The Viceroys (14 page)

But the princess, though deriding him, let him be, and noted down one after the other in her book of rents all the money which he failed to give her every year. This already amounted to quite a considerable sum which the Booby did not know where to lay hands on. His continual fear was that his mother, tired of finding she was never paid, would take the estate away from him; and indeed the princess did threaten this more than once. Thus a master-stroke in her Will was assigning the property at Pietra dell'Ovo to Ferdinando. That property was worth more to him than a great estate: if he were to exchange it for the whole of his elder brother's heritage he feared to lose on the deal. As if that was not enough there was also the condonation of past rents which now totalled nearly one thousand five hundred
onze
; so that, quite beside himself with delight, he thought himself very well treated indeed, beyond his every hope, and to Don Blasco trying to induce him to rebel he would say, candidly, stopping work, his digging or his pruning:

‘What? Isn't what I've got enough?'

‘But you should have had at least three times as much! You've been tricked with all the others! Your father's part is due to you in equal proportion to all the others, and now's the moment to claim it! And don't you know that Giacomo didn't even send for you on the day of your mother's death?'

‘That's impossible!' replied Ferdinando scandalised. ‘But why?'

‘So he could lay hands on certain papers and valuables! He rushed up there and began turning the whole villa upside down. That's known! And then he went through all that act of putting on seals! You'll realise that when you see the inventory, my little virgin soul!'

The monk was in a frenzy of impatience for this inventory, but the prince on the other hand seemed in no hurry to know what there was in the house, never spoke of business to any of his brothers or sisters, not even to his co-heir Raimondo, to whom it never even occurred to ask for any account. In spite of mourning
the latter was always out at the Nobles' Club, chatting about Florence to old friends, having his game of cards, or commenting on the carriages that filed past at the evening parade. And Don Blasco made Ferdinando's ears hum with his invective against his brother. ‘A scandal, a lack of respect to the dead woman whose body is still warm,' was the conduct of this good-for-nothing who thought only of amusement, who had not come to ‘close his mother's eyes' even for love of the money which she wanted to give him
brevi manu
, ‘stolen from the others!…' Then on the day when the inventory was finally made out and it showed that cash in hand had been only five
onze
and two
tarì
in ready money, and a security of a hundred ducats, the monk rushed off to Ferdinando like a madman.

‘D'you see? D'you see? D'you see?… What did I say? Five
onze
! Your mother never had less than a thousand! And securities! Securities! I knew of up to five thousand ducats' worth!… D'you understand now? D'you see how your dear brother has robbed you? That thief of a Signor Marco there held the sack open for him! Robbed! Robbed! If you don't complain, if you don't make yourself heard, you deserve to have 'em spitting in your face!'

On and on he went about this new deception to his nephew, who was stunned by all the shouting. Why, for instance, had Giacomo left Signor Marco in his job, when he had thrown out all the servants whom his mother had protected, the head coachman, the cook, all those to whom she had left something? That ‘pig' Signor Marco, ‘the evil genius' of the dead woman, should have got a ‘kick in the backside' as soon as his protectress had closed her eyes; instead of which why ever was he still in service after two months? Just because as soon as his former mistress died he had flung himself ‘vilely' at the new master's feet, handed everything over to him, let him ‘steal' the valuables which were to go ‘to all' or at least ‘to the co-heir …'

And here was this fool Ferdinando acting the simpleton, refusing to believe all this chicanery and declaring himself grateful to his mother for letting him off that fifteen hundred
onze
! As if that contract between mother and son had not been all wrong in itself, as if the princess had not on purpose settled for a sum higher than the yield from the property so as to get him into
her clutches all the more …! Yet by dint of preaching to him that he should have more money, that he could be more than twice, more than three times as rich, the monk might have managed to shake his nephew, had he not, as he had with Chiara by speaking ill of her husband, committed a grave imprudence with Ferdinando too. Ferdinando feared that if he refused the Will and asked for the legal division, Pietra dell'Ovo might pass into the hands of others, or that at least he would have to divide it with his brothers. One day Don Blasco, when showing him the chance of keeping all for himself, cried out:

‘And anyway if you do lose this place, you'll get another in exchange worth a hundred times more …'

‘No, Excellency,' replied Ferdinando. ‘There's no other place like this in our family.'

