I was certainly as culpable as everyone else. I could not resist the temptation of being shown around the ruins of Pompeii by such a distinguished and knowledgeable guide, even if his heavily accented English did become a little incoherent as the day wore on, and even without such treasures to view there was more than enough to satisfy the most exigent Grand Tourist.
Both Mrs Bennet and Kitty pronounced the shops of the Via Toledo to be as excellent as any in Bond Street, and much cheaper, as were the theatres and other places of entertainment, which particularly delighted Mrs Morland with their operas and concerts.
I had thought that the other gentlemen of the party might not wish to prolong our stay, but Golightly happily spent his days wandering from Caravaggio to Caravaggio, the Prince’s introduction procuring him entry to all sorts of places that might otherwise have been closed.
Even Doctor Morland pronounced himself much delighted with our Prince’s friend, Giovanni di Sangro, another prince, whose Palazzo Sansevero housed a collection of ‘anatomical machines’ the like of which had never been seen on our side of the channel.
“I cannot thank you too much for the introduction, your highness,” he said, at dinner after he had returned from his first visit there. “The delineation of the blood vessels and other processes is outstanding. It is a pity that the means by which these artefacts were obtained should now be unknown.”
“He was a great man for keeping his secrets, was old Prince Raimondo,” replied our host. “They say that he injected a secret fluid into two corpses, which dissolved all the flesh and bone, leaving only the viscera, the arteries and the veins.”
“Do you mean to say, Prince,” enquired Mrs Morland, who is the least squeamish lady I have ever met, “that your friend’s grandfather was a grave-robber?”
“Not at all, bella signora. It is generally agreed that he had these two corpses in his house, but no-one knows where they came from. Only his enemies say that he obtained them by strangling two of his servants, but I think that unlikely, since who would ever consent to serve such a master after such a deed. But the Palazzo Sansevero has had a bad reputation ever since that business with the Prince of Venosa.”
This was all getting too much for the ladies, I could see, so I made haste to change the subject.
“If I may be so bold as to say so, your highness, there seem to be a great many princes in Naples. Your distinguished self, of course, but also your friend di Sangro, and their highnesses of Salina and Lampedusa have been gracious enough to honour us with their presence, and it almost seems that there are princes on every corner, but never a sign of royalty. Pray, tell me, may we expect to see anything of the Court of the two Sicilies while we are here.”
Our host stopped short in his discourse, and sniffed, disdainfully.
“We do not mix,” he said. “The Catapani were princes in the Mezzogiorno before Charles of Anjou came, before the Normans came. Why should we dance attendance upon a Bourbon whose family have barely been a hundred years in Italy?”
It seems that I had struck a sore point, and I was grateful when Kitty broke in to ask the Prince’s opinion of her new silk mantua.
But eventually even I began to think that it was time we were on our way. When I broached the subject to Mrs Bennet, however, I found that she had not yet abandoned her intention never to set foot on a ship again.
“Could Lydia not be persuaded to bring the children here to see us?” she suggested. “After all, it is not so very far, and I am sure a holiday would do her good. I never heard much about this Corfu place, and I am sure that the accommodations and the shops and everything must be far better here than she has been used to among all those convicts and felons and so on.”
“The convicts were in Australia,” I replied. “Corfu has its own population, of Greek extraction, although I believe there is a large Venetian element.”
“Well, there you are, you see. She would be far better off here than among all those foreigners. The children too, I make no doubt. I am sure you could persuade them if you chose to, but you are always so disagreeable these days. You think of nothing but your old ruins.”
“I think of many other things, my dear, among them how we are ever to get home if you will not travel by sea. Do you propose to walk across the Channel?”
“I suppose there is no help for it, to get home, but I must insist upon the shortest sea crossing there is, even if it means travelling across your dreaded Alps and traversing France. What is so terrible about the Alps, after all? We were surrounded by mountains in Derbyshire, were we not? But I will have no more sea travel. It would be the death of me.”
I was tempted to retort that what passes for a mountain in Derbyshire would almost be a valley in the Alps, but it would have served no real purpose. Instead, I remarked upon a recent excursion we had all made.
“And yet you got willingly enough upon the boat to Capri the other day, when we visited that picturesque island?”
“That is a different thing altogether. We were never out of sight of land, and, indeed, we could see where we were going from the outset, and that the weather was calm all the way to our destination.”
“Then if a way could be found to cross to Corfu without losing sight of land, should you be prepared to take it?”
“Is there such a way? I should like to see Lydia and the children, but I do think it most unreasonable of her not to come here to visit us.”
“Let me look into the matter, my dear. I have a vague notion that we may see Corfu yet, but I must make enquiries.”
“Oh, Mr Bennet, you are so good and so clever, I am sure you will find a way if anyone can.”
I was not quite so sure myself, but thought that something might be managed. I should need to consult our local expert on the geography of the Italian peninsula and the waters of the Adriatic.
Chapter Eleven :Salerno to Salento
His Highness did not disappoint. Though perfectly ignorant himself, he knew a man who knew a man, and so on, and but three days later we found ourselves accompanying him to his country villa, near Salerno.
