The Wager (24 page)

The next night passed in the woods, too.

On the third morning, their need for fresh water couldn't be denied any longer. They followed a footpath out of the woods. By afternoon they looked out over a wide gulf, where a small port town nestled at the foot of a mountain. Monte Inici. Don Giovanni could hardly believe it. He walked so poorly these days, they had covered hardly more than half the distance to Trapani, though they'd traveled nonstop for nearly three full days.

They went directly to the public well. Women with their heads covered stepped away quickly. A Muslim town. Good.
Muslims never denied the needy. Don Giovanni made a bowl of his hands and stretched them out, pleading.

The women shrieked in fear at man and dog. They huddled together talking rapidly, then ran off.

Don Giovanni looked into the well. The rope hung flaccid. They'd taken the bucket.

His dry tongue rasped against the inside of his cheeks. Water. What could he use as a container?

He broke a branch off a shrub, tied it to the end of the rope, and lowered it into the well. When he brought it up, he and Cani licked the wet leaves. It wasn't enough.

He took off his smock. This wasn't washing. This was wetting. There was a difference. He freed the linen purse from the threads that held it tight to the inside of the smock and tucked it into the waistband of his trousers. Then he tied the smock to the end of the rope and lowered it into the well.

When he pulled the sopping cloth up, he twisted it over his mouth, over Cani's mouth, wringing out the water. And memories of blood. And all the rest. The water tasted ancient, like death. He dunked the smock over and over. Until it caught.

Don Giovanni stopped pulling immediately. He leaned over the well, but it was impossible to tell what held the smock. He gave the rope a small jerk. Then another. He tugged a little harder. Then harder still. And the rope came up. With nothing attached.

He used a stick to try to snag the lost smock. Nothing. It was as though it had disintegrated.

He turned and slid with his back against the well wall to the ground. The rough rock ripped at his already raw back. He cried, while Cani licked his tears.

It wasn't the cuts. He had so many cuts and sores.

And it wasn't the cold. He could dig a burrow under pine needles, as he and Cani had done for the past two nights. And the days, they were fine. If he moved quickly, or as quickly as he could, he would fight off the shivers.

It was that everyone could see his scabrous self. His smock had shielded him from that, though piteously.

And oh, Lord in heaven, what if he was, indeed, the cause of the diphtheria outbreak in Palermo? What if he'd now infected this town's well? He had to tell someone.

He ordered Cani to stay there, and he walked down the path to the first house he found. He knocked.

A man opened the door.

Don Giovanni suddenly didn't trust himself to say the right things. Tears threatened to come again. He wiped at his eyes.

The man closed the door. A few minutes later he reopened it and held out a shirt.

“Thank you, but I can't accept it. Thank you,” Don Giovanni managed.

A woman's voice called from within. The man reached
behind him and now held out a large flat bread with a blob of fresh goat cheese on top.

Don Giovanni took it with both hands. “Thank you.”

The man started to close the door.

“Please,” said Don Giovanni. “Do you know about Palermo? Are the children still sick there?”

“They thought they had bladder of the throat. The bad swelling that causes suffocation. But it was something else. It passed.”

“And no one died?”

“No one died.”

“Not a single child?”

“No one.”

“Thank you.”

Don Giovanni went back to Cani. They shared the bread and cheese in equal portions. The man couldn't stop crying. He cried between bites. He cried as they walked west, into new woods. He cried as they curled up for the night. He cried with his eyes shut. The children of Palermo were safe. Zizu was safe. The sweet sorrow of gratitude finally carried him off to sleep.

It took an additional two nights in these new woods and most of the day beyond that before they arrived in Trapani and knocked at the door of an inn that backed on to the hill.

The shutter upstairs opened. “Who's that?”

“Don Giovanni.”

“Don Giovanni of Palermo?”

Don Giovanni fought the urge to cross his arms over his chest to try to hide his shameful exposure. It would have been a futile act. “Yes.”

