The Wager (3 page)

The boy stood there.

Was he trying to shame Don Giovanni? The insolent little snot-nose. “Well, go on,” he said gruffly.

The boy ran off.

Don Giovanni continued along the path, through the city gate. He was sickened by the destruction. How on earth had he been so lucky as to have no damage from the wave? But wait, his sheep flocks habitually covered the lower part of the hillside between the castle and the beach. A thousandfold. No one had more sheep than Don Giovanni. He didn't use them for wool; Sicilian wool could never match the quality of imported wools. But they were important for cheese and meat. A solid source of
income. He couldn't remember seeing any of them since the night he'd watched the woman walk into the sea.

He turned back and crossed the countryside to survey his lands. He walked up and down, back and forth, for hours. Bloated carcasses littered the hill. Not a single living ewe, a single living ram. Not one had had the sense to run to higher land.

Disease followed death, any fool knew that. All those carcasses needed to be gathered and burned. The sooner, the better.

Don Giovanni went back to the castle and stopped at the entrance. He rang the bell to call his servants.

He paced the front patio, making plans. Now and then he glanced out over the hillside, over the town. But the view upset him too much.

He rang the bell again.

What was keeping them? Surely the boy had delivered his message. Surely Lino had obeyed. Or someone else. There must have been someone who returned to work.

He rang again and again.

He went inside. A chill met him; the hearth fire had gone out. He walked the castle halls, entered every room, even the servants' quarters. With each room, his steps got faster, so that by the end he was running flat out. The place was empty. And not just empty, it was stripped. The draperies, the rugs, the furniture, gone. Everything had been taken in the hours that he'd been out on the hill.

“Thieves!” shouted Don Giovanni. He burst from the front
door and ran along the footpath, heart and feet thumping hard. He knew where Lino's family lived, didn't he? He'd heard once.

But when he got to the house, he didn't recognize anyone there. “Where's Lino?” he asked.

A woman made tsking noises at him, but a man pointed him along the road.

He knocked on a door. Lino opened it.

The stench came strong as a punch. Don Giovanni fell back a few steps. “Come,” he said. “I need you.”

Lino pointed. In a corner of the room a woman sat on the floor with a child limp across her legs. Her hands braided the dead girl's hair. Even with her face turned away, Don Giovanni could feel the madness in her eyes.

“I'm sorry,” he said in a hushed voice. “Is that your wife and daughter?”

“My sister and niece.”

“I'm so sorry.” Don Giovanni's mind reeled in the face of such wrenching grief. What was he doing here? What could anyone do? God's will.

Nothing to be done.

Damnable, defeated thinking. There was always something to do, something to make right. He put his hands on his forehead to steady his brain. “Come with me, Lino. The sheep need to be burned. We have to catch thieves.” He knew he sounded incoherent, Lino's face told him that, but an explanation would take too long. “Hurry!”

Lino shook his head.

Don Giovanni put his hands on the man's shoulders and squeezed. “Working helps. And you need to make a living.”

“I can't make a living from you, sire.”

“Of course you can. You're my personal servant.”

Lino shook his head. “You have nothing to pay me with, sire.”

“Don't be ridiculous. I'm wealthy.”

“We all know the truth.” Lino shut the door in Don Giovanni's face.

What could Lino have meant? What truth?

Don Giovanni went through parts of town he'd never been in, searching faces. Betta. He could ask where she lived, but there had to be many women named Betta. And everyone was busy. The frenetic activity of the day before, the digging through wreckage, the search for loved ones, all of that was over. Sorrows and losses consumed people now. Wailing rose on all sides. He couldn't ask anything; he didn't want to intrude on strangers.

His friends. They'd help, of course. He was already on the road to one's home; it didn't make sense to go back in the opposite direction to the castle for a horse. Besides, the brisk night air revived him. So he walked.

But that brief distance turned long, after all. He followed country roads, from noble to noble the whole evening. The story was always the same: everyone had suffered losses. Workers
disappeared or injured. Flocks of sheep washed away. Crops destroyed by the saltwater. No one could help him—not now.

Their indifference shocked him. If the tables were turned, he would never have treated any of them so callously. What was going on?

Don Giovanni had no choice but to throw himself on the mercy of Don Alfinu. He was weary when he reached the old man's castle.

The servant Masu led him to Don Alfinu, who was just finishing his meal: a bowl of vermicelli with oil and garlic—a popular new dish—and a plate of raw sardine fillets under vinegar. The old man ate lightly, because he suffered from indigestion in the night. Don Giovanni remembered his belches and farts.

“Good evening, sire,” said Don Giovanni, trying to keep his eyes off the food, which made his stomach clench. “I trust the wave left you without harm.”

“Dispense with the formalities. You've come with something to say—you've said it to everyone else already. Don't think I don't know. But I get to speak first. Do you realize how much money I've lent you in the past year?”

Don Giovanni stared at the old man's mouth. A fleck of silver stuck to his bottom lip. Sardine skin. It looked delicious. How could he be this hungry? He licked his own lip. “None, sire.”

“You brainless sot. I told you to keep a ledger.”

“And I intend to. Soon.”

Don Alfinu brought his open hand down on the table with a wham. “It's too late now. How many spectacles did you think you could host? You're not the king, you know. You're not a duke or even a prince. I told you to rein yourself in. I told you. But you went your own way, buying gifts for loose women, throwing party after party.”

Did he really have to listen to this rant? Don Giovanni was tempted to leave. But he didn't know where to go. He spread his hands in reason. “Why count coins when there's an infinite number?”

“Blockhead! You spent them all. Your servants rely on me for pay while you throw money to the winds.”

