Chapter 23 Columbus by Rafael Sabatini
THE CUP OF TRIBULATION
On the morning after their ignominious consignment to that stone cell in Cordoba gaol, the two Venetian agents were haled before the Corregidor to render an account of themselves.
They stood before him blear-eyed from sleeplessness and indignation, unkempt and flea-bitten, for although, themselves, they had gone supperless, they had furnished a banquet for the tenants of the straw that supplied their bed. The address which Rocca had spent much of the night in silently rehearsing was sternly cropped in full flow by the saturnine Don Xavier.
“You are not to deafen me with your chatter. You are to speak only to what I may ask you. You are now in Castile, and in Castile we conduct our proceedings in an orderly manner.” He turned to the notary beside him. “Read them the plaint.”
They listened gloomily to the account of the contumelious conduct of which they were accused, and were asked at the end if they denied it.
Rocca conceived this to be his cue for a second attempt at delivering his oration.
“We do not deny it. But I will beg your worship to——”
His worship checked him there by raising his hand, whilst he directed the notary at his side. “They do not deny it. Set that down. That is all I asked.”
“But, sir——”
“That is all I asked,” the Corregidor thundered. He paused, and then continued on the awed silence he had produced. “It is for the Alcalde to pass judgment on your offence. Remove the prisoners.”
“At least,” said Gallina, “we may be allowed to send a letter.”
“Not until the Alcalde has pronounced upon your case, or until he chooses to permit it.”
“And when will that be?”
“In the Alcalde’s own good time. Go with God.” He waved them away.
It was a full week before the Alcalde’s good time arrived, and two starveling wretches were brought before him. The indescribably foul appearance to which they were by then reduced rendered the more ludicrous the lofty tone assumed by Rocca, his assertions that he was a gentleman in the following of the Venetian Ambassador, and his imperious demand that he should be permitted at once to communicate with the ambassador.
“You are to understand,” the grave Alcalde told him, “that ambassadorial privileges and immunities do not include those of robbing and maltreating the subjects of the Spanish Sovereigns.”
Rocca’s answer was a denial that there had been any intention to rob anybody, and that they had, themselves, been cruelly robbed, by the very man they were accused of assaulting. In this last particular the Alcalde informed them that he was assured they were in error. But he condescended to permit them to send their letter, and when a secretary from the Venetian embassy had come in response to claim them, they were restored to freedom subject to payment of a fine out of which Ribera should be compensated. Further, the Alcalde consented to receive the details of the robbery of which they proclaimed themselves the victims, and promised to refer the matter to the Corregidor.
Their cup of tribulation, however, was not yet drained. It was the Venetian envoy who forced upon them the bitter dregs of it when in their unkempt and soiled condition they stood before him.
The lordly Federigo Mocenigo, a large and imposing man of fastidious habits, looked down his patrician nose at these bedraggled agents of the Three. He listened to their tale, manifesting no emotion beyond a mild and rather malicious amusement.
“You do not appear,” he drawled, “to have acted with that prudence desirable in gentlemen of your office.” His tone did not attempt to dissemble his contempt for that same office.
Gallina’s face remained as wooden as ever. But the once flamboyant Rocca, who from posturing as an embassy functionary had come to regard himself as of that standing, repelled the rebuke with heat.
“I deny, excellency, that we have wanted for prudence. With great skill we carried our mission to a successful issue. But we do not enjoy immunity from the dangers of highway robbery, and we can hardly be reproved for having suffered it. It is not,” he added viciously, “a robbery that leaves room for smiles.”
“You are presuming, I think, to argue with me,” said his excellency, blandly unreasonable. “In your place I should have taken precautions against being robbed of something I had been at such pains to obtain. But I am not to instruct you in the conduct of your despicable trade.” His excellency’s play with a handkerchief that had been sprinkled with orange water implied that he found his visitors offensive to his nostrils. “You exist as a necessary social evil, which, however, is by the way. I suppose that I am now to provide you with the means to repatriate yourselves.”
