And then, in a few months, it would blossom again. And Arcanu could come back to life. For hundreds of years, since Cassanu and that oak were one and the same. It wasn’t blood that flowed in his veins, but sap. The sap of the Idrissis, since the dawn of time.

Lisabetta was impressed by the ballet of branches as they were carried along by thousands of black ants. The last members of the procession were now leaving the courtyard. She would bring up the rear, she had decided. Before setting off, she glanced one last time at her flower bed, on which no one had dared to trample, her little garden, the flowers that she watered every morning.

She thought that when she died, on her grave she would settle for an orchid.

~

Lisabetta slowly walked past the crowd, which was no longer moving; the first arrivals were already crammed into the pocket-sized cemetery, and the rest of the procession was unable to progress; as she came upon them, the crowd parted or moved aside, like spectators at a very fine, but incredibly slow Corsican rally. It was almost as if the crowd was inches away from waving the oak-branches while chanting Halleluia, although thankfully no one dared.

It took the widow almost an hour to reach the end of the queue.

The crypt was open, with a view over Revellata Bay. And yet, however beautiful the scenery, Lisabetta didn’t like crypts, particularly the monumental ones belonging to the important families. In spite of their splendour, with their Greek columns and Ottoman domes, they were little more than huge cupboards in which the generations are stacked in drawers. One day she would share with Cassanu, for all eternity, the fifth drawer up on the right. Tidied away neatly with their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents in the storeys below. With their son waiting for them another floor up.

She slowly advanced towards the crypt. Of course, she would be the first to throw an oak branch on the coffin, but she had decided to share that honour. She struggled over the last few metres, or at least that was what the impatient crowd thought. Lisabetta turned her head to the right and Speranza understood without a word; she stepped forward and took Lisabetta’s arm. She too would be the first to approach the mausoleum.

Salomé, her daughter, rested there.

Lisabetta’s head now turned to the left, and with a look that brooked no opposition she invited Palma to join them, taking her other arm.

Paul, her husband, rested there.

The three women, supporting one another, approached the coffin.

Lisabetta had taken it upon herself. She’d had the idea the previous day, and reflected on it during the night. To reconcile Palma and Speranza if only for the duration of a ceremony. To make peace. In Corsica, women have that gift.