‘Like this?' the monk burst out then. ‘Just about good enough to fling a herd of pigs on? What's there here apart from acorns? Particularly now that you've completely ruined it with your mad experiments?'

Ferdinando, hearing his own land and work run down, was struck dumb and flushed like a tomato. Then, recovering his voice, he declared:

‘Excellency, you know the proverb? “A madman knows more of his own home than a wise man of others”.'

Then the monk, gurking curses at this ill-mannered nephew, never went up to his ‘pigsty' again and was reduced to laying siege to Lucrezia. He had kept her to the last because, with all his instinctive loathing for each of his nieces and nephews, it was her he loathed most.

Like Chiara and Ferdinando, Lucrezia could not remember her mother ever giving her a caress; but whereas Chiara from the beginning had the relative merit in the monk's eyes of resisting the princess in the matter of her marriage, and Ferdinando that of having been sent away from home, his youngest niece had nothing but demerits, one worse than the other. Under Donna Teresa's lash, treated with particular harshness for having been born when her mother expected no more children, considered an intruder come to steal part of the money destined to the two males, Lucrezia had grown up, said the Benedictine, like a ‘marmot': backward, taciturn, savage as Ferdinando, and
always so distracted that her answers aroused laughter from everyone except her uncle Blasco, who could have eaten her alive.

In her subjugation and ill-treatment of her daughter, the princess never forgot her principal aim; that of keeping her at home, a spinster. So, assiduously, daily she had shown Lucrezia that marriage was not for her; firstly because of her bad health—but the girl was perfectly well; then because the good of the family required it—and she pointed to the example of Donna Ferdinanda; then because with no money she would never be able to find a suitable match—and the exception of the Marchese Federico confirmed the rule; and finally, in case all this was not enough, because she was ugly too—and there she told the truth. When the mother saw her looking in a mirror, or on the rare occasions when the girl was present at visits Donna Teresa would exclaim, ‘How ugly you are, my girl!… What a misfortune it is to have such an ugly daughter, is it not?' The most persuasive argument even so was that of poverty; the money belonged to the ‘males'. When her agents brought in sackloads of coin she would say to Lucrezia, ‘D'you see these? They're all for the men …' And if the girl raised her eyes to the maps of their estates hanging in the antechambers, her mother would repeat, ‘What are you looking at? They're all property of the men!'

When the conversation fell on marriage in her daughter's presence, Donna Teresa would warn, ‘Be careful what you say in front of girls!' and when they were alone she would tell her that thinking of marriage was a mortal sin, to be confessed. Her confessor Father Camillo confirmed Lucrezia in these ideas. Then the princess would repeat again and again, ‘Anyway you've got nothing, so you'll be forced to stay at home; who'll want to marry you without any money?' Chiara had been another matter; she had found someone willing to take her in nothing but her shift, as he knew she was wise, God fearing, and obedient to her mother. Sweetening the pill, the princess let fall now and again, ‘If you behave like your sister, I'll make it up to you in some other way!'

So Lucrezia had grown up; constantly mortified and humiliated, more segregated from the world than in a convent, invisible
to her elder brothers and even to her uncles, tyrannised a little even by Chiara who, being five years older, acted as a grown-up; loved and protected only by Ferdinando, with whose character hers was so much in accord. The Booby had to think of himself, not disposing of much goodwill in the family, but he showed Lucrezia as well as he could the love he had for her.

Older only by a year or so, he played with her and gave her toys he had made himself. Later on, when he got some notion of letters and taught himself to draw and do various little crafts, he passed on his knowledge to his sister, for whom the expense of a tutor had been spared. Besides Ferdinando's company and protection was not all Lucrezia had; she had also Donna Vanna's, one of the women-servants. And the princess, always wary and alert, did not see the danger from that direction.

