I was ten and seven years of age and a world beyond my imagination was revealed to me. Carriages with silver wheels and golden horses with flowing manes took me above the great cliffs and into the villages and the fine shops where I could purchase whatever struck me. There was nothing I could not have, and I wanted everything, for I came from a poor shepherd’s family-a God-fearing father and mother who praised Christ when I was taken into the convent and never seen again.

  And always at my side was the padrone. He way the lion and I was his cherished cub. He would take me around the countryside, to all the great houses and introduce me as his protetta, laughing when he used the word.

  Everyone understood and joined in the laughter. His wife had died, you see, and he had passed his seventieth year. He wanted people to know-his two sons above all, I think-that he had the body and the strength of youth, that he could lie with a young woman and sat!* her as few men could.

  Tutors were hired to teach me the graces of his court: music and proper speech, even history and mathematics, as well as the French language which was the fashion of the time for ladies of bearing. It was a wondrous life. We sailed often across the sea~ on to Rome, then we would train north to Switzerland and across into France and to Paris. The padrone made these trips every five or six months. His business holdings were in those places, you see. His two sons were his directors, reporting to him everything they did.

  For three years I was the happiest girl in the world for the world was given me by the padrone. And then that world fell apart. In a single week it came crashing down and Guillaume de Matarese went mad.

  Men traveled from Zijrich and Paris, from as far away as the great exchange in London, to tell him. It was a time of great banking investments and speculation. They said

  that during the four months that had passed, his sons had done terrible things, made unwise decisions, and most terrible of all had entered into dishonest agreements, commiting vast sums of money to dishonorable men who operated outside the laws of banking and the courts. The governments of France and England had seized the companies and stopped all trade, all access to funds. Except for the accounts he held in Genoa and Rome, Guillaume de Matarese had nothing.

  He summoned his two sons by wireless, ordering them home to Porto Vecchio to give him an accounting of what they had done. The news that came back to him, however, was like a thunderbolt striking him down in a great storm; he was never the same again.

  Word was sent through the authorities In Paris and London that both the sons were dead, one by his own hand, the other killed-it was said-by a man he had ruined. There was nothing left for the padrone; his world had crumbled around him. He locked himself in his library for days on end, never coming out, taking trays of food behind the closed door, speaking to no one. He did not lie with me for he had no interest in matters of the flesh. He was destroying himself, dying by his own hand as surely as if he had taken a knife to his stomach.

  Then one day a man came from Paris and insisted on breaking into the padrones privacy. He was a journalist who had studied the fall of the Matarese companies, and he brought with him an incredible story. If the padrone was driving himself into madness before he heard it, afterward he was beyond hope.

  The destruction of his world was deliberately brought about by bankers working with their governments. His two sons had been tricked into signing illegal documents, and blackmailed-held up to ruin–aver matters of the flesh. Finally, they had been murdered, the false stories of their deaths acceptable, for the “official” evidence of their terrible crimes was complete.

  It was beyond reason. Why had these things been done to the great padrone? His companies stolen from him and destroyed, his sons killed.

  Who would want such things to be done?

  The man from-Paris gave part of the answer. “One mad Corsican was enough for Europe for five hundred years,” was the phrase he had heard. The padrone understood. In England, Edward was dead but he had brought about the French and English treaties of finance, opening the way for the great companies to come together, fortunes made in India and Africa and the Suez. The pa&one, however, was Corsican. Beyond making profit from them, he had no use for the French, less so for the English. He not only refused to join the companies and the banks but he opposed them at every turn, instructing his sons to out-maneuver their competitors. The Matarese fortune blocked powerful men from carrying out their designs.

  For the padrone it was all a great game. For the French and English companies, his playing was a great crime to be answered with greater crimes. The companies and their banks controlled their governments.

  Courts of law and the police, politicians and statesmen, even kings and presidents-all were lackeys and servants to the men who possessed vast sums of money. It would never change. This was the beginning of his final madness. He would find a way to destroy the corruptors and the corrupted.

  He would throw governments everywhere into chaos, for it was the political leaders who were the betrayers of trust. Without the cooperation of government officials his sons would be alive, his world as it was. And with governments in chaos, the companies and the banks would lose their protectors.

  “They look for a mad Corsican,” he screamed. “They will not find him, yet he will be there.” We made a last trip to Rome-not as before, in finery and in carriages with silver wheels, but a’s a humble man and woman staying in cheap lodgings in the Via Due Maccelli. The padrone spent days prowling the Borsa Valort, reading the histories of the great families who had come to ruin.

  We returned to Corsica. He composed five letters to five men known to be alive in five countries, inviting them to journey in secrecy to Porto Vecchio on matters of the utmost urgency, matters pertaining to their own personal histories.

  He was the once-great Guillaume de Matarese. None refused.

