You have never heard of
Count Roger, either, though you know the story of Judas Iscariot by
heart as you have heard it told many a time in Scalea. Up you go,
leaving the castle behind you, up to that square house they call the
tower on the brow of the hill. It is a lonely road, a mere sheep track
over the heights. You are over it at last, and that is Verbicaro, over
there on the other side of the great valley, perched against the
mountain side, a rough, grey mass of red-roofed houses cropping up like
red-tipped rocks out of a vast, sloping vineyard. And now there are
people on the road, slender, barefooted, brown women in dark
wine-coloured woollen skirts and scarlet cloth bodices much the worse
for wear, treading lightly under half-a-quintal weight of grapes;
well-to-do peasant men--galantuomini, they are all called in
Calabria--driving laden mules before them, their dark blue jackets flung
upon one shoulder, their white stockings remarkably white, their short
home-spun breeches far from ragged, as a rule, but their queer little
pointed hats mostly colourless and weather-beaten. Boys and girls, too,
meet you and stare at you, or overtake you at a great pace and almost
run past you, with an enquiring backward glance, each carrying
something--mostly grapes or figs.
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