Being the opening chapter of Isabella Silverto's story of remembrance and awakening in which a funeral brings back memories of a dark family secret and Isabella renews an acquaintance.
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Naples June 1736: The family of Alberto Silverto was in mourning. The family matriarch, and Alberto's aunt on his father's side, Donna Elvira Del Malachi Silverto had finally passed on and the extended family, now scattered widely over the Southern states of what we now call Italy, was gathering in Naples to pay their last respects. For Alberto, his wife Marisa and his now adult children, Gustavo, Maria and Isabella, the event put great pressure on their hospitality. Upwards of forty family members, distant cousins, uncles and aunts, would descend on their home in Palazzo del Coere and consume their bread, wine and whatever nourishment was not locked away. For Maria and Isabella in particular, the event was a great strain but, as good daughters and women of the church, they performed their duty without complaint. The older Maria had married well and her husband, a trader from Palermo, helped provide servants and food. For him, the funeral presented a useful opportunity to make connections with some of the family's more influential members.
Isabella, although also married, was living with her parents after her husband had "failed to return" from one of the former regent's interminable military escapades into the neighbouring province. Whether he had been killed or simply decided that the grass was greener somewhere else was not officially known, but Isabella had her suspicions and was in fact secretly relieved that the preening, prancing oddball was no longer around. Of course, she said no such thing and had dutifully worn her black dress and shawl and officially mourned her departed husband with daily prayers and candles for the requisite year following his disappearance. Her mourning clothes had been packed away these eighteen months when Donna Elvira's funeral caused them to be brought out again. Isabella secretly smiled as the dress was brushed and ironed. She knew she looked good in black.
Her long black hair, almond coloured eyes and sharp wit, not to mention her fair face and figure, had attracted admirers and suitors from near and far during her blossoming from an awkward girlhood in her late teens and early twenties. Only when her father had insisted on a match with Henri Jousta, the youngest son of a wealthy Florentine spice merchant, had Isabella's hopes of true love, or at least exciting romance - and perhaps some traditional Italian wickedness - been dashed. Henri was not to Isabella's taste at all. Short, slightly rotund and given to extravagant facial gestures, he proved to be an unexciting and somewhat irritating husband.
Perhaps worst of all for Isabella, he had very little interest in what the matrons called the "physical side" of the union. Isabella had spent most of her adolescence guiltily fantasizing about such things and after four or five months of marriage was wondering whether or not she had needlessly jeopardised the eternal life of her soul with all that sinful thinking. Henri was neither passionate nor well equipped for such things and spent much of the spring and summer high in the hill regions with his extensive sheep flock, and his shepherds. More than once, Isabella had wondered why her husband insisted on employing so many young shepherds. His military exploits also puzzled Isabella. Every year he would volunteer enthusiastically for one of the local prince's brigades and march happily over the mountain passes to subdue whatever rural province was this year's enemy. Henri always specifically volunteered to lead the brigade made up of the younger villagers and the son's of farmers. His failure to return from the last of these adventures was conveyed to her by an absurdly pretty, lisping youth from his former brigade.
Isabella knew that as soon as her year of mourning was over, her father had petitioned the local Bishop for the annulment of her marriage to Henri and had spent many hours since then plotting her engagement to the offspring of some strategically important trading ally. She sometimes wept at her prospects. At 34, she was now too old for the most eligible of bachelors. The best she could hope for was yet another weak but moneyed second son who, perhaps with luck this time, would at least show some carnal interest.
So, despite the work and the press of relatives, Donna Elvira's funeral came as something of a welcome distraction for Isabella. She piously received the pity of the women and did her best to remain appropriately sad and quiet during the week before the funeral. She was however enlivened to see her brother Gustavo return and take up his old room near hers on the second floor of the house. Gustavo was only a year older than Isabella and they had shared many childhood adventures. Gustavo had become a trader, just as his father had wished, and now sailed the Mediterranean making deals and, most likely, breaking hearts. Like Isabella, Gustavo had his mother's jet-black hair, Roman nose and brown eyes. He had the rugged good looks of their father and more than a hint of the animal nature that Isabella had wished her own lovers would possess. Behind the closed door of Gustavo's old room, away from the mourners, they now hugged and laughed with the joy of seeing each other once again. Questions bubbled from Isabella's mouth –where had he traveled? who had had seen?, was he happy? Gustavo just smiled and held her by the shoulders at arms length. "You are still Isabella the Talkative, I see," he said, "But you grow more beautiful every year!"
