Orphan of the Olive Tree - Historical Romance Saga

by Patzer, Mirella Sichirollo

  “Nothing other than to savor the earth beneath my feet, feel the warm breeze through my hair, and put in a good day’s work in our vineyards and orchards.” Carlo contemplated the simplicity of his desires and stopped massaging his leg.

  “You saved my life.” Enrico’s voice trembled with emotion.

  Guilt seized Carlo. “No, I failed you. For the rest of my life, I will bear the regret that I was not close enough to block that blow.”

  “If you had not warned me, I would be dead now. Do not blame yourself. It is the misfortune of war. You could not have prevented what fate had decided for me.” Enrico reached out and rested his blood-encrusted hand on Carlo's shoulder.

  “And I am grateful to you, Enrico. All my life, you have guided my decrepit foot into a stirrup or fetched something for me whenever the ache grew unbearable.” Carlo smiled at his friend’s many kindnesses.

  “We are blessed to have each other. In honor of our friendship and for saving my life, I want our families to be as one.”

  “They already are.”

  Enrico paused. “But I want more, something stronger to last our entire lives and beyond. Let us vow to wed our firstborn children to each other.”

  “Done, as long as we have sons and daughters,” Carlo said with a grin. “We can name our children after one another, too.”

  Enrico let out a laugh. “I have no doubt we will. Let’s swear a blood oath on it before God and make it good until death.”

  Carlo hesitated, and then fumbled for his dagger, removing it from the sheath at his side.

  Enrico raised his left arm. “Cut me.”

  Carlo shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “You have to. I can’t see to do it myself.”

  Reluctantly, Carlo held the blade against the inside of Enrico’s left forearm and paused.

  “Mind that the cut goes deep enough to leave a scar to forever remind us of our pledge,” Enrico said.

  With great care, Carlo pulled the blade across his friend’s skin until a deep, vibrant streak of crimson appeared. Enrico had not flinched. Carlo took the blade and made an incision no less deep or long on his own left forearm. It stung only a little. They touched their wounds together to mix their blood as Enrico uttered the oath, which Carlo repeated.

  Before God we swear:

  As the sea to the river, as the seed to the tree,

  As the stone to the mountain, I bond you to me.

  From this day forward, our families shall be one.

  A curse on our families if this vow be undone.

  We blend our blood in honor’s eternal flame.

  Fruit of my loins shall carry your name.

  Carlo ripped a strip of cloth from his tunic and bound their wounds to quell the blood flow. “First born shall marry first born. You now have my vow and I will do everything in my power to make it so.”

  “As will I, amico mio. As will I, my friend. Come, let’s go home,” Enrico said. “If I’m lucky, my wife will recognize my new face and won’t run off frightened.” He grimaced when Carlo helped him stand. “In a year or two, God willing, our children will be born and one day we will wed them to each other.”

  A pale half-moon began its ascent over the fertile slopes of the valley as Carlo helped Enrico stand. The knowledge that their blood oath, a vow so sacred it could never be broken, would forever bind their families enveloped them both with a sense of peace.

  With two good eyes and three good legs between them, Carlo led Enrico home on the last leg of their journey, certain that a future, rich with promise, laid gloriously before them.

  1

  Spring AD 1261

  Enrico’s screams wrenched Felicia from a deep sleep. His limbs flailed about in defense against some unrevealed terror. Spasms shook his body as he coughed and bellowed and struggled to breathe.

  She reacted quickly, by rote, hushing him with a soothing tone, reaching for his arms to still them lest he accidentally harm her. “Hush now, Enrico. You are dreaming again, amore mio.”

  She murmured loving words, stroking his arms, his hair, his face, until she felt his panic calm and his breathing slow. When his consciousness returned, she held him tight, his disfigured countenance against her breast, until he shed the memories of battle his mind had conjured: demons that never left, in night or day. With no words spoken, she held him thus until sleep took him once more.

  When the first rays of dawn lightened the room, Felicia raised herself up on her elbow. Enrico lay to her right. She studied his profile – the perfect side of his face. The handsome man who had so gallantly departed for war was vastly different from the man who had come back to her. The horrible scar dented the entire left side of his face. He had lost his left eye too. His physical wounds had healed, but the wounds to his spirit lingered on, forever changing him.

  Dreadful dreams now plagued him; vestiges of some traumatic event he had survived that haunted him every time he tried to sleep, images he kept buried deep within himself.

  Her destiny was wrapped up with Enrico, whom she loved above all else. With time, she prayed he would heal, in body and in spirit. Enrico had always wanted a family and she was determined to give him one. She was alone in the world now except for her husband; he was everything to her. How they both longed to fill their large villa with the laughter of children. Family meant everything to her and Enrico. A child, or two, would be the greatest gift she could give him. Family! Except for their love for one another, little else mattered in their world.

  2

  Autumn AD 1261

  A solitary shaft of morning sunlight pierced through the center of the closed window shutters, casting a serene radiance into the bedchamber. Buried beneath the bed covers, Felicia studied her sleeping husband. Enrico snored lightly, one naked leg flung above the rumpled bed covers. She nestled closer to him.

  Over the past six months, her husband’s health had returned. Her eyes fell upon their clothes on the floor, hastily discarded in frenzied passion. A smile arose on her lips at the memory of last night’s lovemaking. How she adored him. Her eyes lingered over his hard chest, his well-muscled arms, and his strong legs. His fair hair, the color of light sand, spilled in fawn-colored waves across the embroidered pillow. A beard now covered the lower portion of his shattered left cheek. The moment he awoke, he would don the black eye patch to conceal his empty eye socket and the upper part of his scarred countenance. Even that did not detract from his handsomeness in her eyes.

  She leaned over and gently pressed her lips against his disfigurement. She traced a feather-light finger across the rutted grooves and undulations of his scar. Her chest swelled with the love she bore him. His mutilated appearance did not bother her in the least. In fact, she loved him even more for it because he had earned it courageously in battle. Enrico was a good, honest man who worked hard and provided everything she needed to be happy. Mutual kindness governed their days while heated ardor dominated their nights. She ran her hands over her flat belly and mouthed a prayer of hope for the baby they both longed to create.

  From their very first moments together, she and Enrico had known utter happiness. An only child, and raised in a loving home, Felicia still grieved the deaths of her parents who perished after an unexplained fever swept through their town. A kindly aunt had taken her in, but she died only a month after Felicia married Enrico. Now no other family remained.

  Enrico had returned from the battle in the Monteaperti hills, blind, injured, and seized by a dark melancholy she could not dispel. She had feared not only for his life, but also for hers should he not recover. The local healer had assured her that Enrico would recuperate fully from his physical injuries and with patience and time, so would his despondency. Felicia clung to that hope, nursing him with such attentiveness that she rarely left his side even to eat or sleep.

  She sat up, swung her legs over the bed’s side, and stood. She crossed the room to a dressing table and ran a comb through her disheveled tresses. From the small basin she had set
out the night before, she splashed cool water onto her face.

  Fear of being alone in the world had sparked her need to bear children. Months passed as Felicia waited patiently for the wounds on Enrico’s face to heal and for his one good eye to recover its sight. As his health improved, they made love with frequency and eagerness. To her dismay, however, despite numerous couplings, she failed to conceive.

  Knowing how badly they both longed for a baby, Felicia decided to resort to stronger methods. Today was Tuesday, the day the women gathered at the river to wash their laundry. She would seek their advice.

  Felicia rubbed a mint leaf against her teeth then popped it into her mouth to chew. She dressed and gathered up the basket of soiled linens in the corner. With a final glance at her sleeping husband, she picked up last night’s discarded clothes and stuffed them into the basket. Shutting the door, she descended the narrow stairs into the kitchen. After tossing a bar of soap into the laundry basket, she headed to the creek.

