Siciliana Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2022 Carlo Treviso

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Trevixo Originale Books

  www.carlotreviso.com

  Edited and designed by Girl Friday Productions

  www.girlfridayproductions.com

  Cover design: Rachel Marek

  Project management: Katherine Richards

  Editorial: Tiffany Taing

  Illustrations: Josh Lynch

  Image credits: Unsplash/Rishabh Pammi, Shutterstock/photopalace, Shutterstock/Peyker, Shutterstock/Inara Prusakova, Shutterstock/tugol, Shutterstock/Johan Larson

  Image retouching: Scott Giannini

  ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-7374577-1-8

  ISBN (paperback): 978-1-7374577-0-1

  ISBN (ebook): 978-1-7374577-2-5

  ISBN (audiobook): 978-1-7374577-3-2

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2021925173

  For Andrea

  There are three things that are perilous to man:

  fire, the sea, and Sicilian women.

  —A Sicilian Proverb

  Inspired by actual events

  Why I Wrote Siciliana

  I’m the first-generation son of a Sicilian immigrant family.

  Growing up, if I mentioned Sicily or my Sicilian heritage to anyone unfamiliar with its past or culture, the typical response included some use of the notorious M word. “Oh, like the Mafia?” Mention Sicily in literature or film, and one might imagine an aging don stroking a white cat or a low-level mobster running a casino outfit.

  In all fairness, the general public can’t be faulted for making these connections. More often than not, Sicilians are portrayed and perceived in popular culture in a negative context—hustlers, gangsters, grifters.

  My Sicilian heritage deserves better.

  As a lifelong aficionado of fiction and cinema, I believe in the transformative power of storytelling and determined that the only way to confront and change these negative perceptions was to change the narrative.

  This would become my knight’s quest.

  My hero’s journey.

  Enter Siciliana.

  In writing this novel, I set out to paint a portrait of a tempestuous time when the island of Sicily was still considered its own kingdom. Originally known as the Kingdom of Trinacria, Sicily was once a grandiose and evocative realm of forbidden knights, forgotten fortresses, and fallen kings.

  Readers of Siciliana will discover a moment in history that is not particularly well known. The period is focused on a brief era in thirteenth-century Sicily when a people’s revolt against the island’s French occupation single-handedly sparked a world war and forever altered the face of the Mediterranean as we know it. The uprising was called the Sicilian Vespers. It was a violent, harrowing, world-shaping event that delivered an oppressed people from the scourge of tyranny and fundamentally forged the identity of a Sicilian nation.

  By opening a window into this dramatic era, I hope to shine a new light on Sicily’s engrossing past and resilient culture, and celebrate my heritage in a way that I wanted to see in popular culture growing up.

  Perhaps one day, when a Sicilian daughter or Sicilian son tells someone about their family’s heritage, the response they receive will not be “Oh, like the Mafia?” but rather “Oh, like Siciliana!”

  Carlo Treviso

  March 30, 2022

  Chicago, IL

  Fact:

  On March 30, 1282, as the bells of Palermo tolled for Vespers, a Sicilian woman crying “Death to the Angevins!” led a people’s uprising against the French garrison occupying the city. Within six weeks, Sicilian rebels slayed more than three thousand Angevin soldiers across the island. The turbulent events of 1282 became known as the Sicilian Vespers.

  A stiletto is a long, razor-sharp blade with an ornamental hilt and cross-guard. The Sicilians were deadly with the stiletto blade—and their menacing flair gained notoriety throughout Europe—coining the phrase, “Only saints and Sicilians dare clash with the devil.” A master of the stiletto was called a cavaleri, a Sicilian knight.

  The Knights of the Teutonic Order, or Ordu Teutoni, was founded in 1190 during the Third Crusade. The Teutonic Order was charged with protecting the pilgrim path to the Holy Land and providing care for crusaders who had fallen ill. A decade later, the Teutoni Knights became a powerful military force throughout the Mediterranean. The order’s fealty was toward the great dynasty of Sicilian kings. The Teutonic Order exists today as a chivalric sect of the Catholic Church.

