Chapter 7 Columbus by Rafael Sabatini
INQUISITORS OF STATE
It was among the wise enactments of the most serene Republic that her Doge should hold no communications with any representative of a foreign power. In this as in many other things, however, Agostino Barbarigo was a law unto himself, and whilst officially, as Doge, he dared not transcend the rule or receive any envoy at the Ducal Palace, unofficially, as man and in his family residence, he permitted himself sub rosa relations with some of them, amongst whom was Don Ramon de Aguilar. If he violated the spirit whilst observing the letter of the law, he accounted himself justified by the services he was thus permitted, from time to time, to render to the State.
Therefore it was not from the ambassador’s gilded barge with its richly liveried watermen, but from a private gondola, that Don Ramon alighted on the steps of the Barbarigo Palace on the Canal Grande within an hour of his interview with La Gitanilla.
Sarasin was again with his brother-in-law when the envoy was ushered into a room of splendours to which the East had richly contributed. Notwithstanding the Inquisitor’s presence, and after formal compliments, the Spaniard came straight to the matter.
“I am a suppliant. I seek a particular favour at your Serenity’s hands.”
His Serenity, spuriously juvenile in a scarlet tunic that fell in short pleats from the waist, with one leg scarlet and the other white, and a little scarlet gold-broidered cap on his fair locks, bowed gracefully. “It is accorded, excellency, so that it lies within my power.”
“All things lie there. And this, after all, is but a little thing. There’s a poor knave, a countryman of mine, who is in trouble with the law over the matter of a dagger. He found it, and accounted himself at liberty to sell it. That ranks as theft, of course; but on the score of his ignorance I hope your Serenity will be lenient with the poor devil.”
Sarasin, asprawl in the room’s best chair, put up his eyebrows, whilst the Doge stood frowning, fingering his shaven chin.
“We are not easy with thieves in Venice,” he demurred.
“Oh, I am aware of it. But this is scarcely a theft. The fellow did not steal—not deliberately steal—the dagger. He found it. If your Serenity could possibly contrive that the offence be overlooked, I will undertake that no one suffers loss, and you will leave me profoundly in your debt.”
“Why, if you put it so . . .” The Doge waved a graceful hand. “Though you leave me wondering what can be the interest of the Count of Arias in so poor a knave.”
Don Ramon not only deemed frankness best, but accounted it of a kind to have amusing weight with the jocund Barbarigo. “My interest is not in him, but in his sister, the lovely Gitanilla. She has been to beg my intercession, an advocate to make a saint of a devil or a devil of a saint.”
“And which has she made of you?”
Don Ramon laughed. “I am but flesh, and the flesh is weak. It is not in me to resist a lovely woman.”
“Given, I suppose,” mumbled Sarasin, “that it is not in her to resist your excellency.”
“I am not so ungallant as to neglect opportunity. Do you blame me, sir?”
“Not I. Not I.” Shivers of mirth agitated Sarasin’s corpulence. “Having seen La Gitanilla, I’ld release all the thieves in Venice on those terms.”
“My sister, you see,” said Barbarigo, “is not fortunate in her husband. As for this poor thief, why I must prove the anxiety I have ever professed to serve your excellency. Since the rogue’s a foreigner, and provided there is naught else against him . . .”
“There is naught else, I am sure.”
“Why then, on the condition that he leaves the territory of the Republic at once, I see no obstacle to ordering his enlargement. What is his name?”
“Pablo de Arana,” said Don Ramon, and he was voluble as only a Spaniard can be in his thanks.
When he had departed, Sarasin heaved himself up. “If your sister is unfortunate in her husband, so is the Adriatic. What does one say of a Doge who is without reverence for the law?”
“The lex suprema is the welfare of the State,” said the smiling Doge. “Lesser ones may yield to it.”
“God save us! And the welfare of the State is served by letting a thief go free. I must go to school again.”
“If it places the Ambassador of Spain under an obligation to me at this present time. Have you forgotten what I told you about Messer Cristofero Colombo, the Ligurian navigator?”
Sarasin stared. “How can Arias help you there?”
“I do not know. Not yet. But I neglect no thread however mean. To secure this one, by all means let him have his thief, oh, and his dancing-girl.”
“The thief if you will. As for the Gitanilla, the poor child deserves a better fate.”
“An Inquisitor of State, for instance. A pity she did not know it. She might have sought your interest instead of Don Ramon’s. You are not fortunate, Silvestro, in your low pursuits.”
“Not so fortunate as Don Ramon. No. Ah, well! What matter a thief more or less in a world of thieves.”
