Nun (9781609459109) by Simonetta Agnello Hornby Read Free Book Online Page B

Agata: Giacomo informed her that his father, having learned of their meeting in the cobbler’s shop, had threatened to send Giacomo away to Naples until he got over her. He hadn’t written her before this because he was convinced that they were being spied upon; he begged her forgiveness for the brevity and the terseness of that note—when they were able to see one another again, he’d explain the rest to her. Giacomo made no reference to the meeting between his grandfather and the Marescialla. He concluded by pledging his undying love and urging her to await his return from Naples and to remain faithful to him.
    Aghast, Agata took comfort in caring for her suffering father. At the first signs of improvement, the field marshal had stubbornly insisted on returning to Messina, despite the doctor’s opinion and the wishes of his family. It wasn’t often that the field marshal dug in his heels, but when he did there was no dissuading him.
    Agata went into her father’s bedroom. She perched on a stool next to the night table and poured him a glass of sweet lemonade: then she sat waiting, without a word. He began reminiscing. It was as if he were recalling his life and giving it to her as a gift. She devoured his words.
    He told her about the glittering magnificence of his family and the happy years of his childhood with his beloved younger sisters, a childhood idyll that was cut rudely short: “I know that I haven’t been a good father to you, or perhaps to your sisters, but I’ve done my best,” he told her. “There’s just one thing I’m happy about: I never forced you into a convent.” He told her that one day his mother took the three littlest girls–Violante, Antonina, and Teresa–had them dressed in their finest, and left the house with them. He remembered it clearly because after his mother left, the wet nurses seemed heartbroken and he couldn’t understand why. “I never saw them again,” he said, sorrowfully, and then went on: “She left one at the convent of Santa Patrizia and the other two at the convent of San Giorgio Stilita. Just like that, she left them . . . I complained about it to my father and he told me to shut up and try to understand. King Louis XV, thirty years before that, had sent four of his daughters–the princesses Victoire, Sophie, Marie-Thérèse-Félicité, and Louise Marie–to the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud, and he left them there for ten years. Then he took them back home–or perhaps I should say, he took the ones that were still alive back home–and everything was all right. ‘He was the king and he could provide them with dowries. We are princes but we have to count our pennies, and a monastic dowry is much smaller than a matrimonial dowry. Your sisters will be very well off,’ he told me.” Then her father’s gaze sought out her almond-shaped eyes. “I’m not sure that’s how it went.” A pause. “But for you girls, I’ve managed to find good husbands, even with a tiny dowry.” He snickered wickedly: “But my daughters have their mother’s sharp, clinical eye, and men seem to like that. When I was a boy, the women of the house of Padellani were fine and expensive, but they were dull-eyed.”
    Frequently he struggled to tell her the story of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, of the fragile successes of the French revolutionary cause, of how that cause had attempted to sink roots in Naples, likewise without success. Agata did her best to take it all in, but when her father drew political links between the recent past and the present day, she struggled. He could tell. He gazed at her keenly. He took her hands in his. He relied upon her intelligence. And Agata returned his confidence with a sort of hope that took the form of inquisitive glances. One day he sent her to retrieve from a shelf hidden in his secrétaire a copy of the
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