  All named locations, architecture, and historical symbols depicted in this novel are real, and their remnants can still be seen today.

  In the early 1960s, volcanologists digging on a crater of Sicily’s active volcano, Mount Etna, found an ancient papyrus scroll wrapped in preserved sheepskin. The fragile missive read:

  Aprili 1282

  I’ve forgotten much about my childhood years, but I remember the lava.

  The roaring fountain of red molten rock erupting from the black earth.

  The glowing orange serpents slithering down the flanks of the volcano.

  Deliberately.

  Violently.

  Yet in the path of its devastation came new growth from the ugly soil.

  New life.

  A new era.

  I am lava.

  I am Siciliana.

  Prologue

  Castello di Vicari

  Vicari, Sicily

  March 30, 1282

  Death came at sundown.

  “Rapidement!” shouted Angevin lieutenant Guiscard, staggering through a vaulted archway and into the castle’s dining hall. Only seconds behind him, a squad of twelve Angevin soldiers dragged the justiciar of Palermo, Jean de Saint-Remy, into the dark dining hall, the toes of his boots scraping across the stone floor.

  Far off, an alarm rang out. The cliffside fortress awakened with a clamoring of urgent activity. The grizzled lieutenant pointed to a wooden chair near the center of the cavernous chamber. “Set him down.”

  Two soldiers thrust the forty-three-year-old justiciar onto the chair. The other men hurried to the corners of the room to ignite the torches, which blazed to life and cast long, flickering, contorted shadows across the high walls.

  Justiciar Saint-Remy clutched his left eye, which hung from its gaping socket by a nerve fiber beneath his grisly palm. His cheeks were bruised and swollen. He glanced down in panic as blood ran down his face and caked in his gnarly gray beard.

  A physician pushed through the group and started dressing the justiciar’s facial wound in a linen cloth. Some of the men shot anxious glances at one another. Others were transfixed with astonishment. The justiciar of Palermo was barely recognizable.

  “I rode directly from Palermo,” Saint-Remy said. He grabbed a soldier’s collar in his fist. “War is upon us.”

  The soldier studied Saint-Remy’s misshapen face for a long moment. Then he burst into laughter. The other men shot nervous glances toward one another and joined in the laughter.

  Saint-Remy bared his teeth. He lunged from the chair, clenching his hands around the soldier’s throat and pushing him to the ground. The two men grappled on the stone floor.

  “You think this is a game?” Saint-Remy growled. His cries echoed through t
he hollow chamber.

  Two hulking Angevins wrestled Saint-Remy off the man and pushed him back into the chair.

  Lieutenant Guiscard furrowed his brow. Justiciar Jean de Saint-Remy was the most powerful Angevin in Palermo, cousin to the royal vicar of Sicily himself. Seeing him reduced to such a wretched state sent a cold chill down his spine.

  “Tell me,” Guiscard asked carefully, “what foreign army has invaded Palermo?”

  Saint-Remy shook his head. His eye darted around the room. He saw nothing but men blinking back at him.

  “Not an army . . . ,” Saint-Remy stammered. “Siciliens . . . hundreds of them . . . thousands . . .”

  The Angevins’ eyes widened in unison.

  A soldier ran forward and handed a glass of wine to Saint-Remy, who quickly drained the tart red liquid down his throat.

  “Sicilians, you say?” Guiscard said.

  Saint-Remy nodded, exasperated, and wiped the wine from his beard.

  Guiscard observed the honest terror gleaming from Saint-Remy’s eye. He couldn’t fathom what kind of primeval nightmare had fallen upon Palermo this night, but whatever it was, it would soon be beating a path to their doorstep. In that moment, the lieutenant made up his mind. The justiciar was telling the truth. The harrowing task before them would require every ounce of their resolve. He turned to his men and issued his final command. “Barricade the gates and ready the garrison . . . War is upon us.”

