The Viceroys

by Federico De Roberto

  ‘Auntie, can we have a look at the “escutcheons”?’

  The ‘escutcheons’ were the work of Mugnòs, illustrated with the coats-of-arms of families mentioned in the text; and Donna Ferdinanda would spend entire days reading this out and commenting on it to her nephew.

  She had already put him through a little course of heraldic grammar, and explained what was meant by per pale and per fess, by quartering and by inescutcheon, and she would always put a knobbly finger on the branch holding the Uzeda family shield, describing it to him each time so that he would learn it by heart.

  ‘Quarterly, first and fourth or and eagle sable, langued and armed gules, impaling fusilly azure and argent; second and third per fess azure and sable, in chief a comet argent, in base a chevron or; on an inescutcheon or four pallets gules, for Aragon. Behind the shield six banners of alliance.’

  Then she explained the symbolism. The comet meant fame or glory; the chevron represented a knight’s spurs. The small shield in the middle of the big one was that of the Aragonese Kings; the Uzeda had obtained a right to it, a pale at a time, the first pale at the time of Don Blasco II.

  ‘Having served,’ the spinster read out ‘at the request of King Don Jaime, in the war being waged against Count Uguetto of Narbonne and against the Moors for possession of Majorca, he received no reward of any kind for his services, and so withdrew from the Royal Service and returned with his men to his own estates; there he heard that the King was sending a great sum of money to the Queen; so with 200 knights he lay in wait in a narrow pass, seized the royal baggage wagons, and took the money and whatever else they bore; then he sent a message to the King that his first obligation was to pay for personal services, then to satisfy the Queen’s wishes; but the King, much incensed at this action, waged a great war against Blasco, which was peacefully settled by the intervention of many barons; he obtained the barony of Almeira, as well as the privilege of superimposing on his Arms a pale gules of Aragon.’ The spinster loved reading out that story, and after reading it would repeat it to her nephew in simpler language, so that he could get the sense better. ‘A fine King, he was, eh? Making use of his barons and then not giving them a thing! But Don Blasco Uzeda’s idea was a grand one, wasn’t it? “Oho, so you’re not giving me a thing after I’ve fought for you, and sending presents to the Queen instead, eh? I’ll just see to that!” …’ Her voice trembled with excitement as she repeated the story of the ambush, and her eyes flashed with the centuries’ old cupidity of the ancient Spanish race, the Viceroys who had despoiled Sicily.

  ‘What about the other pales on the shield?’ asked the little prince, who was hanging on his aunt’s lips even more than if she were telling fairy-tales from Betta pelosa or Mamma Draga.

  The old woman quickly turned over the pages of the book, and found the passage she wanted.

  ‘Because of this it happened that the aforesaid Consalvo de Uzeda, being an excellent huntsman, was invited by King Carlo to go ahunting in his woods, which invitation was accepted by Consalvo; and while everyone including the King himself were endeavouring to pursue deer, boar and hare, the King attacked a big boar all alone; craftily it turned on him, but the King’s horse rushed at it wildly, and as it passed fell to the ground with the King, who remained with a leg under the horse; seeing this the boar rushed on the King to kill him, and the Monarch would have been unable to defend himself, having only a dagger, and would undoubtedly have been killed on the spot, had not the said Consalvo noticed his King’s danger and hastened to his assistance; at the first onslaught he killed the boar; then he got off his horse and helped the King to mount his own horse; and the King thanked him, praised him, and called him “My good son!” which was why ever afterwards the Uzeda had the title of “relatives” to the Sicilian kings, and bore on their escutcheon the Royal Arms of Aragon and all its powers, as in effect to this very day they explain to the present author, and as also says the chronicler of Madrid: “Los feruicios de los Vzedas fveron tantos, y tan buenos que por merced de los Reyes de Aragona hazian la mefmas armas que ellos …” ’

  Once Donna Ferdinanda had started on this, there was no stopping her. She had never had a more attentive audience than the boy, and that made her affectionate to him, as her other relatives would only listen distractedly, either thinking of nothing but their own ‘silly business’, or working away to dim the family splendour like that fox the duke flirting with republicans, like that crazy Lucrezia for ever out on her balcony waiting for Giulente to pass …

