Chapter 16 Columbus by Rafael Sabatini
THE EVE OF CORPUS CHRISTI
Admitted by Colon, old Bensabat shuffled into his guest’s room as was his morning habit, bearing on a copper tray a frugal breakfast of bread, cheese, olives, dried figs and a jug of the heavy dark wine of Malaga.
Having set it on a corner of the table, which was still spread with the map on which the coming of Beatriz had interrupted Colon’s work last night, the old man looked round, and his glance alighted on a woman’s blue cloak that lay across the day-bed. His face discreetly blank, he looked up at Colon who stood beside him in shirt and breeches. He bowed a creaking back. “A good morning to your worship.”
“Good morning to you, Juan.”
Bensabat waved a gnarled hand to indicate the tray. “Your worship is served. And there’s a letter from his excellency Don Luis de Santangel brought by a messenger.”
Colon nodded. Bensabat lingered, his little eyes straying furtively to the alcove, the curtains of which remained closely drawn. “Nothing else your worship requires this morning?”
“Nothing else, Juan.”
“Ah! There’s a deal of news abroad. They do say that the Sovereigns will be leaving Cordoba in a day or two, to return to the Vega. Fresh troops have arrived there. The siege is to be pressed hard, they say, so as to make sure that the cross replaces the crescent on Granada before Christmas.”
“Ah!” Colon nodded vaguely. He waited for Bensabat to go.
“There’s bad news, too,” the tailor babbled on. “A hidalgo was fished out of the river this morning, as dead as Mahomet, with his head cracked. A very noble hidalgo; the Count of Arias, nephew of the Inquisitor-General of Cordoba.”
Colon was conscious of a momentarily quickened pulse. He was conscious, too—or else he imagined it—of a faint sound from beyond the curtains of the alcove. Outwardly, however, he remained unmoved, and the sound, if really audible, would hardly have reached Bensabat’s deaf ears.
“Poor gentleman,” he said. “God rest him!”
“Amen, sir! Amen!” the tailor crossed himself with New Christian ostentation. “It isn’t rightly known whether he broke his head in falling, or whether it was broken for him before he was thrown in. A handsome, lustful gentleman, the Count of Arias, with a back to set a coat off to perfection. He’ll be greatly missed.”
“Not a doubt,” said Colon, and grew ribald:
“A handsome body clothed a soul as fair
And wore a doublet with a princely air.”
“God save us, sir!” Bensabat was scandalized. “Do you make a jest of it?”
“A jest? An epitaph.” He took up the letter from the tray. “You have leave, Juan.”
Bensabat, perceiving at last his dismissal, shambled out.
He had scarcely gone when the curtains of the alcove, which had been an object of such deep interest to him, were swept apart and Beatriz came breathless to join Colon.
“I heard,” she panted, her eyes grave.
“The Count of Arias?” He looked down at the glossy chestnut head that reached to his shoulder, and put an arm round her. “Poor man! I’ll have a Mass said for his soul. I owe him that for supplying the occasion of your coming to me last night.”
“Unnecessarily, as we now know.”
“Unnecessarily, but happily. Or do you regret it?”
“No,” she answered soberly. “I shall never regret it.”
“I vow to God you shall never have reason.” He stooped to kiss her. “You are now my care. Sit here.” He placed a chair for her, swept the chart away to the day-bed, and drew the tray before her. “Break your fast, child. It’s poor fare. But the Indies still await discovery.”
There was an air of blitheness about him, as if he had recaptured his first youth. Straight and vigorous, he moved resilient as a panther. His grey eyes were light and eager. He hovered about her, quick and gay, talking the while.
“It’s but a poor lodging, this. But such as it is it offers you a haven in your need, as will henceforth whatever lodging may be mine. When I return from the lands of the Grand Khan, where the roofs are tiled with gold, you shall be housed in splendours worthy of you. Until then beautify these poor shards for me by freely making use of them.”
He paused to pour wine for her. “Why so solemn, my Beatriz?”
