluring, with their little
laughter and their merry wit, and their open pleasure in their beauty.
Donna Rusidda was in the highest spirits, and since all talked
English, as being my only language, her broken English made her
flashes of wit irresistible.
When at last the _colazione_ was over, and I had refused to take
another drop of the mellow generous wine, grown on the neighbouring
slope of Misilmeri, we wandered out into the pleasure garden which was
the saddest-looking thing, for I believe that every joint in the
masonry of the terraces and fountains and colonnades, and marble
couches overlooking the city and the bay, was gaping and ready at a
touch to pour out its mortar in powder. We sat down on the terrace
which had the marble couches I have mentioned, commanding the view as
far as the great dark mass of Monte Pellegrino, where the Carthaginian
General maintained his army for three whole years against the Romans
in Palermo, supporting life on the wheat grown on the broad top of the
mountain, and the wild fennel and wild onions. At one end was a little
mound, such as I think they would call a calvary, save that at the top
of the path which wound round it there was no crucifix, but a little
shrine to Santa Rosalia, the patroness of the city and of Donna
Rusidda herself, Rusidda being one of the abbreviations, in which
Sicilians delight, of this name.
In this there was a seat concealed from view, even from the terrace,
where I sat with the Prince while they went up for Will to be shown
her saint. The Prince, desiring nothing so much as his sister's
marriage with Will, and being at this time, like many of the
Sicilians, a violent adherent of English customs, was content to
throw opportunity in their way. He and I smoked. What passed between
Will and Rusidda I had from Will afterwards, rehearsed with growing
excitement, but I dare swear without any embellishment from the
imagination, of which Will possessed little.
"Well, W-Will," she began, "now you have seen my home, and you know
that it is not because you are poor that I fear to marry you. We live
on maccaroni in order to have horses for the old coaches in our
stable, and men to take us out. Were it not for the little salaries
which we have from the Court, we could not buy ourselves a change of
clothes, and even the Queen is not very good at paying. She would
rather buy things, and give them to you when she is tired of them. And
this, though the Ambassador's wife is not too proud, a Princess of
Favara--with an unconscious little access of _hauteur_--could not
tolerate. Besides, picture me in a train of Her Majesty, who would
make two of me!"
Then, suddenly springing up from her seat, she led him to another side
of the belvedere--for such practically the shrine was--and pointed to
a beautiful little lake. "That," she said, "is the Mardolce, from
which our family derives its name. Its founder was known in the Norman
fashion as Tancredus de Mari Dulci; and that is where we shall have to
come to, if we get much worse off."
"Don't, Rusidda!" he said, putting his arm round her to draw her back
to their seat. A little shiver passed through him. True love can
picture any far-fetched ill reaching the loved one.
"Oh, it is not very likely," she said. "I am the only maid of honour
the Queen has in Sicily: the others preferred facing the French to the
sea-passage."
At that moment, glancing through the balustrade of the belvedere, she
caught sight of a well fed but badly shaved priest riding on a stout
ass, which carried panniers piled up with various kinds of garden
produce, as well as himself.
"That is the priest of S. Giovanni," she said, with a curious look at
the stout red-faced form in its stained, rusty black. "What a shock he
would have if he saw you! It was he first told me the tradition of our
house, that it would end with the love of a woman for a fair-haired
stranger. But W-Will, dear," she said, with a caressing look and
remorseful voice--she was really fond of him, and it was the first
time she had welcomed him as hostess in her own home--"I am safe,
because I have tried so hard to love you, and cannot."
"Why do you take such pleasure in torturing me, Rusidda? It is right
that you should feel safe, but not for that reason. I am not a prince,
and I cannot offer you a palace."
"A palace!" she said: "a ruined village! _My house is not large, but
at any rate it is not in ruins_, you were going to say."
"Indeed, dear, I hope I shall never say anything to hurt you."
"You can never tell."
"What I was going to say was," he protested rather hotly, "that I have
saved quite a good bit of prize-money already, and that under the
Admiral I shall make enough to retire on in a few years."
At the mention of the Admiral's name her face changed a little.
"And so, Rusidda----"
Under ordinary circumstances he would have caught the tempting
rebellious creature in his arms, and trusted to beating down her
defiance with the vehemence of his embrace; but, having been accorded
the freedom of embracing her, he took no such extreme measure. When
once a woman has accorded a man this freedom, it is not the vehement
but the gentle embrace which steals her heart or her judgment; and
therefore it was only with lips laid softly on her neck that he asked,
"Oh, why will you not marry me, Rusidda?"
"I have told you I cannot love you; besides, I have told you about the
fair-haired stranger. I look so like being the last woman of my race
that it would not be safe for me to marry you."
"Fancy believing in an old wife's tale like that!" he said bitterly.