  Don Eugenio, when not working at his memorandum on the disinterment of his new Pompeii, was the only one to listen to the reading of Mugnòs, and also ‘other historians of the family’. Then brother and sister would pass in review their long line of ancestors, and recite tales of their deeds and of their efforts, centuries ago, to seize and maintain fortunes; the betrayals, rebellions, terrorism, never-ending quarrels, described by the writers in veiled ways, and all made to sound magnificent. Artale di Uzeda ‘daily issuing with his armed retainers from his castle dominating the whole countryside around’; Giacomo, living in the time of King Lodovico, and ‘ruling Nicosia, was eventually removed for the many taxes he imposed’; Don Ferrante, ‘nicknamed Sconza, which in Sicilian dialect means the same as “Ruined” ’, who lost all his estates ‘due to disobedience to his King. Later he obtained a pardon, but even so did not remain loyal, since for his own reasons he disobeyed the King once again, was condemned to death and saved his head only by Royal Grace and Favour.’ Don Filippo was celebrated ‘for showing such valour in support of his King, Don Ferdinando, against the King of Portugal, that on banishment from Court for murder he was freed and taken back into the Favour of his King’; Giacomo V, ‘having sold his estates to Errico di Chiaramonte, then attempted to recover them by force’; Don Livio, ‘delighted in taking harsh revenge for insults offered him’; etc., etc. Such, for Donna Ferdinanda, were deeds of valour and proofs of shrewdness. Nor had the Uzeda quarrelled only with their sovereigns and rivals, but also among themselves. Don Giuseppe, in 1684, ‘married Donna Aldonza Alcarosso, by whom he had Don Giovanni and Don Errico, who on their father’s death before their grandfather claimed the latter’s estates and sued him for many years before the Royal Courts’; Don Paolo ‘had long and most criminal contests with his stepfather’; Consalvo, Conte della Venerata ‘at the death of his father was despoiled by his uncle, and on repudiating his infertile wife quarrelled for many years with his brother-in-law’; Giacomo VI, ‘nicknamed Sciarra, which means Quarrel in Tuscan idiom, had many a difference with his father’; Consalvo III, ‘nicknamed Head of St John the Baptist, suffered for the crime of his sons who followed Frederigo Count of Luna, bastard of King Martin’; but most terrible of all was the first Viceroy, the great Lopez Ximenes ‘who lost the esteem of his subjects because of the excesses of a bastard son of overbearing ways and loose habits; his father, on finding him to be an incorrigible criminal, treated him with the greatest severity and condemned him to death, a sentence which would have been carried out had King Don Ferdinando, who happened to be in Sicily, not ordered it to be suspended …’

  Now and again Don Eugenio considered it proper to make some moral comments for the boy’s edification. Donna Ferdinanda, on the other hand, praised all, admired all. In time the aggressive race had been weakened by exercise of power; the second Viceroy, challenged to a duel by a rebel baron, ‘prudently refused to listen to the invitation of that ill-advised young man’. The shameful conduct of this ancestor was found as praiseworthy by the old spinster as that of all the others who had quarrelled with everyone within sight for no reason. And as to duels, what about that famous decree of Lopez Ximenes?

  ‘He had put out proclamation after proclamation to forbid duels,’ narrated the spinster to her little nephew, ‘but he might have been speaking to the wall. No one took any notice! Oh, so they won’t, eh? Then he gets a notion; he waits for the very next duel, which happened to be between Arrigo Ventimiglia Count of Geraci and Pietro Card
ona Count of Golisano, and confiscated all their property; he took the lot away from them, d’you understand?’

  ‘And who got it?’

