Chapter 15 Columbus by Rafael Sabatini
THE LEGACY
Colon, emerging furiously from Zagarte’s, almost collided with a large gaudy man who seized him by the arm to arrest him. An Italian voice haled him out of his angry absorption.
“Gesumaria, Ser Cristofero! Whither so blindly?”
“Not now. Not now.” Colon disengaged his arm. “Give me leave.” And he plunged away.
Rocca, fingering his chin, watched the tall figure until it disappeared round a twist of the crooked street. His brow darkened. “The devil!” he said aloud, and went purposefully in. He needed reassurance that no folly on the part of Beatriz had created some breach between her and Colon.
He crossed the courtyard unheeded, and went briskly up the stairs. But along the corridor to her door he trod like a cat, from the instincts which his trade had developed in him. At the door itself he paused. A man’s voice reached him.
“Realize, adorable Beatriz, that it is as profitable to be my friend as it is deadly to be my enemy.”
It was enough to assure Rocca that his coming was well timed. He rapped on a panel, and without further ceremony lifted the latch and went in.
On the divan sat Beatriz in distress, her shoulders hunched. Over her—like a monstrous spider in Rocca’s indignant eyes—stood the long, olive-green elegance of Don Ramon.
Rocca affected surprise. “God forgive me, I believe that I intrude. Oh, your pardon, madam.”
If he really meant to withdraw, he was stayed by Beatriz. She sprang up, addressing him with the eagerness of relief. “But come in. Come in. His excellency is just taking leave.”
Don Ramon’s countenance darkened by this fresh intrusion was darkened further by the dismissal. He had flung no more than a cursory glance over his shoulder at the newcomer. Deeply annoyed though he might be, he had no wish to embroil himself again. Enough already that day had his dignity suffered. He elected to be haughtily distant.
“I shall return, at a more convenient time. When you are less occupied with other visitors.”
He waited a moment, but receiving no reply he turned to go, and so came face to face with Rocca, whom he had last seen in Doge Barbarigo’s antechamber.
There was mutual recognition and mutual surprise. Rocca, well schooled in dissimulation, scarcely blinked. But Don Ramon, with nothing to conceal, sharply threw up his head. “Why, sir . . . I know you. You are from Venice.”
Rocca bowed, without trace of his consuming anxiety. Denial would be worse than idle. He must carry this by impudence.
“Your lordship’s memory flatters me.” It was his hope that Don Ramon’s memory would not reach too far. “I was attached there to the chancellery.”
“The chancellery? I knew you as an agent of the Inquisitors of State.”
Liking it less and less, Rocca still preserved his practised calm. “Oh! In very special matters only. And now you see me in the following of the Venetian Envoy to the Sovereigns of Castile and Aragon.”
“An odd promotion.” Don Ramon looked with narrowed eyes from the Venetian to Beatriz. “Very odd.”
“We are old friends, Beatriz and I,” Rocca explained, “from her days in Venice.”
“I do not doubt that. I am not doubting it at all. An agent of the Three would no doubt find some usefulness in such a friendship. Perhaps even in Cordoba. You leave me wondering.”
“Sir, I’ve said that in Cordoba I am attached to the Venetian Envoy.”
“To be sure you said so. Yes,” he answered with a sneer on his loose mouth. “And I ask myself in what capacity. Well, well! I take my leave.”
He bowed with a cool formality and went out.
Beatriz and Rocca stood looking at each other, with no word spoken until Don Ramon’s footsteps had faded in the corridor. Then Rocca’s lips took an unpleasant twist.
“That’s a cursedly unlucky meeting. I wonder what’s in the popinjay’s mind?” Abandoning conjecture, he came to the matter of the visit. “What trouble was he threatening you?”
“The worst. He’ll discover heresy or blasphemy or both in my part in the mystery. He’s nephew of the Grand Inquisitor of Cordoba, and, himself, a lay-tertiary of St. Dominic. His word, he tells me, can send me to the fire.”
“A hot wooer, faith! An ardent gentleman.” Rocca was sardonic. “And with Colon? What occurred?”
“An altercation. Not much in itself. But enough to make that devil swear to have Colon’s throat cut.”
