FRANCESCO AND LEONARDANTONIO WERE MANACLED THE whole bumpy ride through the mountains using a bagno handcuff. Rather than two separate cuffs, the bagno consisted of one forged piece of iron shaped like a McDonald’s letter M with two spaces for hands and a vertical metal screw bar with a wing nut beneath the wrists that would be cranked up tightly so that the hands couldn’t move. A padlock kept the cuff in place.
They wore shackles on their ankles as well, thick, circular iron cuffs bound together with a short iron chain. Their ankles were linked to one another, like on a chain gang. Since it was November, it was starting to grow cold in the mountains during their three-day journey. They stared out the carriage window at the countryside, the olive trees still green but the lush valleys now a golden-yellow stubble.
That little bastard—that tough guy Camardo with his gun—would have to up and die, Francesco thought. Just my luck. But what was Francesco supposed to do, just let him shoot at them again? He couldn’t let him reload. He had had to attack him. It was his family duty. Leonardantonio was his brother-in-law and had been injured. And Camardo surely would have fired again.
But had they really punched and kicked him hard enough to kill him? Until he was on top of the guy, Francesco hadn’t realized he was just a kid. But he was just a boy. Maybe it didn’t take much to break him.
Francesco shuddered, thinking of his own son, Rocco, back home, replaying the scene over and over again in his head, the teenager and his mother shouting at them, Camardo aiming that gun. Loading it from the front and firing. He could see him on the ground reloading the gun, and picture himself running toward him with the stick to stop him. A few punches and kicks and the boy lying there with so much blood pouring out of his head. And then running. Running. And the long, drawn-out drive back to Bernalda with the injured horse.
He and Leonardantonio couldn’t discuss the murder or their side of the story, not with the carabinieri right there in the carriage with them. But their slumped posture and their longing looks out at the countryside—their freedom suddenly taken from them—communicated all they needed to say to one another. They were headed to the regional capital of Potenza, where they would be tried. Over and over on that long, long ride, they replayed the murder. How could this have happened? What had they gotten themselves into? What would happen to Vita and young Rocco, only seven months old?
Francesco replayed his goodbye to them in his head, Vita holding the baby in her arms, like a sad Madonna and Child, both her and Rocco crying, sobbing, clinging to Francesco and not wanting him to go. Francesco told her not to worry, that everything would turn out all right. But he was lying. Nothing ever turned out all right in Bernalda in the nineteenth century.
He was worried this would be their last time together, that he would never return, would never even see them again. They couldn’t make the trip to Potenza to visit him in jail or to attend the trial. It was just not possible; they could barely survive life in Bernalda. And how would they survive without him now? Vita told him before he left, trying to look strong for him and swallow her tears, that she could move back in with her parents, with Teresina and Domenico. But they had their youngest still at home, and a small army of other grandchildren to take care of.
Francesco and Leonardantonio were tied up at night when the carriage driver and policemen rested in the countryside, darkness falling over the craggy mountains and straw-colored valleys below, like a dark velvet curtain falling on a tragic opera. The leg irons and the bagno cuffs—so named for the deep prisons that would flood, giving the prisoners a bath (or bagno)—were particularly uncomfortable. But for the sadistic carabinieri, that was part of their charm. Along with their worry, and the murder, replayed dozens of times, the cuffs made it hard for Francesco and Leonardantonio to sleep. Just as they drifted off, the sun rose and the carriage was off again, headed to Potenza.