Nun (9781609459109) Read Free Page B

arranging marriages for the four eldest daughters.
    Times were changing rapidly; the scent of revolution was in the air throughout Europe. Ferdinand II was an isolationist king, completely green in terms of diplomatic experience. The whole matter of sulfur mining, an export of paramount importance both for the economy of the kingdom at large and especially in Sicily, had become a nightmare for the government and a tragedy for the Sicilians. Ever since St
.
Stephen’s Day in 1798, when the English navy landed the fugitive king Ferdinand I and his royal family on the docks of Palermo, England had gradually consolidated its economic and political dominion over the island. The English army, deployed in Sicily, had twice prevented the island being taken by French forces. They had been rewarded for the efforts, establishing a tidy monopoly on sulfur exports. Two years earlier, a French consortium had made a very attractive offer for control of the sulfur trade and the king had recklessly insisted on accepting that offer. But the Englishmen who lived in the kingdom had substantial business concerns and represented a sizable market for Bourbon exports. To lose that market would spell considerable economic damage to the kingdom. The king turned a deaf ear to the protests lodged by the British government, and as a result sulfur sales plunged. The field marshal—who had maintained his friendships with Freemasons and a wide-ranging network of contacts throughout the many nations involved in the kingdom’s affairs dating back to his earliest days as a gentleman at court—feared the worst imaginable: a general collapse of exports to England. It would have dealt a crushing blow to the thriving seaport of Messina and the business concerns of both his sons-in-law: Domenico Craxi, husband of Amalia and a trader in citrus fruit and silk, and Salvatore Bonajuto, husband of Giulia and the owner of a shipping agency. Both men depended on trade with the English.
    Moreover, the Masonic uprisings in Spain had undermined the Bourbon monarchy; Freemasonry was powerful in Messina as well. In that city the age-old power of the aristocracy, long since stripped of their feudal rights and now shuttered into life at court, had weakened and waned. The newly rich bourgeoisie now placed greater value on money than lineage. The actions of the Lepre family made that perfectly clear, to the discomfort of Donna Gesuela. Now she was even starting to worry about Anna Carolina’s engagement—even though it had been worked out to the last detail, dowry included, and was to be announced that very afternoon.
    Even as the Marescialla was in the kitchen sampling desserts, a message was brought to her—Anna Carolina’s future father-in-law, Cavaliere Amilcare Carnevale, had requested a meeting at eleven o’clock, to discuss a matter of some delicacy. Donna Gesuela flushed beet-red and hurried to her dressing room. Her daughter, certain that her betrothal was about to vanish into thin air, flew into a hysterical fit. That fit was followed by a series of tantrums over her hairpiece, and in the end two hairdressers had to be summoned to appease her.
    At last, mother and daughter, dressed, brushed, and lustrous, left the bedroom to the footservants who were impatiently waiting to set up the
tablattè
.
    Now there was a problem, however: while everyone else was busy gobbling down the
sfincione
, Anna Carolina, unsure which outfit would look best at the reception and then afterward, at the procession, had transported to her parents’ bedroom, one item at a time, her entire formal wardrobe—dresses, slippers, hats, shawls: entirely too many items of apparel to be easily concealed under the tablecloths of the
tablattè
. It was now necessary to carry that vast array of clothing back from the bedroom of the mistress of the house, and in so doing, necessarily pass before the eyes of Cavaliere Carnevale.
    It was just five minutes to