“So, so! Handy with both steel and fire. A gentleman of parts. We must take order about him.” He was suddenly anxious. “Colon went off in fury. He has not broken with you on that fool’s account?”
She relieved his fears by telling him what had passed.
“That should be soon mended when Colon knows with what the dog was threatening you.”
“He must know it at once. He must be warned.”
“And you mean to go, yourself, and warn him. Excellent! It’s an opportunity not to be neglected. The very occasion for tenderness. It should advance matters between you by a long stride. Don’t you see?”
“I see,” she answered heavily.
“To it, then. Why so glum? Nothing could have fallen out better.” He displayed a faint excitement. “He’s lodged at Bensabat’s, the tailor in the Calle Atayud. By my soul, Don Ramon may prove to have done us the best of services. It’s well said that all evil doesn’t come to hurt us. Away with you, then. Find Colon. It’s a heaven-sent chance to find at the same time the thing we seek.”
That prospect took him off in better humour. But he was thoughtful again by the time he reached the Fonda del Leon and Messer Gallina, and there poured out his tale.
“This damned popinjay,” he ended, “comes blundering into our plans like a bumble-bee into a spider’s web.”
Gallina’s dark wooden face remained inscrutable. He sat at table, with papers before him, at the interrupted task of preparing by candlelight a report for the Council of Three.
“He is certainly inconvenient. In fact dangerous. Damnably dangerous. But at least we are warned in time. So far no harm is done.”
“But how long shall we be able to say that? His recognizing me for an agent of the Three is bad enough. That in his mind he is linking Beatriz with me as another agent is still worse. He scarcely troubled to conceal his suspicions. A word from him to the Corregidor of Cordoba, and we should be asked to account for ourselves.”
“Do you suppose I don’t perceive it? That he should come between Colon and Beatriz is nothing. That breach is soon healed in the case of a man as love-sick as Colon. And such healings make for expansiveness. But if Beatriz were arrested with you as a Venetian agent . . .” He shrugged. “Your image was very apt, Rocca. A bumble-bee in a spider’s web.” He sat back, fingering his square chin, his eyes veiled. “He’s extremely inconvenient, our Don Ramon de Aguilar, this hidalgo who commands fire and steel in such abundance.” He made the comment dispassionately. “Where does the fool live, do you know?”
“That’s soon discovered. But to what end?”
Gallina sat up again. “The only end.” He drew a sheet of paper forward, and took up his pen.
“Wait.” The quill scratched and spluttered for some moments. “There.” He held out the sheet on which he had written:
My lord—You have left me in such terror that I cannot bear it longer. I cannot sleep until I’ve made my peace with you. I implore you to come to me at once, and believe me your servant who kisses your hands and will deny you nothing.
Rocca frowned over it. “I see. But the writing?”
“Is it likely that he will know her hand?”
“No. That’s true,” Rocca slowly agreed. He returned the sheet. “It wants her name to it.”
But Gallina shook his head, and on his tight mouth there was that smile of his that was always akin to a sneer. “For that jackanapes it requires no signature. For others it would be too much.” He folded the sheet, sealed it with a blob of wax, and wrote the superscription. “Now order supper,” he commanded. “This must wait awhile.”
At an hour that night when Cordoba was disposing itself for sleep and wayfarers in its narrow streets were scarce, a man muffled in a dark burnouse knocked at the gates of a Moorish palace on the Ronda with an urgent message which he was ordered to deliver to Don Ramon de Aguilar in person.
The porter admitted him to a courtyard where the glow of a lantern faintly gilded the bubbling water of a fountain. Thence, after a spell of waiting, he was conducted to the hall, where Don Ramon himself stood to receive him.
“What is this message?”
The messenger’s face remained invisible in his hood. But his salaam and the Arab garment that enfolded him announced him to Don Ramon and to the porter alike for a Mudejar. In silence he proffered his letter.
Don Ramon broke the seal and stepped under the three-beaked lamp that hung from the ceiling, so that he might have light by which to read. A gleam leapt from his eyes and a flush of colour to his sallow cheek.
“A hat and cloak, Gonzalo.” He was peremptory.
“I have leave to go, excellency?” murmured the messenger.
“Yes. No. Wait.”
