He came about again. He spoke of torture once more, but in a half-hearted sort of way; for he did not himself believe that it would be effective with a man of Brancaleone’s temper.
Brancaleone laughed at the threat, and shrugged his shoulders. “You may as profitably hang me, Messer Dragut,” he said, “for your infidel barbarities will but seal my lips for all time.”
“We might torture the woman,” said Dragut the ingenious.
Brancaleone, on the words, turned white to the lips; but it was the pallor of bitter, heartsearing resolve, not the pallor of such fear as Dragut had hoped to awaken. He advanced a step, his imperturbability all gone, and he sent his words into the face of the corsair with the fierceness of a cornered wild cat.
“Attempt it,” said he, “and as God’s my witness I leave you to your fate at the hands of Genoa — ay, though my heart should burst with the pain of my silence. I am a man, Messer Dragut; never doubt it.”
“I do not,” said Dragut, his piercing black eyes upon that set white face. “I agree to your terms. Show me a way out of Doria’s clutches, and you shall have all that you have asked for.”
Chapter V: Really Simple.
Trembling still from his recent emotion, Brancaleone hoarsely bade the corsair call up his officers and repeat his words before them. “And you shall make oath upon this matter,” he added. “Men say of you that you are a faithful Moslem. I mean to put it to the test.” Dragut, now all eagerness to know what plan was stirring in his prisoner’s brain, unable to brook further suspense in this affair, called up his officers, and before them all, taking Allah to witness, he made oath upon the beard of the Prophet that if Brancaleone could show him deliverance, he on his side would recompense the Genoese to the extent demanded.
Thereafter Dragut and Brancaleone went ashore, with no other attendant but the Nubian swordsman. It was the Genoese who led the way, not toward the fort, as Dragut had expected, but in the opposite direction. Arrived at the northernmost curve of that almost circular lagoon, where the ground was swampy. Brancaleone paused. He pointed across a strip of shallow land, that was no more than a half mile or so in width, to the blue-green sea beyond. Part of this territory was swamp, and part sand; vegetation there was of the scantiest; some clumps of reeds, an odd date palm, its crest rustling slightly in the breeze, and nothing else.
“It is really very simple,” said the Italian. “Yonder lies your way.”
As he spoke, a red-legged stork rose from the edge of the marsh, and went circling overhead.
Dragut’s face was purple with rage. He deemed that this smooth fellow had brought him there to make mock of him.
“Are my galleys winged like that stork, thou fool?” he answered passionately. “Or are they wheeled like chariots that I can sail them over dry land.”
Brancaleone looked at him in stupefaction. “I protest,” said he, “that for a man of your reputation for shrewdness, you fill me with amazement. I said you were a dull fellow. I little dreamed how dull. Nay, now, suppress your rage. Truth is a very healing draft, and you have need of it. I compute now that aboard your ships there will be, including slaves, some three thousand men.
“No doubt you could press another thousand from the island into your service. How long would it take four thousand men to dig a channel deep enough to float your shallow galleys through that strip of land?”
Dragut’s fierce eyes flickered as though he had been menaced with a blow. “By Allah!” he ejaculated, and gripped his beard. “By the splendor of Allah!”
“In a week the thing were easily done,”
Brancaleone resumed, “and meanwhile your fort will hold the admiral in play and mask your labors. Then, one dark night, you slip through this channel, and stand away to the south, so that by sunrise you shall have vanished beyond the sky line, leaving the admiral to guard an empty trap.”
Dragut laughed aloud, in almost childlike glee, and otherwise signified his delight by the vehemence with which he testified to the unity of Allah. Suddenly he checked, and his eyes narrowed as they rested upon Brancaleone. “’Tis a scurvy trick you play your lady’s grandsire!” said he.
The Genoese shrugged and, smiled deprecatingly. “Every man for himself, Messer Dragut. We understand each other, I think. ’Tis not for love of you I do this thing.”
“I would it were,” said the corsair, with an odd sincerity, and thereafter, as they returned to the galleys, it was seen that Dragut’s arm was about the shoulders of the infidel, and that he spoke with him as with a brother.