“The one who brought diphtheria? I can see it. Look at you. Disgusting mess. Get out of here. Leave Trapani. We care about our children.”

“It wasn't diphtheria. No one died. It was something else.”

“Really? How do you know that?”

“Everyone knows that,” Don Giovanni said as forcefully as a hungry, thirsty man could.

“Even so, you're hideous. No one would come to my inn if I gave you a bed.”

“Please just sell us food then. Set it outside the door. I'll leave money there.”

The innkeeper shook his head.

“I'll leave double what the meal is worth. And if you'll fill an amphora with water for us, I'll pay triple for the food, plus an extra gold coin for the amphora.” It was an exorbitant price.

The innkeeper closed the shutters. Fifteen minutes later, he opened the door and set a cloth parcel and an amphora outside.

Man and dog wandered down the long sickle-shaped beach, sat on the cold sand, and ate and drank.

“We'll be all right, Cani. We've both got fat on us. If we can eat every third day, like we've done so far, we'll be all right. Only
sixteen days to go. Then we'll get ready for the wedding. My bride. Your new mistress. We can do this.”

A cold wind whipped off the sea with no warning, spraying them, ruining their bread. They ate it anyway.

They walked south, staying as close to the shoreline as they could. That night they dug a hole high up on a beach and slept while the wind screamed over them.

In the morning Cani whistled and snorted and threw himself around to get free of the sand.

Don Giovanni had to wipe sand off his eyelids before he could open them. He picked crusts of sand from his nostrils. He blew sand from his lips. He wondered if he should try to scrape it from his chest and back, but he had nothing to scrape with. The wind blew hard, grinding the sand deeper into his skin, throwing it in his eyes.

They kept following the shoreline, anyway. It was the shortest route to Marsala, where they arrived on the third morning. Cani whimpered continuously. And every part of Don Giovanni stung except the center of his chest, where he'd clutched the empty amphora tight.

The flat land was perfect for agriculture. To the north of the city was a river, where Don Giovanni and Cani drank their fill. The water sloshed in Don Giovanni's stomach as they walked to the first farmhouse and paid the farmer for a hearty meal.

“I've got an old smock,” said the farmer, filling the amphora with the delicious local wine.

Don Giovanni hadn't asked for wine. Cani didn't drink it, after all. But both man and dog had already had their fill of water, so he didn't object. But the smock . . . ah. “Thank you. But I can't accept it.”

“The wind's unusual this year,” said the farmer. “No one remembers anything like this. The oldest man in town says that when his grandfather was a child gales cut through like a sword. But that old man makes up things all the time.”

Don Giovanni nodded. “The wind can hurt.”

“Well, you can sleep with the horses if you want. You won't find anything better around here. Derelicts like you aren't tolerated.”

Derelict. That's what he looked like, for sure.

“In the smaller towns south of here they kill people like you.”

That couldn't be true. The king's laws extended all over Sicily.

“Go on, sleep with the horses. In the morning, you can have bread in goat milk. A traveler needs a hearty start to his day. And maybe you'll have changed your mind about the smock by then.” The farmer gestured toward the stable. “Go on now.”

The offer was good. Too good.

They couldn't accept.

This was the final stretch. Don Giovanni had to expect traps everywhere. Thirteen days to go.

“Thanks. But we can't stay.”

The wind followed them down the coast, driving sand into every exposed opening in their bodies. When a wagon would pass on the road up the slope, they'd flatten themselves into the sand. That farmer could have been the devil's assistant, or he could have simply been a friendly man. But it wasn't worth the chance. There was still one more large town on the western coast. Don Giovanni and Cani wouldn't stop till they got there.

It took four days before they finally arrived in Mazara. They should have made it in three. And they would have, if it hadn't been for the wine. Being drunk slowed a man down. And made him stupid; Don Giovanni dropped the amphora as they were coming to the edge of town. It broke on a stone beside the road.

