Chapter 14 Columbus by Rafael Sabatini
RE-ENTER DON RAMON
That uneasy spirit of Colon’s was further to be ruffled on the morrow at Zagarte’s.
To his usual invitation Beatriz returned by the Morisco the answer that she could not come, and begged him to excuse her. He was in no mood to do so.
“What the devil’s this?” he blazed.
Zagarte spread his hands, and hunched his shoulders. “Mugerices. Womanishnesses. Vapours. What can I do?”
“Perhaps there is something I can do. Where is she?”
“She has a temper, excellency. She can be a wild-cat if provoked.”
“Let us provoke her, then. Lead the way.”
She had her dwelling, as he now discovered, in two rooms on the upper floor. One of these served her as bower and dressing-room, a diminutive bedchamber leading from it. There was some luxury in its equipment. An eastern carpet clothed half the floor, a Moorish divan spread with bright cushions was set against one of the walls. She rose from this when Colon appeared, tall and more than ordinarily masterful, in the doorway. That she should deny herself to him was as a spur to drive him headlong.
“How, sir? I sent word . . .”
“I know what word you sent.” He closed the door, shutting out Zagarte. “It was no word to send me. I have come to ask why I am denied.”
“Is your pleasure alone to weigh between us?”
“Not if it ceases to be your pleasure, too. Come, Beatriz, there must be some good reason to refuse me.”
“You acquire rights over me, I think. I have not conceded them.” She sank to the divan again, rather wearily. She was in a state of only half understanding her own mind, and therefore only half understood the comedy it prompted her to play. “It would be best for both of us if you kept to your fine friends at Court.”
“Beatriz! What is this?”
“The best advice that I can give you.” She did not look at him. “That was a very beautiful lady, yesterday, at the Mezquita; and a very exalted one; the Queen’s friend. Fitter company for you than I.”
He came close, and set a knee on the divan beside her, thus lowering himself to her seated level. “Is it possible that you do me the honour to be jealous?”
“Jealous? Yes. But of my repute. I am no fine gentleman’s toy.”
“I am no fine gentleman. Just a rather lonely man who loves you.”
This was a thrust at her vitals, to rob her, by its suddenness, of breath. There was a look almost of fear in the eyes she slowly raised to his. Then she assumed resentment, like an armour. “Of what do you talk? You have known me scarcely a week.”
“That is just the time I have loved you, Beatriz; so utterly that it is impossible you should not be aware of it. It has revived my courage, dispelled my loneliness, tinted a drab world for me. You are to me not merely a woman, but the incarnation of all womanhood, which I worship because of my two mothers, who were women, the one on earth and the One in Heaven.”
She was staring at him now in awe. Tears were gathering in her eyes, evoked as much by the actual words he used as by the reverence vibrating in his voice. Her lovely mouth was tremulous. Then as if to combat the weakness to which he was reducing her, she laughed. “The devil can lend a man an angel’s tongue for the undoing of a woman.”
“Is it possible that you believe it of me?”
“Whatever life may have denied me, it has cruelly supplied me with discernment.”
“Not if you can discern no better in me. This, my Beatriz, is pure perversity.” His arms went round her as he spoke, and he drew her close.
For a moment, taken by surprise, she let him have his will. Then, as his lips touched her cheek, she broke the spell of it. Battling wildly she thrust him from her. “No!” she cried, and again, “No!”
“Beatriz,” he pleaded, “why will you deny your heart?”
“My heart? What do you know of my heart?”
“What my own tells me.”
She hung her head, and taking this for the end of resistance he enfolded her in his arms again. Holding her, he slipped down to sit beside her. “You are glad, Beatriz? Say that you are glad, my dear.” His lips found her neck, and as if he had stung her she started again out of his embrace.
“Ah, but you go too fast,” she protested. “Give me time. Give me time.” She was pleading passionately in an agitation that bewildered him.
“Time? Life is so brief. There is so little time to waste.”
“I . . . I must be sure,” she evaded desperately.
“Of me?”
“Of myself. Ah, leave me now. I implore it of the regard you say you have for me.”