But on the next day Sarasin was of a different mind.
He came panting and sweating from haste and excitement into the Doge’s room in the Ducal Palace, and peremptorily demanded the dismissal of a secretary who was at work there with Barbarigo.
“What now?” wondered the Doge, when they were alone. “Has the Sultan Bajazet declared war?”
“The devil take Bajazet. It’s this Spanish rogue, Arana. I hear from Messer Grande that you’ve signed an order for his release.”
“Irregular of me,” agreed the flippant Doge. “But was it not what yesterday I promised that love-sick envoy?”
“Fortunately with the condition that there should be nothing but this theft against him. A report on him has come before the Three. It is learnt that Arana came here from Milan, and there are suspicions that he may be in the pay of Duke Lodovico.”
Barbarigo’s gesture was disdainful. “A spy in the pay of Milan? That is not likely. The relations between Duke Lodovico and Spain are no better than between him and us.”
“Don’t let that be dust in your eyes. In spying all things are possible. My report is from Gallina, and he’s as shrewd an agent as we possess. So that this is no miserable question of a larceny, but of an offence against the State. This man does not belong to Messer Grande. He belongs to the inquisitors. He belongs to me.”
“To you?” Amusement gleamed in the Doge’s eyes. “To you, eh? Come, come, Silvestro. Are you to play Don Ramon’s game with the Gitanilla, holding her thief of a brother as your pawn?”
“I do not like the jest. Have I ever used my office to further my own ends? Let us be serious. This man is not to be released; at least, not until we’ve put him to the question.”
The Doge set aside his flippancy, but this because the jest so lightly uttered had sown a seed in his mind. After a frowning pause, the wraith of a smile tightened his lips.
“But, of course, as you say, this is no longer a petty question of a theft. Such suspicions, however unlikely to be justified, must be investigated.” He sighed. “I fear that we must disappoint Don Ramon. Regrettable, but then . . . Best examine this Spanish rascal without delay. But no torture to begin with, Silvestro. And you had better question the girl at the same time.”
That same afternoon two burly warders descended to the foul dank dungeon of the Pozzi, under the Ducal Palace, to hale thence the Spanish prisoner, a wretched fellow sapped in nerve and body by hard living, and now reduced by forty-eight hours of confinement in that loathly unlighted hole to the mere wreckage of a man.
Huddled on a wooden shelf that served him for a couch he had been denied all sleep by horror of the rats that invaded the place when the water came to film and befoul the stone floor with the rise of the tide in the lagoons. He screamed at sight of the warders, who looked gigantic and grim in the feeble light of the turnkey’s lantern, conceiving them to be the strangler and his mate.
They soothed his panic, and conducted him above stairs and by a noble gallery to the little audience chamber of the dread Three.
Impassive in their leather bucket seats of judgment at the polished table, they received him, Sarasin, the Red Inquisitor, mantled in scarlet, between his two black colleagues.
Blinking and scared, Pablo de Arana stood before them, cadaverous of aspect, with blood-injected eyes, a black stubble of beard on his leaden cheeks. The lingering slime and filth from his dungeon made him repulsive, and perhaps something more, for Sarasin made great play with a pomander-ball to his nostrils whilst grimly inspecting him.
The theft of the dagger was touched upon, and summarily dismissed by one of the black inquisitors as not being a matter for this august tribunal. Since the offence was established, Pablo might look forward, he was told, either to the loss of his right hand or a long term at the oars of the Republic’s galleys. That, however, was matter for a lesser court. The Three had to deal with something graver far.
Thereupon it was Sarasin who took up the interrogation.
Did the prisoner admit that he came to Venice from Milan? He did. What, then, was he doing in Milan, and what was the precise business upon which he left it to come to Venice? Warned that prevarication would be useless, that the tribunal possessed the means to twist or burn the truth from the most recalcitrant, he was invited to seek leniency by frankness.
He told a whimpering tale, obscured and complicated by his invocation of every saint in the calendar in turn to bear witness to his truth, of having no business in Venice save the safeguarding of his sister Beatriz Enriquez de Arana, known as La Gitanilla.
Sarasin was facetiously sarcastic. “Quis custodiet ipsos cutodes?” he wondered for the amusement of his colleagues. “A custodian, thou? I should pity any woman guarded by such a watch-dog. But no matter for that. What we desire to know is why you could not do this safeguarding in Milan.”
Pablo was voluble. He would willingly have done so. But Messer Angelo Ruzzante had heard her sing and seen her dance on a trestle stage in a square of the Ambrosian city, and had tempted her to Venice with the promise of good money.