The fact is that Dragut, fired with admiration of Brancaleone’s resourcefulness, was cast down at the thought that so fine a spirit should of necessity be destined to go down to the pit. He spoke to him now of the glories of Islam, and of the future that must await a gentleman of his endowments in the ranks of the Moslem; he had of a sudden conceived so great an affection for him that he was filled with the desire to convert him to the true faith. But this was a matter in which Brancaleone was politely obdurate, and Dragut had not the time to devote to the conversation, greatly as he desired it. There was the matter of that canal to engage him.
Brancaleone’s instructions were diligently carried out. Daily the fort at the Boca de Cantara would belch forth shot at the Genoese navy, which stood well out of range. To the admiral this was but the barking of a dog that dared not come within biting reach, and the waste of ammunition roused his contempt of that pirate Dragut whom he held at his mercy.
There came a day, however, when the fort was silent; it was followed by another day of silence, in the evening of which one of the admiral’s officers suggested that all might not be well. Doria agreed with him.
“All is not at all well with that dog Dragut.”
Andrea Doria laughed in his white beard. “He wants us within range of his guns. The ruse is a little too obvious.”
And so the great Genoese fleet remained carefully out of range of the empty fort, what time Dragut himself was some scores of miles away, speeding as fast as his slaves could row for the archipelago and the safety of the Dardanelles. In the words of the Spanish historian, Marmol, who has chronicled the event — although many of the details here recorded escaped his knowledge— “Dragut left Messer Andrea Doria ‘with the dog to hold.’”
Brancaleone accompanied the Moslem fleet at first, though now aboard the galley which Dragut had given him in accordance with their agreement, and with him sailed the lovely Amelia Francesca Doria, his chest of gold, the jewels, and the fifteen hundred ducats that Dragut, grimly stifling his reluctance, had paid the Genoese.
On the second day of their voyage, the corsair was able to replace the vessel granted to Brancaleone. They met a royal galley from Naples, manned by Spaniards, and rowed by Moslem slaves. She was speeding to Andrea Doria with news that the viceroy was sending reenforcements. There was a sharp, short fight, and Messer Dragut added her to his fleet, liberating the Moslem slaves, and replacing them by the Spaniards who had manned the vessel.
Some hours later, Messer Brancaleone and the corsair captain parted company with many expressions of mutual good will, and the Genoese put about and steered a northwesterly course for the coast of Spain.
Chapter VI: That Impudent Genoese
It was some months ere Dragut learned the true inwardness of Messer Brancaleone’s conduct.
He had the story from a Genoese captive, captain of a carack which the corsair scuttled in the Straits of Messina. The fellow’s name chanced to be Brancaleone, upon learning which Dragut inquired if he were kin to one Ottavio Brancaleone, who had gone to Spain with the admiral’s granddaughter.
“He is my cousin,” the man answered. And Dragut now learned that in the teeth of the opposition of the whole Doria family, the irrepressible Brancaleone had carried off Madonna Amelia. The admiral had news of it as he was putting to sea, and it was in pursuit not only of Dragut, but also of the runagates, that he had come south so far as Jerbah, having reason more than to suspect that they were aboa
rd one of Dragut’s galleys. The admiral had sworn to hang Brancaleone from his yardarm ere he returned to port, and his bitterness at the trick Dragut had played him was increased by the reflection that Brancaleone, too, had got clear away.
Dragut was very thoughtful when he heard that story. “And to think,” said he, “that I paid that unconscionable dog fifteen hundred ducats and gave him my best galley manned by two hundred Christian slaves for rendering himself as great a service as ever he was rendering me!”
He bore no malice, however. On the contrary, his admiration grew for that impudent Genoese, the only Christian who had ever bested Dragut in a bargain, and if he had a regret it was that so shrewd a spirit should abide in the body of an infidel. “In the service of Islam,” he was wont to say, “such a man as Brancaleone might have gone far indeed. But Allah is all-knowing.”
