by Peter Watson
“What time is it?”
“Four. Four o’clock on your birthday. Everybody’s asleep. Get dressed.”
Silvio knew his room by now, even in the dark. He found his trousers and his shirt. He was lucky in a way. Many of the others in the bivio were forced to sleep with goats under the bed. The stench was unbearable but it was preferable to having the goats stolen. Silvio found his boots, but he didn’t put them on, not yet. His eyes were adjusting to the gloom, and he could see Annunziata’s outline by the door. She wore a long white skirt with a white blouse. She was fair for a Sicilian, and tall. Silvio knew her skin was the color of almonds.
“Come on, Toto,” she urged, and was gone.
He turned left out of the bedroom doorway and went down the stairs leading to a yard, which was paved with stones. Annunziata was already waiting on the other side. Silvio paused. The yard was overlooked by several bedrooms, in two of which candles flickered. Whatever she said, some people were awake. He held on to his boots as, slowly, he edged his way around the yard, keeping to the shadows. But he made no sound, and very soon he was standing next to Zata, as he called her when they were alone. Here the rough ground began and he could put on his boots.
He tied the laces and stood up. As he did so Annunziata turned and led the way across the ground, in among the olive trees. Both of them knew the land here well, so Silvio had little trouble following. Indeed, he was almost certain he knew where she was heading—a small grassy ledge, occupied by a few stone ruins that had once been a temple in ancient times, when Sicily was ruled from Greece. Because a small spring leaked out of the mountain just here, there was enough grass to sit and enough tree cover so that in daylight you could see without being seen. Mosses and a few flowers also grew there in spring. They had discovered the spot after following some goats there one day, when they were both young children. By day you could look down on the bivio in perfect safety. They called it their giardino segreto, their secret garden. They often escaped in the early hours to watch the sun come up over the Massa Carcaciotto.
Nino kept guards on duty all night, but both Annunziata and Silvio knew where they were positioned, so they had no difficulty avoiding the lookout posts. It meant making an occasional detour, but the guards would undoubtedly have made them turn back had they been spotted. Worse, their escapade would have been reported to Nino and Bastiano.
But there were no mishaps, and after some forty minutes Silvio scrambled onto the ledge slightly ahead of Annunziata. They both turned on their backs and rested for a while, recovering from the climb. They lay talking, looking up at the stars, which were just beginning to fade as the edges of the day inched closer. How many times had they done this in the past, talked while they watched the sun come up, filling the mountainside with color? The early-morning chatter of the birds was the only other sound.
“What time of the day were you born? Do you know?” Annunziata had a clear voice and a clear skin, but she smelled of the straw mattresses they all slept on. Neither had risked washing. Silvio thought her words gurgled like water over stones.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”
Silvio was not sentimental. He hated to look back. When he did, all he saw was his dead parents. Bastiano and his wife, Smeralda, had worked hard at being Silvio’s parents. They always made a fuss of his birthday and saint’s day. But nothing they did could obliterate the raw fact that he was an orphan, less complete than other children, inescapably alone and forever maimed by the secret knowledge that if he had thought more quickly, acted sooner, he might have prevented his parents’ deaths. Not even Annunziata knew about that. One day, perhaps, she would, after he had proved himself … but not yet.
Nino’s comments that Sunday in Bivona had had a big effect on Silvio. You couldn’t inherit the title of Capo; it had to be earned. But Nino had mentioned it, and that meant he thought Silvio might one day make the grade. He was his father’s son, Nino’s nephew; his blood was right. He had balls—his trip to Palermo had proved it. But did he have the brains? And what sort of brains did you need? He had been struck by the episode with the oranges in the café at Bivona. “In Sicily even the oranges bleed,” Nino had said. Silvio reckoned he had a lot to learn.
Annunziata rolled over and looked at him. Her brown eyes were shadowy in the gloom. “I want to be sure it’s really your birthday before I give you your present.”
“In that case I was born a minute after midnight. But I don’t see any present.”
