Chapter 13 Columbus by Rafael Sabatini
IN THE WEB
Rocca was none too pleased with her. He came back that night to Zagarte’s, where she had her lodging. Gallina, who did not entirely trust his methods, came with him, to employ a curb at need.
“Look now, my girl,” Rocca told her, “this is no case for aping the great lady and affecting prudery. You know what’s to do.”
She measured his inches with a curling lip. “Isn’t there harlotry enough in what I do, without adopting the manner of it, too?”
He stared in annoyance. “Body of God! A fine spirit in which to go to work. Very fine. But think a little less of your dignity and a little more of Pablo de Arana rotting in the Pozzi with the rats for company.”
This turned her livid. “You hulking piece of cowardice. Must you add to my torment so as to serve your foul ends more speedily? Isn’t what I do vile enough to satisfy your vileness and your master’s without . . .”
“Look you, my girl,” he stormed in, “that’s no way to speak of his Serenity.”
“Sh!” Gallina hissed at him. “Do you want all Cordoba to hear you? Impatience never accomplished anything.”
“Can we afford patience, with time pressing as it is? Once the junta——”
“Quiet!” Gallina thrust him aside, and faced the girl, setting a hand on her shoulder.
She squirmed away from under his touch. “Say what you have to say without pawing me.”
“Oh, a dainty piece,” sneered Rocca.
But Gallina was unmoved. “It is just that the sooner this thing is done, the better for us all, Beatriz, your brother included. To-night it seemed to us that you wasted time. Still, it was a beginning. When next he comes be a little less . . . aloof. That’s all.” And he took leave in the current terms. “Remain with God.”
Mechanically she answered: “Go with God.”
Outside, however, Rocca vented his annoyance. “Why check me when I would have spurred her?”
“Because I prefer that the girl should go about it in her own way.” And he quoted the proverb: “Chi va sano . . . Who goes slowly goes safely and goes far.”
“Or else he never arrives at all. But have it your own way.”
After that there was no further pressure upon Beatriz to bring her victim to the net. Nor was pressure necessary where the victim proved so ready and willing to entangle himself. The very reticence that Beatriz had employed, yielding to her nature, was the chief allurement, where the beckoning wantonness that Rocca so crudely urged would have repelled the victim.
The circumstances of the moment, too, rendered him vulnerable to allurement. Inflammable of temperament, as Rocca judged him, the passion aroused in him by the Marchioness of Moya, from being curbed, had brought him a yearning solitude of soul. His life at Court and the neglect into which he had fallen there, had increased this sense of solitude, begotten in him an overwhelming loneliness. Beatriz had been thrust into his life at a moment when his heart was aching from emptiness.
It was not a moment in which he could have withstood, had he desired to do so, the appeal to his senses of so much beauty and grace in one who seemed to hold out to him the promise of that fond companionship that might heal this loneliness in which he moved.
He could not wait beyond the morrow to fulfil his promise to visit Zagarte’s again. Once more, and now alone, he occupied that same room, and from its window watched her every movement with avid, hungry eyes.
Afterwards, in response to the invitation he sent her by Zagarte, she came to him, and if she hesitated, and demurred a little upon finding him alone, yet in the end she yielded to his respectful insistence that again she should remain to sup with him.
It was no more than a beginning. On the next day, and the next after that, he was again at Zagarte’s, and Beatriz was supping with him, in an intimacy that grew apace and yet was kept within rigidly decorous bounds, which he made no attempt to overstep.
Because she was restrained by her very nature from exerting any conscious allurement, she played the greater havoc with his senses. Whilst gently gracious in word and attitude, there was no hint of archness in her manner. And whilst when he exerted himself to amuse her, her soft laughter was not withheld, yet there was a hint of sadness in it that smote the heart. She was as one who laughs despite herself in time of mourning, with the ache of bereavement ever behind the laughter.
It led him once to say: “If I read you aright, mistress, the world has not been kind to you.”
“Is the world ever kind?” she evaded.
“Ah! You have marked its hardness, have you?”
“Being alone, with none to shield me from it.”
He was grave. “Yet your own nature should have been your sufficient shield. But alone? How does that happen?”
“Is it so uncommon?”