  Sobbing, Saint-Remy leaned back in his chair as the men stumbled from the room. He placed his quivering hand over his wounded face, feeling his own blood soaking through the cloth.

  Guiscard stood over Saint-Remy in silence, cringing at the severity of the justiciar’s facial wounds. “Who in God’s name did this to you?”

  Saint-Remy lifted his gaze to meet the lieutenant’s. A long, uncomfortable silence hung between the two men.

  Saint-Remy finally opened his mouth and muttered only two words: “A woman.”

  Book I

  O Santo Cavaleri

  1269

  Thirteen years before Vespers

  Prince Conradin was dead.

  After vanquishing the last prince of Sicily in battle, a monstrous French lord named Charles of Anjou, known in Sicilian as Re Carlu, ordered his army of Angevin soldiers to seize the kingdom of Sicily and invade its capital city of Palermo.

  The Angevin army—a brutal outfit of drunkards and deviants—established a military occupation on the island and plundered Sicily of her treasures. The Angevins bullied, molested, and subjugated the Sicilian people, who submitted in fear under this dangerous new power.

  But among the Sicilians themselves festered a muted, primeval rage. A seething resentment perhaps no different from that of a young woman who had been too often betrayed and was no longer fit for love.

  —From the journal of Don Rapaci, 1282

  Chapter 1

  Mount Etna, Sicily

  August 20, 1269

  The crimson glow of twilight washed over the volcanic countryside as seven-year-old Aetna Vespiri and her nine-year-old brother, Cicero, darted toward a festival gathering outside a nearby village. The August night was crisp, tingling their small lungs as they gulped in the cool, fresh air. Ragged tents were strewn across the field. Colorful banners snapped in the breeze. Women in silk garments beat sheepskin tambourines and pranced round one another, kicking their legs in a spirited tarantella dance. Orange torchlight cast long shadows across the black earth.

  Aetna and Cicero entered a tent and took a front-row seat on an oaken bench. Inside, stage performers held life-size marionettes: two knights named Orlando and Rinaldo. As the story went, Orlando fought his cousin, Rinaldo, over the love of the beautiful princess Angelica. It was known as The Song of Orlando.

  A tinkling lute that had played continuously as patrons first entered the tent suddenly fell silent. Aetna watched with anticipation as a skinny stagehand pulled on a gnarly rope, lifting an ornamental scarlet curtain and revealing an order of knights warring in front of a crude forest backdrop. All eyes in the audience glistened with wonder.

  “Con un colpo della mia spada faccio saltare la testa a cento Paladini!” the virtuous Orlando boomed as the tumultuous rage of battle swirled around him. “With the stroke of my sword, I will slay one hundred knights!”

  Vibrant blue and gold plumes stemmed from Orlando’s helmet and visor; a crimson skirt wrapped around his thighs. His silver breastplate, gauntlets, and shield were all meticulously polished and worked, gleaming in the firelight for all the world to see.

  A perfect Sicilian knight.

  Lunging forward, Orlando struck blows with his cousin, Rinaldo, in an elaborately choreographed dance. An electric current seemed to surge through Orlando’s armor as sparks burst from the clashing swords.

  Taratata! Taratata!

  Cicero leaned over to Aetna. “I can’t believe Orlando would fight his own family.”

  “He has no choice,” Aetna said, her eyes glued to the action on the stage. “Rinaldo wouldn’t reason with him.”

  “But Rinaldo loves Princess Angelica, too,” Cicero said.

  Aetna nodded vigorously, her lips curling up into a knowing half smile. “Then they’ll fight to the death.”

  Shushing sounds came from the crowd. Aetna and Cicero clasped their hands over their mouths, stooping their heads lower and snickering to themselves.

  In that instant, Orlando twirled to face the audience, and it appeared to Aetna that the valiant knight’s eyes flashed with fire as he swept his sword out over the children’s heads. Silver volts seemed to crackle from Orlando’s sword, bristling the hairs on their heads. The children yelped in surprise and delight.

