Chapter 12 Columbus by Rafael Sabatini
AT ZAGARTE’S
Lured thither by the flamboyant Messer Della Rocca, Colon sauntered with him in the gardens of the Alcazar.
They took their idle way by an avenue of fragrant orange-trees, which, close-set and over-arching, coolly shaded them from the blazing Andalusian sun.
The Venetian, displaying himself a great talker, worked hard to ingratiate himself. He knew how to be subtly flattering as much by allusions as by the deferential court he paid to his companion. He succeeded the more readily because Colon, uplifted by the new hope of a speedy shaping of his affairs, was in amiable mood, and because, however little he might be disposed to avail himself of the offer, yet a man who proposed to supply ships at need was clearly not a man to be treated lightly.
The talk was of all things, from voyages to the known limits of the world, by way of deeds of arms now doing, to the land of Spain and its folk. Having thus, by easy stages, reached the Spaniards, it was natural enough that Messer Rocca, this jovial savourer of life, should linger over Spanish women.
“They blend,” he declared, “the Orient with the Occident, and so achieve a perfection dangerous to men like ourselves, from other lands. Have you not found them so?”
“No more dangerous than are all women,” Colon admitted. “They trouble a man’s peace of mind.”
Rocca was amused. He took Colon by the arm confidentially. “Only when reluctant to satisfy our longings, and that’s a complaint I cannot bring against the ardent women of Spain.”
“Since you find them lovelier than others I can understand it.”
“But do not you? If you do not, let me convert you. Here in Cordoba I can show you a pearl of womanhood that it would be hard to match outside of Andalusia. You know Zagarte’s eating-house. You don’t? How long have you been in Cordoba? No matter. There are, then, two excellent things with which I can make you acquainted. Sup with me there this evening after witnessing a mystery-play that’s performed daily in Zagarte’s courtyard. My pearl of womanhood is displayed in it.”
So it fell out that in the late afternoon, Rocca, reinforced now by Gallina, whom he presented as a fellow-countryman and a merchant, conducted Colon down the Calle de Almodovar. It was a busy thoroughfare of houses whose uniformly white walls were broken at intervals by the gateways to their patios. Through the wrought-iron scroll-work of the gates there were inviting glimpses of courtyards where fountains played under cool green foliage. Above them windows that opened upon the street were guarded by iron work that bellied outwards, and here and there a balcony was gay with flowers.
There was bustling movement all about them, in which many were moving on the same errand, folk of various degrees, humble in the main, but with a sprinkling of sedate merchants, and here and there a stiff hidalgo, who took the wall of all the others. A string of pack-mules, gay with bells and tassels of coloured wool, clattered by. A water-seller’s donkey with a barrel slung upon either flank was urged along by a bare-legged lad with his incessant raucous shout of “Agua!” There were noisy girls of the people in flaming shawls, with roguish liquid, questing eyes, exchanging railleries with passing men-at-arms; and there were noble ladies, discreetly hooded, attended each by a duenna or a liveried page.
Through this moving press came Colon with his escorting Venetians to Zagarte’s eating-house, proclaimed by a gilt shield above the gateway, emblazoned with a bunch of grapes. A knot of citizens stood about it, and about these some beggars flitted, whining. Rocca opened a way with his elbows, quelling resentful looks by his haughty stare. The gate-keeper bestirred himself to clear the entrance for them, and within the deep archway of the gate Zagarte, himself, came forward to receive them. A little brown Morisco, keen-eyed, sharp-nosed and wide-mouthed, he was all white. From waist to neck he was clothed only in his shirt, and whatever he may have worn below was covered by a spotless apron.
He washed his hands in the air as he bowed, addressing Messer Rocca by name. He had reserved the best room for his lordship. If their nobilities would give themselves the trouble of following, he would conduct them. He hoped that his mystery-play would amuse them. It was well liked, even by nobilities of the Court, who honoured him with their patronage.
Talking ever, displaying his white, even teeth in his effusiveness, he led the way across the spacious courtyard, protected by an awning of green canvas from the ardours of the sun. At one end a platform had been raised on trestles for the players. Immediately below this, a dozen or more rows of forms were ranged and already occupied; behind them the court was cleared to give standing room to the remainder and humbler section of the public. Here, too, some groups of townsfolk had already gathered and were noisy. Facing the platform on the first floor there was a gallery for diners, glazed for their protection in winter or in bad weather, but standing open now. The other two walls bore windows on the ground and first floors, some eight in all. There were the windows of lesser rooms for diners who desired them and could afford to be private. It was to one of these on the ground floor and near the stage that the Morisco conducted his illustrious patrons. Its furnishings were of the simplest: a table in mid-chamber, another for the service, ranged against the wall, and four chairs. But the scoured boards of the floor were strewn with slim branches of fragrant rosemary and lemon verbena.