“Listening to you makes me solemn.”
“I talk awry, then. I want to see you smile. You are not unhappy? You have no misgivings for entrusting yourself to such a vagabond?”
“My dear!” she cried, in repudiation.
“If that means that you have not, then all is well.” He began to eat. Munching, he tore open, at last, the letter, and an added brightness shone in his eyes.
“The Salamanca doctors, of whom I was telling you last night, have arrived in Cordoba to sit in judgment on me. I am to go before them at once. The Sovereigns want the matter decided before they return to the Vega. Not to-morrow, says Don Luis, for it is the Feast of Corpus Christi. And—ha!—the astute Chancellor counsels me to carry a candle in the procession, so that I may make sure of the favour of the theologians who are to judge me. Theologians to pronounce upon cosmography. Laugh, Beatriz. Oblige me by laughing. For this is as humorous as a cosmographer would be preaching the sermon in an auto-de-fé.”
Yet neither then nor after did he find it easy to amuse her. She ate and drank but little, and that little in preoccupation, for which at last he chided her. “There is something on your mind, Beatriz.”
She smiled by an effort. “The thought that I must be going,” she prevaricated. “It is time that you smuggled me out of this. It grows late. Zagarte will be wondering.” She rose.
He helped her into her cloak. “When shall I see you again, my dear?”
“Why, when you will. I shall be waiting for you until you come.”
“There is so much still to say between us. So much that perhaps it will never all be said.”
He kissed her, and closely hooded she slipped away.
She reached Zagarte’s, and across the courtyard, deserted at that morning hour, she sped to the staircase, and so gained her room.
She opened her door, and checked, startled by the sight of a man seated at her table. He raised his grizzled head and disclosed the sardonic, bony face of Gallina. He rose with an eagerness unusual to his inscrutability.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded sternly.
“Waiting for you, my dear. And for what I hope you’ll have brought me.”
Thus brutally was the haunting horror that she had been madly striving, and even succeeding, to exclude from her tormented mind, thrust suddenly, as it were naked, under her notice.
“I bring you nothing,” she told him, choking.
“How? Nothing?” His beady eyes never left her face. They seemed to possess a queer, paralysing power. “Nothing? Close the door,” he bade her, and was mechanically obeyed. “Come now, my girl, you went to warn and stayed to kiss. Surely not quite in vain. Not if I know you at all; and I think I do.” He waited a moment, ever watchful. “Well?”
“I have told you that I bring you nothing.”
“Ah!” He moved slowly towards her. “But why this defiant air? What does it mean?” He was suddenly beside her, and she found her wrist in a grip that made her wince. His bony face was close to hers, and never had his beady eyes looked quite so evil. “You haven’t by any chance fallen like a simpering ninny into the pit you dug for him? You haven’t been abandoning yourself to mawkish emotions? You aren’t thinking of playing us false, little fool?”
“Release my wrist,” she panted angrily.
He more than obeyed. He flung it from him in a gesture of disgust. “You silly slut! I am answered. It is what I half suspected when Rocca told me last night of your terrors of what might be done to this rascal mariner by your other friend the Count of Arias.”
“Whom you’ve murdered,” she flung at him.
His glittering eyes did not waver in their steady contempt. “Assume it if you please. But do not breathe it if you value your own breath. Leave that.” He was peremptory. “Give a thought instead to your brother, going mad in the Pozzi with the fear of the cord, whilst waiting for his dutiful sister to procure his deliverance. Trusting to her.”
Deathly white she crossed to the divan, and sank to it without answering. But Gallina pursued her ruthlessly. “Will you tell me that you’ve been cheated? That you’ve paid the price, given yourself to that rascal’s lusts, and obtained nothing in return? Is that how the tale goes?”
“Oh, you are vile. Vile! Vile!”
“Miscall me to your heart’s content, but let me understand. Having given all, have you accomplished nothing? If so, why? Let me know where we stand.”
