Читать книгу Arthur and the unicorn - Джованни Сальветти - Страница 5

Every morning when Arthur awoke, he’d splash his face with cold water his father had just pulled up from the well, pull on his shirt and trousers and run straight to the family’s tiny chicken coop to collect the eggs. “Well done Arthur, you are a such judicious, careful boy. Since you started collecting the eggs, you haven’t broken even one!” his mother would say. Eggs were important for Arthur’s family’s breakfast.

Arthur was born into a peasant family, the Bontempis, and they lived in the countryside outside Bergamo, a pretty Mediaeval city in northern Italy, between Milan and Venice. It was around the end of the 16th century, many centuries ago. Arthur was the fourth child of seven siblings – three girls and four boys – and he was eleven years old. In those days, families were much bigger than they are nowadays, especially among the peasant community. Children were seen as valuable as they could help on the farm when they were old enough. Living with the seven children and their parents was also old grandpa Guido, making ten of them altogether.

Life was harsh and lived according to nature and the changing seasons. The family would rise at dawn and go to bed just after sunset. The winter nights were long and cold and the land would be left to rest under the snow. It snowed a lot more in those days. In summer the days were long and hot and culminated in the all-important harvest which took place in September. The harvest was crucial because the family lived mostly off the crops they had grown during the year and harvested in autumn.

The land they farmed did not belong to Arthur’s family but to the rich Marquis Trecolli of Bergamo. The agreement, which was very popular in those days, was that the harvest would be split in two – half to Arthur’s family who had worked the land all year, and half to the Marquis who owned the land. This agreement was called mezzadria in Italy, from the word “mezzo” meaning half. The Marquis owned large swathes of land, not just the plot cultivated by Arthur’s father, which made him very rich. He had inherited everything from his father who had, in turn, inherited it from his father and so on.

It was not a large farm that Arthur’s family worked on, little more than ten hectares, which is roughly the size of two football pitches. Arthur’s house was an old stone farmstead which stood bang in the middle of the Marquis’ fields.

Arthur’s father had also inherited the mezzadria from his father, grandpa Guido. In those days, things evolved very slowly. You knew more or less what you would become in life straight from birth, meaning you would be expected to follow in your father’s or grandfather’s footsteps, unless you became a soldier and went off to fight in battle. It wasn’t like nowadays where everything changes at lightning speed. But sometimes magical things happened back then, like in this story.

The family owned two pigs, a mule, five chickens, two goats and an enormous dog called Ombra. He’d been given this name because of his all-black coat and dark eyes. If you didn’t know Ombra and met him on the road, he was a frightening sight. This made him very useful because he would scare away any robbers lurking around the farm, making sure they didn’t come back. Otherwise, Ombra was actually a friendly dog and had never bitten any of Arthur’s brothers and sisters, not even when they were young and used to pull his tail.

In those days, the children of peasants didn’t go to school. The children of rich families had a private governess who would be employed to teach the children and given quarters in the family residence. The children of peasant families would learn a lot about the natural world and how to grow things from the land. Moreover, Grandpa Guido had lots of stories to tell. There were many more wars and battles back then and Grandpa Guido, before he became a farmer, had fought in several of them. He had seen and heard a multitude of things which made his stories fascinating.

In those days they didn’t have televisions, computers or tablets like the one I’m writing this story on now. The only entertainment were the stories Grandpa Guido told after dinner, on long winter nights when the children would sit together around the fire to warm up and prepare for bed.

The family owned one book, just one! It was a beautiful manuscript on the history of art that a distant relative in Florence had bequeathed them. Arthur, the brightest of the seven children, would pour over it almost every day and marvel at the stunning illustrations of classic artworks. Moreover, Arthur never left his grandpa’s side and would constantly quiz him about the battles he’d fought in, and the many soldiers, knights and castles he’d encountered. The family rarely went to Bergamo, only Arthur’s father who was required to brief the Marquis regularly on how the farm was performing then, once a year, all of them would go after the harvest.

That would be a grand occasion because it was when Arthur’s father would sell his part of the crops. To celebrate, he’d buy the children a chestnut cake made in a pastry shop in Bergamo, a piece of fabric for their mother so she could make a dress, a little red wine for himself and Grandpa, and even a bone for Ombra to chew on. The children would run and play in the streets of Bergamo along with the children of the other farmers in town to sell their produce. On harvest day they would also buy a pig to be fattened over the next two years then slaughtered to make salamis and sausages for the family to eat during the year.

Mother Nature was their real master – she determined their fortunes and set their pace of life. Sometimes she’d be generous and give them the gift of good weather and bountiful harvests. At others, the weather might not be as good, either too wet or too dry. Then the harvest would be poor and they’d have to tighten their belts as food would be scarce but they still had ten mouths to feed. All things considered, they were happy with their simple life, surrounded by the gentle rolling hills and myriad of beautiful colours which would change with the changing seasons.