“Who are you to disturb my eternal sleep?”
“Ahhhh!” cried the ghost, scared to death, promptly turning tail and running out of the room.
The soldier on guard, who, as ordered, had only been pretending to be asleep, got up at once and tried to nab him, but the ghost eluded him and started running down the stairs. At the fourth stair, however, he stumbled and rolled all the way down to the landing below.
Standing up, he got rid of the sheet covering him and dashed, limping, towards the secondary door, pursued by the soldiers and don Serafino, who for the past hour had been waiting for him, hiding behind don Angel’s casket, so he could play that wicked joke on him.
Father Scipione Mezzatesta realized that if he was able to reach the bishop he might manage to avoid arrest. The moment he came out into the square, still running, he started shouting:
“Help! I’m Father Mezzatesta and they’re trying to arrest me! Help!”
At this point the soldiers caught up with him, grabbed him, lifted him into the air and carried him inside. There, don Serafino and Lieutenant Ramirez were waiting for him.
“That was clever of you,” don Serafino said to him. “You took the key from its drawer and replaced it with another similar one, even adding the tag to identify it. But it went badly for you anyway.”
“I want to talk to the Grand Captain of Justice,” said Father Scipione, suddenly calm.
“Why?”
“I want to tell him that everything I did was on the orders of his excellency the bishop. I hope he will take that into account.”
“I hereby inform you that you are under arrest,” Ramírez concluded, just to make things clear.
Outside, meanwhile, the recitation of the novenas had broken off.
Between the ghost’s apparition and news of the arrest of Patre Mezzatesta, a kind of fuse had been lit and burned slowly through the great mass of people until they exploded in fury and rage.
Quivering with an irresistible desire to let off steam, they all waited for the word from the bishop, who meanwhile was standing aside, surrounded by a handful of priests.
Turro Mendoza was quite worried because, knowing Father Mezzatesta well, he knew he could not be trusted. Sooner or later the man would confess to everything and reveal that the idea of the ghost was not his own. And he would have no qualms about naming him as the sole person responsible for the whole tragic farce. For that reason he had to do something to get him released as soon as possible.
He didn’t know that Patre Mezzatesta had already maneuvered to finagle a lesser sentence, and that any attempt to keep him from talking was by now useless.
The bishop told the priests to work up the faithful’s exasperation and hysteria as much as possible and then have them attack the soldiers guarding the palace.
“But those guys’ll kill us all at their leisure!” said one of the priests. “We’re unarmed!”
“Our weapon is our faith!” the bishop replied harshly.
“All right, but with our faith all we can do is die, we can’t very well hit a soldier over the head with it!” the same priest replied.
“Then order everyone to arm themselves with stones, sticks, iron bars, whatever they can find that can cause injury. Break the branches off the trees in the square and turn them into cudgels!”
And if we’re lucky, somebody’ll get killed! the bishop thought to himself.
That way the faithful’s fury would become unstoppable, and it was anyone’s guess how it would all end.
As soon as the captain commanding the triple array of soldiers outside, whose name was Villasevaglios, saw that the people were arming themselves with sticks and stones, he realized that things were taking a very bad turn. They were no longer dealing with shouts and prayers but with beatings, and ferocious ones. And so he sent a lieutenant to talk to donna Eleonora to find out how he should proceed.
He received very precise orders. The marquesa wanted, at all costs, for there to be no dead or wounded amongst the people, should they decide to storm the palace. The soldiers could indeed use their sabres, but only the flat side, never the tip or the cutting edge.
All at once a crowd of about five hundred hurled themselves at the soldiers, shouting angrily:
“Free Father Mezzatesta!”
“Sacrilege!”
“Devil out of Palermo!”
The first attack was repelled. Five or six soldiers were taken inside with their heads cracked open from clubs or thrown stones.
About half an hour went by before a second attack was launched. Don Valentino Puglia, who had been a soldier before becoming a priest and was one of the bishop’s trusted men, took command and better organized the nearly three thousand people, enraged out of their wits, who no longer demanded just the burial of don Angel and the liberation of Patre Mezzatesta, but also the expulsion of donna Eleonora from Palermo.
Meanwhile hundreds of pitchforks, mattocks, and spades were taken from nearby houses and passed out among the men that seemed the most hot-headed.
The second assault was more violent than the first. The soldiers barely managed to push back the attackers, but only after a long clash that at moments was so unbridled that the soldiers lost another ten or so men to variously serious degrees of injury.
It was clear that if the people launched a third assault, the soldiers would have to yield if they couldn’t use their weapons. Captain Villasevaglios, who had asked for emergency reinforcements, was biting his nails with each passing moment, worried that they might not get there in time.
Meanwhile it was becoming more and more unlikely that that there wouldn’t be any wounded among the attackers. One couldn’t rule out that some soldier, finding himself in a hopeless situation, might use his sabre not as a club but as a proper sabre.
At this point don Serafino, seeing how dangerous the situation had become, tried to persuade donna Eleonora to leave the palace and go and stay temporarily either at the soldiers’ compound or on one of the warships docked in the port. But she wouldn’t listen to reason, and there was no way to make her change her mind.
