Chapter Twenty-Two
April 1817
Laura discovered time in Sicily passed in feasting. Winter had been marked with the feast of the Nativity and then Christmas. Mid-winter was marked by the feast of Epiphany and, as though to shuck off the pall of winter, February was marked by carnivals all over Sicily. Last month had brought preparations for Easter.
Once again, Elias had surprised her. She’d always considered Methodists to be cold and dogmatic in their practice, dismissive of the pageantry of the Anglicans, disdainful of the iconography and ritual of the Roman Catholics. However, Elias had thrown himself into working with the parish priest and the villagers for this year’s parade and passion play.
For generations, twelve extended families in Villagrazia had cared for one each of the large, hand-carved stations of the cross. Each year, the family would decorate a platform with brightly-colored ribbons and fresh seasonal flowers on which to stand the icon. Four men in the family would lift each corner onto their shoulder, taking it from the church to a grassy field at the edge of the village which formed a natural amphitheater.
Despite being one of the newest residents of Villagrazia, Elias could not be allowed to escape marking Pasqua in the traditional Sicilian way. As soon as the priest had learned of Laura’s skill with paints, she was immediately pressed into service to help supervise the painting of the backdrop curtains. For Elias’ sake and his standing in the community, Laura had reluctantly agreed.
Now, she was standing “backstage” – a curtained off area behind the outdoor platform – pressed into an even more unlikely task, painting a beard on Elias as he stood in a white sheet as a robe with a length of red fabric as a cloak.
“Stand still, you’re making me smudge,” she admonished, dabbing watercolor paint onto his cheeks to build up the appearance of facial hair. “If he’d given you more notice, you could have grown your own beard,” she remarked.
“I wasn’t necessarily Father Giacomo’s first choice to play Christ,” he replied.
“But you’re taking this seriously?”
“Of course I’m taking it seriously. I may not have grown up celebrating Easter this way, but I don’t dismiss how others do it. Besides, these are our neighbors and friends, and I’m still a newcomer – even if I live here for twenty years, I’ll still be the nuovo venuto, the new arrival. So to be asked to take a prominent role in the Pasqua traditions is an honor I won’t spurn.”
Laura stepped back with her brush in hand to examine her handiwork. “There, it will do if no one looks too closely.”
“Mister Elias!” called Gina, rushing behind the backstage curtain with Benjamin in her arms. “The baby won’t—”
The girl gasped and stopped abruptly, mouth agape. She rushed to juggle a restless Benjamin so she could make the sign of the cross.
Laura had to admit Elias looked the part, even if the painted beard was awful. Benjamin stared at the strange face a moment before seeing through the disguise. The baby waved his arms and legs, and chortled with delight.
Laura put down her paintbrush. “I’ll take him,” she said.
Gina turned, her eyes still wide, and stared at Laura as if she were a stranger. Laura pointedly held out her arms and gestured for the child once more. The girl warily placed Benjamin into her arms with a frown.
Elias gave a theatrical flourish borrowed from Kit Hardacre, but his voice was serious when he spoke. “Ladies, I want to spend some time alone before the performance.”
He stepped forward to capture Benjamin’s balled fist and kissed it. He leaned toward Laura, but she backed away. “You’ll smudge your make up,” she told him and there was a flicker of disappointment in his eyes for a moment. Then he picked up his Bible and slipped behind another curtain.
Laura was aware of the look Gina had given her during the exchange with Elias, a little sullen, perhaps a look of hostility. “I think I should take Beniamino now,” the girl insisted.
Benjamin smiled invitingly at Gina’s outstretched hands then turned away as she approached, giggling at his game.
“No,” said Laura. “He stays with me.”
The girl’s full mouth thinned. “As you wish,” she pouted and disappeared outside to where the villagers gathered.
Laura sighed and waited a few moments before she, too, departed the makeshift dressing room. In part, it was to be sure Gina had gone – she didn’t want to deal with her right now – but also she was conscious of the crowd of virtual strangers out there. She did not feel the acute panic of such gatherings as she had done six months earlier, but she still needed to take a deep breath and prepare herself.