He bent over her, abandoning his sinister note. He assumed, instead, a matter-of-fact tone. “To me, after all, it’s no great matter what happens to your brother. But, at least, be honest with us. Don’t waste our time if you’re no longer concerned to save him; if you’ve decided to leave him to his fate. The galleys. Or the strangler.”
“Pablo!” she wailed, from her tortured conscience.
“Well?”
Cunningly goaded by this insistence upon her faithlessness, yet she could not take the path along which he sought to drive her; neither could she persist along the one she had thought to tread. Either way led to betrayal, the one of her lover, the other of her brother. Appalled before so horrible a choice, she knew only the need to postpone, to temporize.
“Wait, wait.” She took her tormented head in her hands. She spoke wildly, at random, to gain time. “You expect the impossible. How could I get possession of the chart whilst he was there?”
Had she looked at him, the sudden gleam in his cunning eyes must have warned her of how much she was betraying. His tone was suddenly softened. “Why not? Why not?” So as to test his inference he slyly drew a bow at a venture. “Since, at least, you’ve discovered where he hides his chart, that is something.” He paused, watching her closely. As there was no denial, he added the probing question: “When can you use this knowledge?”
This, however, pressed her too sharply. She answered in fierce rebellion: “Never! I shall never use it. Never.”
He drew breath audibly, and straightened himself. He was smiling, confirmed now in his assumption.
“But what a waste,” he protested, “since you possess the knowledge. Having gone so far—not to go just a little further and so deliver your unhappy brother.”
“You are answered. I have told you.”
“Yes. You have told me.” He smiled darkly. “You have certainly told me.”
She no longer heeded him. He stood a moment, then abruptly crossed to the door, and was gone, leaving her crouched on the divan, her head in her hands, her vision blurred by anguish.
He went back to the Fonda del Leon to await Rocca, who did not return until high noon, and came in such bubbling excitement that Gallina must allow it to pour itself out without attempting to dam the flow. The source of it was in the discovery just made at Court that the junta of doctors had arrived from Salamanca. It was to sit immediately. Not to-morrow, because to-morrow was the Feast of Corpus Christi. But possibly on Friday, or perhaps Saturday and certainly not later than next week, the Sovereigns being now in haste to leave for the Vega. Action, therefore, must be immediate. Beatriz must bestir herself that very day. She had been much too leisurely. But perhaps last night . . .
Gallina’s malevolent smile at last made its appearance. “Not so leisurely,” he interrupted. “No. Much worse than that. The fool has tangled herself in her own web.” And he told him what had passed.
Rocca’s prominent eyes bulged in a congested face. His temper boiling up, he heaped infamies upon Beatriz until Gallina checked him.
“Wait. Something is gained. She knows where he hides the chart.”
“If she knows that, she may easily be brought to do the rest.”
“Easily? Not a girl of her spirit. Violence might only exasperate her into betraying us to Colon.”
“And her brother, then?”
“There are fiercer loves than the sisterly kind. Haven’t you noticed it? We’ll go cautiously and patiently. Sarasin is not an indulgent employer.”
Rocca had fallen into thought. “If she knows where he hides it, that means that she has seen it. That puts an end to doubts as to where it is. It must be in his lodging.”
Gallina sneered. “You become acute, Rocca.”
Rocca left the sneer unheeded. “In that case we know all that we need.”
“Of course.” Gallina was still sneering. “We have merely to go and get it.”
“Just so,” said Rocca. “And to-morrow is our opportunity. Colon is to follow the Court in the Corpus Christi procession. We make sure of his absence for more than half a day. Time and to spare in which to go through the effects in his lodging.”
Gallina no longer sneered. “And how do we enter it?”
“If I can’t find a key to his door, I’ll break the lock.”
“And his landlord, the tailor?”
“There’s no likelihood that he will be at home. There’s not a converso in Cordoba will dare to make his Christianity suspect by staying away from the procession. Nothing could fall out better.”
Gallina reflected.
“I begin to believe you,” he said at last.