The Francalanza servants were paid little and accustomed to trembling before their mistress. In spite of this it was rare for any of them to leave unless dismissed, as all found a means of recouping morally and materially for bad treatment. The means consisted in secretly taking sides with one of the children or in-laws against their mistress, in fomenting rebellions and acting as spies. For this reason there were as many factions down in the courtyard as there were heads up in the palace wanting to get their own way. Now Donna Vanna was one of the ‘young ladies' faction: as before she had encouraged Chiara's desperate resistance to the marriage imposed on her, so later she would tell Lucrezia her sister's story in order to show her the harshness and quirkiness of her mother; and she put the idea into the girl's head of getting married too, and gave her a consciousness of her own rights and qualities. It was not true that she was poor; the princess could only dispose of half of her own fortune, the other half had to be equally divided among all her children. ‘She must do that, as it's written in the law; that's why a part is called “legitimate” …' And Lucrezia listened to her open-mouthed, trying to understand. She understood more easily the praises of the maid, who found recondite beauties in the person of her little mistress as she dressed and combed her. ‘How straight Your Excellency is!… Like a palm-tree … 
And these tresses! Like boat ropes!' Then she would conclude, ‘We must find a man to enjoy them.'

So it happened that, when the Giulente family came to live opposite the Francalanza palace, Donna Vanna said to her young mistress, ‘Has Your Excellency seen the Signorino Benedetto? What a handsome lad!' Lucrezia began watching him from her window, and agreed with the maid. ‘Hasn't Your Excellency noticed how he looks at you?' Lucrezia went redder than a poppy and from that day her eyes often strayed to the young man's balcony. But as long as the princess was in good health things went no further than that and nobody suspected her. Then one day Donna Teresa, already poorly, woke with a pain in her side which at first she took no notice of, but which a year later was to take her to the tomb. When the mistress's illness grew worse, and particularly when she went off alone to the Belvedere for a change of air, as Raimondo, her favourite, was in Florence and her other children were all more or less abhorred by her, then Donna Vanna, freer to favour her young mistress's love more and more, talked to the young man, bore, first, greetings from one side to another, then messages, and finally letters. This was noticed in the family, and all turned on Lucrezia.

The Giulente, who had come to Catania almost a century before from Syracuse, belonged to a dubious class that was no longer ‘middle' or bourgeois but had not yet acquired true and proper nobility. Nobles they thought and vaunted themselves to be, but they could not succeed in spreading this conviction to others. For a number of generations they had intermarried with families of the true ‘old stock', but only among those short of money, for a girl who was both noble and rich would never have married a Giulente. In order to play at being the equals of authentic barons they had adopted all the baronial habits; only one son among them, the eldest, could marry; the others had to remain bachelors. The abolition of entails had pleased them, as there was none in their family; when the majority law was instituted, they had tried to get it applied to them, but without success. In spite of that everything was left to the eldest son. Don Paolo, Benedetto's father, was very rich while his brother Don Lorenzo did not have a cent; that was the reason, maybe,
why he intrigued with revolutionaries. Benedetto, partly from his uncle's example, partly from the air of the times, was also a Liberal. He was very proud of his birth, but much against the arrogance of the nobility—‘When the fox can't reach the grapes!' cried Donna Ferdinanda—and because of these sentiments, though all his father's fortune would one day come to him, he was studying for a lawyer's degree. Hence Don Blasco's anger against his niece for falling in love without asking his permission; and who with? A Giulente, a Liberal, a lawyer!

Now, after the reading of the Will, after the opposition put up to his suggestions by Chiara, the marchese, and Ferdinando, the monk turned to Lucrezia. He had greater hope of succeeding with her as her love of Giulente gave her a reason for rebelling against the family. It was true that for the moment he would have either to help or at least pretend to ignore his niece's love affair, but as long as he could plot and put his finger in things, and get himself noticed, Don Blasco was willing to pass over greater difficulties than that. So he began to show Lucrezia how wrongly she had been treated, and what was to be deduced from it, and how Giacomo had robbed them all as soon as his mother was dead; and he went over the accounts with her again and encouraged her to come to an agreement with Ferdinando, on whom she alone could have an influence, in order to put up a united front against their elder brother.