The Viceroys (31 page)

All conspired to prevent Matilde noticing anything, but she was warned by a kind of sixth sense, realised that her husband was slipping away from her, and wept with the agony of it. Now that her child was better and she should have been able to breathe calmly, that thought tortured her all the time. She knew that if anyone opposed him Raimondo had a habit of sticking all the more to his whims, and that the only way, if any, of getting him back, was to let him have his head. But how could she resign herself to knowing that head was full of another woman, to being looked at by the part-curious and part-pitying eye of Lucrezia, the marchese, strangers, even servants? So she would sidle up to him timidly and imploringly, tell him of her jealousy, beg him not to make her suffer if he was really not thinking of that woman …

‘This cursed country!' exclaimed her husband excitedly.
‘Who ever invented such foul nonsense? You yourself? You've been putting round your silly suspicions, now tell the truth, haven't you?'

‘Me?… Me?…'

‘D'you want to ruin her, d'you want to get me killed by her husband?'

Then another terror froze her; suppose Fersa had noticed something too? And wanted revenge?… Suddenly she saw her husband lying dead in the middle of a road, with a bullet in his forehead or a dagger in his side. Every time he was late in coming home she wrung her hands and pressed her heart, almost hearing the cries of terrified servants at the sudden arrival of his lifeless corpse; then she would caress her children and sob over them as if they were already orphans. What particularly distressed her was having no one with whom to let herself go, no one to comfort her at least with a kind word. She could say nothing to her father, and the Uzeda seemed to protect that other woman; those of them who did not go as far as that in their rancour against the ‘intruder' remained neutral and did not even notice her.

Don Eugenio had now finished and despatched to Naples his memorandum on Massa Annunziata. Its title was: ‘
Anent the propriety—of excavating—the Sicilian Pompeii—otherwise called Massa Annunziata—in the ancient Mongibello—buried in the year of Grace 1669—by the belching lava of that fiery volcano—together with all the riches it contained—Memorandum submitted to the Royal Government of the Two Sicilies—by Don Eugenio Uzeda of Francalanza and Mirabella—Gentleman of the Bedchamber of His Majesty (with functions).'
In the evening he would read out to the assembled company from his rough copy. This was written in a strange style which was the fruit of grammatical reforms thought up by him, with his own emphasis and expressions.

Don Cono was the only one to listen to these verbal reforms and solemnly discussed whether ‘solemn' should have one or two ‘l's'; everyone else turned their backs on this idiot, who after losing two appointments by his own idiocy now expected to be appointed a director of excavations; Don Blasco and Donna
Ferdinanda, among others, though each on his own, jeered mercilessly at him to his face, but they were singing to the deaf, as the cavaliere was quite sure that this time he had seized fortune by the forelock.

The marchese and Chiara, who came to the palace every day, might not have been there at all, for while people spoke of one thing or another they thought of nothing but their own progeny. At a certain period every month Chiara really seemed in the clouds; she did not reply or replied vaguely to questions she was asked; then she drew all the ladies apart one after another and muttered certain questions in their ears. So when Don Blasco went to her house and inveighed again against the prince and Raimondo, she did not bother to listen, so rapt was she in constant and intense expectation.

As for Ferdinando, he let his uncle the monk say what he liked. Delighted to be absolute master at Pietra dell'Ovo, he had indulged his whims to his heart's content. Gradually however the place was falling into ruin, and he realised it. He had tried all the things that he found in books of agriculture; having read, for instance, that in every tree branches can act as roots and roots as branches, he began trying out the truth of this by pulling up the tall flourishing orange trees to replant them upside down. One by one all the trees died. But this would not have made him decide to stop these experiments had he not thought of others of a different kind. Among the many books he bought were some on mechanics; then, remembering his former love for watchmaking he hired a bailiff to take over the estate, and begun to make wheels and springs. Why did water in suction pumps never rise farther than five
canne?
Because of atmospheric pressure. Was there no way of counter-balancing it? So he had built a machine with a gadget worked by a handle whereby the water did not rise even an inch, far less five
canne.
This was all the fault of the workmen, who had not understood his orders. Now he was studying a much vaster problem: perpetual motion …