  The preparations were mqgnificent, Villa Matarese made more beautiful than it had ever been. The gardens were sculptured and bursting with color, the lawns greener than a brown cat’s eyes, the great house and the stables washed in white, the horses curried until they glistened. It was a fairyland again, the padrone running everywhere at once, checking all things, demanding perfection. His great vitality had returned, but it was not the vitality we had known before. There was a cruelty in him now. “Make them remember, my child,” he roared at me in the bedroom. “Make them remember what once was theirs!” For he came back to my bed, but his spirit was not the same. There was only brute strength in the performance of his manhood, there was no joy.

  If all of us-in the house and the stables and in the fields-knew then what we soon would learn, we would have killed him in the forest. 1, who had been given everything by the great padrone, who worshiped him as both father and lover, would have plunged in the knife myself.

  The great day came, the ships sailed in at dawn from Lida di Ostia, and the carriages were sent down to Porto Vecchio to bring up the honored guests to Villa Matarese. It was a glorious day, music in the gardens, enormous tables heaped with delicacies, and much wine. The finest wines from all Europe, stored for decades in the padrone’s cellars.

  The honored guests were given their own suites, each with a balcony and a magnificent view, and-not the least-each guest was provided with his own young whore for an afternoon’s pleasure. Like the wines they were the flnest, not of Europe, but of southern Corsica. Five of the most beautiful virgins to be found in the hills.

  Night came and the grandest banquet ever seen at Villa Matarese was held in the great hall. When it was over, the servants placed bottles of brandy in front of the guests and were told to remain in the kitchens.

  The musicians were ordered to take their instruments into the gardens and continue playing. We girls were asked to go to the upper house to await our masters.

  We were flushed with wine, the girls and 1, but there was a diflerence between myself and them. I was the protetta of Guillaume de Matarese and I knew a great event was taking place. He was my padrone, my lover, and I wished to be a part of it. In addition to which I’d spent three years with tutors, and although hardly a learned woman, I was given to better things than the giddy talk of ignorant girls from the hills.

  I crept away from the others and concealed myself behind a railing on the balcony above the great hall. I watched and listened for hours, it seems, understanding very little then of what my padrone was saying, only that he was most persuasive, his voice at times barely heard, at others shouting as though he were possessed by the fever.

  He spoke of generations past when men ruled empires given them by God and by their own endeavors. How they ruled them with iron might because they were able to protect themselves from those who would steal their king-doms, and the fruits of their labors. However, those days! were gone and the great families, the great empire builders-such as those in that room-were now being stripped by thieves and corrupt governments that harbored thieves. They-those in that room-had to look to other methods to regain what was rightfully theirs.

  They had to kill-cautiously, judiciously, with skill and daring-and divide the thieves and their corrupt protectors. They were never to kill by themselves, for they were the decision-makers, the men who selected victim&wherever possible victims chosen by others among the corrupted.

  Those in that room were to be known as the Council of the Matarese, and word was to go forth in the circles of power that there was a group of unknown, silent men who understood the necessity of sudden change and violence, who were unafraid to provide the means, and who would guarantee beyond living doubt that those performing the acts could never be traced to those purchasing them.

  He went on to speak of things I could not understand, of killers trained by great pharaohs and Arabian princes centuries ago. How men could be trained to do terrible things beyond their wills, even beyond their knowledge. How others needed only the proper encouragement for they sought the assassin’s martyrdom. These were to be the methods of the Matarese, but in the beginning there would be disbelief in the circles of power, so examples had to be made.

  During the next few years selected men were to be as%. sassinated. They would be chosen carefully, killed in ways that would breed mistrust, pitting political faction against political faction, corrupt government against corrupt government. There would be chaos and bloodshed and the message would be clear: the Matarese existed.

  The padrone distributed to each guest pages on which he had written down his thoughts. These writings were to be the council’s source of strength and direction, but they were never to be shown to eyes other than their own. These pages were the Last Will and Testament of Guillaume de Matarese… and those in that room were his inheritors.

  Inheritors? asked the guests. They were compassionate, but direct. In spite of the villa’s beauty and the servants and the musicians and the feast they had enjoyed, they knew he had been ruined–as each of them had been ruined. Who among them had anything left but his wine cellars and his lands and rents from tenants to keep but a semblance of his former life intact? A grand banquet once in a great while, but little else.

  The padrone did not answer them at first. Instead, he demanded to know from each guest whether that man accepted the things he had said, if that man was prepared to become a consigliere of the Matarese.

  They replied yes, each more vehement than the last, pledging himself to the padrone’s goals, for great evil had been done to each of them and they wanted revenge. It was apparent that Guillaume de Matarese appeared to each at that moment a saint.

  Each, except one, a deeply religious Spaniard who spoke of the word of God and of His commandments. He accused the padrone of madness, called him an abomination in the eyes of God.

  “Am I an abomination in your eyes, sir?” asked the padrone.

  “You are, sir,” replied the man.

  Whereupon the first of the most terrible things happened. The padrone took a pistol from his belt, aimed it at the man, and fired. The guests sprang up from their chairs and stared in silence at the dead Spaniard.

  “He could not be permitted to leave this room alive,” said the padrone.

  As if nothing had happened, the guests returned to their chairs, all eyes on this mightiest of men who could kill with such deliberateness, perhaps afraid for their own lives, it was difficult to tell. The padrone went on.

