Sunday arrived, and the church was packed, more crowded than it had ever been.
The villagers all wore the same expression, a mixture of fear and pleading. They had placed their only hope in this stone building, and in the man who was about to step onto the altar.
The Mass began.
Giovanni walked forward wearing his ornate vestments. His face showed exhaustion, like he had spent days and nights without sleep, praying to God for this village. The sight moved the believers below even more and deepened their trust in him.
The Mass followed its usual order: scripture, hymns, blessings.
But when it came time for the sermon, his voice suddenly stopped.
He closed his eyes, his brow tightening, as if he were listening to something unseen. The church fell completely silent. No one dared breathe as they watched him.
After a long moment, he slowly opened his eyes. They were filled with shock, and a sorrow that came from understanding everything.
"My children," he began slowly, "just now, while I was praying, the Lord… revealed Himself to me once again."
Every ear strained to listen.
"The sinner who brought disaster upon our village, the one who defiled the altar and walked with the devil, the Lord showed me what he looks like."
"His heart is filled with greed. He values money more than the Gospel."
"His wealth is built on the suffering of the poor. He makes his brothers sweat for him, yet gives them only enough to survive."
Greed. Exploitation.
Those words made the villagers think of the same person.
Bartolo.
"He openly mocked the holy rite the Lord gave us. He called the Firstfruits Thanksgiving a lie."
"He used his false words to mislead simple believers and pull them away from the Lord's grace."
Giovanni paused. He did not say the name. He did not need to. The clues were already clear, so clear it was as if the word "sin" had been carved onto Bartolo's forehead.
Whispers spread through the church.
"It's Bartolo…"
"It has to be him…"
"He's the richest and the greediest…"
"I heard it too. He keeps saying the thanksgiving is a scam…"
"So it was him! He brought the curse upon us!"
The voices grew louder, whispers turning into open talk.
Giovanni stood on the altar and listened. In this sacred place, words spoken as a revelation from the Lord, then confirmed by the believers' own reasoning and repetition, were no longer rumors. They became "truth."
The Mass ended.
Several women known in the village for their devotion, and even more for their loose tongues, such as Rosa the blacksmith's wife and Sofia the grocer's daughter-in-law, left the church with shining eyes. The moment they stepped outside, they began their own preaching.
"Did you hear? The abbot received a revelation! The one harming us is Bartolo!"
"He saw it in a vision! A devil was standing behind Bartolo, breathing black smoke!"
"Every coin in his house is soaked with the blood and tears of tenants!"
"He mocked the Lord's rite! The Lord heard it and sent punishment!"
"Our well, Giotto's bread, Martin's cow… All of it was caused by him!"
The rumors spread faster than any curse Giovanni had invented. Before the morning was over, the claim that Bartolo was the true culprit had reached every corner of St. Lucia village.
* * *
Bartolo soon sensed that something was wrong.
After lunch, he strolled through the village as usual, inspecting his "domain." Today, however, the atmosphere had completely changed. The people who once lowered their heads from afar and greeted him with respect now looked at him as if they were seeing the devil himself.
They stopped where they stood and stared from a distance. Their eyes no longer held fear mixed with respect, only hatred and terror. Someone spat on the ground near his feet. Someone grabbed a child and hurried back into the house, as if a single glance from him might make the child fall sick. A few half-grown boys even threw clods of mud at his back.
None of them hit him, but the insult made his face flush red.
"Get lost, you little bastards!" he roared.
The boys laughed and scattered.
Bartolo trembled with rage. He could not understand it. What had happened? Why had everyone gone mad overnight?
He grabbed a villager who was slow to move away. The man was an honest farmer and once his tenant.
"Speak! What is wrong with all of you?" Bartolo demanded, gripping his collar.
The farmer shook violently and would not meet his eyes.
"Mr… Mr. Bartolo… you should go home quickly," he stammered.
"Go home? Say it clearly!"
"You… you are the one," the farmer forced out, repeating what he had heard. "The one who serves Satan…. It is you who brought the curse upon us…"
After saying that, he shoved Bartolo away with a burst of strength and fled in panic.
A servant of Satan.
Bartolo stood there, stunned. At last, he understood. It was that pretty-faced abbot. He had stirred these fools up inside the church and pinned everything on him.
Anger from false accusation and humiliation from betrayal surged through him at the same time. He, Bartolo, was the king of this village. These people ate and clothed themselves with what he allowed, and now they dared to turn on him over a few words from a priest.
He rushed back to his estate. He would prove who the real master was. He would make those traitorous tenants pay.
The moment he entered the estate, he saw several tenants gathered together, packing their tools and preparing to leave. When they saw him, they froze like startled rabbits.
"What are you doing?" he barked.
One tenant stepped forward with more courage than the rest. It was Piero, who rented the largest piece of land.
"Master Bartolo," Piero said, without his usual flattery or fear, "we can no longer farm for you."
"What?" Bartolo thought he misheard.
"We want to cancel the lease."
"Cancel it?" Bartolo cried out in disbelief. "It's planting season. You want to end the lease now? What will you eat later this year? Dirt?"
"We would rather starve," Piero replied through clenched teeth, "than keep farming for someone cursed by the devil."
"We do not want to go to hell with you," another tenant added quietly.
Those words stabbed straight into Bartolo's heart. The authority he had built over a lifetime through money and power shattered in that instant, destroyed by people he had always looked down on.
He finally understood that his money and land meant nothing before the words "devil" and "hell." His power was as fragile as paper before the false divine force created by that pretty-faced abbot.
He raged, but there was nothing he could do. He could not drive all the tenants away. If he did, his land would truly lie barren.
All he could do was stand there and watch as those who once bowed their heads packed their things and walked past him one by one. As they left, they did not dare look at him, avoiding him as if he were a plague.
**
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