The first time Ava saw Angelo naked was on their wedding night (11 May 1860) when he strode into their bedroom, accidentally revealing to her startled eyes that from the waist down he had the hindquarters of a stallion. Now Angelo was no brute. He was a miller and this was in his house in Carco, Sicily. He had knocked gently and he had thought he heard her whisper Come in, but when he opened the door the room was ablaze with candles and Ava was still on her knees in prayer at the bedside. She lifted her head and saw — Angelo was wearing only the fancy shirt he had married in — saw those supreme flanks, hocks, fetlocks and horny soled feet. The blood drained from her face. For a moment she wavered and flickered, then she murmured the last words of her Hail Mary, blessed herself and stood up. “Amen,” Angelo said, taking her cool hand in his. “I have something to tell you.” 
 
“Your legs …” she began. 
 
“Remember,” Angelo broke in. “God created horses, too. In fact, horses are among the most noble of God’s creatures. Horses aren’t soaked in blood. They don’t have fangs or claws. They don’t kill and they don’t eat other horses. Horses are peaceful, more peaceful than men, not cowardly like sheep or stupid like oxen, but serene and powerful. God created horses just to show us what He could do in the way of power and beauty, and when He finished, He admired His handiwork. He admires horses. Horses have strength and grace and intelligence, horses have courage and endurance, horses have fidelity. Besides, I’m not wholly, not …” 
 
“Your bottom half …” she began again. 
 
“There’ve been other unions, but they were horrible mismatches and produced mongrel beasts. Harpies, manticores, bull-headed minotaurs. Only Chiron, the centaur, was a scholar and teacher. Besides, as I said …” 
 
“Your thing …” she began once more. 
 
“Don’t let the great size frighten you.” His voice was gentle, almost complacent. 
 
“A horse?” she asked, astounded. 
 
“A stallion,” he said. He was quite frank about it. Sicily was a beautiful land where strange and terrible things happened every day of the week. 
 
“I will not bed down with a horse!” Ava snatched her hand from his and ran around to the far side of the bed and stood there, watching him. 
 
“It’s been a long day and we’re both tired,” Angelo said, keeping quite still so as not to frighten her. 
 
So?”
 
“And when we’re tired we should go to sleep.”
 
“I’m never going to sleep. Certainly not with you,” she said, her voice trembling.
 
“You look so fierce,” Angelo remarked, simply to make her feel better. He had begun to stroll very slowly down the room on his side of the bed. “You look …” 
 
“Not tonight, not tomorrow night, not ever!” 
 
“Wild” he continued. “Like an animal. I like that, of course. An animal.” He paused at the foot of the bed and smiled at her. “You are a magnificent woman.” 
 
Ava had almost started to say something but now she hesitated, her lips still parted, distracted by what he had just said. 
 
“A splendid woman,” he continued. “It’s hard to believe that when I first saw you your legs were so thin I thought they would snap in two. You were always running after your aunt and everywhere she went you would follow her, trotting after her like a foal.” 
 
“Because I was ten years old,” she protested. 
 
“And now you are a woman of seventeen with beautiful teeth and strong round arms. And, I imagine, sturdy legs. We will be superb at making love.” 
 
Ava clapped her hands over her ears. 
 
Angelo laughed. He praised her hair — told her it shimmered like a river at midnight — then spoke quietly about her luminous eyes, her gleaming shoulders something, her something breasts, and so on downward, dropping his voice softer and softer, so that Ava who had opened her fingers just a bit to hear him had to open them more and still more until, straining to catch his last words, she forgot herself and said, “What? What flower? — Stop! Don’t come any closer!” 
 
“Calm yourself,” Angelo said. He seated himself on the low chest which stood against the wall by the foot of the bed. “How long do you plan to stand over there?” he asked. 
 
“As long as I want to.” 
 
“Of course. But why not sit on the bed? Filomena scented the sheets with lavender, just for us.” 
 
Ava seated herself guardedly on the edge of the bed, watching him all the time. 
 
“This is a pretty room, isn’t it?” he said, looking around. “I whitewashed it myself a week ago.” 
 
In fact, it was a pretty room. In addition to the bed there was a low dresser, a rush-bottomed chair, and in the space between two shuttered windows there was a washstand with an oval mirror hung above it. Angelo said, “The candles look nice, too. I didn’t expect you to light them all at once, but they do look nice. Like a church at High Mass. Maybe that’s why I’m so sleepy. Church always makes me sleepy,” he confessed. “Or maybe it’s my age. I’m no child and at my age …” 
 
“What are you doing?” Ava cried, jumping up.
 
“I’m unbuttoning my shirt. I’m going to bed.”
 
“Bed? What bed? Stop!”
 
But Angelo was already on his feet, rampant, and now he threw off his shirt, letting it billow onto the chair, and there he stood naked while a dozen shadows of him reared and plunged on the whitewashed wall at his back. Ava had started to cover her eyes but it was too late. Now she simply looked at him and the candle flames grew calm again and the shadows grew still. His flesh was a rich chestnut color and his hair was black — black on his head, black in his beard, black everywhere. His shoulders gleamed, at the base of his throat there was a little hollow filled with golden shadow and on his chest the pattern of hair spread like the wings of a crow. His navel was deep and dark, his legs — ah, those splendid stallion legs — his flanks so smoothly muscled that as he walked the flesh shimmered, and the short downy hairs on his rump, the curling hairs on his thighs, the tassel-like hairs on his fetlocks, all sparkled like coal, and in the center, of course, as if the darkness of night had taken beastly shape — But Angelo was blowing out the candles one by one and it was becoming harder to see. He stopped when there was only the solitary chamber stick burning on the chest of drawers. Then he leapt into bed, stacked two pillows behind his back and sat with the sheets pulled to his chest. He looked at Ava. “I’m going to sleep,” he said. 
 