Annunziata eyed him. Then, without a word, she sat up and began to take off her blouse. A few pale strands of daylight slipped between the branches of the trees and threw soft shadows across her skin.
“Take your shirt off, too,” she whispered. She turned toward Silvio but kept one arm across her breasts, hiding them.
He did as he was told.
“I visited that old strega near Cammarata yesterday,” she said. The strega was a witch. “She gave me something to stop me getting pregnant. Now lie back and close your eyes.”
He did. The grass under his back felt both cool and scratchy. Then he felt Annunziata moving.
“Don’t look!” she hissed. “Promise?”
Silvio kept his eyes firmly closed. “I promise.”
Then something touched his abdomen. It was very light and soft and he was being touched in two places. Still keeping his eyes closed, he could scarcely believe what was happening. But at the same time he did believe it. She had promised him she would surprise him on his birthday. Annunziata was leaning over him, allowing her breasts to hang down and her nipples to brush his skin. Where had she learned such a thing?
Silvio had never—not once—imagined that when he and Annunziata finally made love, she would take control. He had always imagined making all the moves. This was very different.
She crisscrossed his abdomen and chest, moving her breasts first one way, then another, but gradually moving up his body. Still he kept his eyes shut.
For a moment her breasts left his skin and he felt bereft. But then, as he had dared to hope, Annunziata allowed one of her breasts, its nipple, to brush Silvio’s lips.
“Kiss me,” she whispered.
He did so.
“Bite me. Gently! Bite me.”
He bit, and a tiny moan hovered in her throat.
Silvio was confused. That moan seemed to tell him Annunziata was in pain when he bit her; but she found it pleasurable, too. He bit again. The same whimper was repeated.
Now Silvio opened his eyes and sought Annunziata’s other breast. He pulled her to him and buried his entire face in her flesh. “Zata,” he breathed. “Zata, Zata, Zata.” It was like being immersed in the Sosia River, where they had bathed naked as children. Annunziata had been a favorite of his father’s, too. He had called her his passero, his sparrow, because she had been so thin.
Annunziata allowed Silvio to feast for a while, then pushed him gently away. She stood up. Standing in front of him, without any hint of shame or modesty, she undid the fastening of her skirt and began to slide it down over her hips. There was little of the passero about her now. The daylight was strengthening all the time. To their right, and below them, the birdsong intensified. Annunziata did not hurry. She was wearing no undergarments. Silvio watched, still hardly believing that this was happening to him. Her thighs came into view, and the triangle of hair between her thighs. Then she let the skirt drop to her ankles and kicked it off. She stooped, rearranged the skirt on the ground, and lay back on it.
They had swum together as children, looked after the goats together on the slopes of Mount Catera. They had always sat together in church, received their first Mass together from Father Serravalle. They had bandaged each other’s legs when they had fallen, been punished together for fishing from the dangerous cliffs of the Capraria gorge. They had told lies on each other’s behalf. Now this.
Without standing, Silvio took off his boots and struggled out of his trousers. He slithered across to Annunziata and knel
t above her.
“No,” she whispered. “Not yet, Toto. Lie here.” She indicated that she wanted him to stretch out next to her.
He did so, putting an arm under her neck. She pulled him to her and they began kissing. With one hand she stroked his chest then rubbed a finger across his belly.
Silvio was becoming intensely aroused. They kissed more passionately now, and Annunziata drew the back of her hand down Silvio’s thigh. When she could reach no farther, she dug her nails into the flesh of his leg, and slowly began to draw them back up the inside of his thigh. Her nails hurt slightly, but to Silvio’s astonishment, he found that he liked it.
When her hand reached his groin, Silvio broke off kissing. Now it was his turn to groan and whimper. He looked at Annunziata in the pale light. She smiled and kissed him again, closing her eyes. Now, now was the moment he had dreamed of. Gently he touched her thigh, enthralled by her smoothness.
Suddenly, below them and to their right, rifle fire barked several times in rapid succession, the echo richocheting back and forth along the Indisi serra. The blunt boom of shotguns answered the rifles, together with the high-pitched crack of revolvers. Birds flew squealing into the air. Voices screamed.