What happened in the house, what others did never bothered him, and his visits to the palace became rarer and rarer; had it not been for Lucrezia, he would never have gone at all. But his sister was busy making signals to Benedetto Giulente, and only
seldom came down into the drawing-rooms. The flirtation was going stronger than ever; in each letter the young man told her that the time for him to ask the question was drawing nearer and that in a year they would plight their vows. Even now that the little devil Consalvo was no longer there to search about amid her things, Lucrezia would still lock up her room when she went down to the floor below, and the prince said nothing to her about the resulting inconvenience.

And so none of the legatees bothered about the division of property. As for Raimondo, he was more than ever intent on his gay life and on following Donna Isabella over sky and sea. Pasqualino Riso scarcely did any other service nowadays, busy as he was in watching Donna Isabella's movements and carrying letters and messages. There was even jealousy of him among the other servants, the under-coachman particularly, who was now left all the work, and the footman Matteo. They spoke through set teeth of their colleague's good luck, saying that they could not understand how the prince could go on paying him just like before and leaving him at his brother's disposal. So disgusted were they that they nearly changed allegiance, for from being against the Countess Matilde before, now they felt sorry for her and said she did not deserve such unfaithfulness and ill-treatment …

The Uzedas' harshness towards Donna Matilde was really becoming excessive, particularly towards her daughters, for ill-treatment of them hurt Matilde more than any directed personally at herself. There were terrible days, when Donna Ferdinanda had raised her hand to Teresina, which Matilde spent sobbing like a child, drinking in her tears so they should not fall on the letters that she wrote to her father to hide her sorrow from him and give him to understand that she was happy.

At the beginning of September, when the time drew near for going to the country, the baron arrived from Milazzo to see his little grand-daughters and take them all with him to his estates, where Carlotta's fiancé had gone too; the wedding was to take place in a year. The prince asked the baron to stay at the palace, and all the others who were so harsh to his daughter greeted him with politeness, as if to prevent him suspecting their ill—grace towards her … Nor did he read her long sufferings in
her face; proud of the kinship and of the family's nobility, he even felt confirmed in his idea of having ensured Matilde's happiness. She, on her father's arrival, at the announcement that he had come to take them all away, began trembling again for another reason, the old fear of a quarrel breaking out between her father and her husband. Would not Raimondo refuse to follow his father-in-law?… Instead of which a ray of sun shone suddenly in her long sadness; Raimondo replied to the baron's invitation by ordering preparations for a journey. That consent was nothing really; it could not reassure her, as no one would be staying in town at that season and Donna Isabella Fersa was leaving as in other years for Leonforte. And yet, in the anguish to which she was reduced, the idea of leaving the Uzeda household, of returning to her father's by consent and in company of Raimondo, made her breathe freely.

The prince invited the whole family to the Belvedere. But things did not go too smoothly there, and the first to provoke friction were Chiara and the Marchese Federico. Beginning to lose hope of the child they had so much expected, almost ashamed at their constant announcement of a pregnancy which was never confirmed, husband and wife were now overcome by a melancholy which gradually turned to irritability, to latent rancour with no definite object.

Chiara in particular was unable to resign herself to her failure at maternity, and blamed herself as if it were her own fault. So, to get her husband to forgive her, while before she had awaited his every word as an oracle's, she now forestalled his judgements and guessed his every wish. He had not time to turn round, for example, at the faint draught from an open window, before Chiara was calling servants to shut everything up and threatening to get them all dismissed if they were ever so careless again. When someone in conversation described a fact or suggested an idea she would read in her husband's eyes if he disagreed and then reply vigorously before he had opened his mouth.