The elderly porter was settling the cloak on his master’s shoulders. “Shall I summon Salvador or Martin to accompany your lordship?”
“No. This Mudejar will serve for escort. I may not be returning to-night. My arms.”
Gonzalo girt him with a belt carrying sword and dagger; then, ordering the messenger to follow, Don Ramon set out.
They emerged upon the wide Ronda, facing the broad Guadalquivir. It was a clear soft, starlit summer night, and the moon in the last quarter, riding high, flung shafts of silver athwart the black bosom of the river and turned to silver flakes the ripples that broke over the wheels of the Arab water-mills. The Ronda was deserted, and the only sound that broke the silence of the night was the distant tinkle of a guitar.
Don Ramon swung to the left and went off in the direction of the great Moorish bridge whose six arches were black pits of shadow. He moved at speed in his joyous eagerness to respond to the unexpected invitation he had received.
Whatever may have been false in the note that had lured him forth, it conveyed at least a faithful impression of the affliction of its supposed author. It was an affliction that sprang from two merging sources. Her deep trouble at the manner of Colon’s departure and the inferences dishonouring to herself in which he must have accepted his dismissal, and the still deeper trouble sown by Don Ramon’s threats to Colon’s life.
Rocca had promised to take order. But what order could he take against one so powerful as the Count of Arias, and whatever it might be, would it be taken in time?
She was at once cold with dread of what might happen to Colon and hot with shame of his probable present thoughts of her. It was not to be endured. There could be no peace from these emotions until she had warned him and explained herself.
In the end, without thought for herself or the dangers that might lurk by night in those streets for an unescorted woman, she had gone forth without even troubling to summon her Morisco woman to attend her. To the Calle Atayud the distance was short, the streets were almost empty, and of the few she met none heeded her.
The entrance to Bensabat’s shop was by a door on the left of the courtyard, immediately within its iron gate. She found the bell-chain, and in answer to the tinkling summons the tailor’s door was opened, sending a rhomb of light across the gloom. Into this hobbled the bent, aproned shape of Bensabat. He came to peer at her through the bars of the gate.
“I am seeking Master Colon. It is urgent.” She was out of breath from the haste she had made, and from apprehension of two moving shadows vaguely seen in a doorway across the street.
“Master Colon? Ohé!” he cackled, and drew the bolt. “Come you in. Come you in.” He pointed to a dark doorway, farther down the yard on the left. “In there. His door is at the head of the stairs.”
She thanked him, hastened on, climbed the stairs and knocked.
“Enter!” a voice answered.
She lifted the latch, and the door yielded.
Colon sat in shirt and breeches at his table, and by the light of two candles in tall wooden sconces was at work with coloured inks upon a large chart. At least, that was the purpose of his sitting there. Actually the ink was drying on the quill he held. He was gnawing the feathered end of it, and his brooding eyes saw nothing of the chart before him. What he saw was the face of Beatriz, white and distorted by some emotion that baffled him, whilst an echo of her voice rang in his ears to wound and anger him with its harsh, urgent, “Go! Go!”
As the latch clicked and the door of his humble room swung slowly inwards, creaking on its hinges, he looked round, and imagined for a moment that he was still at his visions. Timid, hesitant, Beatriz stood framed in the doorway.
He flung down his pen, and started up.
“May I come in?” she asked, and without waiting for his answer did so, closing the door.
They stood at last eye to eye with the table between them, her lips tremulous, her breast heaving in agitation, he, outwardly calm and stern, waiting. Speech poured from her breathlessly. “You understood—did you not?—why I bade you go. You saw—did you not?—that I was under constraint.”
Out of his pain he answered hurtfully: “It is natural, I suppose, with your kind, to prefer a grande of Spain to such as I am.”
“My kind! What is my kind? No matter. You say that to be cruel. You want to punish me for what you suppose was an offence against you.”
“What would you have me suppose it?”
“What it was. What you might have seen if you had faith in me. Is it difficult to understand that I had no thought but fear for you?”
“I am not flattered by such needless fear.”
“Needless? Oh, not needless. If it were I should not now be here.”
“I am asking myself why you are.”
