Unto the Sons (30 page)

Within the hour, as Maria and her husband, together with their one son, Giuseppe, remained in their house behind bolted doors, they heard in the vicinity the repeated explosions of guns; but later in the afternoon, when quiet was restored, a neighbor knocked on the door to announce that Murat had been captured. He had tried to escape along the beach into a boat, the visitor said, but the golden spur on one of his boots became entangled in a fisherman’s net that had been left lying in the sand, enabling the charging local militia to capture the former king and drag him to the Pizzo castle, where he was now locked behind bars.

Early the next morning several hundred people, including Maria and Vincenzo Gagliardi and their son, stood outside the castle by the sea, waiting to learn the fate of Murat, hoping to glimpse the former king peeking out from his cell. The news of Murat’s capture had already been semaphored to King Ferdinand in Naples; but no reply had yet been received from the Bourbon monarch.

In Pizzo on this day, and during the days that followed, little work was accomplished by the town bureaucrats and artisans, or by the farmers in the area, for they were busy socializing around the castle, debating whether Murat should be hanged, shot, or incarcerated for life.

Although the local militia maintained absolute control over the gates and bars that confined Murat and his followers who had not been killed in Sunday’s skirmish, the fifteenth-century castle itself was owned at the time by the duke of Infantado of Madrid. And the duke’s steward in Pizzo always had access to the palace. The steward was a humble and kindly man named Francesco Alcalá, a good friend of Maria’s husband, and he kept the latter informed on what was transpiring within the castle—and that is how the details of Murat’s imprisonment became so well known to Maria and her son, a teenager at the time; and he would subsequently pass the tale along to his daughter, Ippolita, who would in turn describe Murat’s demise to
her
grandchild Joseph.

“They kept Murat locked up in the Pizzo castle for five days,” Ippolita Talese told Joseph, during a quiet afternoon in her house after Christmas. Living with his grandparents after the wolf attack had provided Joseph with his first opportunity to spend time with his grandmother, and her recounting of the Murat story was as engrossing as anything he had heard in Don Achille’s history class. “When Murat was captured on the beach by the militia and marched off to the castle, a mob of citizens and brigands, hundreds of them, attacked him along the way,” Ippolita continued. “They gashed his face. They tore at his clothes. They stole his gold epaulets, his spurs, his jewels, and the snuffbox you saw. The militia allowed these brutal people to have their way with Murat, and when he was finally carried into the castle he was almost bleeding to death.

“It was my grandfather Vincenzo’s friend, Alcalá, the steward, who saved Murat at that time. Alcalá got a doctor to treat the wounds immediately. And it was Alcalá who also saw to it that Murat should have new clothes, for the poor Frenchman’s clothes had been torn to shreds by the mob. Three tailors from the area were called in to measure and make Murat his garments, one of these tailors being an ancestor of your mentor, Cristiani.

“But none of these garments was as fine as Murat was accustomed to wearing. There simply was not enough time to make them properly. The garments had to be delivered in two days, for that was when King Ferdinand’s military commander, General Nunziante, was to arrive in Pizzo with his staff to interrogate Murat, and Murat had insisted that he had the right to make a dignified appearance for this official occasion. But it made no difference. Murat was found guilty of starting a civil disturbance against King Ferdinand, and he was condemned to death.

“Murat died on the fifth day after his capture,” Ippolita told Joseph, her voice conveying a sympathetic tone that her grandmother had perhaps
used in retelling the tale decades before; her grandmother Maria was known to have had much compassion for the Frenchman. “On the day of his death he had a shock of his hair cut off and asked one of the officers to enclose it with a letter he had written to his wife, Napoleon’s sister, and his children, who were then all living in Trieste. Then Murat took off his watch and gave it to the officer as a gift. But before he parted with the watch he removed from its lid a tiny carnelian on which was carved a portrait of his wife. Murat held this carnelian tightly in the palm of his hand as he followed the soldiers out to the courtyard, where they were preparing to kill him.