Federico was not to be outdone and showed the same disposition as she, so that all the quarrels avoided between themselves they started up with other people. Now the start of the one with the prince, whose guests they were, was that matter of the legacy to the Convent of San Placido. As Giacomo was
still determined to consider it void for lack of royal approval, the Mother Abbess had called the convent's lawyers, who had declared unanimously that the prince's reasons were not worth a button and that the late lamented princess had not instituted a benefice at all, but left a legacy
cum onere missarum;
hence there was no need whatsoever of the royal approval, hence the prince must pay out the two thousand
onze
. But the latter stuck to the other interpretation and his poor Sister of the Cross wept morning and night. In a moment of ill-humour, seeing that friendly dealings were getting nowhere, the Abbess had confided to the marchese and Chiara another of the prince's tricks; the late lamented Donna Teresa, before departing for the Belvedere from which she was never to return, had left a box full of gold coins and precious objects to be kept in the convent treasury and later handed over to Signor Marco, who was then to pass it to Raimondo. As soon as his mother was dead, Giacomo had presented himself to withdraw this deposit, and as she made some objections, he had returned with Signor Marco, whom she had been unable to refuse.

For a time husband and wife were scandalised, but they would have taken no action if the Abbess, to get them on her side, had not told them that the glorious Saint Francesco di Paola had prevented their marriage being fruitful and made Chiara's first pregnancy fail because they had allowed a sacrilege against the convent. With this bee in their bonnets they both turned against the prince, Chiara in particular persuading her husband of the brother's roguery. The marchese bowed to his wife's reasoning, and gradually from the legacy for Masses and the vanished deposit they went on to other questions concerning the inheritance, to the arbitrary division, the subtraction of ready cash, the refusal to present accounts, the demand that the pretended handing over of capital should appear as a payment already made, to all the accusations of Don Blasco, who came over on purpose from Nicolosi to fan the flames.

Within seven months the three years would be up since their mother's death. After this the women could draw their portions, which the prince, in spite of his promise to pay in advance, still kept to himself; all these things must be put clearly and their real due established. But although both were sure that if they
did not complain Giacomo would cheat them, neither wife nor husband dared complain directly to brother and brother-in-law.

Chiara, wishing to show her zeal, began instigating Lucrezia to try to get Ferdinando on their side too. She shut herself up with her sister, or drew her into a corner to pass on all the remarks of her uncle the monk, adding that she, Lucrezia, was the most victimised of them all, for Giacomo would continue his mother's policy and not let her marry or postpone marriage for her as late as possible, in order to remain master of her dowry. Lucrezia, understanding nothing of business, let her run on and replied, ‘We'll see!… I'll have my say too!…' She did not confide her love for Benedetto Giulente to her sister, and would not have listened to her instigations, as she did not to her uncle the monk's, had the prince, noticing these secret confabulations, these attempts at plotting under his roof while enjoying his hospitality, not become colder to his sisters and refused to greet Giulente. Lucrezia, having heard this, and after consulting with her maid, who said that if the prince was now behaving badly to the ‘Signorino' too it was time to make herself felt, decided to listen to Chiara's reasoning. The hostility between brother and sisters grew harsher on return from the Belvedere, when Lucrezia began to complain to Ferdinando in order to draw him into their league. Then onto the scene came Father Camillo, the confessor.

On returning from Rome after the princess's death the Dominican had remained, to everyone's amazement, the prince's confessor as he had been his mother's. Giacomo not only went to confession every month but called his spiritual adviser into his home and took his advice as had Donna Teresa. Don Blasco breathed fire and sword against ‘this turn-coat Jesuit' who after acting as spy for his mother was now acting as spy for the son, which was why ‘that thief' Giacomo had not ‘kicked him in the backside'. But Father Camillo, all sweetness and light, never even heard the Benedictine's diatribes.

One day he took Lucrezia apart and began a long speech to tell her that a declaration of discontent with her mother's Will was as bad a sin as disobeying her mother in life. The princess, like a wise just mother, had divided her fortune ‘with scales', for to a mother's heart all her children should be ‘equally dear'.
Certainly the prince and the count had obtained a privileged part, but they were the head of the house and heir to the title, and the count was another son with a family to maintain with decorum. For the others the late lamented princess had arranged equal parts ‘to the last cent'. Were these suggesting that she should have had land instead of money? He quoted the past Wills of defunct Princes of Francalanza, the institution of primogeniture and Salic laws, quoting as examples what had happened in the previous generation.