While Don Valentino Puglia was giving the order to attack again, this time with two thousand people, all equipped with lethal objects, something happened that nobody in the world would ever have expected.
Some three hundred men, all considerably young and strong, suddenly and very quickly poured into the square. They were shouting as one, with all the air they had in their lungs:
Long live donna Eleonora!
Donna Eleonora is ours!
They were members of the guild of stevedores of the port, and they immediately started punching and kicking the faithful. And with each punch, one of the crowd fell, unconscious.
Then some five hundred members of other guilds came running in, after they were woken up in the middle of the night to come to donna Eleonora’s aid.
And then Captain Villasevaglios ordered a counterattack.
In this way the faithful found themselves threatened from the front and the rear at the same time.
The first to run away was the bishop.
Once he was gone, there was a mad stampede of retreat.
Half an hour later, there was hardly anyone left in the square, because the men from the guilds had all gone home to try and recover a little of the sleep they’d lost, and the soldiers had fallen back to their positions around the walls of the palace.
Early in the afternoon of the following day, don Filippo Arcadipane requested an audience with donna Eleonora, to inform her that he would be going as soon as he could to officially interrogate Father Scipione Mezzatesta.
And since the priest had confessed the night before to the court physician and Lieutenant Ramírez that the whole episode of the fake ghost had been cooked up and ordered by the bishop to stir up trouble for her, it was possible that during the interrogation h
e might not only repeat his confession but add that it had likewise been the bishop behind an even more serious act—that is, having incited the people to rise up against the person who not only represented absolute power but was the alter ego of His Majesty the King.
In the past, all those who had done the same had been arrested and condemned to death.
As a result, with the law on his side, he, as Grand Captain of Justice, would, as a first, unavoidable measure, have to send the bishop immediately to jail.
But this would surely trigger a serious reaction in the city, where the situation merely appeared to have calmed down, but was actually smouldering under the ashes.
He therefore wanted to know how he should proceed.
Donna Eleonora’s answer was to wait until the afternoon of the following day, Tuesday, to interrogate Patre Mezzatesta, because the Holy Royal Council was scheduled to meet that morning. This was a decision that had to be carefully considered and discussed by everyone.
In the mid-afternoon, Patre Mezzatesta, who until that moment had remained relatively tranquil in the bodyguards’ cell, suddenly started yelling that he wanted a priest, because he wanted to confess and take Communion early the next morning.
Lieutenant Ramírez, when informed of this by a soldier, couldn’t decide whether or not to accept the detainee’s request.
He talked about it with the Chief of Ceremonies, who went and told donna Eleonora about it.
She granted the request, but advised the soldiers not to take their eyes off him for even one second.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Donna Eleonora and Her Laws
An hour later, Don Valentino Puglia presented himself to the palace guard. He’d been chosen personally by the bishop, and had received detailed secret instructions on how to behave with the detainee.
The bishop was certain that Mezzatesta would ask him how much he was willing to pay for his silence. And he wasn’t mistaken.
Don Puglia’s meeting with Patre Mezzatesta lasted more than two hours, and to the soldiers standing guard outside the door, all the angry shouting sounded more like a squabble than a confession.
When he came out, Don Puglia told the guard commander that he would be back the following morning at six, and that he would celebrate Mass in the chapel. Therefore the detainee had to be brought there shortly after six, since he wanted to take Communion.
Don Puglia hurried to tell the bishop what Patre Mezzatesta wanted in exchange for refusing to confirm to the Captain of Justice the confession he’d made to don Serafino and Lieutenant Ramírez. He was ready to swear that he’d said what he’d said to them in a moment of anger, that the idea to create the fake ghost had been his own, and that the bishop not only had nothing to do with it, but didn’t even know about it—but only on the condition that . . .
“So, in conclusion,” said the bishop, “Mezzatesta wants me to make certain they give him the minimum sentence, demands five thousand scudi at once, and then, once he’s served his time, he wants to be appointed priest of the Sacro Cori parish, which is the richest in town, the one that receives the largest bequests. Is that correct?”
“Quite,” said Don Puglia.
“Then tell him that I cannot accept two of his three requests. He must content himself with the five thousand scudi. Tell it to him before you give him Communion.”
“And what if he doesn’t accept?”
The bishop bowed his head pensively. Then raised it again. And before speaking, he looked Don Puglia long and hard in the eye. The other understood in full the content of that silent exchange.
“If he doesn’t accept, give him Communion.”
Don Puglia arrived at the chapel at six the following morning. The priest got ready for Mass, put the only host he’d brought with him into the chalice, and closed the tabernacle.
A short while later, Patre Mezzatesta came in with a soldier on either side of him.
“Last night I sinned in my thoughts and need to confess,” he said to Don Puglia.
“Very well,” said the priest, going and sitting down in the confessional.
Patre Mezzatesta went in the other side and knelt down.
Don Puglia leaned out of the confessional and asked the soldiers to stand farther away, at the back of the chapel.
