As soon as she arrived, Giovanna slid down from the horse and, with lagging step and bowed head, approached a woman, a relative whom they had left in charge of the house and who now came forward with a baby in her arms. Giovanna took the child from her, hugged him to her breast, and began to weep, burying her face on the innocent little shoulder. She wept quietly in deep despair. She felt as if her former grief were nothing to that which she now felt. The baby, who, at scarcely five months old, had as yet unformed features, but his violet eyes were large and glowing. He wore a red bonnet, whose fringes hid his forehead. He had recognized his mother, and was tugging the edge of her kerchief, kicking his little feet and crying.

‘Baby Martino, my little Martino, my only joy in the world, your papa’s dead,’ sobbed Giovanna.

Realising that Costantino had been found guilty, the woman began to weep with her. Bachisia, however, advanced on the two of them, pushed Giovanna into the cottage, and asked the woman to help her unload the horse. ‘Must you two carry on like that right in view of the white house?’ she muttered. ‘I can see Martina’s face, the nosey old hag. She’s probably delighted to hear of our bad luck.’

‘Oh, no,’ said the woman. ‘She’s been here several times to inquire about Costantino, and she seemed very upset. She told me she’d dreamed they’d given him hard labour.’

‘She’s as upset as a rabid dog. I know what she’s like, she’s a venomous snake, and she’ll never forgive us because Giovanna turned Brontu down.’ Moving towards the door, the saddlebag over her shoulder, she added, ‘But she’s right, we’ll never forgive ourselves either.’

Martina Dejas, the owner of the white house, was the mother of Brontu Dejas, who had asked for Giovanna’s hand and been rejected. Though quite comfortably off, Martina was a miser, and Bachisia was wrong to think that the woman hated her. Old Signora Dejas had not cared one jot about her son’s rejection.

‘Do me one more favour, Maria Chicca,’ Bachisia said when they had unloaded their baggage. ‘Take this horse back to Martina, tell her that Costantino has been sent to prison for twenty-seven years and see the expression on her face.’

The woman took hold of the bridle and led the animal over to the white house. Formerly owned by a merchant who had gone bankrupt, the house had been bought at public auction a few years before. It was large and comfortable with a portico that would not have disgraced a gentleman’s residence. Martina let piglets and chickens wander about in this portico. The house did not suit rough shepherds like the Dejas, and the crude furniture, the hard, high wooden beds, clumsily carved coffers, benches, and heavy chairs, bore evidence of this.