Chapter 9 Columbus by Rafael Sabatini
THE DECOY
At the stairhead the gaoler surprised her with the announcement that she was awaited by his Serenity.
With no more than half her wits about her she suffered him to lead her along that gallery, up a noble staircase by richly frescoed walls, down yet another gallery flooded by sunshine, to a door of carved panels enriched by gilding. Admitted by a sleek silken chamberlain, she was given a moment’s pause in an ante-room, and then ushered into the gilded ducal chamber whose gothic windows looked out over the blue waters of St. Mark’s Basin and the shipping anchored there.
Here Barbarigo awaited her, no longer in his official robes. He had put off the cloth of gold of the ducal chlamys, but was scarcely less arresting in a flowing houppelande of black with broad silver arabesques, over a short crimson tunic and crimson hose.
By the condescension of setting a chair for her he diminished the awe with which the man and the office alike inspired her.
“Pray sit, Madonna.” His voice, like the title he bestowed upon her, implied a flattering deference. His glance enveloped her, from the eyes made haggard by the brief visit to the Pozzi, to the foulness on her shoes and the hem of her gown. All this his fastidiousness deplored.
“By your Serenity’s leave,” she responded, taking the seat he offered. She sat upright, with a statue’s rigidity, her bare hands folded in her lap, and waited.
His Serenity remained standing. “You have seen your brother, Madonna?”
“I have seen him.”
He sighed. “I grieve that you should have been pained by the necessity. Such sights are not for a woman’s gentle eyes. And I commiserate you, too, in the affliction with which you are visited by your brother’s peril. Believe that I could desire to relieve it.”
“Your Serenity is gracious.” She spoke with an effort. This man inspired dread. In his willowy elegance, his light movements, his silken voice, she detected something feline and sinister.
“In this matter now of being an agent of the Milanese——”
“It is false,” she was so rash as to interrupt him. “An empty suspicion. It has no foundation. It can have none.”
“You assure me of that?”
“I swear it.”
“I do not hesitate to believe you.” She gasped relief too soon. “Unfortunately the Inquisitors of State are less easy to satisfy. They may test him on the hoist. Even if he withstands that, there will remain this matter of the theft. For that he should lose his hand. But as slaves are wanted for the Republic’s oars he may be sent to the galleys for the remainder of his life.”
She came to her feet in a white heat of passion. “I perceive that your Serenity mocks me.”
“I?” His lightness vanished. “St. Mark! I hope I am incapable of that. No, no.” A gentle hand on her shoulder pressed her down again to the chair. “On the contrary.” He moved away with his sauntering gait, and turned again. “I sent for you to offer you your brother’s freedom.”
She said no word, but watched him with dilating eyes. And he added after a pause: “Without concerning myself whether he is innocent or guilty.”
She continued silently to fix him with her stare, waiting in increasing surprise and suspicion. He sauntered back, and came to a halt squarely before her, considering her again with his air of faint, detestable amusement. “That should earn your gratitude.”
“Assuredly, my lord,” she choked.
Gently he asked: “And you will afford me proof of it?”
She shivered and for a moment closed her eyes. Again she seemed to hear Don Ramon’s hateful wooing. It stirred her to hot revolt.
“Must it always be the same? Because my necessities compel me to sing and dance for men’s delight, is it to be presumed that there are no bounds to what I will do in the same cause? Must the credit of virtue be denied me?”
There was a protesting weariness in Barbarigo’s faint smile.
“You go too fast and too far. Unless I gave you that credit, Madonna, I should have no proposals for you. You are a very beautiful woman, a fact which will hardly have escaped your notice. Beauty, however, is not enough. It is because allied with it I perceive—or else I am a poor judge—not only intelligence, but a noble pride that guards your virtue and keeps you pure, that I account you irresistible to any man upon whom you set your will.”
She found all this bewildering. “I do not understand.”
“You shall. It is not for myself that I require your service. It is for the State.
