In Maremma/Volume 2/Chapter 26
CHAPTER XXVI.
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HEN Daniello Villamagna saw his boat go out of the lagoon of Orbetello bearing her with it, he looked after it as long as he could see its path over the water, that was growing lilac and purple under the after-glow of the west. Then he retraced his steps slowly towards the town. The galley-slaves were still at work; the labour at the sea-wall was urgent, and they would be kept at it by lantern-light. There was a score of them. They were all there until the State should have decided whether to send them to in land or island prisons, or to the mines, or to public labours on the coast.
Daniello looked curiously at the one amidst them to whom she had spoken. Saturnino Mastarna looked in turn at him, with a hungry, longing look.
'You know her?' he muttered, very low, as the sailor passed him.
Daniello, eager to catch a hint or a sign, with his quick, ardent southern mind, murmured back to him:
'What is she to you—tell me?'
'I am her father,' answered the galley-slave; and he bent his shoulders to the rope-yoke with which he and five of his comrades were doing oxen's work in moving with cords the great blocks of the fresh stone that was being fitted into the Pelasgic wall,
As for the Sicilian, the red sunset skies and the shallow waters of the lagoon seemed to circle round him: he felt as if the high black rocks of Argentaro had fallen upon him.
The men of Sicily in general do not think a brigand a criminal; the calling to them seems a fair and a brave one. To take to the hills is, in their sight, natural enough, and honourable, since it needs a sure eye, a firm hand, a steady foot, and a bold spirit. But Daniello Villamagna came of an old seafaring stock, who had been always most loyal and honest mariners. He and his did not look with the common Sicilian sympathy on the malandrini. They did not abhor their crimes, indeed, as northern nations or people of the cities might do. They believed a man might be a mountain-robber, yet have Heaven's grace touch him all the same. Still, no one of them had ever had dealings with or friendship for the brigands that undermine public security all over Sicily, as the scolytus will do the trunk of a beech-tree; and to him Saturnino of Santa Fiora was a sinner who merited his chains.
That this great brute, with the dark hair on his naked breast like a wild beast, and his cavernous, cruel eyes that glowed like a wild beast's in the dark, should claim her, his Musoncella—his scarcely-known, tenderly-adored, proud, self-willed, silent, haughty daughter of the moors and sea—seemed to him so incredible that he leaned there against the broken wall staring straight before him, and wondering if he were awake; and, if awake, were in his senses,
The deeds of Saturnino were not of his generation, but he had heard tell of them; they had reached even to his own Sicilian shores, where the Sicilian mountain chiefs had been jealous of the Achilles-like valour, and the countless and ghastly acts, which had marked the blood-stained rule of the Maremmano hero.
He knew that Saturnino had made no more count of the life of a man than a fisher of those shores made of the life of a fish. His blood ran cold as he stood there in the glow from the carmine-colour of the west. He tried by every method he could to approach and speak again to the galley-slave, but in vain. Saturnino was kept at work amidst others, close under the eye of the overseer. Vigilance was redoubled as the shadows of evening drew near and the lamps were lit on the mole.
The men worked there till ten at night, and then were called off to their prisons, while the sea grew alive with the boats for the spearing, and a myriad of little golden lights sparkled on the water as the fire-flies do on the land, and the whole seafaring population of the coast, from ten miles up and down, strained, and leaped, and cursed, and laughed, and wrangled, and shouted as the shoal of fish was murdered.
All the uproar, and the mirth, and the quarrels, and the triumphs failed to divert the young skipper from his thoughts. He pulled out alone to his good brig, and spent the night on his own deck, astonished and perplexed.
With morning he tried again to get an instant's speech with Saturnino,
In vain he spent his day by the sea-wall watching the labours of the gang. It was sunset again before he could seize a moment when the overseer was occupied, and Mastarna had been allowed to pause in his ox-like toil. Then he said quickly, in a whisper:
'Are you truly her father?'
