Chapter 10 Rafaella
Rafaella
The red earth was baked hard as clay, and Rafaella knew falling from the ladder at this height would mean a broken bone for sure.
Still, she worked deftly, knowing exactly which branches to cut and where; her father had taken her out with him since she was a little girl, so it was second nature to her to do this.
Working in the groves had always been the best way she knew to spend time with him, and she had a natural aptitude for it.
She loved living in a port but had always been happiest among the trees, hearing the wind brush the narrow leaves, that light, scratchy rustle as the canopy swayed with their full heads.
She glanced down the line of trees, checking her work.
The seven-hectare estate held over a thousand trees in all, and many in this section were well over four hundred years old, with massive, gnarly, twisted trunks boasting a span of over a metre.
The monumentales, as they were known, were her family’s pride and joy, ancient pillars of Puglian authenticity.
Seven generations of Parisis had worked this land and they took their role as guardians very seriously.
The agricola employed over thirty estate workers, but only her father, her elder brother Dado, and Rafaella herself were allowed to touch the monumentales.
The three of them had had a productive day together until her father and brother had been called to the other side of the estate to help with a tractor problem.
Satisfied with her day’s endeavours, she sank onto the ground and leaned against the trunk of the last tree, her limbs weary as she dropped her head back.
She wasn’t entirely done yet – she still needed to collect the offcuts into the wheelbarrow – but rests were crucial.
This job was physically demanding in a different way to working at the caffè, and she knew she would be stiff tomorrow.
She breathed deeply, feeling her muscles relax as she listened to the song of wood warblers hidden in the vast oak forests that bordered the groves.
The land was elevated here, situated almost at the top of the hill on the outskirts of the port, the groves planted in narrow, tiered steps at the steepest parts – as here.
All she could see for miles around were treetops: mainly olives, but further away some figs, oaks, almonds, some orange and lemon trees too.
They each had a unique sway in the wind, as if dancing different steps, their myriad greens uncountable.
The houses were flat-roofed and low-built so from here they were hidden from sight on the hillside, no signs of human life.
Beyond, the sea sparkled, a pale, glittering belt around the world now that the sun was beginning to climb down from its high perch.
She always felt at peace here, the dramas of port life left firmly behind at sea level.
Up here it didn’t matter if the caffè had run out of pistachios or if her dresses didn’t fit or if Mamma was mad at her because she’d forgotten to strip her bed sheets …
But somehow, what Romola and Fon had done still mattered.
The double betrayal trailed after her, up and down the ladder, weaving with her through the different trees, a dark shadow stitched to her heels that she couldn’t outrun. Her boyfriend and her best friend …
Last night, she had come home to an envelope folded into a crude aeroplane on the balcony outside her room.
I would do anything to change what I did. Can we talk? F.
Finally he had reached out; emboldened, perhaps, by their accidental meeting on the street? She hadn’t been able to scream at him in front of Fede, call him every name under the sun, though she would have liked to. Had he mistaken her mannered civility for forgiveness?
She had yet to respond, unsure of her next step. The humiliation was still fresh, and she felt worthless and rejected by everyone involved: Fon, Romola, Cosi too.
Perhaps even Cosi most of all. She had tried her best to shrug off the pain of learning he was dating Valentina, but the hurt had gone deeper than she’d wanted to admit, running not just into her blood but her bones.
If she was honest, Romola’s betrayal gave her the excuse she wanted to push them both away.
To protect herself from either one of them.
The friendship would have had to end at some point, anyway, she told herself. The differences they had ignored as children were now glaring and unavoidable. She had been a fool to think they could remain friends, and as for the prospect of anything more—
The sound of cattle lowing carried on the breeze, the air still slightly acrid from yesterday’s fire.
She was so lost in her thoughts that several moments passed before her brain registered that the sound, though not jarring, was out of place.
They had some goats, but her father didn’t farm cattle and as far as she was aware, neither did their neighbours.
She waited for it to come again, and it did. Downhill from where she sat, but still close.
Peculiar.
She rose and began to walk towards it, ducking around the trees, her soft hands grazing over knobbled silver bark, red dust spraying her legs as she jumped down between the levels of the stepped groves.
Shadows slipped over her, marbling her skin. Twigs cracked underfoot and beetles scuttled back under pale rocks. The lowing sounds were intermittent but growing ever louder and even from a distance she could tell there must be a number of them.
It was entirely possible their neighbours had bought a herd. Everyone had noticed the Giannellis’ growing fortunes as they branched out beyond fishing and olive-pressing, and jealousy was rife. Why not them too?
She was at the furthermost southern boundary of the agricola now.
Ahead was a stand of oaks. Like the monumentales, they were hundreds of years old, and her father had no plans to ever develop this portion of the estate; the trees spoke to him as they did to her, and he preferred to leave this section wild.
As such, she rarely came down here – no one did – but as she slipped into the cool, dense shade, at least a dozen pairs of eyes blinked back at her.
