Morte alla Francia

The French girl came out of the dark staggering barefoot over the stones. Her nightdress was blackened at one shoulder. One side of her hair had burned away, leaving her scalp red and blistered beneath the ash. Blood ran down the front of her shift in a narrow line, not enough to kill her, but enough to make her look claimed by death.

Sitting in the tower in the dead of night, the mind could play tricks on you. I’d had conversations with shadows. Run from beasts that weren’t there. Fallen into dreams I’d sworn were real. All those years. Gone. This was my prize? My relief? A pathetic half-dead wretch.

Night after night I kept watch, by the cliffs, lulled by the susurration of the sea. Listening for the metered churning of French galleys or the clapping of hooves echoing through the palisades. The enemy seemed ever on the approach. Hidden just out of sight. But tonight she was delivered to me. An offering.

My hands shook. I pulled my seax blade from its leather scabbard. The blade was thirsty for sweet Franchischi blood.

The French. They had committed atrocities. Destroyed lives. Even mine. For what? Because Sicily was the jewel of Charles of Anjou’s eye. Another overlord trying to rule the whole Mediterranean. Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Normans. All coveted this island nation – a footstool between Europe and Arabia. All had come to conquer. All had failed. So too it would be for the French. A free people cannot be ruled.

As I exited into the night, the Bambina saw the torch and tried to run from me.

“Stop,” I called. I do not think she understood. “Wait. Bambina. Wait.”

She made it three more steps before her knees gave.

By the time I reached her, she had folded into the dust at the base of the tower. She could not have been more than ten. Perhaps eleven. Her breath came in tiny whistles. Her lips moved around words I did not know.

Kneeling beside her, I pressed my blade to the soft blistered flesh at the base of her neck. The iron and steel shone in the moonlight.

***

When the French came to Termini with a fleet of galleys, I was still young. I dreamt of having my own ship, trapping tuna and spearing swordfish. I would have a family, support them well from the bounty of the sea, and grow old under the Mediterranean skies.

I had already been given apprenticeship as a “ship’s boy.” I spent my time at sea hauling ropes, cleaning the deck, and bailing the bilge a bucket at a time—that is, until I met Dayana.

While waiting for supplies and gentler seas, we’d been taking turns running some gambling tables on the docks. Enrico, the first mate, beckoned me.

“Get wine, cheese, meat, nuts… and bread… go and fetch what you can, we have a live one tonight boy!”

“But what shall I bring for payment?”

“Payment?” Enrico asked, “tell Friuli he will get payment si piditi a la luna – when he reaches the moon!”

“But…”

“Go, go! Off with you. Biagio is ready to lose his shirt. We must keep him playing.”

When I arrived at Friuli’s shop, Dayana was waiting for me, arms crossed.

“No – you still owe us for the last five times you’ve come down here,” she said.

“But Dayana… Enrico…”

“I don’t care. It’s not possible,” she said.

Dayana was assigned to get payment on the open tab we had with her boss, Friuli, the cheese merchant. Dayana would not stop until she was paid every cent. She became my shadow. Then my lover. Then my wife. And little Giulia was born soon after.

By the time the French arrived, the pieces of my life had all been sown together perfectly. The French wasted no time tearing them apart.

A soldier spat on Friuli’s cheeses in the marketplace. Predictably, Dayana struck him with a rock. It was early in the occupation, and we had not yet learned to fear our Angevin overlords. Those were the days of making examples.

They hanged her from the fig tree below the old chapel that same day. I stood in the square for hours until the body stopped turning.

Little Giulia had to go live with Dayana’s family in Spain as I could not care for her properly while working and could not afford a wet nurse. Giulia was one of the lucky ones. Many women abandoned children they could not afford to feed. They were given names like Proietto – “thrown away” or Milingiana – “eggplant.”

All those years, Giulia was forced to work in an alfar, under the radiating heat of the wood-fire kilns, built into the stone and mortar.

I only was able to obtain the money to visit her five times in all these years, and the longest trip was only two full weeks. And now she was old enough to be wed herself and had no interest in returning to Sicily. Here entire life had been stolen from me. We were strangers to one another, bound by a common tragedy. Nothing more.

After that day, I became a watchman.

I watched in the night and slept in the day, like an undead spirit forced to walk the earth long after the last ember of humanity had dimmed. My soul was mute in my chest. The only force that animated my limbs was the thirst to avenge what had been taken—to set the scales back in balance.

Now my moment had come.

* * *

The first fire appeared just after vespers, a red tooth biting into the dark above Palermo. Then another answered from the ridge beyond Monreale. Then another, and another, until the whole western sky became a chain of flames.

The fires meant Palermo had risen at last. The signal fires were the beacon. Gather arms. Join the fight.

I stood at the parapet with the torch in hand.

“Morte alla Francia,” I whispered.