  ‘It went back to the King,’ explained Don Eugenio, ‘but then matters were arranged. Ventimiglia left the kingdom and Cardona presented the Viceroy with his castle at La Roccella, to obtain pardon …’

  So many such ‘notions’ did the Viceroy have that he got himself, loathed by all. So much so that Parliament sent deputations to Spain for the Sovereign to remove him. That was done by envious and rascally barons—in the spinster’s eyes—but he was cleverer than the lot of them, for what did he do? He offered the King a gift of thirty thousand scudi and so remained at his post; not, however, for long. Obviously he was so unpopular because he was much richer and nobler and more powerful than others. Before that there had been many other governors of Sicily taking the King’s place, but they were Presidents of the Kingdom, or Viceroys without full powers, and had to consult His Majesty before electing anyone to the offices of Chief Justice or High Admiral or Grand Seneschal … And they were unable to grant estates to nobles or burgesses with a larger income than two hundred Castilian onze, or sums of money superior to two thousand Florentine florins. They were also forbidden to nominate Governors of Palermo, Catania, Mozia, Malta, etc., etc.; while Uzeda exercised the very same powers as the King, being able, as his mandate said, ‘to emanate lasting decrees at his pleasure, condone death sentences, confer dignities, to do all that the King himself would have done, carry out all actions reserved to the supreme power and to the Royal dignity, for which he would otherwise have to acquire special or very special permission …’ So who could be compared to him? What had they to envy the noblest families of Naples and Spain? Why, they even gloried in a saint in heaven: the Blessed Ximena. She had lived three and a half centuries before. Married off by her father against her will to the Count Guagliardetto, a terrible enemy of God and man, she had obtained her guilty husband’s conversion and done great miracles during her life and after her death; her body, miraculously incorrupt, was preserved in a chapel of the Capuchin Church! And turning over the leaves to see the other escutcheons, those of the Radalì, of the Torriani, the boy asked his aunt why his Aunt Palmi’s was not there; at which the spinster replied dryly:

  ‘The printer forgot to put it in; but it’s this: her father, with a spade in his hand, planting a palm-shoot …’

  Towards the end of September the cholera intensified. The bulletin of the 25th named thirty deaths, but there were said to be more and over a hundred cases of infection as well as scattered cases disturbing the countryside. Now came a new onrush of people escaping. Up at the Belvedere vigilance was continuous lest refugees enter from places under suspicion. Peasants and villagers, armed with shotguns, carbines and pistols, guarded all roads leading to the village, acting as a kind of arbitrary unnamed police; and as scenes, part-comic and part-tragic, took place at every passage of refugees, Raimondo, to overcome his boredom—now that gambling was suspended because of the new terror—would often wander among the guard-posts. One day news came that there were people with cholera at Màscali, and carriages and carts coming from there were not allowed to pass. While the men of the Belvedere were calling about-turn with muskets at the ready and the emigrants were arguing, showing certificates and imploring, threatening and shouting, Raimondo, who was enjoying all this, suddenly heard himself called, ‘Don Raimondo … Count! Count!…’ and looking around, he saw two women making desperate signs to him from the door of a dusty carriage.

  ‘Donna Clorinda!… you here?’

  Donna Clorinda was the widow of the notary Limarra. She was famous for her gay life in youth, and, now this was near its end, for the beauty of her daughter Agatina who, following in her mother’s footsteps, had flirted in her girlhood with all the young men rubbing up against her skirts; later she married the barrister Galano, for whom she got all kinds of clients. Donna Clorinda had a weakness for young men of the nobility, and more than ten years before had been Raimondo’s first conquest. On leaving the mother he had made up to the daughter, without much result actually as she was then searching for a husband. Then he himself had married, left Sicily, and lost sight of them. Now the two women, and also the husband, crouching more dead than alive in the depths of the carriage, put themselves under his protection to obtain refuge at the Belvedere. Thanks to him, they were allowed to enter; their difficulties began immediately afterwards, for, with refugees invading every corner, there was nowhere but the stables to put new arrivals.

  Nevertheless, for Donna Clorinda and Agatina, who met a new friend at every step, the whole Belvedere was set into motion until they were found two little rooms on a ground floor, a little out of the way, but with a small garden. As soon as they were settled in, they arranged one of those little rooms as a drawing-room, and there at once began a coming and going of all those from town, in a flutter at this arrival.