She was in such agitation—an agitation as plain to him as it was incomprehensible—that consideration left him no choice.
He rose, urbane and gentle. “I do not understand what should distress you so. But I’ll not press you now. You shall tell me when next I come.”
He stooped to kiss her hand, and was gone.
Zagarte came upon her some moments later crouched on the divan, in tears. His wide mouth tightened. “What’s this? Has that long rascal mishandled you?”
“No, no. And you are not to speak of him so.”
“That will depend upon the occasion that he gives me. In your place, Beatriz, I’ld be wasting no time on him. By what they tell me he’s a man of no substance for all his fine airs: a hanger-on at Court, a place-seeker, a foreign adventurer. He’ll mean you no good. An enterprising rogue with the women, I gather. They do say that the Marchioness of Moya——”
She let him go no further. “Enough of your evil tongue, Zagarte. You’ll lose it one of these days through want of caution. Leave me alone. Go.”
“Curb your impatiences, my girl. I haven’t yet told you why I came. There’s a very noble hidalgo asking to see you.”
“I’ll not see anyone.”
“Tcha! Tcha! Listen, girl. This is not a nobleman to be denied. He is nephew of the Inquisitor-General of Cordoba. He is newly home from an embassy abroad, and he claims to be an old friend of yours, the Count of Arias.”
Her eyes went wide in her tear-stained face. “Who?”
Zagarte rubbed his hands. “I see that you know him.”
“I do. And the more reason not to see him.”
“Now, now, my dear. Be reasonable. He is——”
“I know what he is. He answers to the description you supplied of Master Colon.”
“But so different a case. So great a hidalgo. Come now. What shall I tell him?”
“To go to the devil.”
“Is that a message I can carry?” Zagarte was annoyed.
“Soften it as you please so long as you understand that that is what I mean.” Zagarte raised his hands in protest, and opened his mouth to plead. “Not another word!” She sprang up so fiercely that the little Morisco recoiled before her. “Go! Out of here!”
He backed away to the door. He was grinning without mirth. “Oh, curb your furies. I’ll do what I can. I’ll tell him you are indisposed. Impossible to take a high hand with a gentleman of his quality.”
He went out grumbling that only the men of the Muslim faith from which he had apostatized understood the proper treatment of women.
To Beatriz the unexpected presence in Cordoba of Don Ramon had come acutely to remind her of her brother in the Pozzi. Had the Venetian agents, who were her present masters, desired a spur to drive her to the fulfilment of their aims, they could hardly have discovered a better; whilst, on the other hand, had fate desired to increase to the pitch of anguish her loathing of the task before her, it could not have done it more completely than by Colon’s impassioned wooing.
For to-night, at least, she had disposed of Don Ramon. He had accepted the excuses offered by Zagarte. But he came back on the morrow, and having witnessed her performance in the mystery, was not again to be put off by any plea of indisposition.
Harassed, Zagarte sought Beatriz with the envoy’s demand that she receive him.
“Not now or ever. Tell him so,” was her answer.
“I dare not.” Zagarte was grim. “Understand that. I dare not. I have already dared too much. I dared to tell him that I knew you would not see him. He was very short. He was not to be denied, he said, and I’d best contrive that you receive him, or it would be the worse for me. Come now, Beatriz,” he coaxed. “Why deny to a hidalgo, a grande of Spain, favours of which you can be prodigal to a nobody. There’s no manner of sense in you.”
“I will not be pestered by this beast.”
Zagarte became viperish in his despair. “You’ll sing and dance here no more, then.”
She laughed at him. “Who will be the loser? How many came to see your mystery before I joined it?”
“We shall both be the losers. But for me, at any rate, it will be less of a loss than having them find heresy in these mummeries. I don’t want to take part in an auto-de-fé. That’s what this Count of Arias hints might happen. Don’t you see? I’m only a poor devil of a Morisco.” In fervent intercession he added: “A little reasonableness, Beatriz! For both our sakes.”
He had said enough. Whilst breathing hard in anger to perceive the havoc that an unscrupulous Don Ramon had power to make, yet concern for the Morisco conquered her. “Very well,” she said, at last. “Let him come.”