Men were running through the olive groves. Bells sounded from the village. Not the slow bells for death. Not the high bells for Mass. Wild bells. Thunderous bells. Bells that had forgotten God and remembered blood. The night of blood had begun.

A rider came up the mule path, bent low over his horse.

“Palermo has risen!” he shouted. “The French are dead in the streets!”

I laughed. I had not laughed like that since before Dayana was hanged. My joy frightened me. All Sicilians were soldiers now. All of us laughed at our fortune. There was no turning back until every French soldier and tax collector was silenced by steel or choaked to death under the unforgiving waves.

Just as I lifted the torch, I heard the scream.

At first, I thought it was a gull, or some wounded animal in the rocks below the tower. Then the sound came again, thin and broken and unmistakably human.

“À l’aide! Maman! À l’aide!”

French.

***

I had imagined this night a thousand times. I had imagined French captains begging mercy. Opening the tower stores and handing old swords to boys whose fathers had been beaten in the squares. I had imagined the signal fire leaping from my post and carrying vengeance down the coast.

I had not imagined a child.

The wound was high on her chest, just under the collarbone. I tore the cloth away and saw the torn skin, the swelling bruise, the shallow red mouth where the blade had entered and stopped. Her ribs had saved her. The knife must have struck bone, chipped, turned, and gone no deeper. Whatever it was, one of my kinsmen had failed, and she had been delivered to me in time to finish the job.

She would live, if I helped her.

Or I could take my vengeance. Just a little pressure to the neck.

It would take but moments.

The bells kept ringing.

From the village came shouting.

“Giovanni!” someone called from the road below on the palisades. “Light it! Light the fire!”

I looked up at the tower. The basket of pitch waited in the iron cradle. One touch and the coast would know. One touch was all that was needed.

The girl’s small hand closed around my wrist.

“Papa,” she whispered.

I looked down at her burned face.

For sixteen years, I had yearned for French blood on my blade.

But there was blood on this child’s mouth.

Not French blood or Sicilian blood. Only blood. Red and earned.

I lifted her carefully. She whimpered once and then went limp in my arms, her head falling into the hollow beneath my chin. The way my little Giulia used to collapse in my arms after a long day of picking flowers and playing games in the garden with her friends.

The torch rolled from my hand into the dust.

Above me, the tower remained dark.

“Giovanni!” the voice called again. “For the love of God, light it!”

I looked toward the village, then toward the sea, then at the child in my arms.

And at last, the words came to me, not as prayer, not as command, but as confession.

“What have we done?”

***

Above me, the tower remained dark.

Ruggero, Tancredi and Federico burst into the clearing by the tower on horseback, holding torches, with knives and clubs tied to their saddle holsters. Their white shirts were covered in blood. Their eyes were full of murder. All three of them struggled to catch their breath.

“Moranu lin Franchiski,” they yelled.

“Moranu lin Franchiski,” I replied.

“What is that?” Tancredi asked, pointing at the girl.

“A stray,” I said.

“Why is she still breathing?” Federico asked.

“Light the beacon already,” Ruggero ordered.

The torch lay directly in between where I knelt with the girl and where the three men sat on their halted steads. I scurried over on all fours and then stood up with the torch in hand.

“We will take the girl,” Ruggero said, turning his horse with the reins.

“No,” I said, surprising even myself. I held out the palm of my free hand to caution him. “I will deal with her myself. For sixteen years I’ve waited for revenge… this one is mine!”

“Minchia. Minchia.” Ruggero said, nodding his head. And they rode off down the coast, searching for more Frenchmen to kill.

***

I rode for The Hospital of the Holy Trinity.

The girl was draped across the back of the saddle, with a rope tied to each of our torsos. Her breathing was very shallow, and the rough cobbled roads caused the horse to bounce, repeatedly knocking the wind from her lungs.

The front of the building had the classic three-door face. Next to the main building was a clock tower and belfry. I knew it well. Many times, I had gone to be tended to by the nuns, who gave me tinctures and potions to help with my depression. Made me bathe in the hot springs.

I carried the girl through the great halls and into the infirmary.

Sister Agatha shook her head.

“Madre Infirmaria,” I said.

“Giovanni,” Sister Agatha answered.

“This little one needs medical care.”

“And you brought her here? Can’t you see she is French?” Sister Agatha asked.

“She is a Bambina. Children have no nationality.”

“Oh. Uhuh. And this is what you are going to tell Father Corrado.”

“Can you help her? I think she was strangled. She is having trouble breathing.”

“We do not help the French here,” Sister Agatha said.

“Can’t you help this one?”

“Then what? Enroll her as an aspirant? She doesn’t even speak Italian.”

“We will find a place for her.”

“At the end of a rope.”

“Please Sister, in the name of all things holy. She hasn’t much time.”

Sister Agatha took the girl's pulse and put the back of her hand to her head.