An Andalusian girl in bright colours, gipsy-tinted, sloe-eyed and saucy, assisted Zagarte to place the chairs in the window. Being assured that for the moment their lordships lacked nothing beyond the wine-flagon and cups placed on the side-table for their refreshment, the Morisco and his girl withdrew.
From their window they observed the motley crowd below. Three other windows, draped in red damask like their own, were occupied by ladies and gentlemen whom Colon recognized as attached to the Court. Plainly, then, in yielding to Rocca’s invitation he had not derogated from a proper dignity in one who enjoyed the countenance of the Sovereigns.
Rocca chatted gaily in the little time of waiting. Gallina, grim, taciturn and contemptuous, watched the comings and goings below from very force of habit, paid no heed to Rocca’s chatter and left Colon wondering why so dull a curmudgeon should have been included in the party.
At last fell the knocks demanding silence, the audience settled down with a rustle, and the mystery began.
A tall stripling in the morion and breastplate of a Spanish archer took the stage with a swagger and announced himself a centurion of the Imperial Guard, named Sebastian, held in esteem by the Emperor Diocletian and in such high favour by the gods that he might confidently hope soon to be made a tribune.
An early Christian in the guise of a grey friar, his historical identity so vague that yesterday two men had almost killed each other in a dispute as to whether he was St. Peter or St. Paul, overhearing the young man’s boasts, came forward to denounce, in a voice of thunder, as false the gods whom he invoked.
Altercation followed in which Sebastian, beginning arrogantly, was gradually subdued by arguments bellowed from the friar’s powerful lungs, gradually brought to such conviction of their unanswerable truth, that he fell upon his knees, imploring to be taken into the Christian faith.
Sprinkling him with water from a bucket that had been thoughtfully provided, the friar pronounced over him the words of baptism. It was still doing when, to surprise the ritual, a fat man in a red gabardine, with a brass circlet on his brows, appeared upon the stage followed by two more soldiers in Spanish accoutrements. Revealing himself to be the Emperor Diocletian, he furiously upbraided Sebastian for his apostasy, and passionately pleaded with him to return to the gods of Rome. His grossness and the pertly defiant answers of Sebastian swept the simple-minded audience with an approving hilarity, chilled when the Emperor in a final explosion of wrath ordered Sebastian to be put to death.
Six more soldiers came to the Emperor’s call. The centurion was stripped of his breastplate and strapped to the column, with his back to the audience. Half the soldiers remained by the pillar to guard the pinioned martyr, the other half, ranged in a file, shot at him with arbalests, to the loud indignation of the spectators, but it was not clear whether this was at the act or because denied the morbid satisfaction of seeing the quarrels take effect. All that the public was permitted to see was the hero sagging more and more limply in his bonds, until in the end, announcing that it was finished and that thus would he deal with every Christian dog, Diocletian stamped off with his soldiery.
Then, whilst the martyred centurion hung inanimate, the tinkle of a guitar was heard, to which presently was joined a voice, a woman’s voice, rich and full and indescribably sweet. The lilt of the song was lively and gay, and a people of emotions readily stirred by music, so far surrendered to the spell of it that Sebastian and his martyrdom were forgotten.
Two stanzas were heard before the mysterious singer made her appearance, coming slowly round the screens. A moment she stood poised there, still singing, as if for the love of it and out of the sheer joy of life.
Tightly swathed in white draperies that revealed every line and curve of a lithe body that was a miracle of grace, she held herself for a long moment with head thrown back in an attitude of exultant challenge that made men catch their breath. Then as her roving glance alighted on the martyr in his bonds, her song broke off abruptly on a cry of horror. She was suddenly transformed. She became an incarnation of pitying woe, and thus swept the audience back into the drama which her coming had interrupted.
She ran forward to loosen the cords that held Sebastian, whereupon he fell clear of the pillar and lay on his back. It was now seen that a dozen arbalest-bolts were sticking in his doublet. She set aside her guitar, and in graceful movements, kneeling beside him, she piteously ministered to him. She drew out the shafts, opened the breast of his doublet, and with a cloth set herself to stanch imagined wounds. Still kneeling, she reached for her guitar again. Once more the liquid voice soared to enthral her listeners. She sang the passionate love lament Debajo de mi Ventana, with which she had intoxicated the Venetians, but with the words so cunningly adapted that it became the pious elegy of a Christian virgin over the body of a martyr.