  “All in this room are my inheritors,” he said. “For you are the Council of the Matarese and you and yours will do what I can no longer do. I am too old and death is near -nearer than you believe. You will carry out what I tell you, you will divide the corruptors and the corrupted, you will spread chaos and through the strength of your achievements, you will inherit far more than I leave you. You will inherit the earth. You will have your own again.” “What do you-can you-leave us?” asked a guest.

  “A fortune in Genoa and a fortune in Rome. The accounts have been transferred in the manner described in a documen4 one copy of which has been placed in each of your rooms. There also will you find the conditions under which you will receive the monies. These accounts were never known to exist; they will provide millions for you to begin your work.” The guests were stunned until one had a question.

  “‘Your’ work? Is it not ‘our’ work?” “It will always be ours, but I shall not be here. For I leave you something more precious than all the gold in the Transvaal. The complete secrecy of your identities. I speak to each of you. Your presence here this day will never be revealed to anyone on earth. No name, no de-scription, no likeness of your face, no pattern of your speech can ever be traced to you. Neither will it ever be forced from the senile wanderings of an old man’s mind.” Several of the guests protested-mildly to be sure-but with reason. There were many people at Villa Matarese that day. The servants, the grooms, the musicians, the girls.

  The padrone held up his hand. It was as steady as his eyes were glaring.

  ‘7 will show you the way. You must never step back from violence. You must accept it as surely as the air you breathe, for it is necessary to life. Necessary to your lives, to the work you must do.” He dropped his hand and the peaceful, elegant world of Villa Matarese erupted in gunfire and screams of death everywhere. It came first from the kitchen. Deafening blasts of shotguns, glass shattering, metal crashing, servants slain as they tried to escape through the doors into the great hall, their faces and chests covered with blood.

  Then from the gardens; the music abruptly stopped, replaced by supplications to God, all answered by the thunder of the guns. And then-most horribly-the highpitched screams of terror from the upper house where the young ienorant girls from the hills were being slaughtered.

  Children who only hours ago had been virgins, defiled by men they had never seen before on the orders of Guillaume de Matarese, now butchered by new commands.

  I pressed myself back into the wall in the darkness of the balcony, not knowing what to do, trembling, frightened beyond any fear I could imagine. And then the gunfire stopped, the silence that followed more terrible than the screams for it was the evidence of death.

  Suddenly I could hear running—three or four men, I could not tell-but I knew they were the killers. They were rushing down staircases and through doors, and I thought, Oh God in heaven, they are looking for me.

  But they were not. They were racing to a place where all would gather together; it seemed to be the north veranda, I could not be sure, all was happening so fast. Below in the great hall, the four guests were in shock, frozen to their chairs, the padrone holding them in their places by the stren,ath of his qlaring eyes.

  There came what I thought would be the final sounds of gunfire until my own death. Three shots-only threebetween terrible screams. And then I understood. The killers had themselves been killed by a lone man given those orders.

  The silence came back. Death was everywhere-in the shadows and dancing on the walls in the flickering candlelight of the great hall. The padrone spoke to his guests.

  “It is over,” he said. “Or nearly over. All but you at this table are dead save one man you will never see again. It is he who will drive you in a shrouded carriage to Bonifacio where you may mingle with the night revelers and take the crowded morning steamer to Naples. You have fifteen minutes to gather your things and meet on the front steps. There are none to carry your luggage, I’m afraid.” A guest found his voice, or part of it. “And you, padrone?” he whispered.

  “At the last, I give you my life as your final lesson.

  Remember me! I am the way. Go forth and become my disciples! Rip out the corruptors and the corrupted!” He was raving mad, his shouts echoing throughout the great house of death. “Entrare!” he roared.

  A small child, a shepherd boy from the hills, walked through the large doors of the north verandm He held a pistol in his two hands, it was heavy and he was slight. He approached the master.

  The padrone raised his eyes to the heavens, his voice to God. “Do as you were told!” he shouted. “For an innocent child shall light your path!” The shepherd boy raised the heavy pistol and fired it into the head of Guillaume de Matarese.

  The old woman had finished, her unblinking eyes filled with tears.

  “I must rest,” she said.

  Taleniekov, rigid in his chair, spoke softly. “We have questions, madame.

  Surely you know that.” “Later,” said Scofield.

  Light broke over the surrounding mountains as pockets of mist floated up from the fields outside the farmhouse. Taleniekov found tea, and with the old woman’s permission, boiled water on the wood-burning stove.

  Scofield sipped from his cup, watching the rippling stream from the window.

  It was time to talk again; there were too many discrepancies between what the blind woman had told them and the facts as they were assumed to be. But there was a primary question: why had she told them at all? The answer to that might make clear whether any part of her narrative should be believed.

  Bray turned from the window and looked at the old woman in the chair by the stove. Taleniekov had given her tea and she drank it delicately, as though remembering those lessons in the social graces given a girl of “ten and seven years of age” decades ago. The Russian was kneeling by the dog, stroking its fur again, reminding it they were friends.