“To be alone, yes. Though not to be lonely.”
“I am both,” she told him, and then, as if it were an indiscretion to be covered, “But why talk of me?”
He was not yet to be put off. “Have you, then, no kin?”
“None to avail me. I have two brothers. Both are wanderers. Neither is in Spain. Now tell me of yourself.”
“A host’s duty is to amuse his guest. And my history is not amusing.”
“Not amusing? When you are of the Court?”
“Ah, but no courtier. A suitor merely. A patient, unsatisfied suitor; of all things the dullest.”
“What is your suit?”
“A small matter to the Sovereigns. So small that they keep overlooking it. A matter of a ship or two with which to sail the unknown. I am by trade a navigator.”
“An engaging trade.”
“When you navigate. I rust in harbour, rigged with patience that the years are rotting; wasting myself by faith in promises that have proved as water; eating out my heart in loneliness in foreign lands.” He smiled into her sombre eyes. “We have that in common it seems, you and I. Our loneliness should make a bond between us. A healing bond.”
Momentarily her eyes fled away from his, as if scared. Then they came back, to meet again his yearning, wistful gaze.
“A bond? But a mariner’s bonds are soon loosened.”
“Even if it were so, there may be sweetness and comfort in them whilst they endure.”
“Leaving heartbreak behind them when they end.” There was scorn in her smile. “Is there wisdom for a woman in such bonds?”
“It is folly to refuse a fleeting joy in a life in which all joys are fleeting.”
“Once I believed it, and took the joy that offered without heed of the sorrow that might follow.”
“You have suffered,” he said gently. “One reads it in your eyes.”
“Nor is it yet in the past. I eat now the bitter fruit that grew from intoxicating blossoms.”
“That is the common lot of man.”
“And of woman still more commonly. But whither do we stray? This is not gay. Let me fill your cup.” With a sudden gaiety she poured for him. Thereafter constrained by her questions he entertained her with talk of his voyages, of marvels seen in distant lands, and of perils met upon the sea. Thus, from the past, she brought him to the present and the future.
“Tell me now of this voyage you project. This voyage into what you call the unknown.”
“Since it is into the unknown what can there be to tell?”
But she would not suffer him to laugh it off. “The unknown? That is but a word. It will be known to you, else how should you think to sail in it?”
“By groping my way, as we do in the dark.”
“Do you mean that you go into seas as yet uncharted?” There was suspense in her round-eyed gaze.
He smiled upon her wonder. “Oh, there is a chart. A chart of sorts.”
“A chart of the unknown? How can that be? Tell me of it.” She sat forward, elbows on the table, her face in her hands, her regard intent, a quickening heave to her breast.
“What can I tell you of it? It exists, drawn by the pen of imagination in the hand of reason.”
“That should be a strange chart. Like a portrait of someone the painter never saw. I would give much to see it.”
He was amused. “Why? What do you conceive a chart to be? It’s no matter of sea and landscapes, but just lines, some straight, some curved. So much gibberish to such eyes as yours. Enough!” There was a peremptoriness in word and gesture as he swept the matter away. “You know all of me that matters, and I naught of you. Why,” he asked, “do you sail under false colours?”
She sat back suddenly, aghast. “False colours?” she echoed, faltering, a queer pallor about her lips.
“Calling yourself La Gitanilla,” he explained, “when clearly you are not gipsy born.”
Her gasping laugh was of relief. “Oh! That!” she rallied her scared wits. “Neither was I born a dancing-girl. Being this, I take a name that suits the trade.”
“Why do you pursue it?”
“Of necessity. I can spin and embroider and paint a little, and it is fortunate that among the useless accomplishments of a gentlewoman I include music and a natural aptitude to dance.”
“Fortunate?” he questioned. “I wonder.” His eyes were grave. “Is it quite fitting in a gentlewoman?”
“I did not say that I am one; but only that I possess the accomplishments of one.”
“How else should you possess them?” He was impatient of the implied denial. “It needs no label to proclaim you.”
There was no further word of charts that day. The talk having veered away from the subject would not return to it, nor was there any attempt from her to bring it back.
When at last he took his leave, he kissed her hand reverently as ever, and he made his usual prayer: “You’ll suffer me to come again?”