His servants had gone to Don Alfinu behind his back? “They should have told me. Lino, Betta, they should have.”

“No one could tell you anything. You never listen. I figured I could get it back from your sheep if I had to. And now . . .”He flung his hands up. “The whole blasted lot of them dead. And I'm the one holding the bag.”

Don Giovanni's head felt like a huge lump of clay on the weak stalk of his neck. He grasped the edge of the table for support. “I'll call in my loans. Everyone owes me money.”

“After this wave, exactly who has extra money?”

Don Giovanni swallowed hard. “I'll pay you back.”

“You don't need to.”

Surprising words from a stingy man. “Thank you, but I'll repay you anyway.”

“Look around.”

Don Giovanni looked. Against the far wall was a cabinet he recognized as his mother's. Beside it was a table that his father had used for rolling out maps to study. “You're the thief?” he breathed, incredulous.

Don Alfinu laughed. “Don't be absurd.” Exactly the maidservant's words, before this nightmare began. “Your castle is now mine. I'll sell it. Ever since that old King Roger put a moratorium on building castles, they've been hard to come by. It will go high. We'll be even.”

Everything gone. That's why his friends hadn't offered to help. They knew. His problem was so enormous, none could begin to help. “And what becomes of me?”

“You should have worried about that before. With that wave, your last hope at solvency washed away. You can go down to the kitchen now, and beg the cook for old bread and a bowl of sauce. And don't get fresh with her. A randy poor man has even less charm than a randy rich one.

“Let's hope you do a better job at a beggar's life than you did at a don's.”

THOUGH THE MOONLIGHT WAS EXCEPTIONALLY STRONG, DON
Giovanni wouldn't rely on his eyes alone. They had to be wrong. He felt in every cupboard, every drawer.

Now he stood in the kitchen. The shelves were bare. He swept his hands along them a second time. Nothing.

This couldn't be.

Don Alfinu had no heart.

He slid to the floor and slept sitting. Or tried to. The noises of the night kept sneaking up and grabbing him by the throat. From outside the window thumps and a squeak cut off midway. An owl had caught a hare. Or perhaps it was a fox. From the pantry came scurrying, chirping, chirring. Dormice? A small plop, then the crack of an insect crushed in a gecko's jaw. The random groan of wood.

As dawn came, he gave up. He stretched his chill-stiffened limbs. In the haze he saw them hanging from a hook outside the door down to the empty wine cellar: three goatskin bags, overlooked or judged useless. When Don Giovanni went partridge hunting, Lino would fill a bag with watered red wine. Nothing refreshed better in midmorning.

Don Giovanni went to the well in the courtyard and pulled up a bucket. He filled the bags and slung them over his shoulder. He walked through the castle one last time. The ring of his footsteps in the empty rooms was almost eerie. Spots he'd played in as a boy felt unfamiliar. It was the starkness that did it. No texture. Texture was such a big part of recognition—life had lost texture.

He found a wool cap, dropped in haste. Nothing else. He'd never known servants to be so thorough.

He put on the cap and stared up at the painted dining hall ceiling. The light through the windows wasn't strong enough yet to illuminate that high up. He could barely make out the colors, much less the figures. Well, it didn't matter, for he knew every detail by heart. Women half clad offering food to eager men, with musicians in the background. It wasn't the figures that he'd seen there as a boy. After his parents died, Don Alfinu had had the ceiling repainted with war scenes and angels. But when Don Giovanni had taken over the castle again, he paid the finest artists to bring the ceiling back to the spirit his parents had intended. Actually, to a spirit even more sensual than the original. Homage to the good things in life, the things he was born and bred to enjoy.

He gritted his teeth. Nothing made sense. What was he to do next?

Slap
.

Footsteps in the entrance hall. Bare ones. And without a voice announcing them. The nerve.

Don Giovanni strode across the room. “Who's there?”

No answer.

He ran to the entrance hall.

Two men stood by the open door, ready to flee. Peasants, by their clothes.

“What do you mean, coming in unbidden like this?”

“Your Excellency,” said the younger man with a slight bow, but not backing up. “We heard it was abandoned.”

“Abandoned,” echoed the other. His eyes were taking in the bare walls and floors. He craned his neck like a vulture to see into the room behind Don Giovanni.

Don Giovanni moved to the side to break his line of sight. “You heard wrong.”

“No horses in the pasture.” The man shrugged. “Nor the stable.”

No horses. The breath went out of him as fast as if he'd been punched in the gut. Don Giovanni hadn't checked the stable. No horses. He had to force himself to reason. Logic told him it was just as well. If the horses had been cooped up in the stable, they'd have suffered, for he hadn't thought to feed or water them. He hoped the donkeys were gone, too.

The younger man put out his hand. “Anything you can spare, sire.” His arm was skinny; his hand, bony.

“A little charity.” The other extended his claw.

Neither wore a jacket on this cold morning.

Don Giovanni looked at the open palms. That's what he would be reduced to if he didn't come up with a plan fast. He held his own hands out. His pale, soft hands beside their brown, rough ones. Laughter bubbled up. Lack of sleep on top of everything else was making him hysterical, but he couldn't afford to give in to it. He couldn't afford anything. He pressed a hand over his mouth to hold in the laugh at that joke.

The younger man cocked his head. “You don't look well, sire. Do you even know about the disaster?”

“The wave, sire,” said the other man. “Came and smashed everything. Washed people clear away. Don't you know?” He spoke as though to an idiot.

Don Giovanni had always given to the less fortunate. Always. His father said Muslims had that rule right, a foundation for a superior civilization; it was built into their religion—give to the poor. Give. Give, give, give to the poor. “I have nothing to give.”