The Viceroys (36 page)

Don Gaspare Uzeda, in spite of the Giulentes' assurances, and the proofs of his popularity newly acquired among Liberals, was afraid that someone might blame him for his lurking in San Nicola on the day of battle, or that the revolutionaries of '48 would remember old tales. His legs trembled as he entered the Town Hall, crossed the crowded courtyard, went up to the room where they were deliberating; but gradually a smile came out on his pale closed lips, blood began circulating freely in his veins again, as he found himself saluted respectfully and cordially on all sides. Workers bowed to him, friends shook his hand
and exclaimed, ‘At last!… It's come!… We're free!… At last we're our own masters!…'

The most urgent matter to be dealt with was arranging some kind of service of public order, a militia to act until the formation of a National Guard. Money was needed to arm this militia and Guard. A subscription was opened to collect funds, and the duke offered three hundred
onze
. No one had given so much, the sum produced a sensation. When the meeting broke up, Don Gaspare was accompanied back to San Nicola by some dozens of people.

Next morning he added another hundred
onze
to buy ammunition. His popularity was growing by leaps and bounds. There was a dearth of work, as the city was still more or less a desert; he let no-one of those who turned to him for help go away empty-handed. He plucked up courage and went every day to the Reading Room, where Liberals commented jubilantly on news of the revolution's progress. He put himself at the head of demonstrators going to fetch the band from the Charity Home, and went round town to the sound of the ‘Garibaldi Anthem'. Gradually, as he felt more and more reassured, he became quite at home in the Town Hall where his advice was always being asked. While all were talking of liberty and equality, no-one thought of doing anything to show how times had changed and privileges been destroyed and all citizens become really and truly equal. He suggested and had passed a decree for the abolition of superfine bread. This made him a great hero.

Don Blasco, lying low in the monastery, fumed away; not so much perhaps at the ruin of his party and the triumph of heresy, as at the news of his brother being suddenly considered a champion of liberty. The Governor would do nothing without the duke's consent and put him on every commission, a group of admirers accompanied him to the Francalanza palace, which he had reopened and was now living in lest its closing be imputed to the family's pro-Bourbonism; and petty shopkeepers and workers, all those who did not know what would happen next, were converted to the new party on hearing that a grandee like the Duke of Oragua, a Francalanza, was in it. Day and night as many patriotic demonstrations with music and torches
and flags took place beneath the palace windows as beneath those of old Liberals who had been in prison or returned from exile.

Now everyone talked in the squares, from balconies, to stir people up or discuss what action to take in the political clubs being formed. But the duke, incapable of saying two consecutive words in public, terrified at the idea of having to speak before a crowd, would come down and meet them at the gates and get out of it by shouting with them, ‘Long live Garibaldi! Long live Victor Emmanuel! Long live liberty!…' by taking Garibaldi volunteers to a café, paying for their ices, cigars and liqueurs. On the formation of the National Guard he was made a major in it. Every day he sent round to the guard on duty bottles of wine, cakes, packets of cigars, presents of all kinds. And his reputation grew and grew; in demonstrations the cry of ‘Long live Oracqua!'—as most pronounced it—was as frequent as ‘Long live Garibaldi!' or ‘Victor Emmanuel!…' All these enormities reduced Don Blasco to grim silence more terrible than any shouts. But the monk was not at the end of his trials. For where should the exiles, the brigands enrolling to follow the anti-Christ, be lodged? At San Nicola!…

At the announcement that Nino Bixio's and Menotti Garibaldi's column was coming to Catania, the Governor had sent a messenger to tell the Abbot that he had arranged for the soldiers of liberty to be put up at the monastery of the Benedictine Fathers. The Abbot, pro-Bourbon to the eyebrows, tried to make difficulties, but the Prior Don Lodovico persuaded him that it was best not to put up opposition.

On the 27th July the National Guard marched out to meet, just outside the gates, the column entering the city amid hurricanes of applause, and the volunteers were quartered at San Nicola, along the first floor and Clock corridors. Straw scattered over the floors, arms racks, rifles, cartridge cases, bayonets, pipe-stems, reduced the monastery to a state of siege. To reach the refectory Don Blasco had to cross this inferno twice a day. He would pass by, mute, pale, fretting, while the soldiers shouted ‘Hurrahs!' to the Prior Don Lodovico, who had wine and cakes distributed.