The moment he heard the bark of the rifles, Silvio leaped to his feet, but Annunziata was sitting on his trousers. “It’s too late already,” she hissed. “Get down!”
He saw the sense in what she said and fell to his knees. They both inched forward to the lip of the ledge where they had been lying. It was not yet five-thirty. The shooting had stopped as suddenly as it had begun and there was now a lot of shouting. Silvio could see the bivio but not much else.
“Look!” whispered Annunziata urgently. “Men in uniforms.”
“Yes, I’ve seen them.”
“A regiment from Italy?”
“Those aren’t Sicilian uniforms.” Silvio looked at Annunziata. “Someone led them here. They knew where to come. We’ve been betrayed.”
That had to be true. All the nearby roads were guarded. Someone must have led the soldiers across the mountains and through the cordon, someone who knew where the lookouts were posted.
As Silvio and Annunziata watched, the square courtyard behind the main house of the bivio started to fill with people. The open side of the courtyard was already occupied by a line of soldiers, barring any escape. Each soldier was armed with a long rifle and wearing the green-and-beige colors of the Lazio Brigade.
One by one, people Silvio knew were manhandled into the courtyard. He could see his uncle Bastiano and his aunt Smeralda; Andreo, who looked after the horses; Ruggiero, Nino’s servant, who had a fine singing voice; Laura, one of the cooks; Elisavetta, the other cook; Pasquale, Paolo, and Gaspare, all children. Many others. They were being forced into the courtyard at gunpoint, some of them still half-asleep and half-naked. Silvio tried to count them—forty-one, forty-two, forty-three … He gave up. He could see Bastiano looking anxiously about the courtyard, possibly looking for Silvio himself.
“What are they doing now?” Annunziata asked gently, but Silvio had already noticed the movement.
“They’re separating the men from the women—oh, no!” Silvio watched, horrified, as the men were lined up against a wall, facing the wall. “They’re going to shoot them!” He started to get up again, but Annunziata pulled him back down.
“Sit still. You’ll get killed as well. We need to watch. We have friends … elsewhere.”
Annunziata was right. And in fact, the men weren’t shot. Each man had his hands tied behind his back. Then his feet were tied, with enough rope between the ankles to allow him to walk. Finally, another long piece of rope was passed around the neck of the first man, then led to the neck of the second man, and on down the line. The whole process took almost an hour. All this time the women and children were kept separate on the other side of the courtyard. Silvio grew restless, though he realized there was little he could do.
After another half an hour there was a second flurry of activity. More soldiers appeared, this time escorting two men, one in black, with a bandage around his head, the other wearing what Silvio knew to be a white linen suit.
“The English priest,” whispered Annunziata. “He’s been found.”
“And freed.” Silvio was secretly pleased by that. He had not been happy with the kidnapping in the first place.
“And the American artist,” added Annunziata. “They’ve given them one of our carts.”
They watched as Father Livesey and the artist—a bearded, red-haired man called Thomas Forrester—were helped into the cart by two soldiers. Silvio was not the only one to have been impressed by Forrester’s skill as a draftsman. Nino had not at first believed the American when he had said he was an artist, and had challenged him to make a likeness. The American had chosen Nino himself, and the result was so striking that Nino had used that paper to wrap up the priest’s scalp in the package that Silvio had taken to Palermo.
Suddenly, from one of the houses in the bivio, three soldiers exited in quick succession. They turned back to face the door with their weapons drawn, and after a short delay a figure appeared. He was smothered in chains—chains that joined his wrists, chains that joined his wrists to his ankles, his ankles to each other. There was even a chain attached to his neck with a lump of rock on the other end, which the figure was being forced to carry.
“Nino!” breathed Silvio. Again, he would have leaped to his feet had not Annunziata held on to him tightly.
Nino’s daughter spoke calmly. “They’re leaving. We need to know which way they are going. Are they walking or taking the big cart?”
