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When perhaps two hours have passed, Paola returns. There’s a slight grunt from her, and a thump as something heavy hits the ground. She pushes it under the bed and Ettore smells blood, and not from his own leg. She lies back down beside him in silence, and he listens as her breathing steadily slows. The smell of smoke clings to her, bitter and strong. She has joined a poaching raid on a masseria, he knows then. They have stolen, they have killed livestock, they have torched, and she has her loot under the bed – meat, some of which they will eat, most of which they will sell to buy other foodstuffs. He feels nothing about this other than guilt, because it’s his fault she’s taken this risk, his fault that she’s this worried about their survival. For a second he’s furious with her, because she could easily be killed, or arrested, and what would become of Iacopo then? The guards open fire freely at thieves and raiders, and then there are the dogs, too. People frequently die, trying to take what they cannot buy. But his anger only makes the guilt worse, because Paola knows the risks, of course, and nobody worries more for her child than she does. But still she went. Ettore lies in the dark and his frustration grows until it’s harder to bear than the wound in his leg. When his sister shakes his arm to wake him he still has not slept, and he snatches the limb away in fury, ignoring her offended expression. They do not speak of her absence, of the meat under the bed, the smell of smoke, or the frank exhaustion on both of their faces.

In the piazza Ettore avoids the Masseria Vallarta overseer, who knows of his injury, and tries to find work elsewhere. He drops his improvised crutch and balances with both feet on the ground but the weight only on the whole leg, and is hired with a group of men to a smaller farm. But he can’t even begin the walk without the pole to lean on, and is promptly dismissed. When all the overseers and workers have gone he finds Valerio, also unemployed, sitting on the steps of the covered market with an unreadable face. Ettore has no idea what to do with his day. A kind of itching desperation means he can’t go home, he can’t rest. He sits next to his father for a while, as the sun rises and floods the piazza and the temperature soars. He thinks that once threshing starts he might have more luck – a job where he can stand rather than walk, feeding the machine or swinging a flail, using the strength of his arms rather than his legs. His body feels tremulous and broken. The sun roars down at them both but Ettore starts to shiver as his father starts to sweat. He keeps thinking he can hear the hum of a scythe swinging, but that can’t be right. He shakes his head doggedly, to be rid of the sound.

‘If Maria was alive she would fix that leg,’ Valerio says suddenly. ‘She would fix this cough too.’ He sets great store by the memory of his wife’s healing skills, though one time Maria Tarano made a poultice for a neighbour’s wound and that wound turned black, the skin around it shiny and fat, and the unfortunate man soon died of it. After that Ettore lost faith in her magic, in her infallibility. He saw from the way she shrank back when others came to her for help that she had lost faith too. But her efforts earned them payment in kind, so she kept them up. And she could not heal herself, of course, when cholera came for her eleven years ago. ‘I still miss her, Ettore. Sorely, I miss her,’ says Valerio, and Ettore suddenly sees that grief is a thing they have in common, he and his father. It saddens him that he hasn’t thought of this until now.

Paola sells cuts of her stolen meat – a sinewy shoulder of mutton – to various neighbours and strangers, by hushed word of mouth. The peasants keep such things to themselves, but the police and proprietors sometimes send out spies to watch and listen, to find out who suddenly has something they ought not to have. For three days they have bread and beans and olive oil to eat, and even a little wine to go with their meals. Paola cooks the beans in a pignata by the fire, makes a thick stew with the mutton bone and adds handfuls of black pasta and pecorino cheese. They eat together from one large dish, much cracked and stapled, that has served their dinners for as long as Ettore can remember; sitting on stools around a tiny, wobbly table that is the envy of many less well-furnished neighbours.

‘Did you hear about Capozzi?’ says Paola, as they eat. Ettore nods. She is normally his eyes and ears in Gioia, when he is in the fields all day; now he is about town in the daytime he sees and hears as well.

‘What of him?’ says Valerio.

‘Arrested again. Beaten as well, I heard. Badly. He was trying to prevent the removal of men from retaken common land, and the burning of what they’d planted there. He was only speaking, but they charged him with disturbing the peace. Disturbing the peace!’ The three of them share a steady glance, and Ettore knows that Paola is waiting for them to express their anger, their outrage, their fear.

Nicola Capozzi is a Gioia man who founded the local branch of the socialist party there in 1907. The workers have no real understanding of the politics behind their strikes and their riots – they need no such understanding, but they know that Capozzi speaks for them. That he is their man. Since the new branch of the fascist party was formed in Gioia recently, with the full support of the signori and proprietors, there’s no doubt as to which side the police are on. There never has been. The men now wait to hear of Capozzi’s murder. Assassination, it will be called, and nothing will be done about it as and when it happens. Not via official channels, in any case.

‘There’ll be a rally. There’ll be a strike until he’s released. I’ll find out today when it will start,’ says Paola, holding her brother’s eyes. But all the outrage, all the fear and anger at the dinner table comes from her alone. Valerio carries on eating as though he hears nothing; and without Livia Ettore can’t find that feeling any more. He can’t find his will to fight.

For three days, all is well. Being well fed keeps Ettore’s shivers to a minimum, and he feels better even though he doesn’t feel right. Then, after three days, the food runs out and Valerio is coughing so hard he can be heard right across the piazza, and Ettore stands square before the overseer of Masseria Vallarta at dawn, with his weight on both feet, and declares himself fit for work. His cut leg beats like a drum; the bone screams silently at him. He can feel the overseer’s eyes on him as he joins the group for the walk to the farm; he grinds his teeth together, so hard that his jaw cramps, but he does not limp. Halfway along the dusty track out of Gioia he feels the warm trickle of fresh blood as the wound reopens. It goes down into his boot, and makes his foot slide around. Pino is not with him; he was hired elsewhere, and Ettore looks around at the other faces to see if there is a friendly one, one he knows, who might carry him back to town if he can’t walk. He sees Gianni, one of Livia’s older brothers, and makes his way over to him.

Gianni looks down at Ettore’s leg but says nothing. He’s older than Ettore by two years, but seems much older still. His face is hard, his expression grim. If Livia was a golden plover, then this brother is a black kite, silent and watchful. He doesn’t moderate his pace to make it easier for Ettore to keep up.