Naples 1734: The thirty-four year old Isabella Silverto has returned to her parent's home after a ten year loveless marriage. A funeral reunites her family for the first time since it was ripped apart by incest more than a decade earlier. Older, more experienced but still unsatisfied, Isabella spurns her brother's advances and prepares for another arranged marriage.
Isabella slept late the morning after the funeral. She awoke slowly, savouring the last vestiges of a strange dream in which wild horses galloped along a lonely windswept beach and green-eyed children were the objects of loving farewells from mothers and aunts. Isabella always enjoyed her dreams, even when, like this morning, the images and stories made little sense to her on waking. She often took from them not a message or warning, but a feeling of magic that lingered in her body for many hours.
After last evening's confrontation with Gustavo, she was expecting that sleep would not be easy. Instead, her exhaustion had taken her swiftly and deeply and it was only on fully waking that she remembered her surprising encounter with her brother in the bathroom. Even now, she was trying to put together the unexpected chain of events - Gustavo's drunken and clumsy attempt at seduction, his revelation that he knew that Isabella had witnessed his incestuous coupling with Maria fifteen years ago in that very place and, perhaps most surprising of all, the sudden reemergence of her old friend, her powerful inner guide and mentor, who apparently possessed her at times of great sexual moment. She had asserted herself and gently deflated Gustavo's passion. In Isabella's fantasies, Gustavo was often her seducer and her, or rather the inner woman's, outright rejection of him last night was counter to her own desires and dreams. Whenever She had visited Isabella before, although it was now three years since their last acquaintance, She had propelled Isabella towards her secret passions, not away from them. Isabella was not regretting this strange turn. She had long ago learned to trust Her and to respect Her choices and strategies, however strange, brazen or even cruel they seemed to Isabella's logical mind.
It seemed that everyone had slept late that morning. When Isabella finally made her way downstairs to the kitchen, she found her mother, Marisa, sitting alone in the sunny little courtyard between the kitchen and the solid stonewall of the old bathhouse. Isabella poured herself a thick, sweet coffee and joined Marisa, taking a place beside her on the wooden bench. The women acknowledged each other but both were obviously still sleepy and they did not speak for several minutes.
Finally Isabella broke the comfortable silence "It was good to see everyone yesterday, wasn't it mama."
Maria, deep in thought, took a moment to answer. "Indeed it was. Having Maria and Gus at home brought back many memories." A shadow of sadness drifted over Marisa as she spoke.
"They seemed happy," observed Isabella in an attempt to keep the conversation on a light note. "The traveling life must suit Gus and Maria makes such a wonderful mother."
Marisa smiled. Despite the circumstances of their departure from the family home, her two eldest children were still a source of great motherly pride to her.
"Yes, they are good people," she said. "The three of you are such a great comfort to your mother. I just regret we did not have longer together as a real family."
This was the first time that Marisa had spoken to Isabella about her sense of loss following that terrible day.
"They were old enough to leave, mama," comforted Isabella. "It was the speed of their going that was the great surprise."
Marisa nodded "And the circumstances," she added, in almost a whisper, wiping her eyes with corner of her apron.
"Time heals, mama. Even those wounds of which we must not speak." Said Isabella, placing an arm gently around her mothers shoulder. "Let the pain pass now".
Marisa's head dropped and tears began to flow. She buried her head in Isabella's arm. "Oh, it hurts so much," she sobbed. "You cannot know."
"Mother," said Isabella, stroking her hair. "I do know, and you must not grieve or punish yourself."
Marisa suddenly realised that Isabella was behaving as if she was aware of the terrible truth behind their family's breakup. She sat upright and looked at Isabella, who was calm and returned her gaze with love.
Isabella spoke slowly. "Mama, I know that you have protected me from the truth these many years, but as adults I think we should keep no secrets. I do know the truth. I probably know more than anyone but you and Gus. But I do not believe you should feel either guilt or shame. The outcome was sad, but I do not believe there was the slightest ill intention on your part or anyone else's. It was a tragic turn of events, but let us give thanks for our health and happiness and for Gus and Maria too."
In that one statement, delivered with great love and insight, Isabella absolved her mother of the sins she had carried like a weight these past fourteen years. Marisa's eyes showed the lifting of that weight. Without reasoning through the how of Isabella's knowing, her inner being accepted the release and her heart filled with pure joy. She suddenly saw that Isabella, so long the naïve, dutiful, tender child, was actually a fine and wonderful woman whose words had magically healed the deep and abiding scar on her soul.
Marisa hugged Isabella and cried, not from pain but from the pure joy of relief and love. They sat together silently for some minutes before Marisa spoke again.
