The Sheen of the Silk

Ninety-four

IN MARCH OF 1282, THE VAST FLEET OF CHARLES OF ANJOU anchored in the Bay of Messina in the north of Sicily. Giuliano stood on the hillside above the harbor and stared at its size and power, and his heart sank. The force under Charles was enormous, and more ships were expected from Venice. Maybe Pietro Contarini would be with them. He had spoken of it the last time they had met, before that final parting. And it was final. They would not meet as friends again, Pietro had made that clear. His loyalty was always to Venice first. Giuliano could no longer promise that.

He watched now as the fleet commanders walked along the quay and then up the broad streets to be welcomed by the royal vicar and governor of the island, Herbert of Orleans. He lived in the great fortress castle of Mategriffon, known as “The Terror of the Greeks.” That was the thought uppermost in Giuliano’s mind as he thought of the crusader forces pillaging the countryside for food and beasts, in the name of Christ’s war to recover the land of the Savior’s birth and set it again under Christian rule.

Giuliano set out to walk back over the rough terrain of the central mountains, the cone of Etna always on the skyline. He wanted to be back in Palermo before the French forces reached it. If they were to make a stand, he would do it with the people he cared for most, with Giuseppe and his friends.

Not only did his legs ache-his blistered feet remind him with each step-but he was sick at heart at the senseless violence of it, the hatred that drove ignorant men to plunder and destroy. The loss would be immeasurable, not only in life but in beauty and glories that took the breath away, such as the Palatine Chapel with its great soaring Saracen arches and exquisite Byzantine mosaics. Centuries of profound and exquisite thought would be wiped out by men who could barely write their own names.

Perhaps worst of all was the lie that this was done in the service of Christ, the blind belief that sins would be forgiven, that this sea of human blood could wash anything clean.

How had the message of Christ ever come to be twisted into this atrocity?

Giuliano reached Palermo tired and dirty and went quickly through the familiar streets in the clear early morning sun. There was little sound but the music of the fountains, the occasional hurrying footsteps, then the breathless hush of waiting.

Maria was already up and busy in the kitchen. When she heard him at the door she whirled around, carving knife in her hand. Then she saw him and her face flooded with relief. She dropped the knife and ran to him, throwing her arms around his body and hugging him to her so hard that he was afraid she would hurt her own soft flesh in doing it.

Gently he disengaged himself and stepped back.

She looked him up and down. “Food, then clean clothes. You’re filthy!” She turned away and began to get out the bread, oil, cheese, and wine, frantic to do anything useful. He saw over her shoulder how little there was in the cupboards.

“When are they coming?” she asked finally when she set a generous plate of food-too generous-on the table in front of him.

“Share it with me?” he asked.

“I’ve already eaten,” she answered.

He knew it was a lie. She never ate before her family did. “Then eat some more,” he insisted. “It will make me feel at home, not like a stranger. It may be the last meal we can eat like this, together.” He smiled, tears prickling his eyes for all that would be lost.

She obeyed, taking bread and a little well-watered red wine. “They’ll be here today?” she asked. “Aren’t we going to fight, Giuliano?”

“Probably tomorrow,” he answered. “And I don’t know if we’re going to fight or not. The whole island is angry, but it’s just under the surface, and I can’t read it well enough.”

“It’s Easter Monday tomorrow,” she said very quietly. “The day our Lord rose from the dead. Can we fight on Easter Day?”

“You fight on any day, to save the people you love,” he replied.

“Maybe they won’t fight?” she said hopefully.

“Maybe.” But he had seen them and knew otherwise.

Easter Monday was beautiful. The justiciar, John of Saint Remy, celebrated the feast in the palace of the Norman knights as if he and his men were unaware of the tension and hatred churning around them in the people they oppressed. But then, they had refused to learn the Sicilian customs or even their language.

Giuliano stood in the streets and gazed at the Sicilians pouring into the open, filling the alleys and squares with music, dancing. The women’s skirts and bright scarves were like flowers in the wind. Was all this energy the joy at the risen Lord, the belief in life everlasting, or just the breaking of unbearable tension as they waited for horsemen to arrive and take from them the last vestige of what they possessed, not only food but dignity and hope?

Half a dozen young men passed him, arms around girls with swaying skirts, laughing. One of the girls held out a hand to him, smiling.

He hesitated. It was churlish not to join them, and it set him apart when he hungered with something close to despair to belong, at least emotionally. He was part of their battle, and he would be part of their victory or loss.

He stood up and ran the few paces after them, taking the girl’s hand. They reached an open square where music was playing and began to dance. He danced with them until he was exhausted and out of breath.

