After the little excitement caused by the pursuit of the unknown rider, two of the troopers rode before the carriage, and three followed it, while all got their rifles across their saddle-bows, ready for action. They knew well enough that as long as they kept together, even a large band of brigands would not attack them on the open road, but there were plenty of narrow places where the earth was high on each side, and where a single well-directed volley might easily have killed many of the party. Since the outlaws’ latest invention of shooting the carabineers in order to disguise themselves in their uniforms, the troopers were more than ever cautious and on the alert against a surprise.
But nothing happened. The single horseman had disappeared altogether, having probably taken to the broken land for greater safety, and the carriage jogged steadily on across the high land, towards its destination, with a regular jingling of harness bells, and an equally rhythmic clanking of sabres.
‘A little quicker, Tatò,’ said the sergeant to the padrone, from time to time, but no one else said anything.
Both San Giacinto and Orsino were weary of the long drive when, at an abrupt curve of the road, the horses slackened speed, to turn out of the highway, to the right.
‘There is Camaldoli,’ said Tatò, turning round to speak to them for the first time since they had started. ‘You can see the Druse’s tower above the trees, and the river is below.’
So far as the two gentlemen could see there was not another habitation in sight, though it was no very great distance to the village of Santa Vittoria, beyond the next spur of Etna. The ancient building, of which only the top of one square black tower appeared, was concealed by a dense mass of foliage of every kind. Below, to the right and towards the mountain stream which Tatò called a river, the land was covered with wild pear trees, their white blossoms all out and reflecting the lowering sun. Nearer the building, the pink bloom of the flowering peaches formed a low cloud of exquisite colour, and the fresh green of the taller trees of all kinds made a feathery screen above and a compact mass of dark shadow lower down. The narrow drive was thickly hedged with quantities of sweetbrier and sweet hawthorn, which increased as the road descended, till it filled everything up to a man’s height and higher. The way was so narrow that when the carabineers tried to ride on each side of the carriage, they found it impossible to do so without being driven into the tangle of thorns at every step. The whole party moved forward at a quick trot, and Orsino understood what Basili the notary had said about the bushes, so that even he laid his rifle across his knees and peered into the brambles from time to time, half expecting to see the muzzle of a gun sticking through the green leaves and white flowers.
The avenue seemed to be about half a mile long. In the middle of it the trees were so thick as to make it almost gloomy, even in the broad afternoon daylight. The road was rough and stony.
Suddenly the horse of one of the carabineers ahead stumbled and fell heavily, and the other trooper threw his horse back on its haunches with an exclamation. Almost at the same instant, the sharp crack of a rifle rang through the trees on the right; and the bullet, singing overhead, cut through the branches just above the carriage, so that a twig with its leaves dropped upon Orsino’s knees. Another shot, fired very low down, struck a spoke of one of the carriage wheels, and sent the splinters flying, burying itself somewhere in the body of the vehicle. Another and another followed, all fired either far too high or much too low to strike any of the party. As the shots all came from the same side, however, the sergeant of carabineers sprang to the ground and plunged into the brush on that side, his rifle in his hand, calling to his men to follow him. San Giacinto stood up and knelt on the cushion of the carriage, though he knew that he could not fire in the direction taken by the carabineers, lest he should hit one of them by accident.
‘Keep a lookout on your side, too!’ he cried to Orsino. ‘Shoot anybody you see, and do not miss. They may be on both sides, but I think not.’
Strangely enough, from the moment the soldiers entered the brush, not another shot was fired. Clearly the assailants were beating a hasty retreat.
At that moment something black stirred in the bushes on Orsino’s side. Instantly his rifle was at his shoulder, and he fired. San Giacinto started and turned round, bringing up his own weapon at the same time.
‘I believe I heard something fall,’ said Orsino, opening the door of the carriage. Tatò had disappeared. Basili’s man had followed the soldiers into the brush.
In an instant both the gentlemen were in the thicket, Orsino leading, as he followed the direction of his shot.
CHAPTER XI
ORSINO’S GLOVED HAND trembled violently as he pushed aside the tangle of sweetbrier, trying to reach the place where the man upon whom he had fired had fallen.
‘Let me go first,’ said San Giacinto. ‘I am bigger and my gloves are thicker.’
But Orsino pushed on, his heart beating so hard that he felt the pulse in his throat and his eyes. He had been cool enough when the bullets had been flying across the carriage, and his hand had been quite steady when he had aimed at the black something moving stealthily in the bushes. But the sensation of having killed a man, and in such a way, was horrible to him. He pushed on, scratching his face and his wrists above his gloves, in the sharp thorns. The bushes were more than breast high, even to his tall figure, but San Giacinto could see over his head.
‘There!’ exclaimed the giant, suddenly. ‘There he is — to your right — I can see him!’
Orsino pushed on, and in another moment his foot struck something hard that moved a little, but was not a stone. It was the dead man’s foot in a heavy shooting-boot.
