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.