  Aetna watched as Orlando approached the front row, his boots stomping, one in front of the other. She jumped as the knight came to a stop right in front of her, their faces nearly touching. Orlando snapped to full attention as only a knight could. He then extended his sword outward, holding it over Aetna’s head for a long moment. His piercing gaze stared down on her from a chiseled face. Aetna’s green eyes glimmered in the firelight as she looked upward. Orlando gently lowered his blade, tapping Aetna on each shoulder.

  “Cent’anni, Siciliana!” he bellowed. “May you live till kingdom come!”

  Aetna’s jaw dropped. The knight had spoken only to her, his words brimming her ears like a sacred command.

  Glowing, Aetna turned to Cicero.

  “Why did he say that?” she whispered.

  Cicero shrugged, his eyes still marveling at the display on the stage.

  Whatever the reason was, she knew something incredible happened to her that evening because of Orlando. He bestowed upon her a galvanizing feeling of significance, of greatness. In that very moment the young Siciliana made up her own mind.

  She would live forever!

  Chapter 2

  Mount Etna, Sicily

  August 22, 1269

  The fugitive, wrapped in a black cowled robe, serpentined down the face of the volcanic crater. The thirty-one-year-old was a lean man. Dark and agile. His muscles felt starved of energy, sustained only by the primeval thrill of being hunted.

  It’s the panic that betrays you, he reminded himself.

  Panic inhibited a fugitive’s ability to think and act rationally and strategically. Panic kept his mind obsessed with an unrelenting paranoia. Never knowing when to expect a strong grip on the arm or a barn door crashing in.

  Nearly a year earlier, the Ordu Teutoni—the Knights of the Teutonic Order, loyal to Prince Conradin—were outlawed by the French tyrant Re Carlu after the young prince’s beheading. The arrest edict charged Teutoni Knights with treason and punished them with imprisonment, torture, and death. There was no safe haven for the Ordu Teutoni in the entire kingdom of Sicily. Many knights went into hiding. Most attempted to escape Re Carlu’s reach and fled Sicily fo
r the Holy Land.

  To the knight on the run, the most effective antidote to panic was a clear plan, assistance from allies, and a sustained state of calmo—a calm mind. He knew that the most successful prisoners of war spent as much time planning their life after their escape as they did planning the escape itself. His safety came from constant secrecy, a new name, even a new means of livelihood. A knight with no plan and no support was in constant danger of betraying himself.

  The Teutoni Knight winced in pain, his stomach growling with sharp pangs of hunger, as he made his way down the face of the crater, one foot in front of the other. It had been days since his last meal, but he couldn’t stop now. Reaching Mount Etna’s southeastern foothills meant he was close.

  I must find the winemaker. The knight thought only of the mission with which he was now entrusted. He was the sole carrier of a powerful message that could alter the course of Sicily forever.

  If I fail, all is lost . . .

  The knight lifted his eyes to the sun, gauging the time of day. Beads of sweat trickled down his olive-skinned forehead. He’d been moving for over twenty-four hours straight. The human body could sustain long periods without eating, but sleeping could not be put off beyond the point at which the body absolutely demanded it, and then the fugitive was at his most vulnerable. Even the toughest battle-hardened knight was as helpless as a stray dog when in the black oblivion of slumber.

  The knight’s dark eyes flashed with desperation as he scrambled down the slope. Reaching the bottom of the crater, he suddenly found himself moving through a lush green field of shimmering grapevines, endlessly stretching out along the craters of the rolling foothills.

  His ears perked up to a sharp snapping sound. He spotted a single flag, a bannera, fluttering violently in the wind. The bannera was adorned with the likeness of the Gorgoneion Trinacria—an ancient Greek symbol depicting the shrieking face of Medusa, her hair slithering with serpents, surrounded by three human legs bent at the knee.