Mazara was smaller than Marsala. Still, it was big enough for the residents to know how to treat strangers—or it should have been. Instead, the people here were immediately suspicious of him. No one was tempted by the offer of huge sums of money for food. No one seemed moved by the plight of the needy, though Don Giovanni was sure the town had plenty of Muslims. The inlaid street pattern gave that away, and the white houses.

Don Giovanni and Cani wandered hopelessly along a road. Four days was too long to go without water. They'd never make it through a fifth. They'd be dead by night.

They came to a date palm tree and rested under it. Don Giovanni closed his eyes. He could fall asleep easily.

Death was such an easy option.

Smack!

His eyes popped open. He grabbed his aching upper arm. A half-desiccated orange lay on the ground beside him. The skin was clear yellow with just a touch of red tinge.

“Get away or I'll throw more. And take that evil dog with you.” The man was hard to understand. He was dressed in white robes and had only two teeth showing.

Don Giovanni looked at that yellow fruit, the color of hope. He let his mouth hang open. He made his eyes go vacant.

“Idiot!” The man threw another orange,
thump
, at Don Giovanni's forehead. “Don't show your dirty face on the holiday. Disrespectful. Disgraced!”

Cani attempted a growl. It was hardly audible.

Don Giovanni put a calming hand on the dog's head. He swung his own head from side to side.

The man threw a third orange and a fourth.
Smack
on Don Giovanni's bare chest;
thump
on his rag-covered knee. But that was all; the thrower's sack hung empty.

Don Giovanni picked up the oranges and held them like a baby to his chest. “We're going. Come, Cani.” He limped. The dog staggered.

They went back to the road they'd taken into town. No one was on it. So Don Giovanni sat and tried to peel an orange. The peel was tough, though, because the fruit was past ripe. He got up and walked back to the place where he'd dropped the amphora. The shards still lay by the rock. Don
Giovanni summoned every drop of strength he had left and gouged an orange with the point of a shard. He held the dog's mouth open and squeezed in what juice there was. After all, Don Giovanni had had wine for the past few days, but Cani had had nothing.

When the juice was gone, he used the shard to cut the orange into pieces and he and Cani devoured the sour flesh. They did the same with the other three. Then they spent the afternoon walking in the country outside the northern part of town, going from orange tree to orange tree. Most had been picked clean, but now and then an old fruit hung from a high branch. And fairly often there were rotting ones on the ground.

“Nine nights to go,” the man crooned in the dog's ear. “Then we prepare for Mimi.”

They went back to the road and crossed through the town, and Don Giovanni burst out laughing. A river came down through the middle of Mazara. If they'd only walked a little more to the south, they'd have found it that morning. They drank, though by now their thirst had been satisfied. They drank because a river should never go unappreciated. Then they walked past one of the most beautiful mosques Don Giovanni had ever seen.

That night they slept in a hole they dug on a beach south of town.

Don Giovanni knew of no other towns of any decent size along the coast to the south, but scattered villages were
everywhere. He'd have to use his judgment and trust people he thought might help.

They went back to Mazara first, though, and followed the river up, beyond the brackish mouth to where it was fresh and clear. They drank and Cani swam. And a woman washing her laundry gave them a flat bread to share. So charity still existed, just not on a holiday.

They walked the coastal road until it ended. Donkey paths took its place, winding inland. Don Giovanni followed any path that wasn't too steep for their flagging energy. The sparse vegetation promised nothing. They ate bitter leaves and hoped they weren't poisonous.

At nightfall they came to a terraced bit of hillside. The farmhouse showed no candlelight, no lamplight. Knocking on a door in the middle of the country in the dark was tantamount to asking for a beating, so Don Giovanni went back to the terraces and pushed himself against a dirt wall to sleep.

Cani watched him, then wandered off.

Well, that was all right. The dog would be there when he woke. He always was.

Don Giovanni slept.

Cackling woke him. Chicken noises. Then a shout. More shouts.

Don Giovanni clutched the amphora shard in his hand—it was his only weapon of defense—and ran down the terraces
away from the farmhouse. He ran and ran until he couldn't hear anything anymore. He panted in the pitch black of night.