All day long the men trained down in the outer courtyard.
Bixio watched, whip in hand; occasionally he laid it across the shoulders of the most recalcitrant … ‘All in the name of liberty! All to get rid of age-old tyranny!' the pro-Bourbon monks exclaimed to Don Blasco, but the latter did not even reply. Nothing seemed to interest him any longer, as if the world were about to end.

Bixio and Menotti were lodged in the guest wing. The Abbot avoided them, but the Prior—from prudence he said—treated his guests with all respect, enquired solicitously if there was anything they needed, and put the flower-garden at the disposal of the son of anti-Christ, who spent his leisure moments cultivating roses. One day, the novices, who were much reduced in number because many families had withdrawn their sons during the upset, were in a state of great expectation; Menotti was to come among them. Giovannino Radalì, Pedantoni, all the Liberals gazed at him with wide eyes as if he'd dropped from the moon, without bringing out a word, while he patted their heads. But Giovannino ran into the garden to pick the best rose and offered it to him calling him ‘General!…' Consalvo was standing apart, frowning like his uncle Don Blasco, very downcast.

‘Not acting the spy “rat” any more,' said his companions, when Menotti left. ‘Are you afraid of your tail being cut off?'

He did not reply. One day his father, reassured by the way public events were going, came down to see him.

‘I don't want to stay here any more,' the boy told him. ‘So many boys have left …'

‘Want
?…' replied the prince in a harsh tone, ‘Who taught you to use the word “
want
” …? You have to stay here for the moment.'

The duke not only approved of that decision but induced his nephew to bring his family back to town, as there was no danger, and such prolonged keeping apart, such signs of fear, might be taken ill by people. They all arrived a few days later, the marchese and the marchesa alone, beside themselves with delight in a carriage moving at foot's pace out of regard for Chiara's pregnancy, now finally confirmed as being in its sixth month. Every time the carriage stopped at blockposts Lucrezia put her head
out of the window, thinking she recognised Giulente in every soldier.

But Benedetto was no longer in Sicily. In the first days he had helped his uncle Lorenzo and the duke to bring some order into the revolution, haranguing the crowds, speaking in the clubs with an eloquence admired by all, writing articles in a paper called
Italia risorta
founded by his uncle to urge annexation to Piedmont. Then in spite of his father and mother's opposition, he had volunteered as a Garibaldino in a regiment of Scouts, and left for the mainland. On arrival in town, Lucrezia found a letter from the young man announcing that he was going to join Garibaldi to carry out his duty towards his country, and recommending her not to weep should the great fate befall him of dying for Italy. She began reading every newspaper and every bulletin to learn what had happened to him, but understood less than ever, as she was quite incapable of making out the southern army's movements.

Don Blasco, at his relations' arrival, finally let out the bile that had been accumulating for three months. Every day, on coming to the palace, he spewed out curses against his brother and heaped the prince himself with insults for allowing the hated tricolour flag to hang from the central balcony, for putting out lights to greet that ‘brigand's' victories.

The prince looked humble and agreed, exclaiming, ‘But what can I do about it? He's my uncle! Can I send him away?' He was careful, however, not to make any remonstrances to the duke, very glad that the great patriot's popularity should guarantee him his person and his home. But he made safety doubly sure; he talked against the duke to Don Blasco, against Don Blasco to the duke, certain of not being found out, as those two avoided each other like the plague. He also had to keep at bay Donna Ferdinanda, who had become a termagant after the fall of the legitimate Government, was for ever invoking its return and even went so far as to promise Saint Barbara a votive lamp if she threw all her thunderbolts against the betrayers. She demanded that the young prince be taken away from a monastery so infested by revolutionaries, and she adjured her little nephew, when the latter came to see her on holiday, ‘Don't risk talking to those enemies of God or I'll never look
you in the face again!' Consalvo's reply was, ‘Yes, Excellency!' as it was to the duke when the latter said to him, ‘Fine soldiers, those Garibaldini, eh?…'

The boy's shoulders were still smarting from that beating for spying; now he was following the example of his uncle the Prior, who enjoyed the confidence of the out-and-out pro-Bourbon Abbot and was meanwhile very popular with the revolutionaries … What did the young prince care about Bourbon or Savoy? He wanted to get away from the Novitiate; that was why he had a secret rancour against his father, who had not allowed him to do so.

