The Viceroys (58 page)

In fact not only had the epidemic decimated the population which had stayed in town, where as many as three hundred deaths a day could be counted and there was no longer any civil organisation, powers, deputies, counsellors or anything; but it was now beginning to spread for the first time with extraordinary violence through the Etna woodlands, which had till now escaped all other cholera epidemics. It was at the Belvedere, it was at San Gregorio, at Gravina, at La Punta, it was reaching scattered houses, did not spare cottages right out in the country; and not only the poor died, but people of property too, gentry who took every kind of precaution. So terrified crowds were fleeing from one hamlet to the next as best they could, on carts, on horseback, on foot. Anyone with the germ of the disease on them fell by the roadside, writhed in the dust and died like a dog; the unburied corpses, under the torrid summer sun, exuded pestilential smells, making the horror all the worse. Fugitives who arrived safe and sound in places still immune were greeted by shots from the terrified peasantry, lest they succeeded in finding a refuge and gave the disease to the healthy.

Drought made those conditions even more desperate; all cisterns were dry, nothing could be washed, there was scarcely enough water to relieve thirst. At Viagrande the prince paid a lira for every jug of water; and the princess might have been a well she wasted so much, washing herself every hour in those rooms with greasy floors and walls and bedaubed doors, the very sight of which gave her the shivers; and she was devoured by thirst. Her intestinal pains never left her. At times she seemed to have cholera cramps, so that the duke in terror thought of escaping farther off. But his fear was misplaced; those pains, that tendency to vomit, the princess had been suffering from for more than a year, not with the same intensity as she did
now, it was true, but with the same symptoms. The prince, when reassuring his uncle, showed other fears.

‘Margherita would never let me call a doctor … but I'm very much afraid … I'm told she may have cancer of the stomach …'

But the duke was not listening. Just now he had his own skin to think of, for cholera might break out any moment at Viagrande; in fact there had already been some scares.

‘Let's go!…' he insisted, ‘let's go farther off, to Milo, to Cassone, on the mountainside …' and when finally the first sure case appeared in the village, while all repeated, ‘Let's go … get farther away …' terror gave him diarrhoea.

This time the difficulties in finding a house were much greater. The duke went to look for one around Milo. The prince made ready to leave for Cassone.

‘D'you want to come too?' he repeated to his wife.

She had spent a ghastly sleepless night, tormented by nausea and vomiting, and had just managed to dress, pale and haggard, when Chiara said:

‘No, leave her … she'll come when you find the house …'

Even the servants said it was not wise to expose her to the discomforts of a search, and that it would be much better for her to leave when they knew where she was going. But Cousin Graziella, hearing that cases of cholera were multiplying rapidly in the village, was of a contrary opinion.

‘I say, take her off at once … in her condition she might well have less resistance to contagion … Giacomo is bound to find some sort of house …'

Donna Ferdinanda was also of this opinion, but Consalvo, holding his mother close, whispered to her:

‘No, don't go yet … it's better here … we'll all go later …'

She caressed the boy with her thin cold hand, and glanced timidly at her husband, waiting for him to decide.

‘D'you want to come or don't you?' he asked her curtly, in the tone he adopted when decisions began to irk him; and the question, which had a literal meaning to everyone else, took on another meaning for the princess, who understood his intentions and gestures and divined what he implied.

‘No, I'll go with you …'

Just as she was about to set off, the young prince said insistently:

‘Mother, stay here … or take me with you,' and the lad, ordinarily so gay and thoughtless, now showed a kind of frightened disquiet.

‘There's not room for everyone!' cried the prince brusquely. The princess hugged her son and said to him:

‘Stay here … Stay here … we'll all be together tomorrow …'

She got into the carriage next to her husband, holding a piece of camphor to her nose, Baldassarre mounted the box and the carriage left.

Till nightfall there was no news. At ten o'clock arrived an express message from the duke at Milo, telling them that he had found a hut up there in which there was only just room for himself; so that left them free to join Giacomo.

At Viagrande meanwhile there was growing frenzy as panic became contagious. They were already beginning to accuse Giacomo of having forgotten them like that egotist the duke. Don Blasco was talking of getting on a horse or a donkey and going off anywhere, when at dawn next day arrived Baldassarre, pale, overwhelmed and trembling.

‘Excellency!… Excellency!… The mistress, the princess!… Caught cholera!… Died in three hours!…'

A
T THE
prince's wedding to Cousin Graziella, celebrated three months after the epidemic ceased, only relatives and a few intimates were invited; the widower was still in mourning and the bustle of a reception would have been inappropriate. Anyway, as the prince himself explained, the marriage was one of simple convenience; both he and the bride had many an autumn on their shoulders and were linking their destinies without youthful fancies and only in order to be able to ensure each other mutual help. Cousin Graziella needed a man to look after her interests and give her back a position in society, the prince was finding a new mother for his children. That union, foreseen by some since the princess's bad health had made her life uncertain, was expected daily after her sudden death hastened on by cholera, and it aroused almost universal approval. The confessor, the Vicar-General, all priests frequenting the house thought it proper and provident. Preparations for the nuptial ceremony were modest not only because bride and groom were both in mourning; there was scarcely a family not in mourning for some dear one after that fearful epidemic. Benedetto Giulente had lost father and mother in one day, at Mascalucia; the Princess of Roccasciano had been widowed and the Duchess Radalì lost an uncle, the Cavaliere Giovanni Artuso. But this had not caused very great sorrow as the cavaliere was rich and childless, and had left his whole fortune to the Radalì family; the income to the duchess and the property to Giovannino, his godson. The mother was perhaps a trifle sorry that the inheritance had not gone to her eldest son, for whom she had sacrificed her life. The suppression of monasteries had already upset her
plans, as Giovannino could no longer be professed and had returned to the lay world; now this inheritance evened the two brothers' situation, that is diminished that of the elder. She loved them both, but for the duke she also felt a kind of instinctive respect as head of the family, as heir and successor to his father's name and honours. And so the closing of the monasteries and her uncle's error did not upset her plans, as long as Giovannino remained unmarried. She was working to this end, letting the young man free to gad in his own way, encouraging all his tastes for shooting, horses and all pastimes, so that he should feel no temptation to change his life.