ANNABEL’S WAGER
London Magazine, March 1905
I once knew a man who, being under sentence of death, was fretted, the night before they hanged him, at having taken cold — which may serve as an instance of how it is not so much the greater of foreshadowed ills that harasses us as the more imminent. To this construction of the human mind I may set it down that, lying besieged in Penhilgon Castle, with the assurance that should we fall into the hands of the Roundheads that were besetting us there was an overwhelming likelihood of a short shrift in payment for our obstinate resistance, I was a thousand times more plagued and vexed by the coldness of Sir Andrew Penhilgon’s daughter than by any contemplation of what might befall did His Majesty’s move from Oxford fail to take place in time to save us.
You may say that I was a fool not to discern that a maid could hardly opine the season one for dalliance; but defer your judgment until you have heard what else I have to tell.
A time there had been when it had seemed that my suit with Annabel was like to prosper, and this it had done but for the coming to Penhilgon of Master Steele — a man as out of place in that stern garrison as a shaveling monk in a regiment of cavalry. He was a pretty fellow — thus much justice I will do his looks — but it would seem that Nature jested in that he had been born a man. At heart, I’ll swear, he was a woman. He had a woman’s daintiness of speech, a woman’s mincing ways of gesture; like a woman, he inclined to the pursuit of flowers and verses, and he was stirred by all a woman’s gentle horror of war and bloodshed. He started did a musket crack, and the flash of a drawn sword would make him blench and shudder, whilst the sight of blood turned him as squeamish as the sight of virtue might old Satan.
It was over-strange how Annabel, the child of a warlike race, should come to suffer the attentions of this feeble creature, scented like a nosegay and beribboned like a church in time of victory. Yet this she did; and whilst I went about my duties at the castle in sombre, jealous moodiness, and Sir James scowled damnably upon the business, Master Steele sunned himself in her smiles, walked with her in the quadrangle or upon the ramparts, sat with her at the spinet, and, in short, was never from her side. That he was named Steele was but another irony. Had I had the naming of him I would have called him Water.
Enough was Sir James put about by the siege, and I dared not intrude my grievance upon the anxiety wherewith already he was over-burdened. Moreover, for all that he disliked good Master Steele, yet were his views less rancorous than mine, for, after all, he was but Annabel’s father; and a father is oft wont to be less troubled by his daughter’s choice of a lover than are other men.
I stood one night upon the ramparts to the north, looking down upon the lights gleaming in the Parliamentarian lines, and wondering how soon the King would come. There was a bloody bandage about my head, for there had been sharp work that day, and though we had repulsed the enemy effectively for the time, yet the victory had been dearly bought in lives and limbs. Annabel approached me softly in the dark, and her voice was tender as a caress.
“My poor Jocelyn, does your head hurt?”
I started round, and, my mood being boorish and surly with jealousy “’Tis naught,” said I. “The graze of a pike. A little more and it had made an end of me; yet I know gentler hands that deal wounds less bloody but more hurtful.”
“’Tis perhaps that you wound yourself upon the weapons of those hands.”
“Mistress,” I answered, “I have not a poet’s mind to grasp these nice distinctions. Master Steele,” I went on, with my back turned, “I pray you make clear to me her meaning.”
“To whom are you speaking?” she asked. “Master Steele is not here.”
“Is he not!” I cried in feigned surprise, and turning as if to assure myself of his absence: “why, what hath chanced that he is not beside you? And just as I so needed him! Lackaday!”
“Jealousy lends you a poor wit,” said she, “and outrivals Nature in making you a dullard.”
“Madam,” said I with a great dignity, “a wounded head is a not over-useful thing to think with.”
She came a step nearer at that, but ere she could speak there was a heavy tread behind us, and Sir Andrew’s voice.
“Is it not strange, Jocelyn,” said the knight, “with what insistence they press us here on the northern side?”
“I had indeed remarked it,” I replied. “Our weakness in this quarter cannot be apparent to them from without, yet, by a singular ill-chance, each attack has been directed against it.”