Anyway, even with the revolution and liberty and Victor Emmanuel and abolition of superfine bread, at San Nicola there was no joking about privileges. In those very days the Giulente family had recommended to the Abbot a distant cousin of theirs, a young man who had been orphaned at Syracuse and come to Catania to become a Benedictine. This Luigi was a complete contrast to his cousin Benedetto. Not only was he against the revolution, but he had true fear of God and a great vocation for the monastic state. The Abbot, considering the nobility of his family proved, had taken him under his own protection and entered him in the Novitiate. There his noble companions, without distinction of party, made fun of him, jeered at him, played all sorts of tricks on him, considering him unworthy of being among them. And the monks, even the liberal Fathers, turned up their noses; Victor Emmanuel was all right; annexation and constitution even better; but to renounce their privileges and be quite indiscriminate, that was really a bit too much!

The annexation question and how to vote on it was agitating public opinion then; some wanted to confide the mandate to an elected assembly, others were for direct suffrage. Every day with the Governor of the city and Don Lorenzo Giulente and the Liberal leaders, the duke upheld a plebiscite. ‘The people must be left free to pronounce. Their own fate is in question! You see what's been done in the rest of Italy!…' This advice increased his popularity a thousandfold, but drew on him, more violently than ever, Don Blasco and Donna Ferdinanda's hatred and even Don Eugenio's criticism.

The cavaliere, having lost hope of excavating Massa Annunziata, had thought up a new idea: to get himself nominated university professor. Were there not a number of nobles in such posts, which were both decorous and gentlemanly? He had his eye particularly on the chair of history. His archaeological knowledge, his little work on
A Sicilian Pompeii
, were surely titles enough. To have an even better one, he was now writing:
A Chronological History of the Uzeda Viceroys, Lieutenants-General of the Aragonese Kings in the Trinacria
. Being a Gentleman of the Bedchamber, he did not show himself around much, but, sure that the revolution would be crushed at any moment, he too inveighed against the duke.

‘What's all this about the people! If only the Viceroys could return from the next world! If they heard these heresies, saw one of their descendants join the mob!'

Don Cono, Don Giacinto, Don Mariano, all the parasites shook their heads in sorrow at such a degeneration, but they also tried to placate the just anger of purists by suggesting that the duke's liberalism was just for show, a political necessity of the moment; it was impossible that, in his heart, a son of a Prince of Francalanza, one of those Uzeda, who owed everything to legitimate dynasties, should support anarchy and usurpation!

‘So much the worse!' screamed Don Blasco. ‘I can understand a resolute turn-coat, one who has the courage of his convictions! But if the Neapolitans return he'll go and kiss their arses! You'll see when they return!…'

But they did not return. Instead there arrived the news, in rapid succession, of Francis II's departure from Naples, Garibaldi's triumphal entry, the Piedmontese advance to meet the volunteers. At the Belvedere, where the prince returned at the end of September for his autumn visit, Lucrezia read bulletins of the Volturno battle mentioning Benedetto Giulente among the wounded. She did not cry, but shut herself in her room refusing food, deaf to the comforts of Vanna, who promised her that she would try to get news from his family. But the Governor had already applied to the army command and the Director of the Military Hospital at Naples, and the reply, which came before any more bulletins, was made public in a
Communiqué put up on the Town Hall: Volunteer Giulente was wounded by steel in the right leg and was in Caserta Hospital; his state was satisfactory and his recovery assured.

He arrived a fortnight later, on the eve of the plebiscite, with other Sicilian volunteers from the Volturno. His uncle Lorenzo, the Duke of Oragua, the Governor and the National Guard went to meet them. The young man was leaning on a stick, and waving a handkerchief with his left hand in reply to the greetings of the crowd. His father and mother wept with emotion; the duke gently violated their wishes and took the wounded man into his own carriage, which moved off towards the Town Hall amid waves of popular acclamation. From the balcony of the Town Hall, crowded with National Guards, returned exiles, patriots, notabilities, Benedetto glanced down over the square where not a grain of millet could have fallen, then raised his left hand. He already had an established fame as an orator; at that gesture they were silent.