“She may not make it,” Sister Agatha said. “She is in a bad way.”

“It is a hell of a night to be French,” I said.

***

In the morning, Ruggero was at my door.

“Where is the girl?” he asked.

“I killed her.”

“Show me the body,” he said.

“That is impossible.”

“Why?”

“She is among the rocks below San Nicola.”

“Is it true.”

“I slit her throat and delivered her to the sea.”

“Very well, Giovanni. But if a girl appears speaking French, it will be you who hangs from the end of a rope.”

***

The girl’s condition worsened overnight. Sister Agatha washed her wounds with wine, vinegar, and honey. Sister Agatha gave her nose sprays and mouthfuls of liquorice and comfrey to stabilize her humors.

The girl’s chest rattled like something was broken inside.

“If she dies, it will be your problem,” Sister Agatha said.

“So be it,” I said.

“Why would you risk your life for this girl?”

“She means nothing to me.”

“Then why?”

“Because she is a girl. She cannot be blamed for what the French have done to us.”

“But they are our enemies, Giovanni.”

“What are we then – if we shed innocent blood. Are we any better than the French who enslave whole countries? I fear that we may be worse.”

“It is hard to believe you of all people have gone soft on us.”

Father Corrado entered the infirmary and looked at Giovanni.

He walked over and stood directly in front of him, looking down, hands interlocked behind his back.

“I hope you understand the trouble you have brought on all of us.”

“I do father.”

“Good.”

“That’s it?”

“It is Ruggero and Tancredi you need to worry about – not me.”

***

On the third day, I was sleeping in the infirmary. The girl’s fever had not broken, and her poor crushed lungs were infected. It was anyone’s guess if she would live. But I knew that she would. She had already defied a death a dozen times. But could I do the same?

“Giovanni,” Ruggero’s booming voice echoed through the halls. “Rocks of San Nicola my ass. The girl is here.”

Ruggero and Tancredi appeared in the well of the infirmary, still dripping with wet blood, all up their arms and on their shirts and vests.

“You have found me out.”

“I don’t know what is worse, that you lied in a time like this – or that you did it to protect this wretch.”

“She is just a girl, Ruggero. She has no part in this.”

“Did you forget what they did to Dayana?”

“For sixteen years, I thought of nothing else. But you forget my daughter, Giulia. She was taken from me. Her mother was taken from her. What did she do to deserve that?”

“Giulia was innocent. But this wretch! She came here on a boat, with parents whose sole purpose was to enslave us and tax us.”

“I won’t let you touch this girl, Ruggero,” I said.

Father Corrado walked forward out of the shadows. “Nor will I.”

Sister Agatha, who had been just outside the door, strode in, and said, “I’d hand her over to you right now, but I’d never hear the end of it from these to loons. So, I’m sorry Ruggero. I’m with them.”

“Have you all lost your minds?” Ruggero asked. “We are at war.”

“But she isn’t,” I said.

“I can’t let this go, Giovanni. If you want to save this girl so badly, you’ll have to do it somewhere else. You are not welcome in Termini anymore.”

“You are exiling me?”

“It is better than being hung.”

“Not by much. What? I save one girl and I am no better than the French?”

“You heard what I said.”

“And if she dies?”

“Either way. You are dead to us. You are no longer welcome.”

“Look at what you have become, Ruggero.”

***

The girl awoke in a fright.

Sister Agatha looked down at her, putting a handout, speaking soothingly in Italian.

The girl screamed. It was as if she was still in the throes of the ordeal that claimed the lives of her parents. And now, she was surrounded by Italians.

Sister Agatha began to speak to her in French. The girl was asking her how she got here. Sister Agatha looked over at me, scowling.

“What should I tell her?”

“Tell her… Tell her nothing,” I pleaded.

“The girl needs to know,” Sister Agatha said.

The girl was mumbling “Maman, papa… Maman… papa.”

Sister Agatha told the girl about the war. About the Sicilian revolt. About having to leave. And she looked over at me. Then spoke to the girl in French, translating afterward.

“You can go with this man or stay here and learn Italian and become an aspirant to the order. Anything else and you will be slain.”

The girl nodded and looked at me. Then, after another moment, she fell back asleep.

“Are you ready to be a father?” Sister Agatha said.

“How do you know I won’t sell her into hard labor. Make some money. And move on.”

“Let’s not lie to one another,” Sister Agatha said.

“I am not ready for any of this.”

“And what will you do when you settle down.”

“I was thinking of buying a small fishing boat,” I said.

“You yearn for a new life?”

“For the first time in sixteen years, I am thinking of something other than revenge.”

The girl stirred. She looked over at me.

I did not know a word of French.

She did not know a word of Italian.

The bells outside rung out. The screams of war breached the infirmary walls.

Sicily was breaking from captivity.

And here I was, exiled.

But I felt free.