She laughed with a brave display of white, even teeth. “What guile is masked in your humility!”
He laughed in his turn, shrugged, and asked: “Who is not guileful in approaching his ends?”
That sobered her suddenly. “What are your ends with me?”
“Child, have I not told you? The bond in which to dispel our common loneliness. Nay. Never frown. Give it thought until we meet again.”
He went his ways without waiting for her answer, leaving her troubled and darkly pensive, in a state of dangerous pity for a victim who so readily bared his throat to the knife.
Himself he went so haunted by the thought of her that even the obsession of his project began to yield to it. For two days he did violence to his inclinations and kept away from Zagarte’s. On the third day, which was Sunday, he attended with the Court at High Mass in the Mezquita, as Cordoba’s cathedral was still called, that vast Mosque founded by Abderrahman, and since converted into a Christian temple.
He passed up the middle aisle of the nineteen aisles formed by a forest of eight hundred slender pillars of marble, of porphyry, of jasper, which carried the low horseshoe Moorish arches in alternating wedges of red and white. He reached the main Mihrab, where amid Moslem splendours was enthroned the Virgin of the Assumption. The thunder of Gregorian chorus rolled through the vaulted labyrinth, incense was heavy on the hot air.
On the very threshold of the Mihrab, kneeling by one of the pillars that in its slenderness and lack of height seemed symbolical of an Arab tent-pole, he found his devotions diluted by insistent thoughts of Beatriz. On the high altar, the very image of the Virgin, always the object of his special worship, seemed to assume the features and enigmatic smile of La Gitanilla.
He fought piously against the distraction, imploring Our Lady’s aid in that combat. But presently chancing to look to his right, round the porphyry pillar that screened him on that side, he beheld Beatriz herself, a dozen yards away, on the edge of a neighbouring aisle. So unexpected was it that at first he deemed it a vision, an illusion created by the fever in his mind. And, indeed, something of the quality of a vision it must have possessed, for only the keenness of a lover’s eye could have pierced the veiling draperies of long blue mantle and close-drawn hood. Unerring it was, for presently a movement of her head disclosed her features to him even in that muffled light.
He prayed no more that day. His devotions from that moment were for that kneeling blue-mantled figure, his hopes, no longer centred on his soul’s salvation, were concerned with speaking to her when the Mass should be ended.
They were hopes that suffered frustration. Emerging by the great bronze doors into the Court of Oranges, where fountains gleamed in the sunlight and files of orange-trees formed aisles as if in continuation of those within the Mezquita, he found himself in a glittering group of courtiers. Before he could detach himself Santangel had surged beside him and taken his arm, and as they stepped aside to let the press flow on, Cabrera and his Marchioness had joined them. She was never so much at ease with Colon as when her husband was present, as if then secure from too embarrassing a response. So now.
“My friend,” she hailed him, “my dear Cristobal, I rejoice to know that the end of your long waiting is at hand.”
“As I do,” said Cabrera.
“Had it depended upon you, the end had been reached long since. I have much for which to thank you both.”
“Alas!” she sighed. “Too little. I had the will, but it was left for Frey Diego Deza to display the power. At least, now that he has opened the door you may count upon me to see that it is not closed again until you are given satisfaction.”
Colon found himself wondering why he remained cool, why for the first time in their acquaintance her voice had lost its power to thrill him, her statuesque beauty to quicken his pulses.
He addressed Cabrera. “Your Marchioness, my lord, is my guardian angel.”
Cabrera’s goat’s eyes were quizzical. “The patron saint of all deserving men.”
“And the object of their veneration,” said Colon, but he spoke from the lips alone. His mind, following his eyes, was elsewhere. He had just seen Beatriz step forth from the portal of the Cathedral into the sunlight of the vast court, thronged now with loungers.
She moved with a demure stateliness, mantled and hooded, an agate rosary entwined in a Book of Hours between her gloved hands. At her heels, in attendance upon her, trotted a middle-aged Morisco woman, shrouded in a white burnouse.