“Ay,” he growled sourly, “it would almost seem as if they had information from within.”
“Impossible,” I answered quickly.
“So you say, yet I cannot repress the suspicion. There is one here of whom we know but little save that he fled to us for shelter.”
“Monstrous!” cried Annabel, divining of whom he spoke.
He laughed contemptuously, and looked to me for an answer.
I hesitated for a moment. The rivalry that lay between Steele and me made me pause before uttering what otherwise I had spoken boldly. Yet in the end, deeming the season other than one for scruples, and realising how much foundation there was for Sir Andrew’s suspicion, “It might not be ill,” I hazarded, “to apply some test.”
“’Tis what I had thought,” he agreed, whereupon Annabel cried “Monstrous” again; then turning to me, “’Tis cowardly in you,” she exclaimed. “Master Steele is an honourable gentleman, and I would as soon suspect you of being the traitor.”
I smiled wistfully, and held up my left hand, from which the two middle fingers had been lopped by a Puritan sword some months ago.
“‘Od’s life, Annabel,” I answered, “I wear the signs of my loyalty for all to read.”
“And so does he, for those that have discerning eyes. He is aglow with loyalty. Could you but see the verses he has written on the King—”
“Bah!” snarled Sir Andrew, rudely interrupting her.
“Verses are but words,” said I, “and words need not express our true sentiments. Of what value, for instance, is a liar’s word?”
“You dub him liar now!” she cried, with a woman’s faculty for subverting a man’s meaning. “I vow ’tis very noble of you!”
Whereupon, seeing how her mood had grown of that quality in which the merest word offends, I held my peace.
But coming later to ponder what Sir Andrew had said — and aided, maybe, in some unconscious way by my dislike for Steele — I grew more and more distrustful of the youth; to such a degree at last that, seeking Sir Andrew on the morrow, I counselled that some measure of test be applied.
“Do what you will,” said he. “I mislike the coxcomb with his oily, insidious ways; and if you do no more than prove him a craven, and cure Annabel of her unaccountable kindness for him, ‘twill be something.”
He set his hand on my shoulder, and, letting his eyes meet mine, he sighed.
“Before he came to us it seemed that Annabel was growing fond of you, Jocelyn.” Then, bracing himself: “Make your experiment, lad. Put him to some test; and may Heaven send you success, and prove him a rogue!”
With t
hat encouragement I set to work. And, my plans being laid, I went in quest of good Master Steele that evening. I found him in one of the rooms overlooking the courtyard. He sat with Annabel, citing lines — whose virtues he was extolling — from the words of one Thomas Campion. Annabel, who reclined in a great chair, listened with great show of attention.
“Master Steele,” said I, as politely as may be.
“Your servant, sir,” said he, in a tone that implied the very contrary; then added that anon he would give me his attention. I told him, with a brevity that held more peremptoriness than wit, that my business could not wait, for it was desired that within an hour, as soon as it grew dark, he should leave the castle. Before I had got further Annabel was on her feet, and eyeing me with some show of anger.
“This is your doing, Jocelyn!” she exclaimed hotly.
“In a measure it may be; yet things are not as you think. There is no question of Master Steele’s dismissal. On the contrary. I come from Sir Andrew to afford him an opportunity of very signally distinguishing himself, if he is minded to undertake the task I shall propose.”
He was toying stupidly with a lock of his hair, his jaw fallen, and his cheeks, methought, a little paler than their wont.
“Master Steele,” I resumed, seeing that he had no word to offer, “as you may in a measure realise, our circumstances here are growing sorely straitened, and we shall not be able to resist the crop-ears much longer. We have just had news that Rupert is at Stafford; and we require a messenger who, escaping the vigilance of the Puritans, will make his way to the Prince, and bring him with all despatch to our assistance. It is Sir Andrew’s wish that you undertake this.”
“But why send Master Steele?” cried Annabel. “He is not a soldier.”
“Of that,” I answered drily, “I was dimly aware. But for this work a messenger is needed, not a soldier.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 477