But the horrors of Taormina in that siege are too much for another slave—a Syrian. He betrays the town to the Romans ... and Publius disposes of all the remaining garrison over the edge of the cliff.
Shopping is an important part of a stay in Taormina. Surely no other street of its length anywhere in the world has so many beguilements to part the tourist from his coin. The dark little shops spilling their goods out upon the pavement; things so bizarre, so good, so cheap, the lire of the forestieri flow away in torrents. Beautiful inlaid furniture; lovely old jewelry of flawed rubies and emeralds set amid the famous antique Sicilian pearl-work and enamelling. Old Spanish paste in delightful designs; red Catanian amber, little Roman intaglios, delicate old cameos, enamelled orders; necklaces, rings, pendants; earrings in odd and charming settings; delightful old trinkets in richer assortment of variety and quality here than any other place in Italy. Old Sicilian thread lace, coarse but effective, in shawls and scarfs of many charming old designs; old altar lace too in great abundance; better laces, as one may have luck to find them, or to be on the spot when gleanings from churches and convents in the interior are brought in—bundles containing varied treasures, from brocades and embroideries and splendid lace of priestly vestments, to drawn-work altar cloths and the lace cottas little choirboys’ restless arms have worn sad holes in. Churchly silver too, reliquaries and ornaments and old medals, abound in Taormina for scarcely more than the value of the silver’s weight. Old coins dug up in its gardens, the old porcelains bought from its impoverished nobles; old drawn-work, on heavy hand-woven linen, still firmly carrying its processions of marvellous beasts and birds and personages in wide lace-like bands. Beasts conceived by the same imagination that evolved the gargoyles of Gothic cathedrals, such wonderful mixtures of animal and bird and human as Adam never named in Garden of Eden. These horned birds and winged animals processioning around churchly altar cloths are old, old pagan Siculian luck charms—protectors against the evil eye. Peripatetica and Jane instantly proceeded to combat their Hoodoo with valiant processions of fat little many-horned stags romping around throat and wrist—and of all the many exorcisms they had tried this truly seemed the most effective!
Taormina’s naïve native pottery, too, drapes the outside walls of shops and doorways in bright garlands of strange shapes of fishes and fruits and beasts, is stacked in shining heaps of colour, jugs and pots and platters of every possible form and design. Some of it reminiscent of Sevillian pottery in elaborate Renaissance decoration, but for the most part rough little shapes of clay, covered with hard bright glaze and no two ever exactly alike in either shape or tint. The favourite model being a gay Sicilian Lady Godiva, riding either a stag or a cock, attired proudly in a crown and a floating blue ribbon!
Day after day, all through March, the sun moped behind clouds, the wind lashed the sea against the rocks, and milky foam bands streaked the turbid green. Rain beat on the Villa windows, and even through them, to the great amusement of Maria, who appeared to consider mopping up the streaming floors a merry contest with the elements.
But when the rare sun burst out and revealed a fresh-washed sky, a land shimmering through thinnest gauze of mist, or the moon could escape from the clouds and rise behind the theatre ruins to hang, hugely bright over the gleaming sea floor so far, far below, it seemed a fair world all prepared to greet its radiant returning goddess.
On such days no shop could beguile. Even the old dames weaving towels on hand looms by their open doors, always so ready for friendly chat with these forestieri, would be passed with only a smile, for the breath of the fields called loudly to hillside and orchard, “where all fair herbs bloom, red goat-wort and endive, and fragrant bees-wort”; the only sound breaking the sunny calm being the notes of a shepherd boy on a neighbouring hill, piping as if his reed flute held the very spirit of youth, the bubbling notes sparkling like a little fountain of joy flinging its spray on the spring breeze. Or on a day like this to wander far afield; or else in the high hillside orchards where the birds sang “Sicily! Sicily! Sicily!” or called mockingly “Who are you? Who are you?”
On such a day they adventured to Mola and the heights of Monte Venere’s peak in the company of those brave asinelli Giovanino and Francesco, and in the charge of Domenico, Sheik of guides, whose particular exploitation they had long ago become.
Loafing in the fountain square, watching the women filling jars at the fountain, and speculating as usual over the history of its presiding deity (who as St. Taypotem is the local genius and emblem of the town, a saint utterly unknown to churchly calendar)—a lady centaur, and a two-legged one at that, uprearing her plump person on two neat little hoofed heels raised high above the four archaic beasts spouting water—Peripatetica and Jane fell a prey to a genial Arab, a beguiling smile wrinkling his dark hawk-like face. Wouldn’t they like a donkey ride? The best donkeys in all Sicily were his—Domenico’s—guide No. 5, beloved of all tourists, as they could see by reading his book. A dingy little worn note-book was fluttered under their noses, an eager brown finger pointed to this and that page of English writing, all singing the praises of Domenico and his beasts on many an expedition. More influenced by the smile than the testimonials they promised that he should conduct them to Mola. From that instant Domenico’s wing was spread over them in brooding solicitude. Yes, the weather was too threatening to ride out anywhere that afternoon, but did they know all the sights of the town? he inquired. Had they seen the Bagni Saraceni? No, they admitted. Oh, that was molto interessante and close at hand; he would show them! Hypnotized by the smile they followed meekly, though the Bagni turned out to be the Norman Moorish ruins of the San Stefano Palace with which they were already familiar. But not as it was shown by Domenico. The surly old contadina in charge, bullied into offering the choicest of the oranges and flowers growing among the ruins, the smile gilding all the dark corners of antiquity and lighting up the vaulted cellar in which by graphic pantomime of jumps into its biggest holes they were shown exactly how the Saracens had once bathed, much as more modern folk did, it seemed.
After that days came and went of such greyness and cold wind or rain, that Domenico and his donkeys attended in vain at the pink gateway to take Peripatetica and Jane excursioning. But not for that did they lose the sunniness of the smile. Like a benevolent spider, Domenico was to be always lying in wait to pounce around any corner with friendly greeting, to give them the news of the town in his patois of mixed Italian, English, and pantomime; to suggest carrying home their bundles for them if they were on a shopping tour, to point out an antiquity or garden to inspect if they seemed planless, or a lift home on the painted cart whose driver he had been enlivening with merry quips, when met on the high road outside town. And once, oh blessed time, when he encountered Jane at the Catania gate, her tongue hanging out with thirst and fatigue after a long mountain climb, he haled her straightway into a friend’s garden to refresh herself with juicy oranges from the trees.