As she made her way, Benjamin rested his head on her shoulder and stuck a fist in his mouth. Laura adjusted the baby in her arms and placed a hand on his back. He nestled into her shoulder. A smile spread across her face at his action. He was such a good-natured baby. Why ever was she worried about having him?
Her thoughts made her more sympathetic to Gina. She couldn’t blame the girl for being possessive. Feeding Benjamin, she was sure, had given the girl solace after losing her own child but, still, it was necessary to remind her that Benjamin was her child.
Why? Laura paused mid-step at the thought. In two months’ time you will be setting sail for home, leaving Benjamin behind, just as you agreed with Samuel.
Despite the warm day, she felt a chill. That was the plan, wasn’t it? To put her horrendous ordeal behind her and pretend as though her abduction and abuse never happened. For the past nine months, her daily prayer had been to erase the past two and a half years of her life so she could be the carefree debutante with innocent virginal dreams of love and marriage.
Well, she would never be innocent again, much less virginal, she thought bitterly. And no matter how earnestly she pleaded, God seemed equally determined not to answer her prayers.
So she would go away. Just for a short time… really… just until she could be sure of her heart.
She looked about her. To be rid of the pain of her past might mean losing the pleasure of each day here. The pleasure of feeling the spring sunshine on her skin, the laughter which came more easily to her, the aroma of Serafina’s caponata di melanzane – Laura was certain she had never had an eggplant dish in England!
And as though Laura had conjured her out of memory alone, Serafina rushed toward her, but the housekeeper only had eyes for Benjamin, holding out her arms to take him. “Ah, my bambino! I will get this little one out of the sun, eh?”
Benjamin pushed forward, his fists waving excitedly, so Laura relinquished the child, stretching her arms which had begun to ache. He was a fortunate little boy, to be loved by so many good people. No one cared how he came into being, only that he was here…
Perhaps she was silly to be jealous of Gina.
She found herself at the front of the temporary stage, a scaffold structure only a foot off the ground. She considered the backdrop with some satisfaction – after all, it was the largest canvas she had ever painted – and only one of three she had worked on for this event.
The one before her for the first act was the Garden of Gethsemane.
She had decided to make each of the works huge vignettes. The sky of her tableau was heavy, bruised and portentous. The edges of the canvas were densely painted with the gnarled trunks of olive trees that were likely ancient when Christ walked with his disciples. From a distance, the expansive branches drew the eye to the center left plain so as to not distract from the actors on stage.
To think, she had nearly refused when Elias had asked her to paint them six weeks ago. But she couldn’t refuse without revealing why, so she gritted her teeth and considered the job before her. The largest thing she had ever done before was a board eleven inches by seventeen. These canvases were eight feet tall by twelve feet wide, and she had to make do with a limited palette of house paints, yet what she had managed to achieve with a mix of red iron oxide, lamp black, raw sienna, and yellow ochre made the backdrops one of her finest achievements – the largest plein air art project she had ever undertaken.
After the first day, her only fear was completing the task – not the act of painting itself.
Leaning in at a corner of the backdrop were Matteo and his father, Raffaele. They seemed to be touching the canvas. Matteo jumped as Laura approached.
“Is anything wrong?” she asked.
The young man looked guilty and stepped away, pulling his father back by the shoulders.
“No, Miss Laura, forgive me. I was just showing my father the painting for the passion play. Never before have we had anything as beautiful as this.”
Matteo’s father spoke then, but in such a heavy dialect Laura couldn’t understand.
The young man translated. “Father says it is a shame you were not born Sicilian. We should be proud to count a gifted artist as one of our own. He says the way you used the paint, he can feel the roughness of the trunk, just like a real olive tree. Now he can listen to the play and see in his mind’s eye even though he is blind. He says thank you. You have given him a gift.”
Laura pressed her hands into Raffaele’s and kissed him on each cheek as a daughter might. She would miss the old man. She would never forget the past winter as he barked orders in the barn, his work-roughened hands, his taste and touch honed by so many years of practice, telling him what his eyes could not of the progress of extracting oil from Elias’ olive groves.