“The sergeant of the firing squad offered Murat a chair, but Murat said he wanted to die standing up. The sergeant offered to cover up his eyes with a cloth, but Murat said he wanted to die with his eyes open. ‘I do have one request,’ Murat then said. ‘I have commanded in many battles, and now I would like to give the word of command for the last time.’

“The sergeant granted his wish. Murat then stood against the wall of the castle and called out in a loud voice: ‘Soldiers, form line.’ Six soldiers drew themselves up to within about ten feet of him. ‘Prepare arms—present.’ The soldiers pointed their muskets at him. ‘Aim at the heart, save the face,’ Murat said, with a little smile. And then, after he had held up his hand to look for the final time at the carnelian showing the portrait of his wife, he issued his final command—‘Fire!’

“The muskets exploded, and six bullets struck him in the chest. Murat fell to the ground without even a groan.”

15.

I
ppolita Talese had an aura of mystery about her that often puzzled her grandson, a detachment that sometimes made Joseph ill at ease in her presence; and yet he was oddly pleased that she was his grandmother. He was impressed by her. He was impressed by her well-groomed appearance, her delicate face and fair skin, which was remarkably unwrinkled for a woman of her age, and he was impressed with the fact that she changed her dress each evening before supper, or, at the very least, came to the table wearing a beautiful lace collar, and always emitted a slight but pleasant fragrance of perfume.

She held her slim shoulders back when she walked, and sat upright during dinner in one of the high-backed chairs that had cushions and were much more comfortable than the furniture that Joseph was accustomed to at home. His grandmother’s dining table was polished and had candelabra; and the cookies she had baked for Christmas were displayed on the sideboard on cut-glass plates with silver rims. She spoke softly but directly, as had been her manner when recounting to Joseph the life of Murat; but she did not talk much about family matters or town gossip, and often she lapsed into long silences at the table, ignoring the conversations around her and seeming to be self-absorbed. She wore a variety of rings and had a nervous habit of turning them around again and again on her fingers, as if they were loose-fitting. There were objets d’art on the shelves of her living room, and mauve-colored fringed draperies along the windows; and on the wall above the fireplace was a gilt-framed painting of a cliffside manor at dusk that Joseph could not identify.

There was much in his grandparents’ house that was unfamiliar to Joseph. His previous visits to the house had been rare and brief, and until this occasion, prompted by the attack of the wolves, he had never been an overnight guest. He and Sebastian slept in a rear bedroom on the first floor that, during the days of the Bongiovanni barony, had been the quarters for a servant. Next door was a room where Joseph’s mother stayed with the younger children; but after two nights she moved out and took them to her own parents’ house in the valley. Joseph could see that his mother was uncomfortable around his paternal grandparents, and after she had overcome her fear that the wolves might return, she proposed spending the Christmas holidays in her girlhood home, and Ippolita made no effort to discourage her.

But Joseph remained with Sebastian, and each day Sebastian accompanied his grandfather’s crew to the farm, as usual, while Joseph went to Cristiani’s tailor shop. The shop was open only half-days until after New Year’s, and so Joseph often found himself alone in the house, or with Ippolita. Overcoming his shyness one afternoon, Joseph asked his grandmother about the painting of the manor that hung above the fireplace, and she identified it as the Gagliardi residence in Vibo Valentia, where she had spent much time during her girlhood. However, the place had greatly declined in recent years, she said, and added with a sigh: “But that is only natural. The Gagliardi family itself is in decline—and that, too, is natural. All families have their ups and downs, and sometimes a family can go from rags to riches, and from riches to rags, in three or four generations—and then the process starts all over again. It all depends on whether any
energy is left. In the beginning, a family’s energy usually springs from misery. And this misery often produces a family member’s drive to escape to a better life; and sometimes he paves the way for other members to follow. So you have a family on the rise, motivated and industrious. And within a generation this industriousness can produce wealth. And with wealth can come status, even nobility. And with nobility comes pride, and often arrogance. Arrogance is usually an element that leads to decline, and in time back to misery. The process continues,” she concluded without a tone of regret, and Joseph had no idea if she was referring to the Gagliardis or to families in general.