They found him quite dead, not fallen to the ground, but half sitting and half lying in the thorns. He had fallen straight backwards, shot through the temples. The eyes were wide open, but without light, the handsome face perfectly colourless, and the silky, brown moustache hid the relaxed mouth. His rifle stood upright in the bush as it had fallen from his hand. His soft hat was still firmly planted on the back of his head.
Orsino was stupefied with horror and stood quite still, gazing at the dead man’s face. San Giacinto looked down over his shoulders.
‘He looks like a gentleman,’ he said in a low voice.
The chill of a terrible presentiment froze about Orsino’s heart. As he looked, the handsome features became familiar, all at once, as though he had often seen them before.
‘We had better get him out to the road,’ said San Giacinto. ‘The carabineers may identify him. The sooner, the better, though you were perfectly justified in shooting him.’
He laid his hand upon Orsino’s shoulder to make him move a little, and the young man started. Then he bit his trembling lip and stooped to try and lift the body. As he touched the velveteen coat, the head fell suddenly to one side, and Orsino uttered an involuntary exclamation. He had never moved a dead man before.
‘It is nothing,’ said San Giacinto, quietly. ‘He is quite dead. Take his feet.’
He pushed past Orsino and lifted the head and shoulders, beginning to move towards the road at once, walking backwards and breaking down the bushes with his big shoulders. They got him out upon the road. The carriage horses were standing quite still, with their heads hanging down as though nothing had happened. They had plunged a little at first. In the road before them stood the trooper who had been thrown, holding his own and another charger by the bridle. The cause of the accident was clear enough. A pit had been treacherously dug across the road and covered with sticks and wood, so as to be invisible. Fortunately the horse had escaped injury. The others were tethered by their bridles to the back of the carriage. In the brush, far to the right, the tall bushes were moving, showing where the other four carabineers were searching for the outlaws who had fired, if, indeed there had been more than one.
They laid the dead man in the middle of the road, on the other side of the ditch, out of reach of the horses’ feet, and the trooper watched them without speaking, t
hough with a satisfied look of approval.
‘Do you know him?’ asked San Giacinto, addressing the soldier.
‘No, Signor Marchese. But I have not been long on this station. The brigadiere will know him, and will be glad. I came to take the place of the man they killed last week.’
Orsino looked curiously at the young carabineer, who took matters so quietly, when he himself was struggling hard to seem calm. He would not have believed that he could ever have felt such inward weakness and horror as filled him, and he could not trust himself to speak, yet he had no reason to doubt that he had saved his own life or San Giacinto’s by firing in time.
‘I see why the other ones fired so wildly,’ said San Giacinto. ‘They were afraid of hitting their friend, who was to do the real work alone, while they led the carabineers off on a false scent on the other side. This fellow felt quite safe. He thought he could creep up to the carriage and make sure of us at close quarters. He did not expect that one of us would be on the lookout.’
‘That is a common trick,’ said the soldier. ‘I have seen it done at Noto. It must have been a single person that fired, and this man was also alone. If he had been with a companion, the gentleman’s shot would have been answered and one of you would have been killed.’
‘Then it was the other man who was waiting on horseback in the road to warn this one of our coming?’
‘Evidently, Signor Marchese.’
Still Orsino stood quite still, gazing down into the dead man’s face, and feeling very unsteady. Just then nothing else seemed to have any existence for him, and he was unaware of all outward things excepting that one thing that lay there, limp and helpless, killed by his hand in the flash of an instant. And as he gazed, he fancied that the young features in their death pallor grew more and more familiar, and at his own heart there was a freezing and a stiffening, as though he were turning into ice from within.
The sergeant and the troopers came back, covered with brambles, hot and grim, and empty-handed.
‘Did any of you fire that other shot?’ he asked, as soon as he was in the road.
‘I did,’ said Orsino. ‘I killed this man.’
The sergeant sprang forward, and his men pressed after him to see. The sergeant bent down and examined the dead face attentively. Then he looked up.
‘You have killed rather an important person,’ he said gravely. ‘This is Ferdinando Pagliuca. We knew that he was on good terms with the outlaws, but we could not prove it against him.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Tatò, the padrone, suddenly appearing again. ‘That is Don Ferdinando. I know him very well, for I have often driven him. Who would have thought it?’
Orsino had heard nothing after the sergeant had pronounced the name. He almost reeled against San Giacinto, and gripped the latter’s arm desperately, his face almost as white as the dead man’s. Even San Giacinto started in surprise. Then Orsino made a great effort and straightened himself, and walked away a few paces.
‘This is a bad business,’ said San Giacinto in a preoccupied tone. ‘We shall have the whole mafia against us for this. Has the other man escaped?’
‘Clean gone,’ said the sergeant. ‘You had better luck than we, for we never saw him. He must have fired his shots from his horse and bolted instantly. We could not have got through the brush with our horses.’
