Nun (9781609459109) by Simonetta Agnello Hornby

that the year before he died he had told her about the time, when he was a gentleman of the chamber of His Majesty King Ferdinand I, that the two of them had dressed up as chefs. They cooked together in the royal kitchens, and amused themselves by selling what they’d cooked to the courtiers. At that point she thought she’d heard a stifled laugh and she seemed to glimpse a diaphanous hand covering the laughing mouth of the young Teresa Padellani.
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    At the end of January, good news arrived: back in Messina, Donna Gesuela’s sons-in-law had managed to secure a court ruling in her favor and they had secured a cash payment. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to stave off the most persistent of her creditors. Donna Gesuela commented that this was a good sign and that it would help her to make the right decision in another matter that was very much in her mind, something that she preferred not to discuss. Admiral Pietraperciata, back in town from Lecce, where he had gone to spend the Christmas holidays, informed Donna Gesuela that he had managed to secure a loan for Anna Carolina’s dowry, a loan secured by the future inheritance of a mutual Apulian relative—and so it was established that the wedding would take place within the year. Donna Gesuela then pointed her finger at Agata and in a sugar-sweet voice flutingly told the admiral: “With this daughter who resembles me so closely I’ll need all your help as well.” Agata blushed, contentedly—her mother was asking for assistance with her dowry too, she felt certain of it, because she’d just received a letter from Giacomo, who had stayed in Sicily after the Christmas holidays. He wrote that he would be back in Naples just as soon as his father had set a date for the trip up.
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    In February 1840 their mother decided to lighten her daughters’ state of mourning. She therefore gave permission to Anna Carolina—who would soon be married—but not to Agata, to take part in receptions in the Tozzi household. Agata wasn’t offended, confident as she was that her mother was doing everything within her power to make her own engagement to Giacomo become a reality. One day, while they were sitting down to a meal, Donna Gesuela announced that Anna Carolina’s wedding would take place when six months had passed since their father’s death, and that she would then go back to Messina. Agata’s face lit up: her wedding would take place in Sicily. She was tempted to ask her mother if it was true, but she didn’t dare: at that exact moment her mother had shot her a strange glance. Eager to celebrate her happy intuition, she asked if she could go downstairs, where her female cousins were holding an informal evening of dancing with friends—the last celebration before Lent. When her mother distractedly consented, she was certain she had guessed right and hurried to get dressed.
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    Agata’s cousins talked excitedly about the Royal Academy of Music and Dance, founded a few years earlier by the king. At least once a week, the Academy held balls, concerts, and theatrical performances put on by amateurs or professionals. The king had set aside for their use the foyer of the San Carlo opera house; the president of the Academy was chosen from among the gentlemen of the king’s chamber and took orders only and exclusively from the king and from the Minister of the Interior. Members of the Academy must belong to the families of the nobility who were allowed admittance to the great balls of the Royal Palace—families like the Padellanis. It was a way of satisfying the upper classes’ demand for entertainment and culture and at the same time of keeping an eye on them, a way of reinforcing the government’s isolationism, as well as keeping at arm’s length from the kingdom the dangerously modern political and artistic ferment of mainland Europe. That evening the cousins had invited their friends