'She has the face of the woman I loved most; she has the face of Serapia,' answered the galley-slave. 'When I was taken first I gave her to a woman of Santa Tarsilla. I see she knows nought of me. Last year she saved and sheltered me; but then I scarce looked at her. I was half-drowned, and mad with hunger. I took the gold toys out of the place she hid me in. I would rather she should never know———'
'Why do you tell me, then?'
'Because, by your eyes as you walked beside her, I saw that you loved her; and for her sake, perhaps, you will free me.'
'Free you!'
Daniello stared at him in amaze, forgetting how absolutely the one single longing to escape filled all the thoughts, and ate up all the soul, of this mountain-eagle, who was caged by the hot sea-shore.
The heart of Saturnino had thrilled with a sudden memory of tenderness as he had seen the girl in whom he had recognised Serapia's daughter; but far stronger and more absorbing in him was his own thirst for deliverance. It was aimost the only instinct left in him, and the few weeks that he had been free on his own hills in the summer before—all wretched, hungry, filled with fear, and compelled to concealment, though they were—had been so sweet to him, that night and day since he had been captured afresh he had meditated escape; schemed for it, lived for it, scarcely felt the heat of the sun or the cold of the wind, the aching of his old wounds or the lash of the overseer's whip, for thinking every moment—could he get away?
He would have torn himself from his trap as the eagle does, leaving its foot wrenched off behind it. The thirst for the liberty of the hills was like a madness on him.
To his gaolers and his companions in misery he never spoke. If he could have slain them all and so escaped, he would have done it.
'She is beautiful and her mother was noble,' he muttered. 'The woman who took her was a good woman. There was love in your eyes as you looked at her; one gives the world for that—I have not forgotten. Will you help me to get free for her sake?'
'You would torment her———'
'No; I might have called to the gaolers yesterday, and if I had said to them "yonder child is of my blood," they would have let me speak to her. But I would not. I stole her gold toys; I would rather she should never know———You are a sailor, you have a ship; if you can get me away, take me to Sardinia. There are Mastarna men there; kindred of mine. They, too, live by the mountains; they would make me welcome———'
The overseer turned and resumed his walk near them.
Saturnino lapsed into the sullen silence he had preserved since his capture.
'I will see you again,' murmured the Sicilian, and for prudence sake he left the sea-wall and went towards the town to summon those of his sailors who were drinking and domino-playing at the wine-houses.
To do what the galley-slave asked him might be utter ruin and disgrace to him; it might cost him his vessel, and his liberty, and his good name. If he helped the captive to cheat the law, the law would most likely find out his complicity and fling him in turn into its prisons; and he knew well that Saturnino Masturna had been a murderer, not once, but many times; that his crimes against the law were dark and numberless, that he was still a wild beast ready to tear even the hand that aided him.
Yet it hurt him to leave the man there in his hourly torment, in his hopeless misery, and who could tell, if he were left thus, growing more and more brutish and desperate every day, how he might not in sheer despair call upon his daughter to drink his cup of bitterness with him? Or if he escaped by himself, might he not seek her out and compel her to shelter him afresh, and bury her youth for ever underneath the weight of his own secrecy and cult? If it were possible to rescue him, would it not be well done for her sake?
He was generous, and he took little thought, and the memory of Musa was with him, potent and intoxicating as the fumes of strong wine; her coldness, her scorn, her strength enhanced her beauty of person to him. The dangerous race she sprang from gave her a mystery and a magic the more. To the northern mind and worldly knowledge of Sanctis this lineage had seemed the most terrible of all inheritance. But to the Sicilian it made her look the lovelier; as Persephone looked to her lover when the darkness of the shades was about her instead of the flowering fields.
That in her veins ran the bold, fierce blood of the Mastarna of the Apennine rocks was but a reason the more for him to long to bear her away on the deck of his own good brig, and dwell with her under the dark green orange-groves beside his own blue sea, and make her the happy mother of dauntless children who would ride the waves like the dolphin and nautilus.