“Turiddu, my chief groom there, will take you on to the Salento,” his Highness remarked as we bumped along in his enormous carriage. “They are all rascals, these Pugliesi, and he is a prime one himself. But he knows all the shipmasters, and will be able to get you a good rate. He will cheat you, but he will see that no-one else does, and he will keep his cheating reasonable if he values his position with me. You would find it easier to secure a passage from Bari, where my ancestors ruled when there was still an emperor in Constantinople, but we must respect the sensibilities of la bella signora Bennetta. Therefore you must cross from nowhere but Otranto.”
“Otranto!” cried Kitty, “Is there truly an Otranto, your highness? And does it really have a castle? Shall we see spectres stepping out of picture frames and giant helmets appearing from nowhere? I never thought to have such fun. It will be horrid, I dare say, but I am sure my darling will protect me. He is a clergyman, after all. Who better to deal with undead spirits?”
“Ah, but these are Catholic spirits, bellissima signora Caterina, and may not attend to an Anglican priest. Then what should you do?”
Such philosophical speculations kept the ladies occupied for the chief of the journey, and kept me from consulting the Prince on the practicalities of obtaining passage on a ship from that infamous port until much later.
My opportunity came after we had arrived at His Highness’s country house. I suppose, at any rate, that that is what I should call it, although it was more of a luxurious hunting lodge with farm buildings attached. While the ladies were doing whatever it is that ladies do that makes them so late in coming down to dinner, I asked him for his advice on what to do when we reached our chosen port of embarkation.
“Caro signor Benneto,” he replied, “you are a gentiluomo of much learning. You should find no troubles dealing with these rascally seamen. From Otranto, they tell me, you may leave port in the evening and f
ind the island of Corfu in sight the following morning, or if not the island itself, then at least the mainland, now, alas, filled with heathen Turks now the Serenissima is no more, and Ragusa, to keep them down. La bella signora need have no fear of them, however, being English. But you must make speed to cross, for it is late in the stagione, and soon may come the Tramuntana, when you may find no capitano to take you across the straits. Turiddu will see that you find a ship, if a ship is to be found, and once you are there, your son the great English General will surely see that you are welcomed as befits a gentleman of your quality. But if you intend to go exploring further, in search of your antique heroes and their rests, I give you one word of advice. Find yourself a good dragoman, and let him do all the work. He will cheat you, too, but not as much as others would without him to act for you.”
Just how good this advice proved to be very quickly became evident. I had begun to compliment myself on how quickly I had begun to have some understanding of Italian, and how like Latin it really was, but our new guide spoke such a thick jargon as to be quite impenetrable. Even Mrs Morland admitted that she rarely caught as much as one word in two, and as we progressed further south and east the local people we encountered became more and more incomprehensible. We became as babes in arms, dependent entirely upon our – as we hoped – benevolent guardian.
As far as I can tell, he dealt with us reasonably honestly. The inns we stopped at en route may well all have been owned by his cousins, and the prices they charged were perhaps a little inflated, but their accommodation and food were perfectly acceptable.
The ladies, perhaps, were a little squeamish. At Bari, the largest place at which we stopped, and one of the few which I would dignify with the name of city, they served us a dish of the boiled pastry the Italians call pasta. We had become used to this, of course. In Italy it is impossible to avoid, forming part of almost every meal. Mrs Bennet remarked upon the unusual shape of the pieces of this material (I suppose I must call it food, though it is nothing like any food we know in England) served up to us, and the unaccustomed flavour of the meat sauce in which it was smothered.
“These shapes remind me of something,” she remarked, “as does the taste, but I cannot think quite what.”
Turiddu, who was passing at the time, now surprised us all by revealing a previously unsuspected knowledge of English.
“Is famous plate of the place,” he said, smiling from ear to ear, “orrechiette con cavallo. Small ears with ‘orse.”
At this Kitty screamed, dropped her fork, and ran from the room, closely followed by Mrs Bennet.
The rest of us carried on eating, whether from a spirit of scientific enquiry or of mere gluttony I decline to speculate. I will own that I was too busy wondering what I had let slip in the hearing of our supposedly monoglot guide even to notice what I was eating.
That incident was typical of our journey through a strange country that seemed hardly to form part of civilized Europe. We passed through one place which appeared to be inhabited principally by troglodytes, and another where the houses seemed no more than haphazard heaps of flat stones.
Turiddu pointed these out with evident pride, and went to great lengths, with much waving of arms and scratching of palms, to explain their significance.
I will not say it was all Greek to me, for Greek would have been much clearer, but according to the indispensible Mrs Morland it was something to do with a tax payable only by householders. When the taxman came round, the locals always got word in advance, and would pull down their own homes, so as not to have to pay this injurious impost, rebuilding them when the pernicious official had passed on.
We stayed in one of these strange, pyramidal dwellings for one night, attended by one of Turiddu’s many cousins, of course, and found it no worse than many of our lodgings en route. I doubt very much if such a form of construction would answer in the English climate, however.
So we progressed, through Brindisi, where we saw the end of the famous Appian Way, and Lecce, where the main streets are so carved about in all their facades with such grotesque decoration as to resemble something by Mr Grinling Gibbons, but in stone rather than wood, and eventually reached the Salento peninsula at the farthest extremity of which lay our goal.