A young man offered him wine, and he took it. It was rough and a little sharp to the taste, but he drank it with pleasure, passing the bottle back with a smile. The girls began to sing, and everyone else took up the chorus. Giuliano did not know the words, but it did not matter, he caught the tunes quickly. No one else seemed to care. The wine passed from hand to hand, and he drank probably more than he should have.

The jokes were funny and silly, but everyone laughed too easily and too loud. Now and again he caught someone’s eye, a young man with curly hair, a girl with a blue scarf, and saw for an instant the grief they also knew was coming.

Then someone started a song or told another joke, and they all laughed, arms around one another, holding too tight.

He thanked them when he left to go.

He was tired and hope was fading, raw on the edge of despair, when he set out with Giuseppe, Maria, and their children to attend the Vespers service at the Church of the Holy Spirit, half a mile or so to the southeast beyond the old city wall. It was an austere building, and its spare beauty exactly suited his mood.

The square was crowded with people, as if half the countryside had chosen to come here for this most holy celebration. They milled around, excitement charging the air as if there were a storm to come, in spite of the calm spring evening.

Giuliano looked up at the columns and tower.

A dozen yards away a man began to sing, and quickly others joined in. It was beautiful, totally appropriate as they waited for the Vespers bell to ring and the service to begin, yet to Giuliano it seemed jarringly normal, when nothing else was.

Abruptly the singing stopped.

Giuliano swung around and saw horsemen in the street to the north that opened into the square, then to the east as well, leading from the city walls. There must have been a score of them or more, a foraging party come to take what they could. They looked happy and a little drunk.

The pounding of his heart almost choked him.

Gradually the singing stopped as the Frenchmen came forward, apparently intending to join in. They began singing loudly in French.

The man beside Giuliano swore. In the crowd people moved closer to one another, men reaching a hand to clasp a child or a wife. There was a low rumble of anger.

The Frenchmen were laughing, calling out to the pretty women as one or another caught their eye.

Giuliano felt his muscles ache and his nails bite into the palms of his hands.

One of the Frenchmen called out to a small boy and beckoned him over. The child hesitated, backing a little behind his mother’s skirts. She moved a little farther in front of the boy. One Frenchman shouted something, another laughed.

Giuliano heard a cry and saw an officer. He held a young woman by the waist and drew her away from the crowd into the mouth of a quiet alley. Suddenly his hands were all over her body and she was struggling to avoid him, turning her head this way and that as he tried to kiss her.

Giuliano pushed his way forward past an old woman and several children, but he was too late. The young woman’s husband had already pulled his dagger. The French officer lay sprawled on the stones, his chest scarlet and blood pooling on the stones beneath him.

Someone gasped and stifled a scream.

All around the square, Giuliano saw Frenchmen draw their swords to avenge their comrade. Within seconds the Sicilians had their knives drawn also, and the fighting escalated. There were curses, shouting, the sun bright on steel, and blood on the stones.

Above them all, the bells of the Church of the Holy Spirit began ringing the call to Vespers, and those were echoed by the bells of every other church in the city.

Giuliano was surrounded. Where were Giuseppe and Maria? He saw Tino, one of their children, looking dazed, his face white. He lunged forward and seized the boy’s hand. “Stay by me,” he ordered. “Where’s your mother?”

Tino stared at him, too terrified to speak.

Ten feet away, a French soldier swung his sword and a Sicilian fell to the stones, blood gushing from his arm. A woman screamed. A Sicilian lunged at the man, arm out holding a dagger. The Frenchman fell and Giuliano dived forward to take his sword, then whirled around and snatched the child’s arm.

“Come!” Giuliano shouted, dragging him along. He wanted to find Giuseppe and Maria and the other children, but he could not afford to let go of this one.

All around the square and in the streets leading off it men were fighting, and some women, seeming just as good with the knives. The French were badly outnumbered, and already there were men on the ground, some struggling to rise, others lying still. Generations of oppression and abuse, of poverty, fear, and humiliation, were finding a passion of vengeance at last, and the savagery was unstoppable.

They kept to shadows and narrow ways. It was a risk, in case they should find the way blocked, but the fighting in the square was worse. A few yards to the left, they could hear the shouts of “Death to the French!” and the call on the men of Palermo to unite and take back their freedom and their dignity at last.

Giuliano started to run as fast as he could with the boy. After covering the complete length of the alley, they burst into the quiet courtyard of a Dominican convent. The scene that met their eyes was hideous. A dozen Sicilians held ten friars at knifepoint.

“Say ‘ciceri,’” one of the Sicilians ordered. It was the test of nationality. No Frenchman could pronounce the word.