Santangel and the Marchioness were talking, but Colon was no longer listening. His eyes were following Beatriz, and his soul was in his eyes. As she approached the first fountain a gallant in green put himself suddenly in her way, bowing until his cap swept the ground, in an exaggeration of courtesy that was an impudence. As she stepped aside the gallant stepped with her, so as to continue to bar her progress.
Colon stiffened, and the audible catch of his breath made his companions turn their eyes in the direction of his scowling glance.
Beatriz had stepped aside again, her head thrown up so suddenly that her hood was displaced and her profile revealed. Her lips moved rapidly, and Colon could imagine the blaze of pride from those hazel eyes, before which the importunate gentleman was recoiling with a sheepish grin of discomfiture.
“The dancing-girl from Zagarte’s,” said the Marchioness tonelessly.
It is to be doubted if Colon heard her, so absorbed was he. But as Beatriz resumed her way, his anger took expression. “There’s a fine fellow would be the better for a cooling in the fountain.”
Cabrera was amused. “But I’ld counsel you not to administer it. He is the Count of Miraflor. A hidalgo of some weight.”
“Not so heavy but that I could lift him into it.”
“Why, Cristobal!” said the Marchioness, in a voice of gentle protest. “Is it possible that you, too, are a worshipper at that tawdry shrine?”
He found it necessary to control resentment. “I had not observed it to be either a shrine or tawdry,” he answered evenly.
“A dancing-girl!”
“Each of us is what he is from force of circumstances. They are few and enviable who can shape their destinies.”
There was a suspicion of tartness in the lady’s smile. “You make philosophy on her behalf.”
“If philosophy be, indeed, the love of knowledge. That child is forced to depend upon her throat and her feet for the means of life, with only her wits to shield her from the evils of the world.”
“You invite pity for her?”
“Not pity. No. Understanding. You observed her quality in her reception of that leering fop. He, too, no doubt, deemed her shrine a tawdry one.”
Cabrera laughed. “In Heaven’s name, Cristobal, not so loud, lest you suffer for your chivalry.”
“When I suffer for it, it will not be at such hands as those.”
“Your danger, rather,” said the Marchioness, “might be at the hands of your chivalry’s object. She is to be envied for her champion.” In tone and glance there was a frostiness that was new to him. She took her husband’s arm, and inclined her head in leave-taking. “Come, Andrés.”
Colon bowed low. “I kiss your hands, madam, and yours, sir.”
Santangel’s hand was on his arm as they departed. Beatriz by now was out of sight. The Chancellor chuckled softly. “There is nothing here to surprise or vex you, Cristobal. The ardours which the Marchioness is conscious of having aroused in you have marked you for her own: a sort of spiritual possession. It does not flatter her to discover that others less exalted may deflect your devotion. Not reasonable. No. But feminine.”
Colon was out of temper. “If I have made an enemy of her I must deplore it. But I would not mend it.”
“By my life, has this dancing-girl, then, so firm a hold upon you?”
“Enough that I should resent scorn of her from any who owes a better fortune to the accident of birth. Beatriz Enriquez bears the stamp of gentle blood. If she have it not, then I prize her worth still higher. She possesses that rarer thing: a natural nobility.”
“As I’ve a soul to save, I begin to suspect her of possessing witchcraft.”
“It’s a jest to you.”
“No jest at all. For on the voyage that lies ahead of you a woman might be heavy ballast.”
“Or, perhaps, an inspiration.”
“Oh, if it were really that. . . .” Santangel shrugged his broad shoulders. “After all, perhaps it is saner to love a woman of flesh and blood than waste yourself in a lenten passion for a lady who to you might as well be a painted saint in a cathedral window.”
“I think that is how I should reason if instinct did not save me the trouble.” More thoughtfully he added, “I should be sorry to make an enemy of the Marchioness of Moya.”
“Oh! As to that, she may deplore that you cast an eye elsewhere, but what would she be admitting if she were actively to resent it? Give yourself peace, and come home to dine with me.”
They moved down the court towards the Gate of Pardon, Santangel saluted on every hand by those who still idled there, with an occasional greeting for Colon, whom rumour was re-establishing. But not even these reflections of the reviving royal favour could relieve the gloom in which he moved. The implications of the Marchioness of Moya’s words had too deeply ruffled his spirit.