the piazza. Could it be? Was such a thing possible?
THE EBREO WAS NAKED. His hands were bound with rope before him, blood dripped from his neck and the side of his head. Right behind the Ebreo, Giuseppe followed with his raised and loaded crossbow, occasionally jabbing the Ebreo in the back and prodding him forward. Close behind Giuseppe trailed Mari, apparently tied and bound upon a long-eared donkey.
The short, sharp moans of pain grew louder and began to capture the attention of others besides Bertolli. Heads turned, conversations ceased and mouths fell agape. It was a shocking sight and quickly brought to the surface the array of conflicting emotions the villagers harbored. Just about all mistrusted Giuseppe, at least a little bit, and conversely adored Mari, but that did not make her love affair a right or accepted thing. Neither did they want to lose Mari to a nunnery.
However, what approached was more than just a startling sight. It was an archetypal image, and though no villager was conscious of it, something about the scene profoundly struck their psyches. With his lean body, bruised and bloodied face, bound hands and utterly helpless nakedness, the Ebreo boy was a near-phantasmagorical likeness of Cristo incarnate reliving the Via Dolorosa, and this brought the entire piazza to a silent, almost reverent halt.
Bertolli looked to Mari. Her hair was a mess, she wore a white sleeping gown and her hands were bound with rope and tied to the donkey’s bridle. Her ankles were also bound by rope, secured to each other under the donkey’s belly, trapping her upon its back. Mari lifted her head and caught Bertolli’s eye. Immediately, Bertolli understood what the terror in her eyes was beseeching him to do and he ran from the piazza to fetch the Good Padre.
Giuseppe marched his prisoners forward. The sound of the donkey’s hooves clattering and the slapping of Davido’s bare feet against the piazza’s cobblestones played eerily against the flabbergasted silence. No one moved, no one spoke, no one even dared swallow the food in their mouth. To Augusto Po, Vincenzo and a few others, the sight was unsettling, but they convinced themselves that the Ebreo deserved such abuse. To Mucca, the Cheese Maker (with his broken, swollen and purple nose), Signore Coglione and many others, the sight was alarming and awful, but to Cosimo di Pucci de’ Meducci the Third, the sight of the naked and beaten Davido and his bound lover was entirely devastating.
“Look here!” Giuseppe proclaimed as he prodded Davido. “Behold his naked guilt. I have caught the rat red-handed.”
“Lies!” screamed Mari. “All lies.”
“Do you see,” Giuseppe retorted, “do you see how he’s bedeviled her?” Giuseppe positioned Davido in the center of the piazza. The statue of the Drunken Saint lay ten paces to his left, Mari upon the donkey was just behind him and the gathering of food stands and villagers were before him. Giuseppe scanned the crowd. Vincenzo and Augusto Po were there, along with twenty or so men who made their living working at the mill—that was good. Benito and the Good Padre were not there, and that was even better, leading Giuseppe to think that Benito and the Fungi di Santo-tainted wine had done the trick.
“You lie!” shouted Mari, her hands and feet struggling madly to free herself. “You are a filthy liar!”
“It is you who is filthy,” shot back Giuseppe. “Did I just not find him in your bedchamber, your naked body strewn upon his?”
Mari looked to the crowd desperately. “He lies. I swear it. He has beaten and kidnapped the boy. Ripped him from his farm.”
“Ha,” scoffed Giuseppe, secretly pleased. “A likely story. I stole the boy and his donkey too.” He had purposefully left Mari’s mouth ungagged, assuming that her vociferous protests would only further incriminate her. “It is you who is bewitched and full of lies. The only place I ripped him was from ‘tween your thighs.”
Mari opened her mouth to respond, but the sound of a donkey’s hooves and a wagon’s wheels clattering against cobblestones stole her words. Heads turned and jaws dropped for a second time as the old Ebreo pulled up on the reins and brought the donkey to a stay, just ten feet from his naked grandson. Nonno had seen much in his long life, but nothing he’d seen prepared him for the prospect of his grandson standing bound and bloodied, in the midst of a crowded piazza, surrounded by gentiles, with a loaded crossbow pointed at his back