That Donna Graziella would act as mother to the prince's children was of course beyond all doubt. Baldassarre had mentioned to his dependants, who were repeating them everywhere, details of letters exchanged between the bride and the young princess. The girl had heard in Florence of her mother's death. What sobs! What convulsions! The headmistress had been at her wit's end to know what to do. Poor girl, how right she was! Alone, far from home, unable even to give her a last embrace! Mama! Poor Mama! They were really worth reading, those letters, for the young ladies at the Convent of the Holy Annunciation received what was called a ‘comi fo' education, and the young princess was clever and studious and always getting first prizes.

But eventually, when her godmother sent her dead mother's prayer-book, rosary and a lock of her hair, with a promise that the prince would have her home as soon as possible and a hint that she should write him no more of such harrowing letters in his affliction, poor thing, then the young princess gradually calmed down. ‘You are right, dear godmother. I was forgetting my poor father's sorrow and thinking too much of my own, and that's not just …' What were these letters to the prince like? ‘Don't torture yourself, dear papa; think, as I do, that mother is in paradise and looking down at us all and watching over us and wanting us to be glad that she is among the blessed and that we shall all be joining her one day, with God's grace …' Really amazing for a girl of fourteen to write like that!…

The prince then sent her his great news. He was inconsolable for the loss of that saint and would mourn her till the very last
day of his life, but his children needed someone to replace her as a mother, and for that reason and that reason alone he was taking the advice of all his relatives who were begging him to remarry; he was therefore wedding the cousin who had given so many proofs of affection during the ‘great disaster' and who was the most suitable, being a relation, to carry out the delicate functions of second mother. Cousin Graziella added a postscript of her own under her confessor's dictation. ‘Dear daughter, you will understand, from what your father has told you, that henceforward I shall have more right to call you by the name which I have always given you in my heart. My greatest ambition is to soften the loss of your saintly mother, not to make you forget her, which will be impossible not only for you but for us all. Through this even closer link between us I shall always be by your side, to watch over you and your brother as your saintly mother asked on her deathbed. I yearn to hold you close to my heart; if your studies prevent your returning home just yet we ourselves will come and see you shortly …'

But it was a long time before any reply came to this letter. What had happened? Had the post been up to its tricks? Or was the Signorina unwell? Or had she, maybe, taken the news of the marriage badly?… Baldassarre did all he could to dissipate this last doubt. He was also trying his best to hide from people the young prince's ill-humour, but not succeeding, as from the first announcement of the marriage Consalvo had taken a firm stand against his father and future stepmother.

Naturally, while waiting for the wedding, Cousin Graziella no longer came to the palace now there was no mistress of the house to receive her, but the prince visited her and wanted his son to do so too. Wasted breath; the young prince was deaf in that ear, and when he met his father's future bride at relations' houses would scarcely greet her, reply with mortifying coldness to her effusive ‘my son', or even avoid her, showing clearly the aversion with which she inspired him. The prince, to the great and general amazement, seemed not to notice and to have changed character, as if wanting to ingratiate himself with his son. He was generous with money, let him do what he liked, bought him carriages and English horses; but Consalvo was cold with his father too, avoided him, spent weeks at a time in the
country shooting, so that gradually the prince's rage mounted. The major-domo, man of peace that he was, noticed this, was pained and tried to get the young prince into a better mood. Consalvo let him have his say; then all of a sudden cut him short with an icy, ‘Don't bore me any longer. Look to your own job. And don't bore me …' Youth! Youth! One had to be patient with them, let them have their way before they reached an age of judgment! But what about the young princess? Could she possibly turn against her father and stepmother too? A girl so wise, so obedient, brought up at the Holy Annunciation?…

After keeping all waiting more than a week, finally the Signorina's reply arrived. ‘Dear father, dear mother,' it said: ‘I have not written earlier because I have been unwell; nothing of importance, so do not worry. Now, thanks be to God, I can tell you of the great joy with which I learnt of what you are doing for our sakes.' And so on for two pages full of warm expressions, ending with ‘your most affectionate and grateful daughter, Teresa.' She also wrote to her brother in the same strain, but the young prince in replying to her never mentioned his stepmother or made any allusion to the coming wedding, as if he had never heard of it.

Two days before the ceremony he went off shooting with Giovannino Radalì and other friends, saying he would be away twenty-four hours, but on the day of the ceremony, when his father and stepmother and their guests went to the Town Hall, he had not got back. He did not even arrive that afternoon when the bride and groom returned from church. Great scandal was in the air, with servants gossiping, dependants on tenterhooks, the bride forcing a smile and Lucrezia repeating every quarter of an hour, ‘Where's Consalvo?… Why don't you send for him?' in spite of its having been explained again and again that the youth was out in the country.