Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  Meanwhile there was obvious information that he craved.

  “Matteo, the lovely lady on the prow of the bucentaur...”

  “Ah! Aha! Lovely! lovely!” Thus Matteo, the gondolier, agreed with enthusiasm, in the lilting tones of Venetian speech. “None lovelier in Venice that Madonna Lucrezia Loredano, which is to say none lovelier in Italy. Your Excellency remarked her. There are only the blind who do not do so, and they have no greater cause to regret their blindness.”

  MATTEO, you observe, had the spirit proper to the service of Messer Ottavio. The young exile was conscious of a tightening at the heart.

  “She is related to His Serenity?”

  “His daughter, Excellency. Doge Loredano’s only daughter.”

  Ottavio breathed freely again. For a moment he had feared she might be the doge’s wife.

  Long hours he waited, keeping Matteo fasting the while. But there was no reward for his patience. When at long last the bucentaur returned, Madonna Lucrezia was to be seen only in fleeting glimpses which betrayed rather than revealed her presence and served only to baffle his ardent questing gaze.

  She stood beside the tall figure of her father, resplendent in the cloth of gold of his ducal robes; but she was eclipsed there by the cloud of patricians and prelates who encircled them.

  Subjected thus to the agonies of the thirsting Tantalus, Messer Ottavio watched the great galley sweep majestically and swiftly on toward the Rialto, and since to attempt to follow with his single oar must be in vain, he desired Matteo, at last, to take him home.

  He was out of humour, almost peevish, and in this mood he came earlier than he was expected to the Casa San Michele. Entering his room on the mezzanine, he checked in surprise to behold Zanetto seated at the ormolu-incrusted writing table, thumbing the volume of Copernicus above an open copy of Suetonius.

  So intent was the rascal that he did not hear Messer Ottavio enter, nor move until Ottavio spoke, after a moment’s frowning stare: “What’s here?”

  The little valet leaped up with an outcry of panic, sending the Copernicus crashing to the floor. Ottavio’s annoyance swelled to anger at beholding his precious volume so maltreated. In four strides he crossed to Zanetto’s side. He took the rascal by the ear without gentleness.

  “So, so, Master Scholar! And, pray, who gave you leave to study here? To set your greasy paws upon my books!” By the ear he conducted him to the open door. “Here is something to remind you that it is well to keep to studies concerned with your office.” And with a well-applied kick he lifted Zanetto across the threshold. Slamming the door upon him, he went tenderly to pick up, dust and restore the fallen book.

  PRESENTLY growing calmer, and being naturally of a gentle, amiable disposition, he was ashamed of his violence. He recalled Zanetto, and when the fellow came, cringing, in answer, he proffered him two gold sequins.

  “Here’s an unguent for your bruise, my lad. We will forget the incident. Bear me no rancour and I’ll bear you none.”

  Zanetto, who had been expecting something very different, displayed first astonishment. Then a furtive look of suspicion momentarily flashed from his little eyes. Finally a smile, false and fawning, broke on that lean, foxy face.

  “It is not for such as I to bear rancour to such as Your Excellency.” He took the sequins. “You are too good, Excellency.”

  “That is probably true. Another in my place would have dismissed you.”

  Fresh surprise appeared on Zanetto’s face. “But since Your Excellency leaves tomorrow—”

  “Not so. I have changed my mind.”

  “You are remaining, Excellency? Ah, but that is good. How long, Excellency? How long?”

  “We shall see. I do not know.”

  In this he spoke more truly than he thought. Neither how long nor to what purpose he would remain could he have told you.

  For a man in his position to hope to seek the acquaintance of the doge’s daughter was so far beyond the bounds of possibility that it could not enter even into his dreams. And yet to go from the environment that held her was equally impossible. Though he might entertain no hope of ever speaking to her, yet, at least, he could behold her again; and behold her again he must. There was such joy for this lover of beauty in the mere sight of her that whatever the peril of lingering he must incur it.

  AND so on the morrow he informed Antonelli that his departure was indefinitely postponed.

  After that he haunted all public places that were affected by the fashionable — the theatres, the gardens, the Ridotto, Florian’s and the arcades about St. Mark’s Square. Since this, however, constituted no departure from the manner in which he had spent the first seven days of his visit, it supplied nothing that could be deemed suspicious.

  One only addition did he make to established habit. His gondola would now patrol for hours that Grand Canal, and pass and re-pass before the Loredano Palace, just beyond the Bridge of the Rialto.

  More than once when he saw her emerge and enter her gondola, or when he chanced to come upon her afloat, he would order Matteo, his gondolier, discreetly to follow; and if, as happened once or twice, she landed in a public place where he, too, might land, he would continue the pursuit afoot, but a pursuit which never aimed to overtake and was always careful not to be obtrusive.