“I’m not sleepy.”
 
“Would you like to rest on the top of the covers?”
 
She came and sat on the edge of the bed, her back to him. “Give me your hand,” he said.
 
“What are you going to do?” she asked, half turning.
 
“I’m going to sit here like we used to sit on the bench in your aunt’s garden. What did we ever do there? Now give me your hand.” 
 
“All right,” she said. She lay back on the covers against him and got comfortable. “But don’t try to reason with me,” she added.
 
“Of course not.” He put his arms about her and took her hands. “Now that we’re married, there’s a secret I can tell you.” 
 
“I already know your secret,” she said.
 
“Now listen. This is what you don’t know. When a man of my kind, a man of my nature — when a man who is part stallion makes love to a woman, she inherits three gifts.” 
 
“Everything I ever inherited is in that ugly chest.” 
 
“These gifts come because he makes love to her. They come with his lovemaking, with his …” Angelo hesitated, hunting for the proper word. 
 
“What three gifts?” 
 
“Her childbirths will be easy, her milk will be sweet, and she will be beautiful forever.” 
 
“Angelo, you liar.” She laughed. 
 
“These talents will be yours by nature,” he continued, undeflected. “And they’ll be passed on to our daughters and their daughters, too, if we make love often enough.” 
 
“And the boys? What would they inherit?” 
 
“My sons will be like me, of course.” His breath was soft behind her ear. He went on talking in a voice gentle and resonant and even dreamy, speaking of his father and mother and the village where they lay, which was deep in the heart of Sicily, and in the hour or so that followed he told about those spirits hidden in the hills and fields around the village, told about the patron saints and beasts and, while his voice grew even sleepier, he talked about his relatives, not all of whom were horses, for one was a famous tree and another was a rock and there was an aunt …” 
 
“Yes?” Ava said, turning to him. “Go on. I’m listening.” 
 
But Angelo was asleep. She turned all the way around and crept cautiously over the covers to study his face: his beard, his lips, the hard wrinkles at the corner of his eyes. A handsome man, she thought. His breathing was deep and slow, for he was fast asleep, but the guttering candle made the shadows on his face waver as if he were stirring and about to wake up. So Ava lay on the covers and listened to his soft, slow breathing and watched the candle flicker out and strove to keep awake. 
 
Angelo awoke early and found Ava sleeping like a statue at his side atop the bed covers. He gazed at her in the milky light, at her flushed cheeks and parted lips — how young she was! — cautiously lifted his hand to caress her, but changed his mind and slipped softly out of bed. In the dim hall he pulled on his work pants and boots, then groped his way down the dark stairs to wash in the courtyard. He hoped that a brisk walk on the hills would relieve the painful energy compressed in his legs, his thighs. He pulled on his shirt and flung open the gate and abruptly a horse and rider materialized out of the gray air. “He has landed,” the rider told him. 
 
“Ah!” Angelo said.
 
“Yesterday at Marsala.”
 
Angelo wheeled and ran back into the courtyard, pounded once on the stable door, once on the kitchen door, then clattered up the stairway to his bedroom. “Garibaldi has landed at Marsala and I’m going to join him!” he cried, throwing off his shirt. Ava reached for the latch on the window shutters, staring at him. Angelo sat on the bed to pull off his boots and pants, then flung on his wedding shirt and strode out to the hall. He returned clothed in the fancy shirt and his best pair of velveteen pants. “I have waited all my life for this,” he said, pulling on his boots. He crossed the room to Ava who stood by the open window, still staring at him. “You’re crazy,” she said soberly. Angelo took both her hands in his and kissed her lips. “Remember that I love you,” he told her. 
 
“Garibaldi is an animal, a beast,” she said, her voice rising. He laughed. “Then he has come to the right place.”
 
“We will die,” she wailed.
 
“We have always died. But today you should be singing.” Ava wrenched her hands from his and began to beat her fists on his chest, shouting “Go, go, go, go, go …” She had broken into sobs. 
 
“I have never been so happy,” he said, putting his arms around this sturdy young woman who wept for him. 
 
Angelo kissed the crown of her head and rushed down the stairway to the dining room. There he tossed back the lid of a black oak chest, peeled away the linens and flannels and came up with an antique bird gun, then he strode into the yard, pulling a heavy pistol from under the big flower pot by the door, and was shouting Filomena as he crossed to the stable where the boy had saddled the gelding. He mounted, took the bundle of food which Filomena handed up to him — leftovers from the wedding wrapped in oilcloth — and went out through the gate at a canter, leaving the boy at the stable door, Filomena in the middle of the yard, his uncles and half-brothers asleep indoors, and his virgin bride face down on her bed, beating her pillow. 
 
 
© Eugene Mirabelli 2020
 
This is the first chapter of Renato! by Eugene Mirabelli, McPherson and Company, 2020