Rafaella gasped at the number of them. How had they got all the way up here, past walls, gates and boundaries?
The cows, unperturbed by her presence, dropped back into grazing again, their dark brown muzzles burrowing the patchy grass. She heard their massive teeth easily crunching on the acorns and …
Acorns?
‘Move!’ she cried, advancing towards them with her arms aloft, trying to make herself appear bigger. ‘Basta! Go! Go!’ The animals looked up at her again with slightly more interest but they didn’t back away; they were completely unafraid of her, naive to the danger they were in.
Quickly, she turned and ran back out of the copse. She had to get back to the farm office and tell her father. He would know what to do. He might even know whose cattle they were. But how long had they been there for? Was it already too late?
She was running past the nursery section where the youngest trees had been planted when she saw two men working up some ladders, shaping the crowns as she had been doing, and she pivoted, heading for them instead.
‘Ciao!’ she called, waving her arms to get their attention as they turned and looked down from the treetops. She recognized them at once – Pablo Carrieri and Francesco Romano.
‘Signorina Parisi,’ Pablo said, seeing the alarm on her face. ‘What has happened?’ He spoke with a slight lisp on account of missing some front teeth.
‘There are cows in the oak grove,’ she panted, trying to recover her breath. She had all but sprinted up the hillside. ‘At least twelve of them. And they’re eating the acorns.’
There followed a confused pause as the two men looked back at her. ‘Cows?’
‘Yes,’ she nodded.
‘You are sure they were not the goats?’ Francesco asked.
She shot him an annoyed look. ‘I think I know the difference between cows and goats!’
‘Of course,’ he said quickly. ‘But how would that many cows come to be all the way over there?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps a neighbour bought some and they escaped?’
The men swapped sceptical looks across the tree crowns. She could tell they believed she was somehow mistaken, that such a thing could not possibly be.
‘I promise you, there are a dozen cows down in the oak wood!’ she insisted. ‘And they’re eating the acorns. Acorns are poisonous to them, aren’t they?’
‘Or is that just horses?’ Francesco asked Pablo.
Pablo shrugged, giving a sigh and jerking his head to indicate for Francesco to follow him.
Rafaella waited impatiently as the men came down their ladders with little haste.
‘Good, thank you,’ she said, turning to lead them to the exact spot. ‘If you follow me—’
‘Signorina, do not worry yourself,’ Pablo said. ‘We shall deal with it.’
‘But you won’t know where they are,’ she said, watching as he slowly put his shears into his bag of tools.
‘In the oak wood, you said. I am sure twelve cows are neither invisible nor silent.’
‘But the more people we have to move them—’
‘You are too little to frighten a goose, signorina,’ he chuckled, a light wind whistling between his gappy tooth pegs. Then his expression turned serious. ‘Besides, they can be dangerous if they charge; you would be trampled to death. It is no place for you. If your father was to hear …’
‘But I hardly think moving cows is dangerous. Not if there are three of us.’ She looked at Francesco, but he was wearing the same reticent look as Pablo.
If Emilio Parisi was known for being an honourable and fair employer, he was also known as a devoted father; his men would not dare do anything that might endanger her, no matter how small the risk.
‘OK, well, hurry then, please,’ she sighed, stepping back. ‘I don’t know how long they’ve been in there. It may already be too late.’
‘Do not worry, we will deal with it,’ Pablo said, picking up his bag. Francesco followed, the two men heading downhill in gently loping strides.
She bit her lip, watching them go and wishing they would run. ‘I’ll go back to the office and let Papa know,’ she called. ‘He can send down some more men to help you.’
Francesco turned back. ‘That won’t be necessary, signorina. It will be done before they can get there.’
‘But—’
‘Not to mention,’ Pablo said contemplatively, walking a little way back up the slope again, ‘if these cows do belong to a neighbour and they have strayed onto your father’s estate, his response is likely to be severe, as we know.’
Unlike some of the other agricolas, which had begun to employ campieri – estate guards – her father preferred to protect his boundaries himself; but as such, he sometimes came down too hard. He wasn’t the only man in Puglia to equate respect with fear.
‘… Seeing as this is just a one-off, why don’t you let us find out who owns them and we’ll have a quiet word?
’ Pablo shrugged, almost murmuring now, as if afraid they might be overheard.
‘There’s no need for it to turn into something bigger.
I am sure it’s an honest mistake and times are hard, as we all know. ’
He stared at her, awaiting her agreement, and Rafaella felt that breach which sometimes presented itself, a subdivision of the Us and Them that existed even within the port.
Though her family had no great wealth and certainly nothing in the realms of the Franchettis, they nonetheless had more than many: landed assets and a respectable annual turnover.
Her family’s agricola was the largest in the area, her father a respected man and noted employer of many locals.
Bullying was not a charge she wanted levelled at the Parisi name.
‘Of course,’ she mumbled. ‘We can keep it between us.’
‘Grazie, signorina,’ he smiled, tipping his cap at her and setting off again, heading for the shadows.