As she rode on and on, Giovanna’s head burned under her woollen kerchief, and silent tears rolled down her face. Seated on the horse’s crupper, she tried to hide her tears from her mother, who sat astride the saddle. But Bachisia seemed to see even out of the back of her head and at last she could hold back no longer.
‘Listen, my dear,’ she suddenly said, as they crossed the floor of the valley, ‘can’t you be good enough to stop that? Why go on crying? Haven’t you known about this for months and months?’
But Giovanna only sobbed more loudly.
‘Can you really be so stupid?’ Bachisia gave bitter vent to her feelings. ‘Did he or didn’t he kill the Vulture? Of course he did.’
‘He never said so.’
‘At least he had the sense not to tell you! I always knew that one day he’d crush the Vulture, just like he’d have crushed a wasp that stung him. You say Costantino is a good man? Well, my girl, you must by now have some idea what hatred is. Wouldn’t you kill the men who’ve convicted Costantino? Yes or no? Yes, he killed the Vulture, and up to a point I sympathize with him, because I understand the workings of the human heart. But I don’t forgive him; I’ll never forgive him his rashness. For the love of God, he has a wife and a son. If he had to do it, he should have gone about it more carefully. And now that’s enough of that. You’re still young, Giovanna. You must think of him as dead.’
‘But he’s not dead!’
‘Very well, then.’ Bachisia raised her voice. ‘Go and hang yourself! You see that tree over there? Go and hang yourself from it, but don’t go on tormenting me. You’re the plague of my life, and you always have been. If you’d married Brontu Dejas, you would have been all right. But no, you wanted that pauper. So go and hang yourself!’
Giovanna did not reply. In her heart, she too believed Costantino was guilty, but she had long since forgiven him.
Grief had closed her mind to everything but Costantino’s sentence. She could not understand how simple, ordinary people could so easily dispose of the life of a fellow man.