“Listen. At the Court of Spain, in Cordoba, or Seville, or wherever it may be, there is a needy adventurer in possession of a chart, from an Italian hand, to which he has no genuine right. By means of this chart and a letter of directions that goes with it, it is in this man’s power to do great injury to Venice. Obtain these for me, and in exchange you shall have the life and liberty of your brother.”
She stared, white-faced, wide-eyed. “In exchange? But what means have I of obtaining these things?”
“All that I ask of you is the will. The rest you possess. Such beauty as yours, Madonna, is a currency that purchases most things from most men; and this man, as I’ve informed myself, is no anchorite.”
Distress was blent with her revulsion. After all, this was not so different from Don Ramon’s proposal. The price, in the end, remained the same, and in the ears of her memory rang Pablo’s prayer to her to pay it. “But how could I reach this man? How could I reach the Court of Spain?” she weakly asked.
“That shall be our care. You will be well assisted, and generously supplied. Come, Madonna. What do you say?”
She wrung her hands. Her generous lips writhed scornfully. She had thought the price the same as Don Ramon’s; but now she perceived here an added infamy of betrayal.
Watching her keenly with his languid eyes the Doge repeated: “What do you say?”
“No!” She came to her feet. She was passionate. “It should not be asked of me. To be a decoy! That is an infamy.”
Barbarigo spread his hands. “I do not press it. Some other must serve my turn. If I have offended you, forgive me. The notion sprang from my commiseration of your case, from my desire to ease your affliction on the score of your unhappy brother.”
“Merciful God!” she moaned. “Can you show me no pity?”
“If I could give you—freely give you—your brother’s life and liberty, he would be with you now. But not even the Doge can set aside the law unless he can show that he does so for the sake of some advantage to the State. Short of that I fear that your brother is doomed to a galerian’s fate, unless they mercifully strangle him.”
She cried out in pain, swaying where she stood. “Mother in Heaven, help me! Tell me what I should have to do, my lord. Tell me more. Tell me all.”
“Of course. Of course you shall be told. Meanwhile you know enough for a decision.”
“If I were to try, and yet fail?” she asked in a tone of yielding. “I do not even know if the thing is possible. You have not told me enough.”
What else he told her was of such effect that Don Ramon de Aguilar, visiting the Sala del Cavallo that same night, was disappointed of his hopes of seeing La Gitanilla, and could obtain no explanation of it from Ruzzante. All that Ruzzante could regretfully tell him was that she was not there and that he did not know if she would come again.
Perplexed he called upon the Doge next morning for his answer in the matter of Pablo de Arana.
He was kept waiting, which annoyed a person of his consequence.
Whilst impatiently he paced the antechamber, a large, florid, goggle-eyed gentleman, showily dressed, emerged from the Doge’s room, and gravely saluted him.
He looked down his nose, and his acknowledgment of the greeting was barely perceptible. This fellow, whose name he knew to be Rocca, under his exaggerated patrician exterior and in spite of patrician pretensions, was a secret agent of the Council of Three, and Don Ramon was by no means sure that it sorted with his dignity even to acknowledge the greeting of a creature who pursued such a vocation.
But the man came striding towards him.
“I am required to yield place to your excellency.” He was almost patronizing. “His Serenity will receive you at once.”
Silently cursing his impudence, Don Ramon followed the usher whom Rocca beckoned.
The Doge received him with regrets.
“Alas, my friend, in this affair of Pablo de Arana, I find myself without power to help you. There appears to be more against him than a mere matter of larceny. The unfortunate man is in the hands of the Inquisitors of State.” Don Ramon took this to explain the presence of the agent of the secret tribunal. “In their proceedings,” Barbarigo continued, “not even the Doge can intervene. But as, anyway, they have required his sister to leave Venice, I must suppose that your interest in his affair will be less acute. I hope so.”
Barbarigo smiled his pleasant smile into the envoy’s countenance, and the Spaniard was left wondering whether there was a note of mockery in the expressions of regret on which the Doge closed the matter, or whether the bitterness of a thwarted man made him imagine it.