The Viceroys (6 page)

The two courtyards looked like a fairground, with so many carriages lined up in the shade. Horses, with heads inside fly-bags, ruminated and every now and again grated at the cobbles with their hoofs. One by one, as dusk came on, servants of the relatives arrived, to await their masters and mistresses, and make lively chat, all about the event and its consequences. The women, seeing the confusion, and the coming and going and processions of messengers and letters, were all compassion for the young princess: ‘Poor lady! At this hour she must be in tortures …' In fact she suffered from a kind of nervous disease by which she could not bear to be in a crowd or touch things handled by others. Luckily her cousin was there to help. And others were reflecting philosophically: ‘Now if the prince's mother had died six years ago instead of today, that cousin, instead of helping the mistress, would be mistress here herself.' But the old princess had forbidden the marriage. The prince had obeyed his mother and married Donna Margherita Grazzeri. It must be said, though, that Donna Graziella had behaved very well. Married to the Cavaliere Carvano, she had been most affectionate to the aunt who had refused her as daughter-in-law, and treated her former lover's wife like a real sister. ‘And what about the prince? Maybe he remembers having loved her that way?…' But there were also many praising what the dead woman had done; she had turned out right in opposing that marriage, since the two former lovers had set their hearts at rest. ‘A great woman, the princess! After all, she did pull the family together when it was already bankrupt!' And all asked, ‘Who'll she leave things to?…' But who could know, as she had never confided in anyone at all, even her own children?… ‘If young Count Raimondo had been here, though!…'

Then the prince's partisans came out flatly with, ‘It should all go to the master, if that mad woman hasn't played another of her tricks!…' For she had loathed her eldest son and made
a favourite of young Count Raimondo, and the young count, though called again and again by his mother as she felt her end near, had not moved from Florence …

At the arrival of Fra' Carmelo, sent by the Abbot of San Nicola for news of Don Lodovico and Don Blasco, the conversation took another turn. Fra' Carmelo knew the palace well, as he had often accompanied Don Lodovico there when he was a novice, and all the servants loved him, he was so good, with his big face which looked as if it was about to burst, and its rolls of fat down the nape of the neck.

‘The poor princess!… What a tragedy!'

He praised the dead woman and recalled the days of Father Lodovico's novitiate, when, taking the boy home on leave, he would bring her little presents of fruit which the good lady had deigned to accept.

‘So easy-going!… So warmhearted!… Poor Father Lodovico! How he must have wept!'

The women exclaimed:

‘Imagine! A saint like him!…'

And Fra' Carmelo:

‘A saint indeed! There are no other monks like him. It's not for nothing he was made Prior at thirty!'

‘His Uncle Don Blasco is not like him, is he?…' said the head coachman suddenly, with a wink.

‘He's different. People can't all be alike, can they? But he's good too!… A gentleman too!…'

The conversation had just reached this point, when the distant jingle of harness bells made them all quiet. Giuseppe peered through the wicket and flung open the gates. The curricle of that morning entered at full tilt and from it alit the prince and Signor Marco, who was holding a valise, while all doffed hats and Don Blasco peered from the first-floor loggia.

The reappearance of the head of the family in the Yellow Drawing-room produced renewed emotion: sighs, sobs, mute handshakes. The prince was still pale and spoke with an effort, making sweeping gestures of distress.

‘Too late!… Nothing more to be done!… Till last night she was quite well, in fact ate a couple of eggs and drank a cup of milk with appetite … At dawn this morning, suddenly she
called out and …' he fell silent, as if unable to continue.

Signor Marco, having put the valise down, added:

‘The catastrophe was impossible to foresee … In the first moments, I hoped it was only a stroke … But alas, the sad truth …'

Chiara and Cousin Graziella wept. The Prior was deploring in particular that no priest had been present at her last moments, but Signor Marco assured him that she had confessed two days before and that the Vicar-General Ragusa had arrived in time to give her absolution. Meanwhile the prince on his side was saying:

‘We've improvised a mortuary chapel … All the flowers in the villa sent in from every side …'

‘What about Ferdinando?' asked Chiara.

‘Hasn't he come?… Ah!' he suddenly struck his forehead, ‘I was to go past and warn him … I quite forgot … Baldassarre!… Baldassarre!'

But in the middle of this Don Blasco, who had been eyeing the valise as if it contained contraband, pulled him by a sleeve and asked:

‘What about the Will?'

The prince's reply was in quite a different tone, no longer sorrowful, but very precise and scrupulous.

‘Signor Marco here,' he said, ‘has informed me that our mother's last wishes are deposited with the Notary Rubino. We will await, if you agree, the arrival of Raimondo and our uncle the duke. Meanwhile we have sealed up all that was to be found so as to render a strict account, at the proper time, to whoever it is due … But Signor Marco has a document about the funeral in his possession. I think this should be read out at once …'

And Signor Marco drew a piece of paper from his pocket and read out amidst deep silence:

Signor Marco, who had bowed respectfully at the passage relating to himself, lowered the sheet of paper. The prince, looking round at those present, said:

‘Our mother's wish is law to us. All will be done as she has laid down.'

‘In full and without exception …' confirmed the Prior, bowing his head.

