Chapter 8 Columbus by Rafael Sabatini
BROTHER AND SISTER
Pablo de Arana, back in his dungeon, crushed by an even greater apprehension than had been his before his examination by the Three, was roused from a dejected torpor by the clank and rasp of a key, the opening of the door, and a feeble yellow glow of light.
Crouching on his plank, he glared like a scared animal; then, as his sight cleared, he started up, beholding his sister.
The warder set his lantern down beside her on the uppermost of the three steps that led down to the stone paving. She came down a step, and then recoiled, appalled by the foulness of the floor. The movement drew a guffaw from the gaoler. “Aye! Not so dainty as a lady’s parlour. But there he is. My orders, mistress, are to leave you with him for ten minutes.”
The door clanged again, and brother and sister were alone.
It was a moment before either spoke. Hoarsely at last he croaked her name.
“Beatriz!”
The wretched sight of him was blurred for her by a mist of tears.
“My poor Pablo!”
The sob that broke her voice, chilling him with fresh dread, brought uppermost the creature’s egotism. “Well may you pity me, in the pass to which you have brought me. Why are you here?”
“Oh, Pablo! Pablo!” she cried, and the reproach in her voice was a goad to his humour.
“Pablo! Pablo!” he mimicked her. “That’s your way of denying it. You’ll say it wasn’t by your wishes that we came to this cursed Venice. Were we not well off in Milan? Did you not earn enough there to satisfy your selfish greed?”
The lament might drive a sword through her, but it could not take her by surprise. She was inured to reproaches in return for her unstinting service to him. She accepted this with the same resignation with which she would have accepted a physical affliction in him, holding it something that sprang from a weakness in his nature for which he was not accountable. Like all egotists he had ever been obsessed by a feeling of martyrdom, labouring under an abiding sense of wrong, and finding ever other than in himself the blame for misfortunes procured him by his failings.
His present plaint, however, was too extravagantly unjust for resignation. “That is not true, Pablo,” she defended herself. “Think! Yourself you urged me to accept Ruzzante’s proposals.”
“Knowing your nature, your pretensions. What peace should I have had if I’d opposed you?”
Very gently she remonstrated: “Pablo dear, was it I who stole the poniard?”
But not all her gentleness of tone could prevent the words from driving him to fury. “Body of God!” he snarled. “I did not steal it. I found it. Must you lie so that you can reproach me? And I never should have been driven to sell the cursed thing if you had not stinted me. Your grasping avarice is the cause of all this trouble. And now that I’m in the grasp of these Venetian dogs they must be inventing other things against me. O God! Born unlucky. That’s what I am. Dogged through life by ill luck. Is there anything I haven’t suffered?” He took his head in his hands, and groaned in self-pity. “But you don’t answer me. Why are you here?”
“The Inquisitors of State permit me to visit you.”
“With what purpose? So that you may gloat over the state to which you’ve brought me? They are to put me to the question. Did they tell you? Do you know what it means? Do you know how the hoist wrenches a man’s bones from their sockets?” He ended on a scream. “Mother of God!” Again he sank his face into his grimy hands.
Pity, conquering repugnance, brought her to step down into the foul ooze of the floor, so that she might soothe his terrors. But he writhed himself free of her enfolding arms. “This does not help me.”
“I am doing what I can,” she told him. “I went to Don Ramon de Aguilar, to beg him to claim you as a subject of Spain, to use the influence of his office for you.”
“Don Ramon?” He lowered his hands, to look at her. In the lantern-light his eyes gleamed hope and cunning. “Don Ramon, eh! Vive Dios, that was well thought. Aye, you should be able to work upon him. He had an eye to you.” He clutched her wrist. “What did he say?”
Her voice was toneless. “He offered a bargain. A shameful bargain.”
“Shameful!” His grip tightened. There was alarm in his voice. “What then? What then? Shameful would be to leave your brother in this hell. Virgin Most Holy! Will you always play the cursed prude—even in this extremity?”
Because he felt her shrink from him his voice soared hoarsely in passion. “Shall I be racked and broken, or maybe strangled, because you’re dainty? Have you no bowels, girl? Having brought me down to this, will you leave me to perish when at so little cost you can rescue me?”
“A little cost!”
“What then? What is it, after all? If you had any true feeling for me——”
She interrupted him. “Feeling? O God! What can I do?”
“What can you do? You know what you can do. You can’t deny me.” Suddenly he grew fond and brotherly. He patted her shoulder. “God will requite you, Beatriz, as I shall. Once out of this you’ll find me different. I’ll live for you. I swear I will. At need I’ld give my life for you. Seek Don Ramon again. Lose no time. Spare no persuasions with him.”
The gaoler, opening the door, mercifully put an end to her agony. “It is time, mistress. You are required to go.”
Pablo became all slobbering fondness in his farewells. She was his dear good sister, the best sister man ever had. He trusted her, confident that she would work his salvation.
At last she was following the gaoler up the narrow stone stairs on dragging feet that were befouled and sodden from the dungeon’s slime. It occurred to her that her soul was in much the same case. Her pity for Pablo, the long-standing habit of protecting him, fought with her loathing of his callous indifference to the sacrifice asked of her. She sought excuses for him in his inherent weakness of body and spirit, haunted as he was by terror of a dread ordeal that dwarfed all else.