"Indeed, I do not," she said; "or perhaps I do. But do not scoff at
that, for it is your best friend. It has been the tradition of our
race to fly in the face of prophecy. Besides, my people are not your
people, and it is a long way--I do not know how far, perhaps thousands
of miles--from Sicily to England; and we are a people who live in a
summer land, where one can even gather figs of thistles, but where
everything one gathers turns into the lotus before it reaches the
mouth, and robs the mind and limbs of all desire saving to eat and
drink and be merry. And we of Sicily, called of the ancients the
'laughing land,' cannot even be merry, for every race which has
conquered Sicily knows that it must itself be conquered afterwards.
And the land of the vanquished of many races sits with dry eyes and
sunburned limbs, the Andromeda of the ages."
Will was not scholar enough to plead that he was of course the
Perseus, but she did it for him. She continued: "And we can have no
Perseus, or your northern land might well be it, for the curse of the
gods is upon us; and," she added sceptically, but not so sceptically
as superstitiously, "in the centre of the island is the entrance to
the lower world, with _solfataras_ for miles round."
"Rusidda, you cannot be serious!"
"Dear W-Will, I am serious, so far as that I cannot love you."
"Perhaps there is some one else?" he said, a sudden light breaking
upon him.
"No; I can give you my word I have never even thought of marrying some
one else."
"Then you are trifling with me," he said to her fiercely. "Can you not
see that I love you with all my heart and soul; that it is a matter of
life and death; that I could kill the man who should come between us?"
and then he struck his fist on the marble table of the belvedere.
"There must be some one trifling with your feelings."
"Indeed there is not, W-Will," pleaded Rusidda, a little scared by his
vehemence.
"I am sorry," he said, kissing her tenderly; "but oh, Rusidda, you do
not know how your refusal maddens me--how it dries my life-blood!"
"Oh, W-Will!" she said, with a sad smile, while surveying the sinewy
figure, the bronzed face, the clear proud eyes.
"Don't mock me, little one."
"I mock you!" she said, her arms round him in an instant: "have I not
told you I pray the good Santa Rosalia, night and morning, to change
my heart towards you?"
"Will you swear not to love any one better than me?" he added
desperately.
"I cannot swear; but I shall never marry."
"God in Heaven!" was all he said; and, snatching her hand to his lips,
he came down from the belvedere with bowed head, and walking straight
past us without raising his eyes, rushed through the lemon grove and
out of the gate and down between the high walls of the groves.
The Prince divined what had happened, and for the nonce said nothing.
Soon Donna Rusidda came down--beautiful, tender, and repentant; and
when I sought to make my _adieux_ to such a painful situation,
inquired if I would take a note to Will. Thinking it might be to give
him the news he so courted, I joyfully assented, and we all three
walked up to the palace and into the salon with the silk hangings
where she had first received us, and off the end of which there was a
little room, into which she retired.
The Prince, taking me by the arm, walked me to the other end. He was
much agitated. "My sister," he said, "is changeable. That she has
refused to marry your friend, the match upon which I have set my
heart, is certain; and yet I am equally certain that she loves him,
for she cannot conceal her joy when she is going with Her Majesty on
board his ship, or to any party where your Admiral and his suite will
be. I can see that there is much tenderness between them. She allows
him the liberty which neither she nor I would tolerate in any other
man; and yet she must have refused him, and I think roughly. It cannot
be," he resumed presently, "that she fears and forgets the tradition
of our house, lest the prophecy should be fulfilled."
"Ah," he continued with evident relief, as she came into the room
again, carrying a letter, and with her face glowing with tenderness:
"she has repented. Go, my friend, and take it from her. The word which
accompanies a letter is often a key to it."
Seeing me advance, she halted, and, when I came up, I looked in her
dark shining eyes.
"'Tis a letter to Signor Hardres," she said, "bidding him to come
again soon, and be sure to bring the Admiral with him. There is no one
to whom the immortal Nelson listens as he listens to Signor Hardres;
and it is the desire of my heart that the hero should pass one night
underneath this fast-decaying roof."
Her brother, who had been watching for her expression to tell him when
she had finished what she most desired to say, then joined us; and
she told him that she had been writing to Will to use his influence to
win the Admiral to honour their roof by sleeping under it.
"You should have asked my Lady Hamilton," he rejoined: "'tis the
Ambassador's wife who orders where the Admiral goes."
The Princess shrugged her shoulders.
"There is no disgrace; it is common courtesy, if you wish to invite a
guest who is staying with others, to do it through his hostess."
"I will not," she said briefly. "It makes my blood boil even to see
him with her."
"Rusidda!" he cried protestingly.
"Oh, have you no eyes?" she asked, in a voice that was strangely, and
it seemed to me unnecessarily, touched with emotion.
"Oh yes, of course I have," he continued impatiently. And neither saw
that their words were double-edged.
And I, as I rumbled back in the heavy old coach past the bridge of the
Admiral George, thought myself mighty clever, for I did not believe
there was one word about the Admiral in the letter; and the time sped
even behind those horses, as I thought how Will's stern face would
light up when he read what I took to be the real news in that letter.