But her consent almost increased Zagarte’s anxieties, so grimly wash delivered. “You’ll receive him agreeably?”
“So that he comes you will have done your part. The rest is my affair.”
So Don Ramon was brought, all unconsciously to play out his little part as a pawn in the hand of Destiny.
He stood for a silent moment in the doorway, surveying her with a quizzical smile on his narrow face. He wore a surcoat of darkest olive on which faint arabesques were wrought in thread of gold. Loosely shaped and full-skirted, with wide sleeves that hung to his knees, it gave bulk to his too slender figure. A flat velvet cap of the same colour, with a black plume clasped by a jewelled buckle, adorned his dark head.
Wearying of his stare, standing in stiff defiance before her mirror, she challenged him. “What do you seek, sir, that you are so importunate?”
He came forward, his manner easy, his loose mouth smiling. “I can understand that you should be afraid to receive me . . .”
“Afraid!”
“. . . after your breach of faith with me in Venice. That, my dear Beatriz, was not the way to treat a friend who was at great pains to serve you.” His smile became reproachful. “However, God be thanked I am not by nature vindictive. I bear no malice. At least, none from which amiability will not shield you.”
He took her weakly surrendered hand, and raised it to his lips. In recovering it she answered him tonelessly. “I broke no faith. There was no faith pledged. You offered me a bargain—a sordid bargain. That is all.”
“How ungrateful! And how untrue.” His tone continued easy. “Although you promised nothing I did all that I could. I saw the Doge. I pleaded with him, even with some sacrifice of my ambassadorial dignity, and I actually won his promise to release your unhappy brother. Unfortunately, afterwards, so he told me, he discovered reasons—reasons of State—that made it impossible for him to fulfil his promise. But to deny me thanks for what I did! That is not nice, Beatriz. And it was not nice to quit Venice without a word to me, after the proofs I had given of my devotion. It was ungenerous.”
“You sought to profit by my need,” she reminded him. “But that is in the past.”
“Well said. We’ll agree to turn the page, and do better in the future.”
“It will save trouble, Don Ramon,” she told him coldly, “if you will understand that I have no more concern in your future than in your past.”
“It would break my heart to believe you.”
“Break it, then, and go. You intrude upon me.”
“So hateful am I?” But he still smiled, and it was this smile that awakened her fear and loathing. He found himself a chair, sat down and crossed his shapely, green-clad legs.
“You did not hear me. I asked you to go.”
He shook his head in tolerant reproach. “So regrettable between old friends. So improper. So undreamed by me, solicitous to serve you now, as I would have served you before.”
“I ask no service of you, Don Ramon, and I need none.”
“Do not be too sure. This mystery, now, in which you are performing. It touches dangerously upon holy things. It may even be that it is not without suspicion of heresy, and some might judge that the part you play is tainted with blasphemy. These are matters for the Holy Office, and it is perhaps unfortunate that Zagarte should be a Morisco, on all of whom the Inquisitors keep a suspicious eye. Enchanting though you would be doing penance in your shift, candle in hand, yet I should deplore the spectacle. And there might be worse to follow. You begin to perceive how necessary as a friend I might prove to you?”
He smiled upon the horror that glared at him from her white face, understanding but the half of it.
“If it were really so?” she asked him.
“How could I help you, do you mean?” He threw back his surcoat, revealing the red lily-hilted dagger embroidered on the left breast of his doublet. “Not only am I a lay-tertiary of St. Dominic, but the Inquisitor of Cordoba, Frey Pedro Martinez de Barrio, is my uncle. My testimony to your unstinting piety would be a sure shield to guard you. Now you will understand that . . .”
“That the influence that could be used to protect me, could also be used to denounce me. That is what I am to understand. Is it not? Let us be quite clear, Don Ramon.”
