The Roman Tales

Giulio chose a conspicuous position in the best-lit area. Here he spent his time attending Masses. Noting that he was surrounded only by peasants and hoping he would be observed from the other side of the black curtain, for the first time in his life he tried to attract attention to himself. His plan was carefully thought out. He gave copious alms both on entering and leaving the church. He and his men showed interest in all the workmen and small traders who had business with the convent.

It was not until the third day that he at last became hopeful of getting a letter to Elena. On his orders his men followed the lay sisters who bought some of the convent’s provisions. One of them had dealings with a tradesman. A soldier of Giulio’s, who had been a monk, befriended the tradesman and promised him a zecchino for each letter he delivered to the boarder Elena Campireali.

‘What,’ said the tradesman, when first approached, ‘take a letter to the brigand’s wife?’

So fast does gossip travel that, although Elena had only been in Castro for two weeks, her fame was already established.

‘At least she’s married!’ the tradesman added. ‘How many of our ladies haven’t that excuse and get much more than letters from outside.’

In his first missive Giulio gave a painstaking description of all that had happened on the fateful day of Fabio’s death. ‘Do you hate me?’ he finished.

Elena replied, saying that without hating anyone she proposed to spend the rest of her life trying to forget him by whose hand her brother had perished.

Giulio hastened to write again. After cursing fate he said:

You wish then to forget the word of God revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures? God says, ‘A woman shall leave her mother and father and cleave unto her husband.’ Do you claim you are not my wife? Remember St Peter’s Night as dawn broke behind Monte Cavo, and you threw yourself at my feet. You were mine if I wished to take you; you could not hold back the love you then felt for me. Suddenly it seemed to me that, because I had often told you that a long time ago I sacrificed to you my life and everything I hold dearest in the world, you could have said, but never did, that all that sacrifice, unmarked by any act, could well be imaginary. A notion, to my mind cruel but basically just, struck me. I saw it was not for nothing that fate offered me the opportunity to sacrifice for you the greatest happiness I could ever dream of. You were already defenceless in my arms; even your mouth dared not refuse. Just then the morning Ave Maria rang out in the Monte Cavo Monastery, and, by strange chance, the sound reached us. You said, ‘Make this sacrifice to the Madonna, the mother of purity.’ The idea of this supreme sacrifice, the only real one I would ever have the chance to make to you, had already occurred to me. I found it curious that the same thought came to you. The distant sound of that Ave Maria touched me, I admit, and I gave in to what you asked. The sacrifice was not wholly for you; I wanted to place our future union under the Madonna’s protection. At that time I thought the obstacles came not from you but from your rich, noble family. If there had been no supernatural cause, how did that Angelus reach us from so far away, over the treetops of half the forest, stirred by the morning breeze? Then, remember, you fell at my feet; I took from my breast the cross I wear and you swore on it, by your everlasting damnation, that wherever you were, whatever was happening, as soon as I ordered you would be entirely mine just as you were when we heard the distant Ave Maria from Monte Cavo. Then we both devoutly said two Aves and two Paters. Well! By the love you had for me or, if you have forgotten it – as I fear – by your eternal damnation, I order you to receive me tonight in your room or in the convent garden.