The name of this good man was Bavarello—Giacomo Bavarello—and he lived with his wife Battestina in a house full of lean children and live-stock. The house had deep overhanging eaves, held down by cords and weighted with rocks; but this must have been rather in deference to the custom of the country than as a precaution against storms, for the farmstead lay cosily in a dingle of the mountain, where storms never reached it. Yet it took the sun from earliest dawn almost to the last beam of midsummer daylight. Behind it a pine forest climbed to the snow; and up and across the snow a corniced path traversed the face of the mountain and joined the diligence-road a little below the summit of the pass. At the point of junction stood a small chapel, with a dwelling-room attached, where lived a brother from the Benedictine hospice on the far side of the pass. His name was Brother Polifilo, and it was supposed that he had fallen in love with solitude (else how could he have endured to live in such a place?); yet his smile justified his name, and his manner of playing with the children when he descended to bring us the consolations of religion— which he did by arrangement with the infirm parish priest in the valley. Also, on fine mornings when the snow held and the little ones could be trusted along the path, the entire household of the Bavarelli would troop up to Mass in his tiny chapel.
For me, it was many weeks before my sick brain allowed me to climb beyond the pines; and many weeks, though the Princess always went with me—before she told me all the story of what had happened in Genoa. Yet we talked much, at one time and another, though we were silent more; for the silences told more. Only our talk and our silences were always of the present. It was understood that the whole story of the past would come, some day, when I had strength for it. Of the future we never spoke. I could not then have told why; though now all too well I can.
Sick man though I was, bliss filled those days for me, and their memory is steeped in bliss. Yet a thought began, after a while, to trouble me. We were living on these poor Bavarelli, and, for aught I knew, paying them not a penny. The good farmer might be grateful to his priest-brother down yonder; but even if his gratitude were inexhaustible we—strangers as we were—ought not to test it so. To be sure, he and his wife wore a smile for us, morning and evening—and this, though I had a notion that Donna Battestina was of a saving disposition. I had heard the pair of them protest when the Princess offered to make herself useful in the farm-work—for which she was plainly unfit—or, failing that, in the housework. They had made up their minds about us, that we were persons of gentle blood, to whom all work must be derogatory.
The next day I insisted on climbing the slope to the pine-wood without support of her arm.
"It is time," said I, "that I grew strong; unless somewhere you are hiding a fairy purse."
She looked at me—for between us, by this time, one spoken word would be the key to a dozen unspoken. "You are not fit to start," she stammered hastily, "nor will be for a long while. There are mountains behind these, and again more mountains—" She broke off and sat down upon a pine-log, trembling.
"I was not thinking of that," said I; "but of these people and their hospitality. Since we have no money I must work for them—at least, until I can get money sent from England."
She glanced at me again, and with a shiver up at the snow peaks beyond the pines. I could read that she struggled with something, deep within her, and I waited. By-and-by she leaned forward, clasped her hands about her knee, and sat silent for a long minute, gazing southward over the plain at our feet.
"Listen," she said at length, but without turning her eyes. "I have something to confess to you." Her voice dragged upon the words; but she went on, "You have not asked me what has happened in Genoa after—that night. The snow covered up our footmarks and the blood—for you were bleeding all the way; but at our lodgings the actors were frightened out of their wits, and worse than ever when I told them what had happened to Marc'antonio and Stephanu. They would all be arrested, they declared; the Bank of Genoa had eyes all over the city. Nevertheless one of them showed great courage. It was that strange friend of yours, Messer' Badcock. My first thought was to get you down to the boat and slip away to sea; and he offered—he alone—first of all to make his way to the harbour and bring word if the coast (as he said) was clear. He went very cautiously, by way of a cellar leading under our house and the next, and opening on a back street—this, that his steps might not be traced to the front door; and it was well that he went, for on the quay, hiding behind a stack of timber, he saw two men in uniform posted at the head of the water-stairs. So he hastened back, using less caution, because by this time the snow had smoothed over his tracks, and was falling faster every moment. The actors had already begun to pack, and Messer' Fazio was running about in a twitter, albeit he declared that, beside themselves, not a soul in Genoa knew of his having lodged these Corsicans. Doubtless, however, his house would be searched in the morning, and the important, the pressing need was to get rid of us.
"In his haste he could think of nothing better than an old onion-loft, some sixty paces up the lane at the back. It was a store merely, not connected with any house, but owned by a rich merchant of the city who had acquired it for some debt and straightway forgotten all about it—at least, so Messer' Fazio declared. If we were discovered in hiding there, it could be explained that we had found it, and used it for a lodging, asking no man's leave; and suspicion would fall on no good citizen.