Don Blasco was puffing like a bellows, and did not even wait
for the meeting to break up. Seizing the marchese by an overcoat button, he exclaimed:

‘More charades?… To the very last?… Making herself a figure of fun …'

Signor Marco had scarcely gone up to the administrative offices near his own little rooms, to give dependants appropriate orders, when persons waiting to see him appeared. The chandler of San Francesco came to offer him candles of the finest quality, worked in the Venetian mode, at six
tarì
; the music master Mascione brought a letter from Lawyer Spedalotti, begging Signor Marco to have the young composer's
Requiem
sung; Brusa, the painter, asked for the contract for decorations at the princess's solemn funeral.

‘How d'you know there'll be a solemn funeral?'

‘For a lady like the princess!'

‘Come back tomorrow …'

And Baldassarre called:

‘Signor Marco! Signor Marco!… The prince …'

But new petitioners arrived. No-one had yet said so, but it was known that the Princess of Francalanza could not go into the next world without much pomp and much spending of money, and all were hoping to earn some of it. Raciti, the first violin of the Municipal Orchestra, offered a funeral Mass composed by his son; on hearing that Mascione had a letter from Spedalotti he had rushed off to request a more weighty recommendation from Baron Vita; Santo Ferro, who was in charge of upkeep of the public gardens, hoped to be given charge of the floral decorations for the lying-in-state; but Baldassarre, from the courtyard, was calling out again:

‘Signor Marco! Signor Marco!… The prince!…' Signor Marco broke brusquely away from the petitioners:

‘Oh go to hell … I've other things to do now!'

On Saturday morning the Capuchin Church was like an ant-heap, with more people there than came to visit the Sepulchre even on Maundy Thursday. All night a din of hammers, axes and saws had come from the church and the windows had been blocked since the day before. Very early, in view of the curious crowds milling on terrace and steps, there had been
nailed over the great doors a huge draped curtain of black velvet with silver fringes, on which could be read in gilt lettering:

About ten o'clock, Don Cono Canalà, under the door, with nose in air, was explaining to the Prince of Roccasciano, amid elbowings of people constantly entering.

‘On the exterior you see, I didn't think it proper … to say too much … Greatest simplicity.
For the Soul … Obsequies
 … I think that in its concision … quite by chance …'

But the shoves, kicks, cries of the sightseeing crowd did not allow him any consecutive speech. People were pouring torrentially all around, pushing into the church, overturning the beggars crouched down beside doors and gates who had come to make some money.

‘Just the name … it occurred to me quite by chance …'

Eventually Don Cono decided to enter too, but, separated from his companion, he was drawn, like a coffee bean in a grinder, by the human turbine squeezing into the church through the narrow entry.

It was dark, because of the veiled windows and the black drapery covering walls, hanging in the chapel arches and swathed along cornices. On a platform raised six or seven steps above the floor and surrounded by a treble row of candles, rose the catafalque; the four sides a truncated pyramid draped with ivy and myrtle, and bearing in the centre, designed in fresh flowers, four great coats-of-arms of the Francalanza House. On top of the pyramid two silver angels kneeling on one leg were waiting to bear the coffin. At the lower corners of the catafalque, on silver tripods, were set four torches as thick as poles, with escutcheons in cardboard tied halfway up. Six lackeys in eighteenth-century liveries, red, black and gold, motionless as statues, with freshly shaved faces, were each bearing one of the
ancient standards of alliance. After the lackeys came twelve professional mourners, dressed in black cloaks and with disordered hair, standing all around the catafalque holding handkerchiefs to dry their tears. But it needed a lot of elbowing and walking on neighbours' toes and bruising ribs and kicking heels and sweating shirts to reach all this, around which a crowd of workmen, servants and women were standing ecstatically admiring as they waited for the funeral procession, the platform's false marble, the cardboard urns propped on the steps, the silver paper tears dropping from black veils.

‘A fine job!… Never seen a better!… Real lords they are!… They know how to do things!… Twelve professional mourners!… Not even for the Pope's funeral!… The body's already at the embalmers!' And Vito Rosa, the prince's barber, explained, ‘As soon as it was brought down from the Belvedere it was taken to the palace and carried round the apartments for the last time, as the custom is. The bier was born on shoulders without poles … and all the relations behind, servants with lit torches, like a procession!…' And the waiting women exclaimed, ‘A tile under her head … As if she had any lack of velvet cushions?… Ah, that's for greater penance, to go with the habit of San Placido, don't you see?'

But people pressed in behind them and all talk was interrupted. First arrivals had to give up their places and move to beneath the musicians' gallery, set up by the organ. It had four rows of benches and the necks of double-basses could be seen jutting from the highest, but the seats were still empty. Or they went round the other way, towards the chapel of the Blessed Uzeda, resplendent with votive lamps. And there they stopped, once out of the crush, to look at the hollow altar where could be seen, through glass, an ancient leather-covered coffin enclosing the saintly woman's body. Then they tried to go back towards the middle of the church to read the inscriptions attached to the other altars, but the crowd was now compact as a wall. Don Cono Canalà, after glancing over the whole pyre, had made three or four attempts on his own to approach one of the epigraphs, but had not succeeded in pushing far enough ahead to read them. With his head back, his hat dented with all the shoving, his feet trampled, his shirt asweat, he was
tacking like a boat in a storm. By politeness, and by saying ‘Please!… I beg you!… Excuse me!' he finally got within sight of the first placard, where he read: