Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  They were but twelve and ten years old, but they could fight already, in their small way, and had tried it many a time with shepherd lads on the hill-side. But Don Pietro despised children and aimed a blow at Ruggiero’s right shoulder. The blow did not take effect, but a moment had not passed before the old peasant lay sprawling on his back with both the boys on top of him.

  “You cannot hurt the mother now,” said Ruggiero. “Hit him as I do, Bastianello!”

  And the four bony boyish fists fell in a storm of savage blows upon Don Pietro Casale’s leathern face and eyes and head and thin grey lips.

  “That is for the mother,” said Ruggiero. “Another fifty a-piece for ourselves.”

  The wiry old peasant struggled desperately, and at last threw himself free of them and staggered to his feet.

  “Quick, Bastianello!” shouted Ruggiero.

  In the twinkling of an eye they were over the fence and running at full speed for the valley. Don Pietro bruised, dazed and half-blinded, struggled after them, crashing through hedges and stumbling into ditches while he shouted for help in his pursuit. But his heavy shoes hampered him, and at best he was no match for them in speed. His face was covered with purple blotches and his eyelids were swelling at a terrible rate. Out of breath and utterly worn out he stood still and steadied himself against a crooked olive-tree. He could no longer hear even the footsteps of the lads before him.

  They were beyond his reach now. The last of the Children of the King had left Verbicaro, where their fathers had lived and died since darker ages than Calabrian history has accurately recorded.

  CHAPTER II.

  “WE SHALL NEVER see him again,” said Ruggiero, stopping at last and looking back over the stone wall he had just cleared.

  Sebastiano listened intently. He was not tall enough to see over, but his ears were sharp.

  “I do not hear him any more,” he answered. “I hurt my hands on his nose,” he added, thoughtfully, as he glanced at his bruised knuckles.

  “So did I,” returned his brother. “He will remember us. Come along — it is far to Scalea.”

  “To Scalea? Are we going to Scalea?”

  “Eh! If not, where? And where else can we eat? Don Antonino will give us a piece of bread.”

  “There are figs here,” suggested Sebastiano, looking up into the trees around them.

  “It has not rained yet, and if you eat figs from the tree before it has rained you will have pain. But if we are very hungry we will eat them, all the same.”

  Little Sebastiano yielded rather reluctantly before his brother’s superior wisdom. Besides, Padre Michele had given them a little cold bean porridge at the monastery early in the morning. So they went on their way cautiously, and looking about them at every step now that there was no more need of haste. For they had got amongst the vineyards and orchards where they had no business, and if the peasants saw them, the stones would begin to fly. They knew their way about, however, and reached an open footpath without any adventure, so that in half an hour they were on the mule track to Scalea. They walked much faster than a grown peasant would have done, and they knew the road. Instead of turning to the left after going down the hill beyond the tower, they took the right hand path to the Scalea river, and as it had not rained they got across without getting very wet. But that road is not so good as the one to Diamante, because the river is sometimes swollen, and people with laden mules have to wait even as much as three days before they can try the ford, and moreover there is bad air there, which brings fever.

  At last they struck the long beach and began to trudge through the sand.

  “And what shall we do to-morrow?” asked Sebastiano.

  Ruggiero was whistling loudly to show his younger brother that he was not tired nor afraid of anything. At the question he stopped suddenly, and faced the blazing blue sea.

  “We can go to America,” he said, after a moment’s reflection.

  Little Sebastiano did not seem at all surprised by the proposition, but he remained in deep thought for some moments, stamping up a little hillock of sand between his bare feet.

  “We are not old enough to be married yet,” he remarked at last.

  “That is true,” admitted Ruggiero, reluctantly.

  Possibly, the close connection between going to America and being married may not be apparent to the poor untutored foreign mind. It would certainly not have been understood a hundred miles north of Sebastiano’s heap of sand. And yet it is very simple. In Calabria any strong young fellow with a decently good character can find a wife with a small dowry, though he be ever so penniless. Generally within a week, and always within a fortnight, he emigrates alone, taking all his wife’s money with him and leaving her to work for her own living with her parents. He goes to Buenos Ayres or Monte Video. If, at the end of four, five or six years he has managed to increase the money so as to yield a small income, and if his wife behaves herself during his absence, he comes home again and buys a piece of land and builds a house. His friends do not fail to inform him of his wife’s conduct, and he holds her dowry as a guarantee of her fidelity. But if he fails to enrich himself, or if she is unfaithful to him, he never comes back at all. It is thus clear that a penniless young man cannot go to America until he is married.

  “That is very true,” Ruggiero repeated.

  “And we must eat,” said Sebastiano, who knew by experience the truth of what he said.

  “And we are always hungry. It is very strange. I am hungry now, and yet we had the beans only this morning. It is true that the plate was not full, and there were two of us. I wish we were like the son of Antonio, who never eats. I heard his mother telling the chemist so last winter.”

  “He is dead,” said Sebastiano. “Health to us!” he added, according to custom.

  “Health to us!” repeated Euggiero. “Perhaps he died because he did not eat. Who knows? I should, I am sure. Is he dead? I did not know. Come along! If Don Antonino is not away we shall get some bread.”

  So they trudged on through the sand. It was still very hot on the yellowish white beach, under the great southern sun in September, but the Children of the King had been used to bearing worse hardships than heat, or cold either, and the thought of the big brown loaves in Don Antonino’s wine-shop was very cheering.

  At last they reached the foot of the terraced village that rises with its tiers of white and brown houses from the shore to the top of the hill. Not so big nor so prosperous a place as Verbicaro, but much bigger and richer than Diamante. There are always a good many fishing boats hauled up on the beach, but you will not often see a cargo boat excepting in the autumn. Don Antonino keeps the cook-shop and the wine cellar in the little house facing the sea, before you turn to the right to go up into the village. He is an old sailor and an honest fellow, and comes from Massa, which is near Sorrento.

  A vast old man he is, with keen, quiet grey eyes under heavy lids that droop and slant outward like the lifts of a yard. He is thickset, heavy, bulky in the girth, flat-footed, iron-handed, slow to move. He has a white beard like a friar, and wears a worsted cap. His skin, having lost at last the tan of thirty years, is like the rough side of light brown sole leather — a sort of yellowish, grey, dead-leaf colour. He is very deaf and therefore generally very silent. He has been boatswain on board of many a good ship and there are few ports from Batum to San Francisco where he has not cast anchor.

  The boys saw him from a long way off, and their courage rose. He often came to Verbicaro to buy wine and had known their father, and knew them. He would certainly give them a piece of bread. As he saw them coming his quiet eyes watched them, and followed them as they came up the beach. But he did not turn his head, nor move hand or foot, even when they were close to him. He looked so solid and determined to stand still where he was, in the door of his shop, that you might have taken him for an enormous lay figure of a man, made of carved oak and dressed up for a sign to his own business. The two lads touched their ragged woollen caps and stood looking
at him, wondering whether he would ever move. At last his grey eyes twinkled.

  “Have you never seen a Christian before?” he inquired in a deep gruff voice.

  He did not seem to be in a good humour. The boys drew back somewhat in awe, and sat down to rest on the stones by the wall. Still Antonino’s eyes followed them, though he did not move. Sebastiano looked up at him uneasily from time to time, but Ruggiero gazed steadily at the sea with the affectation of proud indifference to scrutiny, which is becoming in a boy of twelve years. At last the old man stirred, turned slowly as on a pivot and went into the shop.

  “Is it not better to speak to him?” asked Sebastiano of his brother in a whisper.

  “No. He is deaf. If he did not understand us he would be angry and would give us no bread.”

  Presently Don Antonino came out again. He held half a loaf and a big slab of goat’s-milk cheese between his huge thumb and finger. He paused exactly on the spot where he had stood so long, and seemed about to become absorbed in the contemplation of the empty fishing boats lying in the sun. Sebastiano watched him with hungry eyes, but Ruggiero again stared at the sea. After several minutes the old boatswain got under way again and came to them, holding out the food to them both.

  “Eat,” he said laconically.

  They both jumped up and thanked him, and pulled at their ragged caps before they took the bread and cheese from his hand. He nodded gravely, which was his way of explaining that he could not hear but that it was all right, and then he watched them as they set to work.

  “Like wolves,” he said solemnly, as he looked on.

  The place was quite deserted at that hour. Only now and then a woman passed, with an earthen jar of water on her head and her little tin bucket and rope in her hand. The public well is not fifty yards from Antonino’s house, up the brook and on the left of it. The breeze was dying away and it was very hot, though the sun was already behind the high rocks of the cape.

  “Where are the beasts?” asked Don Antonino, as the boys swallowed their last mouthful.

  Ruggiero threw his head back and stuck out his chin, which signifies negation in the south. He knew it was of little use to speak unless he could get near the old man’s ear and shout.

  “And what are you doing here?” asked the latter.

  Speech was now unavoidable. Ruggiero stood on tiptoe and the old man bent over sideways, much as a heavily laden Dutch galliot heels to a stiff breeze.

  “The mother is dead!” bawled the boy in his high strong voice.

  Oddly enough the tears came into his eyes for the first time, as he shouted at the deaf old man, and at the same moment little Sebastiano’s lower lip trembled. Antonino shook his head in rough sympathy.

  “We have also beaten Don Pietro Casale, and so we have run away,” yelled the boy.

  Antonino grunted thoughtfully and his grey eyes twinkled as he slowly righted himself and stood up again. Very deliberately he went into the shop again and presently came back with a big measure of weak wine and water.

  “Drink,” he said, holding out the jug.

  Again the two boys pulled at their caps and each raised the jug respectfully toward the old man before drinking.

  “To health,” each said, and Antonino nodded gravely.

  Then Ruggiero took the jug inside and rinsed it, as he knew it was his duty to do and set it on the table. When he came back he stood beside his brother, waiting for Don Antonino to speak. A long silence followed.

  “Sleep,” said the old man. “Afterwards we will talk.”

  He took his old place in the doorway and stared steadily out to sea. The boys lay down beside the house and having eaten and drunk their fill and walked a matter of fifteen miles, were sound asleep in three minutes.

  At sunset Ruggiero sat up suddenly and rubbed his eyes. Don Antonino was no longer at the door, and the sound of several men’s voices came from within, mingled with the occasional dull rattle of coarse glasses on wooden tables.

  “Ò!” Ruggiero called softly to his brother. Then he added a syllable and called again, “O-è!” Little Sebastiano woke, sat up and looked about him, rubbing his eyes in his turn.

  “What has happened?” he inquired, only half awake.

  “By the grace of God we have eaten, we have drunk and we have slept,” said Ruggiero by way of answer.

  Both got up, shook themselves and stood with their hands in their pockets, looking at the sea. They were barefooted and barelegged, with torn breeches, coarse white shirts much patched about the shoulders, and ragged woollen caps. Presently they turned as by a common instinct and went and stood before the open door, peering in at the guests. Don Antonino was behind his black counter measuring wine. His wife was with him now and helping him, a cheerful, clean woman having a fair complexion, grey hair and round sharp eyes with red lids — a stranger in Calabria like her husband. She held the neck of a great pear-shaped demijohn, covered with straw, of which the lower part rested on the counter. Antonino held a quart jug to be filled while she lowered the mouth, and he poured the measure each time into a barrel through a black tin funnel. They both counted the measures in audible tones, checking each other as it were. The wine was very dark and strong and the smell filled the low room and came out through the door. Half-a-dozen men sat at the tables, mostly eating ship biscuit of their own and goat’s-milk cheese which they bought with their wine. They were rough-looking fellows, generally in checked flannel shirts, and home-spun trousers. But they all wore boots or shoes, which are in the south a distinctive sign of a certain degree of prosperity. Most of them had black beards and smart woollen caps. They were men who got their living principally by the sea in one way or another, but none of them looked thorough seamen. They talked loud and with a certain air of boasting, they were rough, indeed, but not strongly built nor naturally easy in their movements as sailors are. Their eyes were restless and fiery, but the glance was neither keen nor direct. Altogether they contrasted oddly with Don Antonino, the old boatswain. This part of Calabria does not breed genuine sea folk.

