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4
The cobbled road from town to castle is festooned with dusty black crêpe. Two kilometres of cloth, three metres wide, ruched every fifty metres over the top of an upright wooden beam, mark the route the duke’s cortège will take when he makes his journey to join his ancestors in the church crypt. On the castle ramparts, the ducal flags – the crimson, gold and blue – have been replaced with satin banners of jet-black parachute silk that stream out in the light spring breeze.
Over Kastellana Town itself hovers an eerie hush. People dressed in black, heads bowed, voices lowered, walk slowly and solemnly from house to house and salute one another with mournful kisses. On an island with fewer than a thousand inhabitants, even a funeral is a red-letter day. A release from the monotony of the everyday. A chance to wear your good clothes, a communal feast, a day of leisure.
The funeral of a duke is a different order of magnitude.
The Delias and the Marinos walk together from Kastellana Town to the castle to pay their respects, Larissa and Paulina and the girls hot in scratchy headscarves, for modesty. And Donatella is grumbling.
‘I don’t understand,’ she declares in that ringing-bell of voice of hers, ‘why everyone’s so sad. It’s not as if he was here much.’
Larissa and Paulina leap to quiet her. ‘Hush! Oh, hush, Donatella!’
They scan about them for eavesdroppers. The road is filled with straggling parties of mourners, and you never know who’s listening, even in normal times. All the tenants – which means, of course, the entire population – are expected to doff their hats to their deceased landlord. The entire population will be passing through the castle gates between now and Saturday morning. Everyone. And twelve years old is quite old enough to be judged.
‘He was our duqa,’ says Paulina Marino. ‘His family’s loss is all of our loss.’
A crêpe-draped horse and cart rumbles past. They step off the road and wait as it passes. The old. The infirm. And the solteronas, the island spinsters. Women whose very virginity makes them creatures of honour. Crones with hunched backs and walking sticks and the ancient framed mantles, the faldetti, that ride on their shoulders to catch the breeze and protect their modesty. Then tiny old men, outnumbered five to one, bow-legged and hidden beneath wide-brimmed felt hats.
Mercedes watches beneath her eyelashes. Theatre, she thinks. They’re doing mourning as theatre.
‘Look at them,’ mutters Donatella. ‘Like crows on a rooftop.’
Larissa pinches her. Don’t, Donatella. Don’t attract their attention.
Felix Marino, nine years old, smiles his admiration, and Mercedes feels a nip of annoyance. The way the boys all love her twelve-year-old sister is starting to grate.
They walk on.
On a summer day these headscarves, the long-sleeved, high-necked, ankle-brushing dresses, would be unbearable. She still finds it hard to imagine that her grandmother dressed like this all the time, at her age. But on this fine spring morning, with wildflowers bursting through the soil at the roadside and skylarks getting up above the newly sprouted maize fields, it’s only a slight distraction. She knows she should be sad, but she’s quietly filled with joy. Once they’re done at the castle, they’re going to the western cliffs. Larissa has packed a picnic of lamb and cumin pastizzi, foqqaxia filled with goat’s cheese from the mountains and last year’s dried tomatoes, pastries filled with apricots and prickly pear jam. And a small bottle each of the magical brown Pepsi-Cola that they’ve recently started stocking for the tourists at the restaurant. It’s so rare and so precious that Mercedes has only tasted it twice. Her mouth waters, as she walks, at the prospect of that sweet abrasive mouthfeel.
‘And where’s the new duke, anyway?’ asks Donatella. ‘If we’re so sad, why isn’t he here?’
Hector Marino throws a look at Sergio. Your daughter’s out of line. Shut her up before someone hears.
‘Shut up, Donatella,’ says Sergio. ‘Just be quiet for once in your life.’
‘He’s in New York,’ says Larissa. ‘It’s on the other side of the world.’
The sound of horses trotting on the cobbles, the grind of wheels, the rattle of harness. They turn to look and see the castle’s nineteenth-century grande diligence, with its scarlet-padded upholstery and ducal crest, speed smartly up from the town. It’s been washed and polished, and the horses look as though they’ve been lacquered in honour of the dead.
The old duke’s friends, from the yachts moored up in the harbour, cramping the fishing boats, come to make their farewells.
Creatures from a different planet.
The family a hundred metres behind them has already stepped into the ditch and lowered their eyes. Sergio and Hector snatch their hats from their heads and clutch them over their stomachs. Larissa pulls a protesting Donatella into the ditch by her arm. Paulina grips a hand to the back of Felix’s neck. Bend your head, boy. Know your place.
Mercedes can’t resist. As the carriage approaches, she peers up through her fringe and takes a look.
Five faces, white as snow, old as the castle itself, disdainful as conquering corsairs, stare only at each other. This beautiful island with its green and gold, its crimson poppies, its azure sky, its mountains topped with clouds, of no interest to their weary eyes.
Vampires, she thinks, and shivers, though the sun is warm. They’ve lived so long that nothing is new to them.
Hurriedly, she turns her gaze away.
Larissa pokes her in the back as the line shuffles forward. Another couple of steps and the duke’s face will be in view. For now, all she can see is a huge oak coffin, cut from trees planted for this very purpose by generations long forgotten. How confident they were, she thinks, that their line would last a thousand years. And the new duke has no heirs. Imagine. In her lifetime, it might all come to an end.
Bored, Mercedes gazes up at great oil portraits of stern men whose features change subtly over the years. Where did they come from? They’re aquiline and handsome in a way you rarely see among their tenants. High cheekbones, liquid brown eyes, noble Roman noses. As though they didn’t come from La Kastellana at all. How funny.