“Tell your father, the pleasure is mine. I have become so fond of you all. These months spent with you have made me more happy than I have been in a long time.”
Matteo translated quickly – too quickly for her entire remarks to have been communicated to Raffaele. There was a slight frown on the young man’s face, and Laura matched it with a frown of her own.
“Why didn’t you tell him everything?”
“It… it sounded like you were leaving us, Miss Laura. That’s not true, is it? You’re Mr. Elias’ wife, the mother of his baby. You’re not going away, are you?”
She had not given much thought to how the others at Arcadia regarded her, but the fact they considered her Elias’ wife was something she had never considered.
“I have family at home in England,” she told the young man. “A brother who is married, whom I haven’t seen in more than two years.”
Matteo nodded his head in understanding. “As long as you don’t leave forever, Miss Laura. We need you here.”
“You’re too kind.” Laura smiled, despite becoming increasingly uncomfortable.
“No, no! Not too kind. I am only telling you the truth. Mr. Elias was a lonely man before you came, and the holy book says it is not good for man to be alone.”
“Well, with so many friends and neighbors about, Mr. Elias could never be lonely.”
Matteo frowned again, this time at being misunderstood, but Laura decided he was too sweet to know the misunderstanding was deliberate. She had yet to resolve her own feelings about Elias without it being a public production.
Speaking of which, the performance of the passion play would be starting soon. The green was now covered by villagers, a couple of hundred people, by her estimation, sitting with picnic blankets on the grass.
Toward the top of the common, under the shade of a small marquee, were Serafina and other people she recognized from the house. She joined them, and found Gina was there also, with Benjamin to her breast.
She was sure she didn’t imagine the look of triumph from the younger woman.
It was late in the afternoon and Laura stifled a yawn, yet she could not bring herself to leave the chair on the terrace. There was something special about the sunset. Surely she had seen sky as pink as a rosebud before, but she could not recall a time. Lazy wisps of clouds of purple, pink and gold seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon. Lavender light accented every structure as far as the eye could see – the reservoir on the ridge, the outbuildings at the edge of the olive groves, the stone seat alongside the cultivated gardens.
Her eyes followed the flow of the lawn down to her little studio, where wildflowers seemed to pick up the color of the sky, little fuchsia-colored flora that seemed a favorite with the goats, except for the one or two kids which preferred their mothers’ nourishment, instead.
Laura breathed it in deep – the spring warmth, the scent in the air, a nature’s perfect blend of perfume. Perhaps she could be content here.
“I was wondering where you’d gone to.”
Elias leaned against the door, the quality of the now falling sun giving him an almost ethereal quality.
“I went down to the studio looking for Samuel’s last letter. I thought I put it in my writing box but I couldn’t find it.”
“Was it there?”
Laura shook her head. “I must have put it somewhere else, though I can’t think where. And besides, after so many visitors for… what is it called? Pasquetta?” – Elias confirmed the name with a nod – “I needed a quiet moment, then I found I couldn’t look away from this sunset.”
“They’ve been this spectacular for the past two years now,” said Elias. “I was told by someone at the British Embassy volcanoes have been erupting in the East Indies. It does things to the light.”
Laura looked back. The golden orb sat lower in the sky, much larger and rounder than she ever recalled seeing it.
“Will it stay like this forever?” She heard Elias approach and could feel the warmth of his body at her shoulder.
“Nothing stays the same forever.”
The gravity of his words jolted her from the moment.
“Not even love?”
Elias didn’t look at her; his gaze focused on the view beyond the terrace.
“Sometimes the expression of love is different,” he offered.
“I don’t understand.”
And, God help her, she didn’t. She wanted Elias to look at her but he remained resolutely fixed.
Was he talking about her? About himself? Was this something brought on by his performance in yesterday’s passion play? The certainty she had started to feel, the sureness of something solid she had counted on for many months now, shifted under her feet.
Laura felt she knew nothing for certain any more.