CHAPTER XXI.--How Will was entertained by the Princess at her Palace

of the Favara.[7]

[7] Pronounced Făváhră.

One of the earliest and most impressive things which happened to us in Palermo, was our visit to the Favara, the ancient Arabo-Norman palace of Donna Rusidda's brother. She invited me to go with Will, and sent her rumbling old coach to fetch us, for it was a little way out of Palermo. The horses were sorry nags, and the coach had been painted so often (by the coachman) that it had almost lost its shape; but the men had on gorgeous liveries, much decayed, and apparently handed down from former servants, whom they had fitted better.

We two boys, almost lost in this huge conveyance, abandoned ourselves to the novelty of the situation, until we came to a great saddle-back bridge, with nothing but dry land underneath it, and apparently crossing nothing. This the coachman, who could speak a little Italian, informed Will was the bridge of the Admiral: he did not know who the Admiral was, though he was sometimes spoken of as the Greek Admiral, and the bridge was built long, long ago, even before the time of the great Emperor Frederick, who had built the Favara, and was the ancestor of the present Prince--"in a particular way, of course," added Will to me as he translated his words. The river Oreta had in those days run under it, and was so fierce a torrent, and had drowned so many people when the storms came, that the Admiral had been canonised by the villagers of S. Giovanni of the Lepers, to which we presently came, and peered with curiosity at its ancient church, the most ancient above ground in all Sicily.

The road now became very bad, lying for the most part between high walls of rough plaster, enclosing orange groves or lemon gardens. We passed, too, many clumps of the Indian fig, an extraordinary thorny cactus which bears a delicious crimson fruit; and the lean Sicilian bamboos, more like whipping-canes than the solid jointed trunks brought from the East.

At length we came to a place where there must have been a park gate, though it had now been removed, and replaced by doors of a common character. These were opened on our arrival by an old man with his head tied round in a red handkerchief, and we found ourselves in the midst of a very large grove of lemons, incomparably beautiful, I thought, with their dark green foliage studded with the pale gold globes of the lemons, and the ground at their roots covered with a crop of weed with a leaf like the trefoil, and a brilliant yellow flower somewhat like the musk.

From this at length we emerged in front of an enormous palace, built of a yellowy brown stone, with a turret in the centre, and very fine Arab or Norman windows: I am not architect enough to say to which these splendid mouldings belonged. But the palace, which seemed as great or greater than the King's, was sadly decaying, some parts being no longer inhabitable, and the windows of such rooms as were used being filled in till they held modern panes.

A more picturesque object it is not easy to imagine, than this huge mellow pile, with its weather-softened turret in the centre, standing under the shadow of the grim brown rock of Monte Griffone, and almost buried in a prodigal wealth of lemon trees.

Our coach lumbered in through an old gate into a huge sort of castleyard, from whence we were taken by a dark and very narrow stair into the part inhabited by the family. Between our leaving the miserable old coach, which had brought us, and reaching the salon, where the Prince and his sister were awaiting us, we were handed on by a dozen broken-down servitors, who looked as if they had been taken out of the fields, and thrust into the liveries of other days. But we were mistaken perhaps about the fields, because Donna Rusidda, with a mixture of frankness and pride and shame characteristic of her, soon informed us that the ground up to their very doors was let to a farmer, who also occupied the parts of the palace which had the barred windows, he being more fearful for thieves of his lemons, than they for thieves of the heirlooms which had come down in the family, some of them from the days of the Hohenstaufen Emperor--and the precious tapestries woven on Sicilian silk looms in the fifteenth century which were hanging round the chamber where we were received.

This at any rate was princely, for it was of great size and had a vaulted ceiling, with moulded ornaments in the peculiar inverted Arabic style, which looks not so much the design itself as the mould in which the design was executed; while at intervals round the chamber were pairs of columns with marvellously carved capitals, supporting large vaults filled with wonderful mosaics representing hunting scenes. The walls in between these columns consisted of large slabs of porphyry divided by slenderer columns; or the rich mosaic borders known as the Cosmato work. This we saw when Donna Rusidda drew aside the famous silk tapestries. The chairs, too, and the couches, which ran all round the walls, were ancient and magnificent; though the brocade, with which they were covered, was in many places threadbare or even split. The floor was covered in the Sicilian fashion with tiles, a hundred or more of which went to form each of the great arabesque patterns, which looked like vast love-knots tied with orange and blue ribbons. There were no carpets, and there was a general appearance of decay, even of mould, in the room, in spite of its princely proportions and priceless tapestries. But the youthful pair who were there to receive us, for all the decay of their house and the rustiness of the faithful servants who surrounded them, looked princes every inch, worthy descendants of the mighty Frederick.