“It may be too soon, excellency,” Gallina stolidly objected, “to conclude that our mission is ended; that our loss cannot be repaired. Our immediate need is for support in obtaining justice against the robbers and the recovery of our property.”
“Or at least of the chart,” added Rocca.
His excellency was languid. “I see that you are to instruct me. I suppose that you possess minds. If so, pray exercise them. I am to make a plaint to the Alcalde-Mayor of Cordoba. And of what, pray, shall I tell him that you were robbed? Of property that bears on the face of it the evidence that you stole it. Is that your notion of what should now be done? And you, Messer Rocca, are represented as a member of my embassy. Shall I have the Alcalde remind me that qui facit per alium facit per se? A nice position, that, for an Envoy of the Most Serene Republic.” He dropped his manner of contemptuous banter, to become stern. “You shall have the means to get you back to Venice at the least cost to the State, and the sooner you are out of Spain the less offensive I shall find you.”
The lordly Rocca’s sense of his consequence as a confidential and trusted agent of the Three was outraged. “Are we, then, to report to the Inquisitors of State that we were hindered by your excellency in the fulfilment of our mission?”
“Will you be impudent, you rogue? As for what you call your mission, there is more comfort for you than your blundering deserves. Your mission has been fulfilled in spite of you. From what I learn, the owner of the chart found himself without it at the critical hour, and has been dismissed. So that is the end of the matter. And, anyway, I have no intention of compromising the Most Serene. You shall be supplied with means to return home. That, I think, is all that I have to say to you.”
Thereupon, cowed and disgruntled, they were ushered out, to scour themselves of their filth, and return to their old quarters at the Fonda del Leon. There, being clothed once more with some appearance of decency they reviewed in bitterness the situation.
Their fellowship in misfortune had not produced the common result of endearing them to each other. The blame for this lay chiefly on Gallina’s acid tongue, and his disposition to put the blame on his companion for the delay in their departure.
“May calamity overtake Messer Mocenigo,” Rocca was grumbling. “A fool in office, a numskull born to the purple who has never yet had to strive for his bread. Very easy for him to be high and mighty with men who risk their necks to serve the State.”
“It does not look,” Gallina complained, “as if we should serve the State much longer.”
“May your croaking choke you. Shall we be blamed for having been robbed?”
“Men like us are always blamed when things go wrong. That’s what we’re for. No account is taken of mischance where we are concerned.”
“You harp on the mischance. I’ve told you more than once that mischance, or chance of any kind, had nothing to do with what happened to us. It was all deliberate. There are plenty of indications of it. If they didn’t slit up the lining of your doublet as they did mine, and if that ruffian Ribera called off his fellow whilst he was still searching you, it can only have been because in the chart he found what he was seeking.”
Gallina remained unconvinced. “It looks like it, I know. But if Colon knew that we had stolen the chart, he wouldn’t have sent gipsies to rob us. He would have had us arrested.”
“You may suppose it. But I am as sure that those gitanos knew what they were looking for as I am that it was that trull Beatriz who betrayed us.”
“In order to hang her brother, I suppose. Bah! How could she betray what she didn’t know?”
Rocca looked at him with increasing dislike. “I sometimes wonder, Gallina, that with rudimentary wits like yours you should ever have prospered in this trade. It’s one of life’s mysteries. The girl knew that you knew where the chart was. When it vanished, what could she suppose but that we had stolen it?”
“If that were so, then our next conclusion should be that it was the girl who set the gitanos upon us. That, at least, would make some sort of sense.”
Rocca crashed fist into palm in astonishment at this sudden, sneering revelation. “By the Host, but it does. That is the explanation. That clears the last doubt. We had better act upon it.”
Gallina was startled. “I’ll not deny it’s a possibility,” he admitted. “I wonder that I didn’t think of it before.” He got up. “But how to act upon it?”