  Antonino took no notice of the boys as they stood outside the door, but went quietly on with his work, measuring quart after quart of wine and pouring it into the barrel.

  “If it were a keg, I could carry it for him,” said Ruggiero, “but I cannot lift a barrel yet.”

  “We could roll it, together,” suggested Sebastiano thoughtfully.

  Presently Don Antonino finished his job and bunged the barrel with a cork and a bit of old sailcloth. Then he looked up and stood still. The boys were not quite sure whether he was watching them or not, for it was already dusk. His wife lit a small German petroleum lamp and hung it in the middle of the room, and then went to the fireplace in the dark corner where something was cooking. One of the guests shouted to Antonino.

  “There is a martingane at San Nicola,” he bawled.

  Antonino turned his head slowly to the speaker and waited for more.

  “Bound east,” continued the man. “From Majuri.”

  “What is wrong with her?” inquired the old host.

  Boats going west, that is, towards Naples and Civita Vecchia often put in to the small natural harbours to wait for the night wind. Those going east never do except for some especial reason.

  The man said nothing, but fixed his eyes on Antonino and slowly filled his pipe, evidently intending to convey some secret piece of information by the look and action. But the old sailor’s stolid face did not betray the slightest intelligence. He turned away and deliberately took half-a-dozen salted sprats from a keg behind the counter and laid them in a dish preparatory to cleaning them for his own supper. The man who had spoken to him seemed annoyed, but only shrugged his shoulders impatiently and went on eating and drinking.

  Antonino took a jug of water and went outside to wash his fish. The two boys offered to do it for him, but he shook his head. He did not speak until he had almost finished.

  “We will fish to-night,” he said at last, in a low voice, pouring a fi
nal rinsing of water into the dish. “Sleep in the sand under the third boat from the rocks. I will wake you when I am ready.”

  He looked from one to the other of the lads with a keen glance, and then laid one huge finger against his lips. He drained the water from his dish and went in again.

  “Come along,” said Ruggiero softly. “Let us find the boat and get out of the way.”

  The craft was a small “gozzo,” or fisherman’s boat, not above a dozen or fourteen feet long, sharp and much alike at bow and stern, but with a high stem surmounted by a big ball of wood, very convenient for hanging nets upon. It was almost dark by this time, but the boys saw that she was black as compared with the other boats on both sides of her. She was quite empty and lay high and dry on three low chocks. Ruggiero lay down, getting as close to the keel as he could and Sebastiano followed his example. They lay head to head so that they could talk in a whisper.

  “Why are we not to speak of his fishing?” asked the younger boy.

  “Who knows? But if we do as he tells us he will give us more bread to-morrow.”

  “He is very good to us.”

  “Because we beat Don Pietro Casale. Don Pietro cheated him last year. I saw the cottonseed oil he mixed with the good, in that load we brought down.”

  “Perhaps the fishing is not for fish,” suggested little Sebastiano, curling himself up and laying his head on the end of the chock.

  They did not know what time it was when Don Antonino gently stirred them with his big foot. They sprang up wide awake and saw in the starlight that he had a pair of oars and a coil of rope in his hands.

  “As I launch her, take the chocks from behind and put them in front,” he said in a low voice.