The door was ajar. From the next room Bachisia heard Giovanna sobbing and muttering, now addressing passionate words to Costantino, now uttering death threats to the jurors who had condemned him. The older woman lay wide awake, her mind racing over all that had taken place and that would now happen. She resented Giovanna’s grief but at last she too fell to weeping.

IV

Towards evening the following day, Brontu Dejas returned from the fields. No sooner had he dismounted than he began to grumble. Though with outsiders he was cheerful, he always grumbled at home. A handsome, jovial young fellow, he was slim and dark with a short, curly, red beard. He had fine teeth, and, to show them off, he smiled continually when he spoke to women.

As soon as he arrived home, he started to grumble because his mother had neither lit the lamp nor prepared the supper. He had reason to complain, for he had been labouring in the fields and, after a week of hard work, when Saturday came round, he had returned to the village to find the house as dark and dirty as a beggar’s hovel.

‘Hey, this looks like Isidoro Pane’s house,’ he said, unloading the saddlebags. ‘Light the lamps at least. Can’t even see enough to curse. What’s there to eat? Stones?’

‘There are eggs and bacon, my son,’ said Martina. ‘Be patient. Did you know that Costantino Ledda has been sentenced to thirty years?’

‘Twenty-seven. What about those eggs? That bacon’s rancid, Mother. Why don’t you throw it to the chickens? The chickens, you hear,’ he repeated, clenching his fine teeth in anger.

‘They won’t eat it,’ Martina replied calmly. ‘Twenty-seven years, yes. It’s a long time! I dreamt he’d been condemned to hard labour.’

‘Have you been round to see those two women yet?’ he said. ‘They must be happy with that fine marriage of theirs, the filthy beggars.’ But when his mother replied that yes, she had been round, that Giovanna was tearing her hair in despair – and that Bachisia had given her to understand that she regretted she had not strangled her daughter rather than allow that marriage – Brontu flew into a rage.

‘Why did you go over there? What business had you to go into that flea-bitten hole?’

‘You know nothing of Christian charity, my son. Father Elias was there this morning. He went to console them. Giovanna wants to take the baby to Nuoro so that Costantino can see it before he’s taken away. I told her it would be madness in this heat. But Father Elias told her to go. He almost wept.’