They watched in silence as a second and more cumbersome cart was wheeled into the courtyard and a mule made ready—the same mule Silvio had ridden to Palermo.
“Now we can go,” said Annunziata, getting up.
“Shouldn’t we wait till they leave?”
“They’re taking the cart, so they need to stick to the roads. Which means they will either take the Palermo road at Prizzi or head for Trapani.”
“Trapani? It’s very small.”
“But it’s a port. They can sail to Rome from there. If they take my father to Palermo, there could be all sorts of problems. We have relatives and friends in Palermo—they must know that. Trapani would be easier from their point of view. Either way, at the speed they can travel they will need two nights on the road. We must go to the abbey. Come on, get dressed.”
Annunziata was right. She had thought faster than he had. Faster and better.
She handed Silvio his trousers. For a moment the memory of what had taken place earlier flooded back, and Silvio brushed Annunziata’s cheek with his fingers. Then he touched her breast. She looked up at him. “Toto, caro. An hour ago I would have given it to you. Now you must earn it.”
The Benedictine abbey at Quisquina was a gray-stone building rising three thousand feet into the sky, about two and a half miles east of Santo Stefano and a good twelve from the bivio. Traveling on foot, over rough terrain for most of the way, Annunziata and Silvio did not reach the abbey until just after noon, by which time the sun was baking the stones on the hillside. Monks working in the olive and almond orchards below the abbey waved to the young couple as they completed the last climb of their journey. They were both well known at Quisquina.
In Sicily, as everyone on the island was aware, the church had long been suborned by the Mafia, so much so that no one any longer thought it odd. The church was, after all, an important part of life, and itself a form of control. The abbot of Quisquina, Father Ignazio Serravalle, had not been at all pleased when Nino had kidnapped a Catholic priest, albeit a British one, and an American artist into the bargain. But he had said nothing. He and Nino were related by marriage, and had remained good friends over the years, ever since Nino had hidden at the abbey after the Orestano warehouse explosion.
Two monks were standing by the main gate of the building, talking, when Annunziata and Silvio arrived. The travelers looked so tir
ed and disheveled that they were shown straight into the abbot’s study. Quisquina was off the beaten track and did not have many visitors.
Ignazio Serravalle was a small, neat man, with deep-set eyes and prominent cheekbones. Although he was clean-shaven, his chin was always dark from the sheer density of follicles. His hair had streaks of silver, like the trails left by a snail.
Father Ignazio kissed Annunziata and shook hands with Silvio. He insisted they drink some water before they did anything else.
Silvio had always been in awe of the abbot. He seemed so certain of his God. For Silvio there was no such certainty. How could there be a God who allowed his parents to be killed so young? Why did the church lay so much emphasis on the family when this God had allowed his—Silvio’s—to be destroyed? He couldn’t make up his mind whether religious people were lucky, or foolish. But at least Father Ignazio did not deliver sermons on the blessedness of poverty, as so many priests did. Nor did he visit women who failed to give birth every year, as so many of his colleagues did, demanding to know why these women were denying God what was His. Ignazio Serravalle was no fool.
“Now,” said the abbot while they drank. “Why has Nino sent you? Is it urgent? You both look like chickens who’ve been chased by a fox.”
They told him what had happened. His face registered his dismay, then his anger, but he heard them out in silence. As soon as they had finished, he was decisive.
“The Englishman must not be harmed further. It was a mistake to take him in the first place. The same goes for the American artist. The soldiers will take the Trapani road. You are right, Annunziata, Palermo is too big and your father has too many friends there for the soldiers to risk going anywhere near it. Which means that Nino and the others must be taken through Chiusa and Sambuca.” He scribbled something on a piece of paper in front of him, a note to himself. Then he turned back. “You were right to come here. You have done well, though I will not ask why you two were not at home at five o’clock this morning.” He smiled as they both blushed. “It was just as well for all of us. Now, go and bathe. We will give you something to eat. When you come back I may have been able to work out a plan. We must hurry.”