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Updated: June 5, 2025
At all events this bridge was a fraud, and the peasants clamber down a steep footpath they have made through its ruins, and up the other side. And now you are in the town. The streets are paved, but Verbicaro is not Naples, not Salerno, not even Amalfi. The pavement is of the roughest cobble stones, and the pigs are the scavengers.
"Do you know how your family came by that strange name, Ruggiero?" she asked. "No, Excellency. But they tell so many silly stories about us in Verbicaro. That is in Calabria where I and my brother were born. And when our mother, blessed soul, was dying good health to your Excellency she blessed us and said this to us. 'Ruggiero, Sebastiano, dear sons, you could not save me and I am going.
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.
At last they reached the foot of the terraced village that rises with its tiers of white and brown houses from the shore to the top of the hill. Not so big nor so prosperous a place as Verbicaro, but much bigger and richer than Diamante. There are always a good many fishing boats hauled up on the beach, but you will not often see a cargo boat excepting in the autumn.
And now, as you know, gaunt, weather-beaten Luigione, licensed master in the coast trade and just now captain of the Sorrentine felucca Giovannina, from Amalfi to Diamante with macaroni, there are no more of the Children of the King in old Verbicaro, and their goods have fallen into divers hands, but chiefly into those very grasping and close-holding ones of Don Pietro Casale and his wife.
"The mother is dead," said Ruggiero, "and, moreover, we have beaten Don Pietro Casale and run away from Verbicaro, and we wish to be sailors." "Verbicaro?" repeated the master. "Land folk, then. Have you ever been to sea?" "No, but we are strong and can work." "You may come with me to Sorrento. You will find work there. I am short-handed. I daresay you are worth a biscuit apiece."
"Who is it?" asked Bastianello of the boatman who passed nearest to him. "The Giovannina," answered the man. She had returned from her last voyage to Calabria, having taken macaroni from Amalfi and bringing back wine of Verbicaro.
You remember that last of your many narrow escapes to-day as you trudge up the stony mule-track through the green valleys, and it strikes you that after all it is easier to walk from Diamante all the way to Verbicaro, than to face a March storm in the gulf of Salerno in an open boat on a dark night.
And he took Verbicaro from the Turks and gave it to a son of his who was called the Son of the King, as I would give Bastianello half a cigar or a pipe of tobacco in the morning it is true he always has his own and so the Son of the King stayed in that place and lived there, and I have heard old men say that when their fathers who were also old, Excellency were boys, many houses in Verbicaro belonged to the Children of the King.
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