For one thing they were but recently back from long attendance at the Court, and were dressed accordingly. For another it was at the Court that Will and I, though we were but junior lieutenants in His Britannic Majesty's ship the _Vanguard_, and not long since midshipmen, had met them. The flavour of royalty therefore was strong, and there was in them both an innate princeliness. I am sure that Donna Rusidda, as she came forward to welcome us to the poor house, in which she had been born, and her ancestors before her, for five hundred years, looked as fit to be a queen as any woman in Europe: she was so beautiful, her nostrils, her mouth and chin were so delicately cut. I have seen no cameo of antiquity equal in beauty of outline to that which she had executed and presented to Will the time we sailed away to the reconquest of Naples--the cameo which every day is pinned on black velvet upon Katherine's wrist, for she is a gentler memory to Katherine than even to Will. And her slight figure had the self-reliant elegance of the women of her country.

"Welcome to the Favara, W-Will!" she cried gaily, "and you, Signor--Tubbie"; and then she broke off into a little peal of laughter, while the Prince frowned at the liberty she was taking with His Britannic Majesty's Lieutenant Trinder of the _Vanguard_. But seeing that I took it as a good jest, he laughed too, a charming Italian laugh.

"The Palace of the Favara," said Donna Rusidda, "has a great many doors and windows, but only one chamber that you can call a room. Ruggiero has his little sleeping closet, and I mine, and our faithful servants have a roof over their heads--some of them; but the palace consists not of rooms, but of rats and passages. There is a place in which we have our frugal meals, but the plaster has worn off the walls until you lose the decorations; and there is the chapel. Yes, there is the chapel, with relics of I know not what value--the palate of one of the Apostles, and even a little piece of St. Veronica's handkerchief, as thick and strong as the sacks with which our good farmer loads his ass. But these one could never sell, and indeed, though they are of the highest value, no one would give anything for them. And so they remain in the chapel, and serve no purpose but to frighten thieves from the gold in which they are enclosed. Are we to chase the rats until it is time for the _colazione_?"

This meant, of course, my following with the Prince, while she tripped lightly about the enormous old palace, calling to Will to see that and the other feature, which had played its part in her childhood, such as the carved figures on each side of the great fireplace in the banqueting hall, which had been real giants in her fairy tales, but now had the daylight from the hole in the roof exposing them. There were, I suppose, a hundred or two rooms in the palace, connected by stairways innumerable, and galleries hung with portraits of no great value, representing the Admirals and Condottieri, and Statesmen of the house, but no Cardinals with diplomatic faces and purple mantles--no Cardinals.

I daresay Will found the _colazione_ unmercifully long, though it was none too long for me, for I could appreciate all the good things--the best to be had in Palermo--which the pride of the Prince had compelled him to provide for us, with incomparable wines which had been maturing in his cellars for half a century. The price of that "collation" would I daresay have kept their larder going on its ordinary terms for more than a month. To be at once a boy and a sailor gives one a proper appetite for such things. And I ever had as keen an appreciation of a beautiful woman as most men; and these Italian and Sicilian women, when they choose, can be so infinitely alluring, with their little laughter and their merry wit, and their open pleasure in their beauty. Donna Rusidda was in the highest spirits, and since all talked English, as being my only language, her broken English made her flashes of wit irresistible.

When at last the _colazione_ was over, and I had refused to take another drop of the mellow generous wine, grown on the neighbouring slope of Misilmeri, we wandered out into the pleasure garden which was the saddest-looking thing, for I believe that every joint in the masonry of the terraces and fountains and colonnades, and marble couches overlooking the city and the bay, was gaping and ready at a touch to pour out its mortar in powder. We sat down on the terrace which had the marble couches I have mentioned, commanding the view as far as the great dark mass of Monte Pellegrino, where the Carthaginian General maintained his army for three whole years against the Romans in Palermo, supporting life on the wheat grown on the broad top of the mountain, and the wild fennel and wild onions. At one end was a little mound, such as I think they would call a calvary, save that at the top of the path which wound round it there was no crucifix, but a little shrine to Santa Rosalia, the patroness of the city and of Donna Rusidda herself, Rusidda being one of the abbreviations, in which Sicilians delight, of this name.