The first friar obeyed and was let go, staggering, tripping over his torn habit, almost numb with fear.

The second was given the same order.

He stumbled and failed.

There was a cry of “French!” and Giuliano grasped Tino and swung him around just as the Sicilians slit the friar’s throat and he fell forward, gushing blood.

Tino howled in fear. Giuliano picked him up and slung him over his shoulder, then barged back out the way he had come. He stood in the alley trying to draw the air into his lungs, still clinging to the boy’s small body.

He had wanted the Sicilians to rebel, to cast off the yoke of oppression, but he had never imagined this terrible violence. Had Giuliano known the hatred was so close to the surface, would he still have tried to waken it?

Yes. He would, because the only alternative was worse-endless subjection until the life and the heart were crushed out of them. The same slow death awaited Byzantium.

He carried Tino the rest of the way. Men crazed with sudden power, gore-stained scarlet, saw the child and let him pass, and Giuliano was ashamed of his own safety for that reason. But he did not stop, even when he heard men pleading for their lives, women screaming, fighting. He felt Tino’s fingers gripping him, and he kept moving.

When at last he reached Giuseppe and Maria’s house, Giuliano was exhausted and shivering. Fear that they would not be there turned his stomach to water.

He was still yards from it when the door opened and Maria came out. She saw him and choked back a cry as he put Tino in her arms.

Giuseppe was in the doorway, tears running down his cheeks, the candlelight yellow behind him, a knife in his hand, preparing to defend his remaining children if Giuliano had been an enemy. His face split in a smile and he ran forward, dropping the knife and clasping Giuliano so tightly that he all but cracked his ribs.

Maria urged them inside, and obediently they followed her. Giuseppe barred the door after them.

“Go back to Gianni,” Giuseppe said to Maria. As she left, he looked at Giuliano. “He’s hurt,” he said simply. “She can’t leave him.” The explanation was unnecessary, but Giuseppe could not take his eyes from Tino for more than a few moments, and he kept touching the boy’s head, as if to assure himself that he was real and alive.

A little after first light, one of the other fishermen came, a man called Angelo. The children were asleep, and Maria was upstairs with them.

“We’re going to meet in the town center,” Angelo said gravely to Giuliano and Giuseppe. His face was burned and there was a cut on his brow, blood congealed, and his left arm was in a makeshift sling. He was filthy and he moved stiffly, as if his limbs hurt. “We must decide what to do now. There are hundreds dead, maybe thousands. The corpses of people block the alleys, and the stones are red with blood.”

“There’ll be war,” Giuliano warned.

Angelo nodded. “We must prepare for it. They have called for men from every district and trade so we can choose someone to represent us and ask the pope to recognize us as a commune, and ask for his protection.”

“From Charles of Anjou?” Giuliano said incredulously. “What the hell do you think the pope is going to do? He’s French, for God’s sake!”

“He’s Christian,” Giuseppe replied. “He can give us his protection.”

“Are you waiting on that?” Giuliano was appalled.

Giuseppe gave him a bleak smile, a flash of the old humor in his eyes.

Angelo nodded. “Runners have already gone out to all the towns and villages, closest ones first, to tell them what has happened and to call on them to rise up with us. The whole island will turn against the Angevins. We are going to march on Vicari and give them all the choice of leaving with safe conduct to sail back to Provence.”

“Or what?” Giuseppe asked.

“Or death,” Angelo replied.

“I imagine they will choose Provence,” Giuliano said dryly.

“And you, my friend…” Giuseppe turned to Giuliano, his face puckered with anxiety, his eyes gentle. “What do you choose? These were Frenchmen tonight, but by next week, or next month, they may be Venetians. The fleet lies at Messina. You are not Sicilian. This is not your quarrel. Any hospitality we gave you you have more than repaid. Go now, before you act against your own people.”

Still exhausted, aching, his clothes sticking to him with other men’s blood, Giuliano realized how alone he was. “I don’t have people of my own,” he said slowly. “I have friends, I have debts, and people I love. That isn’t the same thing.”

“I don’t know what debts you have,” Giuseppe answered. “None to me. But you are my friend, which is why I give you leave to go, if honor pulls you. I am going to Corleone with Angelo to tell them to rise also, and then after that on to other towns, and if I survive it, to Messina.”

“To the fleet?”

“Yes. Maria and the children will be safe here now. Angelo and his family will protect them.”

“Then I’m coming with you.” Already in his mind he knew what he was going to do. It surprised him. He barely had time to be afraid or realize the enormity of it, but now that it came to the moment, there was no choice after all.

Giuseppe grinned and held out his hand. Giuliano clasped it.