Sarasin caressed his double chin. “And that was all? Think well before you answer. There was no other inducement to come to the lagoons?”
There was none. He came because he could not allow his sister to come alone, exposed to all the temptations and pursuits that beset the path of a cantatrice. He took St. James of Compostella to witness that this was true, and so enabled the Red Inquisitor again to amuse the court.
“I doubt if St. James of Compostella can be induced to leave the peace of God to come and testify for such a mouldy rogue. But your Ruzzante shall be brought before us, and also the woman. After we have heard how far they confirm your tale, we’ll make a beginning with you.” He waved a plump hand. “Take him away.”
Ruzzante, examined that same afternoon by the Three, confirmed the prisoner’s story. A personable man of some culture and a ready wit, his testimony did Pablo good service.
After Ruzzante came the Gitanilla, summoned and escorted from her lodging by an agent of the tribunal, that same agent named Gallina, who had set afoot the suspicion against her brother.
She stood before them straight and lithe, in a fear so well dissembled that she seemed almost bold.
The trend of the questions, which completely ignored the matter of the theft, came to increase her alarm. Commanding herself, she answered them in a low, steady voice, through whose huskiness rang undertones of the melodious quality with which she enchanted audiences. Upon the ears of these three elderly men its magic seemed to have no power. Coldly, now from one, now from another of the black Inquisitors fell the questions, whilst Sarasin sat back, his elbows on the arms of his chair, observing her over his joined finger-tips.
To questions upon what she had done in Milan and why she had left it for Venice her answers were ready, as they were when she was pressed to say whether her brother showed himself eager that she accept Ruzzante’s proposals, whether he had not actually displayed anxiety to do so. Equally ready was she in naming their Milanese associates. When, however, they shifted their questions from Milan to Spain, and demanded to be told for what reason she and her brother had left it, having something to conceal she faltered, fell into contradiction, and when ruthlessly pressed admitted that her brother was a fugitive from justice.
At last, those inscrutable men were bringing the examination to a close when a narrow door behind them opened to frame a resplendent golden figure. It was Barbarigo, himself, coming from a meeting of the Grand Council, still arrayed in the ducal chlamys, his fair locks crowned by the corno, the stiff, humped golden cap of his high office.
His delicate hand, outstretched to stay the Inquisitors from rising, signed to them to continue, whilst he remained standing, just within the doorway, having closed the door.
Thence his shrewd eyes pondered the witness, marvelling to behold either in garb or countenance, so little to betray her station. She stood, a slender blue pillar in her mantle, the hood thrown back from her dark head. In the glowing eyes under the broad smooth brow he saw the fierce pride behind which her fears were hidden. He observed the sensitive, generous mouth and softly rounded chin, and told himself that the face possessed not only beauty, but bore the imprint of a quality that any noblewoman might have envied. Whilst he could understand the spell she had cast over Don Ramon de Aguilar, yet his fastidiousness was nauseated at the thought of such a woman falling a victim to such a profligate. If he knew aught of human nature, the quality he detected in her was a power to subdue men to her will such as St. Anthony himself would have been troubled to withstand.
When presently her dismissal came from Sarasin, he observed with approval the dignity with which this poor cantatrice inclined her head in acknowledgment.
Then at last he spoke. “Let her be detained in the antechamber.”
As the door closed upon her, Sarasin looked round at him in surprise. But here Barbarigo was official, and the brother-in-law was lost in the Doge. He came round to face the Inquisitors. “What are your findings?”
“Little enough,” Sarasin informed him. “The prisoner is a worthless dog on whom that woman wastes her devotion. He lives on her, and she would go to the rack for him.” His glance questioned his colleagues, and was answered by murmurs of ready agreement. “Therefore,” he continued, “her testimony is of no value, save that it agrees with Ruzzante’s, as his does with the prisoner’s own answers. Yet there may be things which neither the girl nor Ruzzante knows. After all, Gallina is our shrewdest and most zealous agent, and his grounds for suspecting this Arana of practising with——”
The Doge had heard enough. “No matter. You may sift that at your leisure.” He stood pondering, chin in hand. “She would go to the rack for him, eh? So I, too, should judge her. There is fire enough under that cool skin of hers. Let us use her gently. It may comfort her to see this brother. And it may be fruitful.”
“If your Serenity orders it, I’ll have him brought to her.”
“Not so. Not so. Rather, let her be taken to him.”
Aghast, one of the Inquisitors blinked. “He is in the Pozzi, Serenity.”
Barbarigo smiled darkly. “Just so. That is where she should see him.”