Filomena, it was clear, was master at
Pontesordo; for though Giannozzo was a man grown, and did a man's work,
he still danced to the tune of his mother's tongue. It was from her that
Odo, shivering over the smoky hearth, gathered the details of their
wretched state. Pontesordo being a part of the ducal domain, they had
led in their old days an easier life than their neighbours; but the new
taxes had stripped them as bare as a mulberry-tree in June.
"How is a Christian to live, excellency, with the salt-tax doubled, so
that the cows go dry for want of it; with half a zecchin on every pair
of oxen, a stajo of wheat and two fowls to the parish, and not so much
as a bite of grass allowed on the Duke's lands? In his late Highness's
day the poor folk were allowed to graze their cattle on the borders of
the chase; but now a man dare not pluck a handful of weeds there, or so
much as pick up a fallen twig; though the deer may trample his young
wheat, and feed off the patch of beans at his very door. They do say the
Duchess has a kind heart, and gives away money to the towns-folk; but we
country-people who spend our lives raising fodder for her game never
hear of her Highness but when one of her game-keepers comes down on us
for poaching or stealing wood.--Yes, by the saints, and it was her
Highness who sent a neighbour's lad to the galleys last year for felling
a tree in the chase; a good lad as ever dug furrow, but he lacked wood
for a new plough-share, and how in God's name was he to plough his field
without it?"
So she went on, like a torrent after the spring rains; but when he named
Momola she fell silent, and Giannozzo, looking sideways, drummed with
his heel on the floor.
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