Most of what he knew about the Gagliardis he had picked up at Cristiani’s, the back room being an endless source of information about the region’s distinguished families, their scandals and other misfortunes. Mr. Cristiani had once recalled making two suits for Marquis Gagliardi and not being paid; although Joseph never knew how the marquis was related to his grandmother Ippolita, if indeed he was directly related. The Gagliardi family was large, with many branches, extending from Vibo Valentia, southwest of Maida, to the town of Amantea, which was northwest. What Joseph did know from personal observation was that his grandmother had better furniture and more jewelry than anyone else in his family, and that she was the only family member who did not go to church.

Not only did she not go to church, but—and Joseph was equally amazed at this—nobody in the family criticized her for it, or even commented upon it. His grandmother was seemingly accepted by everyone in the family, including her husband, as innately different from the rest of them.

Joseph instinctively did not inquire into the reasons for her absence from church during his stay at his grandparents’, but he could not fail to notice—during quick glimpses into their bedroom—that all the religious articles in the room were on his grandfather’s side of the bed. These included the missal on his bedside table, the crucifix on his bureau, and the wall niches containing the statuettes of Saint Francis, the Virgin, and other holy figures. On Ippolita’s bedside table were secular books, one being the poetry of Ovid; a tapestry was hung across the wall behind her armoire, and on her bureau was an ornamented bronze box with a padlock that Joseph imagined held some of the valuable gems she was said to have inherited.

The subject of Ippolita Talese’s gems had been much discussed during the previous summer in Cristiani’s back room, after an incident in early July in which Domenico was also involved. According to the tailors—and
Joseph’s mother later confirmed the story—Domenico Talese was on his horse heading home after Mass one morning when he was greeted along the road by three brown-robed nuns.

“Good morning, Don Domenico,” the nuns said in unison, addressing him in a respectful manner that pleased him; but he was also surprised to hear his name spoken by nuns he did not know. He knew every nun in Maida, and many in nearby convents; so he assumed that these were affiliated with one of the convents on the other side of the mountain and were perhaps on a pilgrimage to Paola—for during this week many traveling monks and nuns were en route to the shrine of Saint Francis to celebrate his feast day and to revisit the grotto where he performed the first of many miracles.

“Good morning, Sisters,” he said with a smile, continuing on his way.

“You are a holy man, Don Domenico,” one of the nuns called after him. “It is a pity that Donna Ippolita does not follow your example.”

Jerking the reins of his horse, Domenico suddenly turned around. He stared at the three nuns standing on the side of the road. He was confused and angry.

“By what right do you judge her?” he shouted. “And how is it that you know her?”

“We do not know her,” replied the oldest nun, who stood in the middle. “We just know of her. Her family is well known in this region. But we mean no offense, Don Domenico,” the nun continued, softly. “In fact, today we bring you good tidings. Because of your devotion to the Church you will be receiving a heavenly reward. Your wealth, Don Domenico, will soon be multiplied.”

He regarded them suspiciously. The three figures stood meekly together, with their heads now bowed. They were tiny, birdlike women who seemed undernourished from excessive fasting. They remained silent and still for several moments.

“So my wealth will be multiplied,” Domenico said finally, almost sneeringly. “And from where did you receive such information?”

“It came to us through our prayers,” the oldest nun replied, looking up, while the two others kept their heads bowed. “We are sisters from the convent near Serra San Bruno,” she explained, referring to a town in the mountains about twenty miles to the south. “We are affiliated with the Carthusian monastery there. The other night, during the seventh day of our novena, your name entered our prayers with the promise of your reward. We were entrusted to inform you, and we have walked many miles to do so.”

Domenico had never been to Serra San Bruno, but he had certainly heard of the Carthusians, an ancient contemplative order that predated even the monasticism of Saint Francis. And despite Domenico’s skepticism of the nuns, he had never been skeptical of the mysterious methods by which the Creator often communicated with his true believers. If Domenico’s reverential life had now earned him the reward of multiplied wealth, then he stood ready to accept it; for next to religion there was nothing that interested him more than multiplied wealth.