“We might pay Beatriz a visit, and find out exactly where we stand, and what’s become of the chart. It’s not impossible that we might yet recover it. Anyway, there are accounts to settle with that strumpet.”
They found her in her room at Zagarte’s, busy upon a piece of needlework. It wanted still some hours to the daily performance, the attendances at which had been greatly reduced in the past week by the Court’s departure from Cordoba.
She was singing quietly to herself as she plied her needle, a little song that withered on her lips at sight of them.
“God save you, Beatriz,” Rocca gently greeted her. If sad-coloured fustian replaced his ruined brocades, yet the flamboyance of his bearing was undiminished. He rolled forward, Gallina shambling after him.
“God save you,” she answered, staring. “I thought you were gone.”
“Without taking leave of you?” He was falsely genial. “How suppose it?”
“And why suppose it?” wondered Gallina. “With our work still to do.”
She was considering them in a calm that was only apparent. Inwardly she was striving with the instinctive sinister dread which their presence had awakened.
“You don’t answer,” said Gallina, coming to stand over her, as grim as Rocca was pleasant. “If you supposed that we had gone, you must also have supposed that we had done the work you were sent to do. Is that it?”
“That is what I supposed, naturally.”
His accusation followed, bluntly so as to surprise admission. “And you played us false by telling Colon.”
She rose suddenly, with something of defiance in her mien. “Why are you here? Why do you take this tone?”
“Answer me.” Gallina’s sinewy hand on her shoulder thrust her down again. “Don’t trifle with us, my girl. To go back on your bargain and refuse your help would have been one thing; that lies between yourself and your brother. But actively to hinder us by betrayal is quite another. And it is not a thing we can suffer.”
“What do you want with me? I have done enough for your purposes.”
“Yes, and then undone it, so that it all has to be done over again. Where is Colon?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me, you slut. Where is Colon?”
“I tell you I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for over a week. Go. Leave me. I have no more to say to you.”
Gallina leaned further over her. “It might come to pass,” he said, his voice softly sibilant, “that you might have no more to say to anyone.”
She was staring up in deepening fear, when Rocca sank to the divan beside her, and motioned Gallina away. He set a coaxing hand on her arm. He took a gentle affectionate tone. “Listen to me, Beatriz. We’ve played fair with you. Will you play us false now for the sake of a rascal who tricks you to his ends? Are you so infatuated as to forget that this is a man of courts, whose proper mates are among the hidalgos and hidalgas? At what do you suppose that he values a dancing-girl but as the toy of an idle hour? Why, child, all Cordoba knows that the lovely Marchioness of Moya is his mistress. Is that the man for whose sake you will destroy your brother?”
“What do you hope to gain by this?”
Whilst Gallina watched in silence, Rocca pursued his subtle course of cajolery. “We want to help you. But for that you must help us. Even now it may not be too late. What’s done may yet be undone. Ten days ago, on the road to Malaga, we were robbed of the chart. I needn’t tell you that that was no ordinary robbery. Now what we want you to do is——”
There Gallina’s cry came harshly to interrupt him. “In the name of Hell, must you still be talking?”
It startled both Rocca and Beatriz. They looked up and round to see that the door had opened, and that under the lintel stood Colon.
He advanced, leaving the door a-swing behind him. He was very pale, a wry smile on his lips, a smouldering fire in his grey eyes. “Pray continue to instruct the lady in her duties, Messer Rocca.”
Both Rocca and Beatriz, the Venetian’s hand still upon her arm, came together to their feet, and with Gallina stood eyeing Colon in a shocked silence.
“What? Nothing more to say? Well, well! Perhaps you have said enough. Certainly enough to enlighten a poor, blind fool named Cristobal Colon. Now that I understand I admire your courage, you rogues, that you should still linger in Cordoba with your impudent decoy.”
“God!” gasped Beatriz, clutching her breast.