  Large rocks lined both sides of a clear running stream. In this spot, the women of Costalpino had gathered for centuries to wash linen, clothes, and bedding, breaking into song or sharing gossip as they scrubbed. The pleasant companionship was something Felicia looked forward to every week. She set down her laundry basket and sat on a patch of grass to remove her leather shoes and hose. After pulling up her sleeves, she gathered the basket again and made her way to the water’s edge to a rock that jutted over the creek. The women crowded into the small area that boasted the deepest water and boulders against which they beat the soil from their wash items.

  From the corner of her eye, Felicia noticed old Agnese ambling down the brush-lined dirt path. No one knew her true age. Despite her frail, stooped condition, she attended every washing day, unwilling to relinquish the familiarity of an old chore, or miss all the rich gossip exchanged. Agnese set down her laundry basket, glanced about, and frowned. No one made room for her. Felicia knew the women did not take her seriously, for her items were few; her husband had died and her children had all moved away.

  Felicia gave the old woman a smile and pushed her basket to the side. “There is plenty of room beside me, Agnese.”

  The old woman offered her a toothless smile as Felicia helped her up onto the rock.

  Now that all the women had begun dipping their clothes in the water, Felicia decided to broach the subject of her infertility. “Enrico and I have been married for two years now, but we still haven’t conceived. Does anyone know of anything that can help us?”

  The women all stopped what they were doing and exchanged looks.

  Agnese put down the old tattered chemise she was about to dip into the water. “Feed your husband celery, and plenty of it. It is said to help a man become as firm as the stalks themselves.”

  Felicia decided the advice, coming from such a small woman who had given birth successfully to four, brawny sons, had merit.

  “On Mondays, eat only chickweed and carrots,” suggested Giovanna, the baker’s wife, as she beat a soapy, twisted blanket against a jagged rock. “The vegetables are a powerful combination. It worked for me and there is no reason why it will not work for you.”

  Chickweed grew in abundance in the meadows around their village. The beautiful, delicate plant was one of Enrico’s favorites.

  “Add it to your salad, or to soft creamy cheese with a little basil and thyme.” Giovanna raised the fingers of her right hand to her lips and then flayed them wide with the smack of a kiss.

  “That is a wonderful idea,” Felicia said as she reached into her basket to remove a tablecloth and dipped it into the water. “I’ll take my herb basket with me to church in Sant’Andrea Montecchio next Sunday and collect some on the way home. That way it will be fresh for the next day.” Giovanna looked pleased and gave Felicia a hearty smile.

  Felicia lifted up the hem of her long gown and tied it into a knot above her knees to keep it from touching the water. Then she waded into the water and soaked the tablecloth. She spread it out against a rock and rubbed soap against it.

  “By wearing amber, I bore eleven children.” Maria, the butcher’s wife reached into her pocket and withdrew a necklace of amber beads with the largest stone at its center. “Here, take mine.” Maria laughed as she splashed through the water and hung the necklace around Felicia’s neck. After adjusting it, she stepped back to admire the effect.

  Felicia examined the generous gift. Against the morning sunlight, the amber glistened with shards of copper and gold. “Grazie, Maria!” Caressing the beads, which already started to grow warm from the heat of her body and the brilliant sun, she said, “I will wear it every day and promise to return it as soon as I am expecting.”

  “Oh no! Please, keep it! If I never see the cursed thing again I will consider myself fortunate.” Maria clasped her growing belly with both hands and looked up at the heavens shaking her head.

  The women chortled at Maria’s jest. Felicia pounded the soapy tablecloth against the rock then raised it up in both of her hands, rubbing it between her fists to scrub out the wine stain.

  “Wish for a child upon a falling star,” Carmella, the blacksmith’s wife, recommended, tossing a wrung-out bed linen into her laundry basket.

  A falling star! Of course! Felicia remembered when her own grandmother had given her mother the same advice. Sadly, it had not worked and Felicia remained an only child.