  Donna Clorinda had not yet given up, and granted audience to all and sundry; but the place next to her daughter was reserved for Raimondo. Because of the freedom of the little household and the good humour of the two women, even those left penniless spent a better evening than at the Casino, playing cards, gossiping, and singing. And Raimondo put off his boredom and long face and no longer came home; once again he was awaited hour upon hour by his wife, sad and restless at the renewed danger of plague, at the suspicions evoked in her by that sudden change, and tortured later by the allusions with which Donna Ferdinanda, the prince, even the servants revealed her husband’s old love. Could she believe in a new intrigue now with the daughter of his former mistress? Was that not a mortal sin, a monstrosity which her mind refused to conceive? Should she not believe, rather, that the family’s grudge against Raimondo and herself had started this malicious accusation?

  Brusquely torn from her peace, she began to torture herself once more, to struggle with herself against the suspicions which re-assailed her as soon as they were brushed off, to spend the long autumn nights trembling as she awaited his return, weeping at his rough answers to her questions.

  ‘Why d’you stay out so late? I’m afraid for your health …’

  ‘Aren’t I free any longer to stay out as long as I like?’

  ‘Indeed you’re free … but not to go to that house, among people whom your brother is ashamed to receive.’

  ‘Where do I go? Among what people? It’s to the Casino I go. D’you want to spy over me too?’

  No, she believed him; she wanted and had to believe him. But why was she so conscious of part-ironical and part-pitying looks from all the family and servants? Why did the conversation die in people’s mouths when she drew near them?

  One night, after four months of drought, a terrible storm broke out; the dark sky was seared by flashes like swords, the roads suddenly changed into muddy torrents, the hail crashed on panes and roofs. She had hoped to see Raimondo return at the first signs of the storm, and awaited him trembling with fear. Not a sound, not a footstep. The storm stopped after an hour, and Raimondo was not yet back … It was not the malice of others, it was he himself who was lying and incestuous; could she doubt it any longer? Had not she too, that shameless creature, stared her challengingly in the face as if saying to her, ‘I’m prettier than you, that’s why he prefers me!…’ And it was true. Her jealousy was all the more humiliating as she realised that she no longer attracted her husband, particularly now she was also deformed by pregnancy. But was he really trying to kill off the creature she bore in her womb by inflicting torture after torture on her, by leaving her thus on a dark tempestuous night, with horror at his new sin, at his new betrayal, with her soul all pain and shame and terror?… He returned at midnight, soaked, his clothes as muddy as if he’d been rolling in the ditch.

  ‘Holy Mary!…’ she exclaimed, wringing her hands. ‘How did you get in that state?’

  ‘It was raining. Are you deaf? Didn’t you hear water?’

  ‘But the rain’s been over some t
ime …’

  ‘I got soaked before …’ he almost yelled. ‘Must I listen to you now too?’

  Suddenly she felt her own suspicions confirmed; he replied like that and reacted violently to reason when caught in the wrong; then he cut off discussion with shouts … Leaning her forehead against a pane of glass on which a fine drizzle was now drawing damp lines, she began silently to weep. Then the love she had for him, the obedience she showed him, the submissive devotion she gave proof of every day, were not enough. All was useless! He escaped from her, betrayed her, for whom? And he had made her leave her own child, exposed her to her father’s rebukes for this!… for this! One sorrow after the other, always, always, even now when she should have been sacred to him because such agonies could kill the creature about to be born!

  Raimondo’s voice, hoarsely calling for his valet, suddenly aroused her the following dawn. He had gone to bed; his teeth were chattering with fever. Then she dried her tears and rushed to his help. For three days she never left his bedside a moment, acted as nurse and maid, forgetting her own anguished state from terror lest that illness should turn into pestilence, remaining alone with him when the family, suspicious, refused, any of them, to enter the room again. Trembling at the idea of contagion, they were all afraid of catching it, Raimondo more than any, in spite of the doctor’s comforting laughs, in spite of her assurances.