Orsino went and leaned against the carriage, shading his eyes with his hands, while San Giacinto and the soldiers talked over what had happened. The sergeant set a couple of men to work on the brambles with their sabres, to cut a way for the carriage on one side of the pitfall that covered the road.
‘Put the body into the carriage,’ said San Giacinto. ‘We can walk. It is not far.’ He roused Orsino, who seemed to be half stunned.
‘Come, my boy!’ he said, drawing him away from the carriage as the soldiers were about to lay the body in it. ‘Of course it is not pleasant, but it cannot be helped, and you have rendered the government a service, though you have got us into an awkward position with the Corleone.’
‘Awkward!’ Orsino’s voice was hoarse and broken. ‘You do not know!’ he added.
San Giacinto did not understand, but made him fall back behind the carriage, which jolted horribly with its dead occupant, as Tatò forced his horses to drag it round the end of the ditch. The carabineers, still distrustful of the thick trees and the underbush, carried their rifles and led their horses, and the whole party proceeded slowly along the drive towards the ancient house. It might have been a quarter of a mile distant. Orsino walked the whole way in silence with bent head and set lips.
They emerged upon a wide open space, overgrown with grass, wild flowers, and rank weeds, through which a narrow path led straight up to the main door. There had been a carriage road once, following a wide curve, but it had long been disused, and even the path was not much trodden, and the grass was beginning to grow in it.
The front of the house presented a broad, rough-plastered surface, broken by but few windows, all of which were high above the ground. The tower was not visible from this side. From the back, the sound of water came up with a steady, low roar. The door was, in fact, a great oak gate, studded with big rusty nails, paintless, gray, and weather-beaten. Regardless of old Basili’s advice, San Giacinto walked straight up to it, followed by the notary’s man with the bunch of keys.
The loneliness of it all was beyond description, and was, if possible, enhanced by the roar of the water. The air was damp, too, from the torrent bed, and near one end of the house there were great patches of moss. At the other side, towards the sun, the remains of what had been a vegetable garden were visible, rank broccoli and cabbages thrusting up their bunches of pale green leaves, broken trellises of cane, half fallen in, and overgrown with tomato vines and wild creeping plants. A breath of air brought a smell of rotting vegetables and damp earth to San Giacinto’s nostrils, as he tried one key after another in the lock.
They got in at last, and entered under a gloomy archway, beyond which there was a broad courtyard, where the grass grew between the flagstones. In the middle was an ancient well, on the right a magnificently carved doorway led into the old chapel of the monastery. On the left, opposite the chapel, a long row of windows, with closed shutters in fairly good condition, showed the position of the habitable rooms.
‘Is that a church?’ asked San Giacinto of Basili’s man. ‘Take the dead man in and leave him there,’ he added, as the man nodded and began to look for the key on the bunch.
They took Ferdinando Pagliuca’s body from the carriage, which stood in the middle of the courtyard, and carried it in and laid it down on the uppermost step of one of the side altars, of which there were three. Orsino followed them.
It was a very dilapidated place. There had once been a few frescoes, which were falling from the walls with age and dampness. High up, through the open windows from which the glass had long since disappeared, the swallows shot in and out, bringing a dark gleam of sunshine on their sharp, black wings. Although the outer air had free access, there was a heavy, death-like smell of mould in the place. The altars were dismantled and the gray dust lay thick upon them, with fragments of plaster here and there. Only on the high altar a half-broken wooden candlestick, once silvered, stood bending over, and a little glazed frame still contained a mouldering printed copy of the Canon of the Mass. In the middle of the floor a round slab of marble, with two greenish bolts of brass, bore the inscription, ‘Ossa R. R. P. P.’ covering the pit wherein lay the bones of the departed monks who had once dwelt in the monastery.
The troopers laid Ferdinando’s body upon the stone steps in silence, and then went away, for there was much to be done. Orsino stayed behind, alone, for his cousin had not even entered the church. He knelt down for a few moments on the lowest step. It seemed a sort of act of reverence to the man whom he had killed. Mechanically he said a prayer for the dead.
But his thoughts were of the living. The man who lay there was Vittoria d’Oriani’s brother, the broth
er of his future wife, of the being he held most dear in the world. Between him and her there was her own blood, shed by his hand. The shot had done more than kill Ferdinando Pagliuca; it had mortally wounded his own life.
He asked himself whether Vittoria, or any woman, could marry the man who had killed her brother. In time, she might forgive, indeed, but she could not forget. No one could. And there were her other brothers, and her mother, and they were Sicilians, revengeful and long pursuing in their revenge. Never, under any imaginable circumstances, would they give their consent to his marriage with Vittoria, even supposing that she herself, in the course of years, could blot out the memory of the dead. He might as well make up his mind that she was lost to him.
But that was hard to do, for the roots of growing love had struck deep and burrowed themselves in under his heart almost unawares, from week to week since he had known her, and to tear them up was to tear out the heart itself.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 887