In this there was a seat concealed from view, even from the terrace, where I sat with the Prince while they went up for Will to be shown her saint. The Prince, desiring nothing so much as his sister's marriage with Will, and being at this time, like many of the Sicilians, a violent adherent of English customs, was content to throw opportunity in their way. He and I smoked. What passed between Will and Rusidda I had from Will afterwards, rehearsed with growing excitement, but I dare swear without any embellishment from the imagination, of which Will possessed little.

"Well, W-Will," she began, "now you have seen my home, and you know that it is not because you are poor that I fear to marry you. We live on maccaroni in order to have horses for the old coaches in our stable, and men to take us out. Were it not for the little salaries which we have from the Court, we could not buy ourselves a change of clothes, and even the Queen is not very good at paying. She would rather buy things, and give them to you when she is tired of them. And this, though the Ambassador's wife is not too proud, a Princess of Favara--with an unconscious little access of _hauteur_--could not tolerate. Besides, picture me in a train of Her Majesty, who would make two of me!"

Then, suddenly springing up from her seat, she led him to another side of the belvedere--for such practically the shrine was--and pointed to a beautiful little lake. "That," she said, "is the Mardolce, from which our family derives its name. Its founder was known in the Norman fashion as Tancredus de Mari Dulci; and that is where we shall have to come to, if we get much worse off."

"Don't, Rusidda!" he said, putting his arm round her to draw her back to their seat. A little shiver passed through him. True love can picture any far-fetched ill reaching the loved one.

"Oh, it is not very likely," she said. "I am the only maid of honour the Queen has in Sicily: the others preferred facing the French to the sea-passage."

At that moment, glancing through the balustrade of the belvedere, she caught sight of a well fed but badly shaved priest riding on a stout ass, which carried panniers piled up with various kinds of garden produce, as well as himself.

"That is the priest of S. Giovanni," she said, with a curious look at the stout red-faced form in its stained, rusty black. "What a shock he would have if he saw you! It was he first told me the tradition of our house, that it would end with the love of a woman for a fair-haired stranger. But W-Will, dear," she said, with a caressing look and remorseful voice--she was really fond of him, and it was the first time she had welcomed him as hostess in her own home--"I am safe, because I have tried so hard to love you, and cannot."

"Why do you take such pleasure in torturing me, Rusidda? It is right that you should feel safe, but not for that reason. I am not a prince, and I cannot offer you a palace."

"A palace!" she said: "a ruined village! _My house is not large, but at any rate it is not in ruins_, you were going to say."

"Indeed, dear, I hope I shall never say anything to hurt you."

"You can never tell."

"What I was going to say was," he protested rather hotly, "that I have saved quite a good bit of prize-money already, and that under the Admiral I shall make enough to retire on in a few years."

At the mention of the Admiral's name her face changed a little.

"And so, Rusidda----"

Under ordinary circumstances he would have caught the tempting rebellious creature in his arms, and trusted to beating down her defiance with the vehemence of his embrace; but, having been accorded the freedom of embracing her, he took no such extreme measure. When once a woman has accorded a man this freedom, it is not the vehement but the gentle embrace which steals her heart or her judgment; and therefore it was only with lips laid softly on her neck that he asked, "Oh, why will you not marry me, Rusidda?"

"I have told you I cannot love you; besides, I have told you about the fair-haired stranger. I look so like being the last woman of my race that it would not be safe for me to marry you."

"Fancy believing in an old wife's tale like that!" he said bitterly.

"Indeed, I do not," she said; "or perhaps I do. But do not scoff at that, for it is your best friend. It has been the tradition of our race to fly in the face of prophecy. Besides, my people are not your people, and it is a long way--I do not know how far, perhaps thousands of miles--from Sicily to England; and we are a people who live in a summer land, where one can even gather figs of thistles, but where everything one gathers turns into the lotus before it reaches the mouth, and robs the mind and limbs of all desire saving to eat and drink and be merry. And we of Sicily, called of the ancients the 'laughing land,' cannot even be merry, for every race which has conquered Sicily knows that it must itself be conquered afterwards. And the land of the vanquished of many races sits with dry eyes and sunburned limbs, the Andromeda of the ages."