Under the stark contempt of her glance he preserved his detestably smiling demeanour. “What is there to anger you? After all, I give you flattering proof of the insistence of my devotion.” Less amiably, he added: “In Venice I was cheated of my dearest hopes. I do not readily submit to that. Nor do I readily relinquish that upon which I have set my heart.” He rose, and moved towards her. His manner changed again to one of pleading conciliation. “Why will you force me, Beatriz, to woo in such ungracious terms, when all I ask is to lavish upon you the treasures of my tenderness?”
An altercation beyond the door came to interrupt him. Zagarte’s voice was raised in expostulation. “But I tell your worship that it is not seemly,” to which a peremptory voice made answer: “Out of my way, Zagarte. Out of my way!” Then the door was flung open and a tall figure in black and gold surveyed them from the threshold.
There was a mutually staring pause. “What do you want here?” Don Ramon at last demanded.
The poise of the intruder’s tawny head became more arrogant, the brows were raised above steely eyes.
“Well, sir? Do you hear me? What do you want? Who are you?”
Colon closed the door. “The question is rather: who and what are you that you should ask me?”
“I am the Count of Arias,” was the truculently shouted answer. He expected the name to produce an impression. But it was evident that it completely failed.
“Is that all? By your bellowing I was supposing you to be at least Captain Matamoros.”
To Don Ramon this was incredible. “You are insolent, sir.”
“To match your insolence. My concern is with this lady. Not with you.”
“You should have the grace to see that you intrude. At some other time Mistress Beatriz may see you, if she so pleases.” He waved an angry hand in dismissal.
But Colon refused to be dismissed. “I do not understand that you command here.”
“It is time you did, then; and also that I do not usually give my orders in vain.”
“The devil take you and your orders. I am not concerned with what usually happens to them, or with you, whatever you may be.” Colon’s eyes swept past the furious nobleman to Beatriz, where she stood, frozen still by the menace of Don Ramon’s last words to her. A glance of wild entreaty from her came further to bewilder him, whilst Don Ramon was raging.
“You shall discover who and what I am, to your cost. Out of here!” Again Don Ramon pointed to the door. “Out of here! At once!”
Ignoring him Colon continued to look beyond him at Beatriz. He spoke quietly. “Whether I go or stay is for Mistress Beatriz to say.”
She stirred at last, and, distraught, answered wildly, as her new-born fear of Don Ramon dictated. “Oh, go, go! Please go!”
This was to dumbfound him. He pondered her with eyes that reflected the hurt to his soul. Thus until Don Ramon roused him.
“You have heard.”
“I have heard,” said Colon slowly.
“Then why do you wait? Out of here, you rascal.”
Colon’s precariously balanced temper was overthrown. It was only outwardly that he preserved a show of calm. “I do not like ‘rascal’,” he said, and swept his cap across Don Ramon’s white face. As Don Ramon fell back, anger blending with amazement at an audacity that had not shrunk from striking him, the other was adding: “I am Colon. Cristobal Colon. Anyone will tell you where I am to be found.”
Don Ramon was in a slobber of rage.
“You shall hear from me. Hell and the devil! You shall be schooled, you dog. Be sure that you shall be schooled.”
But already the door was slamming upon Colon’s departure. Don Ramon swung livid and trembling to Beatriz. “Who is he? Who is that scoundrel?”
But now anger, mastering her too, broke down her circumspection.
“Go,” she ordered him. “Leave me. Go! You’ve done harm enough.”
“Eh?” He croaked. “By God and His Saints, I’ve done harm, have I? That is to follow. Enough harm to settle the account in full. To dare to strike me. Me!” He flung about the room noisily inarticulate, adding by his violence to her distraction. “By the living God, it’s the last blow he’ll ever strike in this world.”
His quaking fury terrified her.
“What do you mean?” she cried. “What will you do?”
“Do?” He laughed unpleasantly. “My lads will know what to do. You’ll have a friend the fewer when they have done with him.”
She seized his arm in panic. “Mother of God! What do you mean?”
“Haven’t I made it clear? Do you think a man may live who can boast that he has struck me?”
“You will do murder!” she gasped in a terror so manifest that it had the effect of staying his passion. For a long moment he considered her with speculative eyes. “We’ll discuss it,” he said presently, and drew her to the divan. “Sit down, and listen.”