Rocca’s hand stole behind him. “You’ll measure your words, my lad.”
“Be sure I’ll measure them. I’ll use no more than I need for a warning. See that you’re gone from Cordoba by this time to-morrow, all three of you, you vermin, or I shall know how to see you gaoled.”
“Is that your humour?” said Gallina.
“That is my humour. To have you gaoled for thieves. I hold the proof, and for witnesses I have the men who found my property upon you.”
Rocca was airy. “It flatters my discernment to find things just as I had supposed.”
“Use that discernment to profit by my warning. You owe it to the unfortunate woman whose haroltry you used.”
He swung on his heel to go, and Beatriz, petrified between a consciousness of guilt and a consciousness that the situation damned her utterly, had no word to stay him.
She could not guess whether Colon had come already informed by Santangel of her betrayal and refusing to perceive a mitigation of it in her subsequent warning, or whether, still in ignorance, he had inferred her part from the situation in which he found her and the words he had overheard. In her despair, however, it did not seem to her that it could matter either way.
It was left for Rocca to answer. His hand came from behind him, armed with the dagger that had hung upon his hip. “We thank you for the warning. It is timely.”
Gallina’s hand was raised to arrest his less calculating associate. Colon, however, sensed rather than heard the swift attack. He wheeled to meet it no more than in time, and it was purely the unreasoned act of lightning reflexes that caught the Venetian’s wrist as the blow descended.
Big and heavily built, Rocca was an active, powerful man, who in the pursuit of his dangerous calling had held his own against odds in many a rough-and-tumble. But Colon, too, was a man of his hands, of unsuspected strength, whom turbulent years at sea had schooled in a prompt dexterity. He swung the arm outwards with a wrenching twist that drove a searing agony through the socket. Then, as Rocca swung sideways, a leg was thrust behind his heels to trip him, and brought him crashing to the ground, his right arm dislocated and useless.
Already Gallina was leaping to the attack, for though his cooler head might deplore the battle so rashly joined, there was no alternative now but to pursue it. He too was armed, and Colon, looking round for a weapon, caught up, for lack of a better one, Beatriz’s guitar from the chair on which it stood near his hand. Swung like a battle-axe, with terrific force, the back of it smote Gallina’s face, to stay his charge. As he staggered under the blow, the instrument was swung a second time, and it took him so violently across the crown that his head went through both sides of it and remained encased in it as in a pillory. He fell back blindly, knocking the table over, and with the blood streaming down his lacerated face, struggled wildly to deliver himself of that jagged collar.
Rocca, faint with pain, had, nevertheless, recovered his dagger with his left hand, and was in the act of rising, when a vigorous kick sent him sprawling again.
Colon, going out backwards, hurtled into Zagarte who with a couple of lads and Beatriz’s Morisco woman had been drawn by the uproar. The scene wrung from him an excited, “Bismillah!” and the dismayed inquiry: “By all the devils, what is happening here?”
“These two assassins set upon me with their daggers. Summon the watch.”
Yet a third lad who was arriving, sped away on that errand, whilst Gallina, delivered at last of the guitar, which lay smashed on the ground, staggered forward without attempting to stanch the blood that dripped from his face, yet attempting truculence, with Rocca limp and livid at his heels. Beyond them on the divan, wild-eyed, mute and gripped by horror, crouched Beatriz.
Zagarte just inside the doorway was angrily meeting Gallina with protests that never yet had such things happened in his well-conducted house. Vainly did Gallina demand to be allowed to pass.
“You shall pass when the alguaziles come for you. May I die if I’ll suffer anyone to use brothel-manners here. Drawing knives in my house, you bandits! The Corregidor shall school you.”
Thus he and his lads held them until the alguaziles arrived. They came promptly and in force, upon a tale that murder was being done. With their high sense of duty, they marched off not only the Venetians, but Colon as well. It would be, said their leader, for the Corregidor to disentangle the matter and decide who were the assailants, who the assailed.