Soon the soldiers began to hear the two men’s angry voices. They started to approach but did not arrive in time, because Patre Mezzatesta had stood up in a flurry and gone over and started kicking Don Puglia, who responded with a powerful punch that sent Patre Mezzatesta’s head crashing against the wooden corner of the confessional.
A moment later Patre Mezzatesta, foaming at the mouth, fell to the ground, unconscious.
When he recovered, he seemed a different man. He asked Don Puglia to forgive him, confessed again, prayed while listening to the Mass, stood up to receive the consecrated host, then returned to his place.
When it was over he let himself be led back to his cell without any fuss, merely saying to the soldiers that he had a terrible headache from the blow.
Half an hour later a guard looked into the spyhole and found him lying on the floor. He unlocked the door, went in, and touched him, but there was nothing more to be done. Father Scipione Mezzatesta was dead.
The soldiers who’d witnessed the scene in the chapel told don Serafino that they were certain that he’d died from the blow to the head.
But a blow to the head—and don Serafino knew this perfectly well because he was a very good doctor—would not cause a generalized bodily swelling and turn the victim’s lips blue.
Those were clear signs of poisoning.
And the poison could only have been given to him through Communion, by means of the consecrated host.
And even he, who believed in nothing, felt profoundly troubled by this.
Donna Eleonora, on the other hand, remained cold as ice when he went into the study to tell her the conclusion he had reached. Don Serafino couldn’t accept this.
“I’m sorry, my lady, perhaps I didn’t make myself clear enough. The bishop—”
Donna Eleonora raised a hand and silenced him.
“Mi querido don Serafino, I spent my entire youth in a convent and have known only one man, my husband. Nevertheless, I am able to recognize and judge men instinctively, and until now I have never once been wrong.. From the very first moment I have considered Turro Mendoza a man capable of terribles atrocidades y igonominias. So this story of yours does not surprise me.”
“My lady, I do hope you realize that you have an enemy who will not hesitate to—”
Donna Eleonora raised her hand again.
“I know. Y estoy pensando en como defenderme.”
“But you have no time to lose! Why hasn’t the Grand Visitor called him in for questioning yet?”
“Because that was mi decisión.”
“But why?”
“Because Turro Mendoza is tan rico that he can pay three times what he illegally stole, without any difficulty. He would be just un poquito menos rico, while losing none of his power, pero con más sed de vendetta. No, ese hombre es una serpiente. We must crush his head.”
When she’d finished she looked don Serafino long in the eye. The doctor suddenly felt weightless as a leaf and began to float through the air.
“No se preocupe por mí, amigo mío,” said donna Eleonora in her angelic voice.
“I can’t help it,” don Serafino blurted out. “Because, you see, I lo—”
Donna Eleonora’s beautiful, slender, soft, tapered, rosy forefinger went straight to his mouth and rested its tip on his lips.
“Silencio!” she ordered him in a soft voice. “Don’t make the mistake of speaking. Y ahora vaya, necesito prepararme para el Holy Royal Council. Ah, por favor: you must dine with me this evening. And finally: could you meet with Don Asciolla and tell him I would like to see h
im at four o’clock this afternoon?”
* * *
The Holy Royal Council began right on time. And for the duration of the session, only donna Eleonora spoke.
To open, she informed the Grand Captain of Justice of the sudden death of Patre Scipione Mezzatesta, adding that since the priest could no longer be questioned, this practically precluded all possibility of action against the bishop.
She didn’t say a word about any of the events that had taken place on Sunday and the night that followed.
On the other hand, she said she had an important new law to propose, one which, if approved, would go into effect starting the very next day. Considering that both the Chief Treasurer and the Chief Administrator had informed her of a large increase in the revenues recently received or soon to be received into the royal treasury, especially after the seizures and expropriations of property belonging to former Councillors, she had decided to lift the tax imposed on wheat used for breadmaking.
If the proposed law were approved, it would mean that, starting the very next day, the price of bread in all of Sicily would fall by nearly half. The larger families and the many hundreds of paupers for whom alms did not suffice to buy bread would benefit the most. The catapani—that is, the guards who watched over the markets—would have to make sure that bakers were charging the reduced price.
Were the Councillors in agreement?
The Councillors were thrilled.
So donna Eleonora told the protonotary and secretary to write up the law immediately, which she would then sign so that by early the next morning the criers could make it known to all.
Immediately afterwards she declared that it was her firm intention to establish two shelters to harbor the women of Palermo who found themselves in abject conditions.
The first would be located in the former Conservatorio dello Spedaletto, which used to house the infirm poor and had been closed three years earlier. It would now admit virgins in danger, to wit, “those young women who, constrained by poverty and bereft of parents, roam about the city at night and sleep in the public streets.” Before being accepted at the Conservatorio, the girls would have to submit to an examination by the midwife Sidora Bonifacio, to establish whether they were still virgins and had received no offense in any other part of their bodies. But the Conservatory would also accept already fallen maidens, that is, those who had suffered an offense to a part of their bodies but against their will.
The Revolution of the Moon Page 14
