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‘But also,’ Mercedes tells her – she takes the St James legend very seriously, ‘we keep our culture safe.’ She looks an appeal at her older sister, whose English is far better than hers – not just from school, but from all those magazines she likes to buy.
‘Yes,’ says Donatella. ‘When the Moors came, they were carrying everything away. The gold and the silver, all the church ornaments. They took it away to Africa. Melted it down to make heathen idols. Even the stained glass in the windows. They raided the castle and took everything the duke owned.’
‘But they not take his courage,’ says Mercedes, ‘or his love for his people.’ They are reciting the story every child has learned by rote since the great battle.
‘They burned the paintings,’ her sister continues. ‘The saints and the dukes and their duchesses, all burned, and the ashes thrown into the sea.’
Paulina rejoins, suddenly friendly again.
‘Even the Roman gods and emperors,’ says Donatella, ‘that used to stand in the temple. They say you can still see them on the ocean floor, if you go down deep enough.’
‘Is that right?’ asks Tatiana. ‘And who was their God?’
Paulina puts a finger to her lips and hushes her. ‘We do not say his name,’ she says.
‘But what,’ she continues in her loud and confident tones, ‘about that jala thing you all keep saying? Surely that’s … ’
An explosion of l’ostias all around them. Jesu Maria. All around them, women are crossing themselves, kissing medallions.
‘Mercedes Delia,’ snaps the woman who does the laundry for the Re del Pesce, ‘if you can’t keep this girl under control, you should take her away.’
‘What’s she even doing here anyway?’ mutters another. ‘This isn’t some … espetacula turistija.’
‘Sorry, sorry,’ says Mercedes.
‘I was only—’ Tatiana begins. Donatella cuts across, interrupts to shut her up.
‘So we were telling you. But they didn’t get it all. Not even a half. Because, while the men were talking and drinking grappa and despairing, the women were spiriting away everything they could get. Under their skirts. In handcarts of linens.’
‘In the carts taking food for the animals,’ adds Mercedes.
‘In their babies’ cradles,’ says Paulina.
‘And they hid them so well, the Moors never found them. Buried in the fields, plastered into wall niches, stored in secret compartments beneath the animals’ mangers. And every generation, we whispered the secret hiding places into our daughters’ ears. Mother to daughter, mother to daughter.’
Larissa has come up behind them, pushed her way between the bodies. She gives Donatella a look. I know what you’ve been up to, missy, it says. Don’t think I didn’t see.
‘Because the men could not be trusted,’ says Donatella, pretending not to know what the look is about. ‘And when the Sant’Iago came and freed us, the daughters’ daughters’ daughters went to their secret places and brought the icons back to the church.’
‘The ancestors back to the castle,’ says Paulina.
‘The communion chalice back to the altar. The history of La Kastellana was saved from the Moors.’
‘And was the women who saved it,’ Mercedes concludes proudly. ‘This why we have festa today.’
Tatiana has shut up at last. She gets it, thinks Mercedes. At last, she gets it. Our noble history. Why we’re special.
‘But not all the women, right, girls?’ asks Paulina. She too learned the Kastellana legend at her mother’s knee.
‘Noo!’ they chorus, and, all around them, women mime spitting and wiping their mouths.
‘There were women who collaborated,’ Donatella recites. ‘Women with no shame, no pride. Women who even laid themselves down for these heathen men. Puta.’
‘Puta,’ they mutter. ‘Puta.’
‘That’s a bit rich … ’ begins Tatiana, then thinks better of carrying on.
‘They shamed their fathers. Some of them even shamed husbands. Left their marriage beds and laid themselves down.’