Whether the audience was moved by the dramatic implications of the song, or merely by the voice and charm of the singer, to such enthusiasm was it moved that peace could not be restored until she had repeated the performance.
After that it was not clear whether the shooting of Sebastian had not completely extinguished him, or whether the flood of melody poured over him had wrought the miracle of resurrecting him. The audience may have found the latter explanation the more credible when Sebastian sat up to thank and bless his rescuer for her ministrations.
She had no more than time to tell him that her name was Irene and that she was a Christian maid, when Diocletian froze all hearts by striding on again in fury to surprise them. Sebastian was carried off to be put to death elsewhere by more effective means, and Irene was given to choose between sharing his fate and offering incense to the gods. Being a songstress the appropriate god for her in Diocletian’s view was Apollo. Accordingly soldiers dragged in a wooden altar surmounted by a laurel-crowned bust, and a smoking thurible was thrust upon Irene.
She stood a moment before the Emperor whilst he recited the details of the horrible fate in store for her if she refused. Then, as if appalled, she began her thurifer’s saraband, symbolizing her hesitations between the fear of martyrdom and the glories to follow upon it. Commencing very slowly, with movements that were little more than posturings of terror and appeal, her dancing gradually gathered pace until it became a whirling exultation that revealed every supple grace of a body that would have been an inspiration to Phidias. At its climax she checked abruptly, on tip-toe, flung the censer in the face of the god, and then lightly, as if there had been no flesh and bone within the silks that swathed her, she sank down into an inanimate, amorphous heap at the feet of Diocletian. On the Emperor’s verification that she had inexplicably expired, and on his awed wonder of whether the Christian God who had cheated him of his prey might not be more powerful than the gods of Rome, the mystery closed.
Whilst the spectators, delighted with Irene, yelled her name in acclamation and flung a shower of blancos and maravedis upon the stage in substantial witness to their enthusiasm, Colon who, leaning from the window, had watched her every movement with absorption, sank back in his chair bemused, and released a sigh.
Rocca, who had furtively watched his intentness, laughed outright.
“Well?” he asked. “Was I justified? Have you ever in all your travels seen a sweeter piece of flesh?”
“Entrancing,” Colon agreed. “Divine.”
“Oh, not divine. Human, God be thanked. Divine would make her too inaccessible, and already she’s inaccessible enough. As modest as she’s desirable. As much a Christian virgin in life as on the trestles.”
Zagarte came in to hope that their nobilities had been entertained and to ask if it was now their pleasure to sup.
From the courtyard below arose the hubbub of departure. They quitted the window, and Zagarte was ordered to serve.
“If your supper is as toothsome as your Irene, you’ll have won a patron in my noble friend here.”
The little Morisco bowed with a flash of teeth. He would not disappoint them. They should have of his best, an olla of pigeons over which their worships would lick their fingers.
“You would add a relish to it if you were to bring the incomparable Irene to sup with us, eh, Ser Cristofero?”
Colon awoke from his absorption. He reared his tawny head, and there was an eagerness in his eyes. “Oh! Could it be?” And he looked at Zagarte.
The Morisco no longer smiled; his eyes were solemn, his lips pursed.
“It were a great honour for her. But your nobilities will not hold it against me if she refuses. Others have invited her, but she never accepts. There’s a cursed prudishness in this Beatriz Enriquez.”
“Others?” Rocca frowned. “Others perhaps. But we are not as others. We are of the Court. Tell your Beatriz that, my good Zagarte. Tell her that. Tell her how much it weighs with you, how much her own interests will be served by civility to persons of our condition.”
Colon got up, and came from the window. “Nay, nay. Use no constraint. That the girl adds virtue to beauty is to be respected.”
“Ah! If I might assure her of that.” Zagarte’s expression was more hopeful.
“St. Ferdinand!” cried Colon. “For what do you take us, then? Are we common troopers or savages? If she comes she will have no cause to complain of us.” And because Rocca laughed, he added sharply: “I’ll answer for it.”
Zagarte bowed. “Be sure I’ll do what I can.”
When he had gone upon his errand Gallina sneered. “These airs and pretences in a vulgar dancing-girl.”
Colon looked into that wooden face with dislike. “A dancing-girl. But not vulgar, if you know the meaning of the word.”
“I know that and more. Enough not to be easily fooled. Bah! A trick of the girl’s, or else of the Morisco’s, so as to make her the more desired.” And he added, with a finger to his nose: “Experto loquor. What do you wager that she will not come?”
“I may hope that she will not refuse a civil invitation.”
“Or be disappointed if we are over civil.”