There was a touch of fierceness in her answer. “To warn you. That man left me swearing that his bullies would deal with you. You know who and what he is, and the infamous power he wields. Bitter, evil, vindictive, he will not scruple to do as he threatens, and he accounts himself beyond the reach of consequences. That is why I am here: to warn you, so that you may guard yourself against his malice.”
He stood a moment thoughtful, looking at her. “What,” he asked at last, “is he to you, this man, that he permits himself the airs of a master?”
Her smile was bitter. “At least not what you have done me the wrong to suppose. If he were I should not be driven to come to you. Oh, don’t you see?” she broke out passionately. “I never more fervently wished to keep you beside me, never more urgently needed you than when for your safety’s sake—with no thought but that—I bade you go. Don’t you see?”
The fervour of her appeal brought him round the table to her side. He set an arm about her shoulders, and drew her against him.
“I am dull at times,” he said, in penitence. “Culpably dull. In my soul I have been angry with you. I miscalled you. I conceived that you despised the heart I offered.”
“You had only the appearances by which to judge. That is why I am so urgent to come and correct them.”
“I should have seen further.”
“Yes.” Her eyes were wistful. “You should have understood that what you saw was but one of the indignities to which I am subject in my way of life.”
“Why do you follow it?”
“Do you ask me that again? I must answer as before. For bread. It is all that I can do, short of shutting myself in a convent.”
“You were never born for it.”
“Do I know for what I was born? I was not born for poverty. But misfortune has brought me to it, none the less.”
“This must end, Beatriz.” He was resolute. “Your Don Ramon has shown me the urgency where I perceived only the necessity. God knows I have little to bestow save my devotion. But soon now this will be mended, and what I have and am I offer you, Beatriz. My name shall shelter you if you will have it.”
“If I will have it?” she echoed, as if she did not understand.
“If you will marry me, my dear.”
He felt her body tremble against him, and there was a long pause before she spoke. “You offer me that!” Her voice was low, and laden with wonder. Then, suddenly, she broke away from him, and confronted him squarely, her eyes tragic. “Oh, what do you know of me?” she cried, and flung wide her arms, as if offering herself for his closer inspection.
She bewildered him. “I know that you are my woman; that I love you, Beatriz.”
“God pity me!” she wailed.
“Beatriz!” He advanced, holding out his arms; then checked as she recoiled before him.
“No, no.” She turned aside, and with uncertain steps, like a blind person, she crossed to his day-bed, and sank to it listlessly, her hands limp in her lap. “It is impossible, Cristobal. Impossible.”
His bewilderment deepening, he came to lean over her. “Impossible?”
There was a distraction of grief in her answer. “What would I not give to make it possible! That you think of me so is the greatest treasure I shall ever possess. I am yours, Cristobal, for as long as I live. I will love you and serve you with all that I have and am.”
“But then . . .”
“I am already married, Cristobal.”
He straightened himself abruptly, and fell back a pace, agape.
“Married! You are married?”
“Three years ago at the Pentecost,” she answered miserably, “when I was eighteen, and a poor, innocent fool who believed no evil of anyone.”
“And your husband?”
“I have no husband. That is the only mercy fate has shown me. The man I married is a galerian serving a life sentence on the galleys of Castile. He was a poor debauched profligate, who ended as such rogues end, by stabbing a man with whom he quarrelled over a good-for-nothing woman. It happened that the wounded man survived. Because of this, and because the galleys are always in need of oars, Enriquez was allowed to live instead of being garrotted, to toil at the oar until he dies. But between him and me the bond tied by the Church abides, and so . . .” She broke off, spread her hands in a pathetic little gesture of misery, and let them fall again in helplessness.
Stricken, he sank to the couch beside her. He set an arm about her shoulders and drew her close. “Poor child! Oh, what can one say to you?”
“Nothing, Cristobal. There is nothing more to say. Best let me go. Right out of your life. I came into it for no good . . .”
“That, never.” His vehemence stifled the confession that emotion was wringing from her. “Never. Never. That you cannot marry does not alter my resolve to make you my care. More than ever do you show me the necessity.”
“Ah, if you knew. If you knew everything. Listen.”
But again he interrupted her. “I know enough. I know all that matters. I know that I love you, and you have confessed that you love me.”
“So truly!” she protested on a note of passion. “But . . .”