Turiddu seemed less confident in this region, as if he had, at last, run out of cousins. By now he had become relatively garrulous when he saw that we did not mock his attempts at the English language, and treated us to commentaries upon the places we were passing. It must be admitted, however, that his version of English was often quite as unintelligible as his Italian.
It seemed that we could not pass through a village in this region without it incurring some censure.
“They are streghe here,” he would mutter, “witches, eretici, schismatici, ortodossi. They not follow il Papa, not talk Italiano. Greci schismatici.”
I tried to draw him out on this point, believing it to be evidence of remnants of the culture of the Eastern Empire in this unknown corner of the west, but my efforts always foundered on the impenetrable wall of linguistic incompatibility.
As we rode down into the little port of Otranto, however, our journey’s end, at least for now, our guide’s face cleared.
“We back among Christiani now,” he said, with his old, gleeful smile. “I ‘ave cousin ‘ere keeps good inn, very clean, very quiet. Is buon’ albergo, ha!”
Seeing that this was lost upon us, however, he was obliged to explain.
“I make joke, see! My cousin has good inn. E buon’ albergo, see! He my cousin but he cousin too of prince Catapani-Buonalbergho. Ha ha!”
It seemed so churlish to disappoint him that we were all obliged to feign merriment, and passed through the streets of Otranto down to the harbor like a pack of cackling lunatics, since such a good joke could not be left to lie, but must be repeated by its perpetrator until we had all dismounted, and then repeated again to the cousin-innkeeper.
Otranto itself was a disappointment to me, if not to Kitty. It does have a castle, a lumpish mediaeval pile with three towers and long curtain walls, all now in romantic ruin although it was only built little more than three centuries ago and must have been old-fashioned when first erected. I am not at all romantic myself, however, and could not be content with wandering through it from morn to night, as Kitty and Mrs Bennet delighted in doing, speculating on this and that chamber as if their horrid novel were real. They even infected Mrs Morland, and dragged the parson and the doctor along with them.
I was left to attend upon Turiddu while he, supposedly, found us a passage to Corfu. This took more time than I had thought likely, largely because of the town’s true history.
Shortly before the castle was built, Otranto suffered a disastrous raid from the Turks, who killed three fourths of the population and carried off most of the rest into slavery, leaving only a tenth part of the former inhabitants. The town (or rather, city, for it boasts a cathedral and an archbishop, no less, in a settlement little larger than Meryton) has never really recovered from this event, and the cathedral houses hundreds of skulls said to be those of citizens who refused to convert to Mohammedanism and were beheaded upon the spot.
Consequently, port though it is, its commerce is not large, and it is frequented mostly by fishing boats neither capable of carrying passengers nor prepared to voyage all the way to Corfu, for all that the other side of the strait can be seen from the castle walls in clear weather.
The impending onset of the winter storms did not make our plight any easier. I should have remembered the Etesian winds, and the effect they have had on shipping since the time of Ulysses himself, and planned my journey more thoroughly, but I am become impatient in the knowledge that I no longer have all the time in the world to expend.
I became more impatient still as time progressed, and found myself fully prepared to be overjoyed when at last Turiddu returned one evening with news of a ship.
“Is all settled,” he told me, “you go tomorrow, or, maybe the next day. A
lcione is good ship, take you anywhere, has number one capitano, very good, very cheap.”
“Don’t tell me,” I replied. “He is your cousin, I dare say.”
“He not my cousin. Why you think he my cousin?You think I have cousins everywhere? He my wife’s brother’s wife’s cousin only, but he jolly good capitano, he take you to your son the Generalissimo in Corfu subito. You tell milady, tell bella signora Kitty e la dottoressa to pack their baggages for we go domani.”
Chapter Twelve : The Wine-Dark Sea
And so we set off, ep’oinopa ponton, as Homer himself has it, the very sea traversed by Ulysses and Telemachus and Aeneas.
We did not go domani a word which in theory means ‘tomorrow’, but in practice signifies merely ‘not today’. I had already learned so much of the Italian language and the Italian character for this not to surprise me, and resisted all female urgings to make haste with my packing to such good effect that it was all done for me by the very females who were later to discover last-minute omissions in their own preparations. What did surprise me was our departure on the day following. I was not expecting such unseemly haste, and had not yet completed my inspection of the mosaics in the cathedral, having yet to find the depiction of King Arthur urged upon me by my host in Naples.
Turiddu bustled us aboard the Alcione, however, straight after breakfast, and made a point of introducing me to the captain as “Signor Bennetto, gran milord Inglese,” before launching into a harangue so rapid and impenetrable that even Mrs Morland could say no more than that he was threatening all kinds of dire consequences if harm came to us under the captain’s care.
“Capitano Beppo is good capitano,” were his last words to me, “but ‘e not my cousin, remember.”
Then he climbed back into the boat which had conveyed us aboard, clinking noticeably with the coins bestowed on him by all – including, of course, the shipmaster, and we were at leisure to look about us.
Our Neighbours' Sport Beyond the Seas Page 8