"Isabel, I realise now that I have misjudged and neglected you all these years. I have been blind to your true nature and to your gifts. There is so much I should have done, should have told you, but I was confused and distracted by my own stupidity and failure. I don't know how to make it up to you."
Isabella interrupted "Mama, be calm. Don't punish yourself like this. I am fine, I am happy, I have made my own life and you have always supported me."
"No Isabel. There a so many things I should have done. I don't know how you discovered your gifts but I should have been there to guide you. I would not have believed it possible given the sadness and the....banality, yes banality, of the life you were delivered into with that stupid husband."
Isabella laughed. "Mama, I shall grant you that Henri was an unsuitable match for any woman of even meager heart, but I had other sources of inspiration."
Marisa raised an eyebrow and made a slight grin "Lovers, Isabel? Did you take lovers?"
"A few mama, only, a few."
"Then how? Who? ...." Marisa suddenly stopped. Isabella said nothing but Marisa suddenly knew the answer. Anton!
Marisa remembered her much earlier suspicions about Isabella and Anton, particularly when Anton had petitioned Alberto and her prior to Isabella's marriage to Henri. Without saying so, Anton had intimated the unsuitability of Henri for a "woman such as Isabelle." Alberto had dismissed his entreaties as being based on Anton's undoubted respect for Isabella's intellect, but Marisa had more than once wondered whether Anton had some deeper, more carnal, knowledge of Isabella's true nature.
Mother and daughter sat, half facing each other, holding hands and smiling into each other's eyes. No words were spoken and none were needed. As if their minds were joined, the images and feelings of Isabella's first awakening flowed through and between them. They both felt great power and joy and it was then that Marisa truly understood what she had to do. She kissed Isabella on the lips and left, saying only that she must think and make plans.
While Marisa plumbed the depths of her own secret past for an answer to the dilemma now facing her, Isabella remained in the warm courtyard and allowed herself to close her eyes and drift to a place and time long ago. The images, the sounds and the feelings were as real as if the events had happened yesterday.
She immediately thought of her brief exchange with uncle Anton during the funeral party. It was from her inner guide, the magical, mysterious woman in her dreams, that Isabella had learnt the art of seduction, the ways she could use her body and eyes and words to speak directly and powerfully to those parts of a man that carried his carnal instincts. And to read his responses and cues as if he was a small child in a sweet shop. Her teasing of the aging Anton was simply a playful expression of those skills designed to complement Anton and to revive, if just for an hour or two, his failing manhood.
Isabella remembered her times with Anton with great fondness and thankfulness, despite a somewhat inauspicious, and possibly quite criminal, beginning.
Anton had been Papa's closest business confidant and advisor since both were young men making their way in the Naples spice trade late last century. Both were handsome young men from humble backgrounds but they had keen minds and could turn pennies into golden dollaros or drachmas or lire with their bargaining skills and charm. They had remained close even after marrying the two most beautiful women in Naples, Isabella's mother the voluptuous Marisa and the taller, aristocratic Serena. Sadly, Isabella did not come to know Serena as she died of the Flux only a few years after her marriage to Anton. Uncle Anton had remained a widower, never marrying again despite his good looks, substantial wealth and popularity with women. As a teenager, Isabella had been vaguely aware that Uncle Anton had several women "friends" and that her mother was somewhat impatient for him to settle on one and marry.
It was not until she was nineteen, a full year after the events of the bathroom had reduced her to being the only child at home, that Isabella came to know Anton as a lover. She had spent the past year confused and afraid for her soul. She had continued her volunteer teaching role at her former school, being dismissed from her obligations as a student at the age of thirteen. She was a proficient reader in several languages, among them French, Greek and Spanish, and had taken the morning duties at the school as much from an intellectual desire to use her hard won skills as to be near the Sisters and the holy Chapel on the Hill, hoping that their piety and goodness would somehow infuse her sinful body and wash away her, and her family's, terrible sins. She enjoyed the teaching but never felt particularly forgiven. On the contrary, her own sinful thoughts and private explorations continued to intensify over the year. Dreams of Gustav, Maria, Mamma, and even the Holy Sisters themselves, locked in naked passionate embraces continued to lubricate the machinations of sinful desire.
Isabella was slowly coming to terms with her earthly, and earthy, nature when Marisa called her aside one day for a serious meeting at the kitchen table.
"Isabella, you are aware of your father's growing interests in Spain. The Bourbon Princes have encouraged trade and your father is poised to enter into a most advantageous alliance with a well-connected trading house in Barcelona. He must soon travel to Spain to make final arrangements and I have decided to go with him."