“There is nothing else to concern us. I began by saying that I have nothing. But I believe myself to stand on fortune’s threshold, that soon I shall be amongst the greatest in the land. Wealth and power will be mine to set you where you should be.” He drew her squarely to him, enfolding her hungrily. “Beatriz!” He bent and kissed her lips. But no sooner had she let him have his way than alarm awoke in her.
“Let me go now,” she begged him. “Ah, let me go. Let me go!”
Obediently he released her. “Let me get my coat, and I will escort you home.”
She stayed him in the act of rising. “No.” There was not only firmness, but a sudden alarm in her denial. “Have you forgotten why I am here? What brought me? You are not to go forth alone at night.”
“Bah!” he laughed.
“I am serious. You do not know the Count of Arias. Nor have I told you all. As I came I saw two men lurking in a doorway across the street. I do not know that they are Don Ramon’s bullies. But I fear it.”
“I shall go armed,” he promised, to reassure her.
“That may suffice in the daytime, if you are watchful. But never at night. Promise me that you will not stir forth alone.”
“That would be intolerable.”
“Promise me,” she insisted. “If you love me, promise me. If you will not think of yourself, think of me. If anything happened to you, where should I find me a protector?”
“A protector whom you protect,” he laughed. “A fine guardian, that.”
But behind his laughter there was seriousness. The possibility of being cut off, weighed now for the first time by this man of strong vitality, started a sudden train of thought, a fresh concern for her. If that were to happen, be it by the agency of Don Ramon, be it by some other, what, indeed, would then become of her for whom he had made himself responsible? Some provision must be made. He had little to leave, yet something there was that he could do to benefit her in such a case. He took a swift resolve.
“Listen, Beatriz. There’s a word I must say before you go. As for this Don Ramon, be sure that I shall know how to guard myself. He serves, however, to remind me that I am mortal, and there is something for which I should provide.”
He went to take from the wall the brass panel that bore the picture of the Madonna, and from the concave back of it he removed a key. With this he unlocked the coffer under the window, raised the lid, and withdrew a slender tin case, a half-yard in length by a foot or so wide. He held it up. “You see this case.”
She nodded without speaking, staring fixedly.
He replaced it, closed and locked the coffer, and came back to sit beside her.
“It is my legacy to you,” he said. “It contains all that I possess of value. But its value should be great. It is a chart, and with that chart a full declaration of the facts and judgments upon which it is drawn.”
She was rigid, her hands clenched, striving with her rising agitation.
“Should anything ever happen to me, Beatriz,” he continued quietly, “here is what you must do. You will take that case, and deliver it to Don Luis de Santangel, the Chancellor of Aragon. I will tell Bensabat that in any such event you are to be made free of my few possessions here.”
Her sudden clutch upon his wrist interrupted him. “No, no!” It was a cry of pain.
“Wait,” he said. “Hear me out. With the chart I shall enclose a letter for Don Luis de Santangel, directing him to sell to the Sovereigns these means to enable another to carry out the discoveries by which I look to magnify the wealth and power of Spain. Don Luis, I know, will do his best so that half of the price obtained should enable you to live in ease and dignity; the other half will go to my little son, who is now at Palos, at the Convent of La Rabida.”
“Mother of God!” she cried out, in such consternation that he swung fully to face her.
She was staring at him with tragic eyes; eyes of a startling blackness in the pallor of her face. Meeting his glance, she was torn by a sudden violent sob; then lowering her head she abandoned herself to a passion of weeping.
For a moment he sat appalled. “Why, Beatriz! Beatriz!” He took her in his arms. “Why, child, what need is there for this? I merely take the common prudent measures against the unlikely case that I should not be at hand to shelter and provide for you.”
“Oh, the shame of it! The shame of it!” she sobbed.
“Shame? Where is the shame?”
“In my worthlessness. I am so worthless.”
He held her close. “To me worth more than all the wealth of the Indies that await me.”
“You don’t understand.” She looked up piteously. Then, in a convulsive movement, she flung her arms round his neck, and drew his head down upon her breast.
Pillowing it there, his arms enlacing her slender, graceful body, he yielded himself to the thrall of an ecstasy such as he had never known.