Will was not scholar enough to plead that he was of course the Perseus, but she did it for him. She continued: "And we can have no Perseus, or your northern land might well be it, for the curse of the gods is upon us; and," she added sceptically, but not so sceptically as superstitiously, "in the centre of the island is the entrance to the lower world, with _solfataras_ for miles round."

"Rusidda, you cannot be serious!"

"Dear W-Will, I am serious, so far as that I cannot love you."

"Perhaps there is some one else?" he said, a sudden light breaking upon him.

"No; I can give you my word I have never even thought of marrying some one else."

"Then you are trifling with me," he said to her fiercely. "Can you not see that I love you with all my heart and soul; that it is a matter of life and death; that I could kill the man who should come between us?" and then he struck his fist on the marble table of the belvedere. "There must be some one trifling with your feelings."

"Indeed there is not, W-Will," pleaded Rusidda, a little scared by his vehemence.

"I am sorry," he said, kissing her tenderly; "but oh, Rusidda, you do not know how your refusal maddens me--how it dries my life-blood!"

"Oh, W-Will!" she said, with a sad smile, while surveying the sinewy figure, the bronzed face, the clear proud eyes.

"Don't mock me, little one."

"I mock you!" she said, her arms round him in an instant: "have I not told you I pray the good Santa Rosalia, night and morning, to change my heart towards you?"

"Will you swear not to love any one better than me?" he added desperately.

"I cannot swear; but I shall never marry."

"God in Heaven!" was all he said; and, snatching her hand to his lips, he came down from the belvedere with bowed head, and walking straight past us without raising his eyes, rushed through the lemon grove and out of the gate and down between the high walls of the groves.

The Prince divined what had happened, and for the nonce said nothing.

Soon Donna Rusidda came down--beautiful, tender, and repentant; and when I sought to make my _adieux_ to such a painful situation, inquired if I would take a note to Will. Thinking it might be to give him the news he so courted, I joyfully assented, and we all three walked up to the palace and into the salon with the silk hangings where she had first received us, and off the end of which there was a little room, into which she retired.

The Prince, taking me by the arm, walked me to the other end. He was much agitated. "My sister," he said, "is changeable. That she has refused to marry your friend, the match upon which I have set my heart, is certain; and yet I am equally certain that she loves him, for she cannot conceal her joy when she is going with Her Majesty on board his ship, or to any party where your Admiral and his suite will be. I can see that there is much tenderness between them. She allows him the liberty which neither she nor I would tolerate in any other man; and yet she must have refused him, and I think roughly. It cannot be," he resumed presently, "that she fears and forgets the tradition of our house, lest the prophecy should be fulfilled."

"Ah," he continued with evident relief, as she came into the room again, carrying a letter, and with her face glowing with tenderness: "she has repented. Go, my friend, and take it from her. The word which accompanies a letter is often a key to it."

Seeing me advance, she halted, and, when I came up, I looked in her dark shining eyes.

"'Tis a letter to Signor Hardres," she said, "bidding him to come again soon, and be sure to bring the Admiral with him. There is no one to whom the immortal Nelson listens as he listens to Signor Hardres; and it is the desire of my heart that the hero should pass one night underneath this fast-decaying roof."

Her brother, who had been watching for her expression to tell him when she had finished what she most desired to say, then joined us; and she told him that she had been writing to Will to use his influence to win the Admiral to honour their roof by sleeping under it.

"You should have asked my Lady Hamilton," he rejoined: "'tis the Ambassador's wife who orders where the Admiral goes."

The Princess shrugged her shoulders.

"There is no disgrace; it is common courtesy, if you wish to invite a guest who is staying with others, to do it through his hostess."

"I will not," she said briefly. "It makes my blood boil even to see him with her."

"Rusidda!" he cried protestingly.

"Oh, have you no eyes?" she asked, in a voice that was strangely, and it seemed to me unnecessarily, touched with emotion.

"Oh yes, of course I have," he continued impatiently. And neither saw that their words were double-edged.

And I, as I rumbled back in the heavy old coach past the bridge of the Admiral George, thought myself mighty clever, for I did not believe there was one word about the Admiral in the letter; and the time sped even behind those horses, as I thought how Will's stern face would light up when he read what I took to be the real news in that letter.