“A misogynist,” Rocca explained him. “Forgive him.”
“No misogynist. No. But not a fool either. I’ve a nose for frailty no matter which of its several masks it wears.”
Thus again he provoked Colon. “Sir, if your nose perceive frailty there, it’s lost its sense of smell.”
Rocca took up the altercation, violently disagreeing with Gallina’s cynical outlook, and the two Venetians were still at that comedy when Zagarte ushered La Gitanilla.
“My lords, I have explained to her that an invitation from gentlemen of the Court of the Sovereigns is no less than a command.”
“And to commands, of course, I must bow,” said she, with a little smile of irony, and a dignity that no lady of the Court could have bettered.
She was still in her clinging draperies of white, but covered now by a mantle of blue silk, and above her left ear she had thrust a tuft of pomegranate blossoms, startlingly red against her dark chestnut hair.
“We are fortunate and honoured,” said Rocca, “to find you so obedient.” He went on to name himself and his companions, indicating them with a noble breadth of gesture.
Gravely she acknowledged each in turn. On Colon her eyes lingered an instant inscrutably, whilst he bowed as he might have bowed to a princess, self-contained and without hint of gallantry. “I count myself happy in this opportunity to thank you for the delight you have given us.”
She did not choose to be gracious. “I do not sing and dance for thanks. I am paid for it.”
“Every artist worthy of payment lives on the earnings of his art, but pursues it because naught else is worth pursuing. I thought—I hoped—that it might be so with you.”
“You hoped it? Why?”
“Because to give joy by exhibiting such gifts should itself be a joy.”
She pondered him for a moment before replying. “You speak as if you were, yourself, an artist.”
“An artist, no. But a man driven by the same irresistible impulse of inspiration.”
“Whereas I am irresistibly driven by the impulse of necessity. And that is to be devil-driven.”
Gallina looked at Rocca with a lift of the brows.
“You imply,” said Colon, “a mystery within your mystery, the mystery of Irene rather than of St. Sebastian.”
Rocca broke in. “Say the mystery of womanhood, which no man can fathom.”
“Do not complain of it,” said she. “If you could fathom it your interest in her would be lost. And what should you be then?”
Zagarte came in bearing a great covered dish. Gallina pointed to it.
“On the subject of mysteries, my friends, here is one of Zagarte’s ollas.”
The Morisco set the dish on the side-table. “No mystery, noble sirs. An accomplishment; an excellence; a perfection. Regale your noble nostrils with these essences.” And he whisked away the lid, to release the steam that arose from a stew of pigeons.
“Facilis descensus,” laughed Colon. “Thus we come headlong from things of the spirit to things of the flesh.”
“Give thanks,” growled Gallina. “You have not the air of an anchorite nourished on herbs and prayers.”
“Why, no. I take what comes, being all human weakness.”
The serving wench came in with platters, and after her a boy staggering under the weight of a basket of flagons.
Colon set a chair at the table, and his smile invited La Gitanilla to sit. “We keep you standing,” he deplored.
Their eyes met, and some of the pride that smouldered in hers was softened by the deference blending with admiration in his glance. Quietly she thanked him, sat down and loosed her mantle. Still he hovered about her. He cut bread for her, and poured wine from one of the flagons the boy had set upon the table. She acknowledged the attention.
“A welcome privilege,” he murmured.
“Said the serpent when he offered Eve the apple,” Rocca mocked. “Beware of him, sweet Eve. Never so seductive as when humble.”
“I have a good ear,” she answered lightly.
“Faith, then,” said Rocca, drawing up his chair, “I haven’t come to Spain in vain.”
“Why did you come?” she asked him.
“To behold you. Would not that be reason enough, Master Colon?”
“Reason enough to cross the world.”
“Lord!” she cried. “Is any woman worth so long a journey?”
“I never met another of whom it might be said.”
The answer, by its solemnity, disconcerted her. Under his grave eyes she appeared momentarily distressed. She recovered on a strained laugh.
“But you’ll have met a good many to whom you said it.”
“May this be my last cup of wine if that is true.”
“Quoth the serpent,” she laughed, and watched him curiously as he drank.
“Oh, a master of all the gallantries,” mumbled Gallina with his mouth full.
“Yet scorning falsehood.” Colon set down his empty cup.
“Why scorn it?” wondered Rocca. “A legitimate weapon in war, and therefore in love, which is a sort of war.”
“I perceive no parallel,” Colon disagreed.
“Is it possible? What is love but an engagement between assailant and assailed, besieger and besieged. Am I wrong, divine Beatriz?”