  “Bah, it is all foolishness. Nothing will help,” added Prudenza Benevento, Felicia’s closest neighbor and the wife of her husband’s dearest friend, Carlo. On the outside, there was no denying the Sicilian woman was a great beauty with ebony hair and perfect features, but inside, a streak of callousness marred her personality. Her lusterless eyes seemed especially void of warmth this day. “If the fates have decreed that it is not meant to be, there is nothing you can do to change that. Best learn to accept things the way they are. You may never bear children, Felicia.”

  The women all fell silent, cognizant of Prudenza’s sharp tongue and vitriolic dominance. No one ever dared enter into an argument with her. Felicia bit back a retort. Any tension between her and Prudenza upset Enrico and brought discord into their lives. Therefore, for her husband’s sake, Felicia tolerated the woman. She did what she could to keep things cordial between them, and became adept at disguising her ire or disgust at things Prudenza did or said.

  As if a cold wind had blown over them, the jovial atmosphere suddenly turned dreary. Prudenza certainly had a knack for dampening the most cheerful encounters, Felicia grumbled to herself.

  In a few moments, some chatter resumed, wandering to less serious topics such as the upcoming grape harvest and the weather, but Felicia took no part. Her thoughts revisited the fertility advice she had received. She decided to put all of it into action. Surely, if she wore the amber beads, ate chickweed on Mondays, fed Enrico plenty of celery, and looked for falling stars every night, she would conceive.

  Felicia completed her wash, packed up her laundry and that of poor Agnese. She hoisted her laundry basket onto her head and balanced it with one hand. Despite Agnese’s protests, she carried her laundry basket beneath her other arm, pressing it against her hip to keep it steady. Then she escorted the old woman to her home.

  With a grateful grin that fully displayed just how few teeth remained in Agnese’s mouth, the diminutive woman handed Felicia two heads of celery and a little packet of celery seeds. “Remember what I said now,” she said with a slight cackle. “Feed your husband celery at every meal and before long you’ll bear him a healthy child.”

  The sun was high in the sky by the time Felicia returned home, eager to put the womens’ suggestions to practice. She looked at the heads of celery in her hand. How could she feed celery to Enrico when he hated it so much that he refused to eat it? Even if she had to grind it into a pulp to disguise it, the celery would be in every one of his meals from this day forth.

  3

  Spring AD 1262

  Long after their lovemaking, while Enr
ico slept, Felicia stared up at the ceiling. She rested her hand over her belly and prayed that this time she had conceived. Several months had passed since she had implemented the advice the women had given her that particular laundry day, yet she remained barren, her womb as empty as a wine barrel the day before the grape harvest.

  She listened to Enrico’s snores for a few moments, but could not fall asleep herself. Felicia glanced over at her husband, and with utmost tenderness, caressed his scar. She pressed a kiss onto his forehead. Careful not to awaken him, she slid out of bed.

  Her fingers toyed with the amber amulet she had worn since Maria had given it to her and suppressed a sigh, not understanding why its powers had failed her. Felicia reached for the robe she had slung over the back of a chair and threw it over her shoulders before sliding her arms into its warmth. With one last glance at Enrico, she tiptoed out of the bedchamber and closed the door behind her. Without aid of candle or lantern, she descended the stairs into the kitchen.

  She scrutinized the simple but serviceable room, pleased with what she saw. The kitchen was her domain, where she spent countless hours baking bread and cooking for Enrico. It complemented her perfectly. Her preference for practicality and comfort superseded any need for luxury. Well-used pots hung on iron hooks over the hearth. Plates, cups, and bowls were stored neatly away in a wooden cupboard.

  Felicia paused to inhale the pungent aroma emanating from a small jar that contained a variety of herbs she had dried and preserved last harvest. She stared out of one of two windows that faced east, which brightened the room each morning. After grabbing her shawl from the hook behind the door, she stepped outside.

  A breeze ruffled her unbound hair as she breathed deeply of the fresh night air. Branches of ancient olive trees from nearby groves rustled softly. In the distance, crickets intoned their songs of spring. The fresh smell of dew scented the air and mingled with the aroma of spring’s first flowers. The world was still, tranquil in its cloak of darkness.