“I hope so. Perhaps Master Colon will tell us. There should be knowledge of such matters under that red thatch.”
“I’ll tell you that he is grossly wrong. What he describes is but a poor travesty of love. Something that merely wears the mask of it.”
“Let us then hear Master Colon on love,” said Gallina. “I’ve often wondered what it really is.”
“You ask me to define the indefinable, the mysterious force beyond control of will, that draws two beings together irresistibly to their fulfilment.”
Gallina laughed his unpleasant, jeering laugh. “For something that you pronounce indefinable that is not bad.”
Colon shook his head. “It is still too vague. But at least it dismisses the notion of antagonism.”
“I do not want it dismissed,” objected Rocca. “Antagonism is the very spice of love. I am sure that Beatriz agrees with me.”
“Why should you be? It is to imply experience, and the implication does not flatter me.”
“What? St. Mark! You were never given that face and shape for a nunnery, or to play the nun in the world.”
Her brows darkened. “My face and shape are not the whole of me.”
Irrepressible, Rocca guffawed. “But enough for me or any man, eh, Master Colon?”
“For any man whose discernment goes no further,” Colon rebuked him, to the malicious amusement of Gallina.
Rocca gaped. “Why? What else is to discern?”
“If you must ask you would not understand the answer.”
“If you knew it you would not be evasive. Lord! I have no patience with your subtleties. A man should be content with what his five senses reveal to him.”
Colon laughed to ease the suspicion of tension. “That may be wisdom: to think with the eyes, rather than to see with the mind. Perhaps I should save myself trouble if I adopted it. And yet, what would life be without trouble? It is the striving that brings a savour to it.”
“Successful striving,” Beatriz quietly corrected.
“All striving carries the hope of success. Without it there is only surrender, which is death.”
She considered him with eyes that were grown friendly. “It is good to be a man,” she said, on a note of sadness. “To have the shaping of one’s fate.”
“How few succeed,” said he.
“But all may strive, and you have said that the striving is all.”
Then Rocca broke in. “Devil take your solemnities. Are we here to be gay, or to make philosophy?”
To be gay he applied himself in his boisterous fashion. But he was indifferently supported. Gallina lacked the art of light chatter. Beatriz sat bemused, as if a veil had descended upon her spirit, and Colon, quietly absorbed in her, contributed little to hilarity.
In the end Rocca was provoked into admonishing him. “Master Colon, the disadvantage of thinking with your eyes is that all the world may read your thoughts.”
“Since they dishonour none, what matter?”
Beatriz emptied her glass, and rose. “I’ll fetch my guitar, so that I may repay so generous an entertainment with a song.”
“We ask no payment, mistress,” Gallina protested.
“It is due, none the less.”
She was gone, and Rocca turned, lugubrious, to Colon. “I’ve served myself ill by bringing you. I had hopes, myself, in that quarter, and you’ve extinguished them. The girl had no eyes for any but you.”
Colon looked him squarely between the eyes. “If you mean her honestly I’ll embarrass you no further.”
“Honestly!” crowed Rocca, and Gallina laughed with him. “A dancing-girl!”
Colon shrugged, disdaining argument. He was finding this shrill, coarsely flamboyant Venetian insupportable. Gallina cut in with his eternal sneer. “This good Rocca has enjoyed such easy triumphs that he has ceased to believe in virtue. But I am of your mind, sir, that if he were to put his fortunes to the test with this child, his vanity might take a fall.”
“Is that a challenge?” Rocca demanded.
“For shame, sir,” Colon rebuked him. “Is this a subject for a wager?”
“Cospetto! If you take it so seriously, I’ll leave you a clear field, my friend. That and my blessing.”
“You mistake me,” Colon was beginning, but got no further, for Beatriz re-entered.
Two little songs she sang for them, little plaintive love-songs in the minor key so dear to Andalusians, in which tears and laughter were so intermingled that Colon’s heart was wrung by them.
At parting, whilst Rocca and Gallina were busy with Zagarte, he stood over her murmuring: “May I come again to hear you sing, to see you dance?”
She sat with her head bowed over the guitar in her lap. “It needs no permission of mine. Zagarte will make you welcome.”
“Will not you?”
She looked up, straight into his eyes, and he detected something akin to a cloud in hers. Then her glance fell away again. “Does that matter?”
“So much that if you will not, I shall not come.”
She laughed softly, but without mirth. “Then it were undutiful to Zagarte to deny you.”
“I care nothing for that.”
“How insistent you are.” She sighed. “But that is the way of you. Is it not?” And then, before he could answer, she had added: “I’ll make you welcome. Yes. Why should I not?”