  In this fashion, and upon no more than just the noble sight of her, he nourished a mounting passion and consumed himself in longings which he perceived no remotest hope of gratifying.

  IF HE was not questing abroad for the object of his humble, distant worship, he was shut up in his room in the Casa San Michele, seeking to find in rimed couplets expression of his absorbing passion.

  He found in these poetical exercises a queer relief, an outlet for emotions which if pent up must end by stifling him. He would sit late into the night composing these little songs of heartbreak, for which, be it confessed, he borrowed a good deal from the Petrarchian sonnets.

  Sometimes when he accomplished something that seemed to approach a true expression of his longings and despair, he would declaim it aloud in the dead of night, pacing his chamber, and allowing himself to imagine that she was within earshot of his burning utterances.

  This until one night a sound on his threshold discovered to him that he had an audience indeed. Softly crossing the room and abruptly opening the door, he found Zanetto crouching there.

  He was very angry, for he feared that if Zanetto had distinguished the actual words he had been uttering, he must have rendered himself ridiculous.

  For the second time in their association he took the valet by the ear and drew him up from that crouching attitude. “Why do you spy on me?” he snarled at him.

  The other grimacing at once from pain and fear protested fearfully.

  “I was not spying, Excellency. I heard your voice. I thought you called. I thought you might be ill.”

  Ottavio loosed his hold. “Begone! Back to your bed, zany, and don’t let me find you here again.”

  Consciousness of the fellow’s obvious inquisitiveness, however, led Ottavio to exercise more care thereafter, and to lock away the reams he covered with writing and rewriting.

  THUS a second week followed the first, and they were midway through the third week, when one morning, while Ottavio was lounging in a bedgown over his chocolate, the Abbé Daugers, introduced by Zanetto, stood suddenly before him.

  “God be thanked!” was the abbé’s greeting.

  “For what, if you please?” demanded Ottavio coldly, taking no satisfaction in the sight of him.

  “That I have found you, My Lord.”

  “Will you tell me how you performed the miracle?”

  “I sought Fra Gregorio at San Domenico.”

  “I see.” Ottavio rose at last, dusting crumbs from his lap. “And the reason for your presence?”

  “The reason?” The abbé showed impatience at the question. “We have been in mortal anxiety for you. We feared that—”

  Ottavio interrupted him. The valet was li
ngering deliberately by the door. “Why do you wait, Zanetto?”

  “For your commands, Excellency.”

  “I have none. When I have I’ll summon you.”

  As the door closed upon the departing servant, Ottavio addressed the abbé in French. “I begin to suspect that rascal of being a spy.”

  If the abbé sought an argument of persuasion it was ready to his hand. He was genuinely flung into a panic. “And suspecting this, knowing what discovery will cost you, have you still remained?”

  “It is only a suspicion, after all.”

  “Will you wait to verify it? Will you wait to leave your head where your brother said you’d leave it? You must be mad, Ottavio; and you have all but driven us mad from fear on your account. I solemnly exhort you to come to your senses and depart with me while still you may. Your brother did not exaggerate when he told you that the eyes of the Serene Republic are as numerous as those of Argus. How much longer do you suppose you will go undetected here? You say, yourself, that you suspect your own servant of being a spy. It is more than likely. If he should come to have a doubt of your pretended identity, if he should—”

  “Monsieur l’Abbé, I do not rule my life by ifs. I do not fret myself with vain conjecture. Understand, I pray, that it is my intention to remain awhile in Venice. From that intention you have no argument to move me.”

  NEVERTHELESS, the Abbé Daugers still did his best, as he conceived to be his duty. In the end, however, he departed baffled, out of temper.

  Unperturbed, Messer Ottavio remained to continue the indulgence of this madness, to continue his mute distant worship at Madonna Lucrezia’s shrine. And he continued it with an ever-increasing assiduity. Whenever and wherever she appeared in public it was rarely that he was not present; observing her, nourishing his ever-mounting passion upon no more than just the noble sight of her, oblivious of the attention this assiduity of his must attract and the danger of the inquiries into his identity which might follow.

  In those weeks he grew pale and thin and even a little wild of aspect, and gradually there arose in him a still greater recklessness. Grown impatient of the reticence imposed upon him, and having, as a result of all his lucubrations, composed a little song that expressed his desperate case too perfectly to be suffered to remain unsung, he crept from his lodging just after day-break on a fair June morning armed with no more than a guitar.

  He embarked alone in his gondola, himself took up the great yellow oar, and propelled the boat through the silence of rose-tinted dawn up the Grand Canal toward the Rialto and the great house above whose portals were carved in arabesques of stone the six five-leaved roses of Loredano.

  HE LET his boat drift before the water-lapped marble steps, flanked by emblazoned piles; then he exchanged the oar for the guitar, and on the silence of the still sleeping city he loosed the song that he had made; the Canzon d’Ottavio, as it has since come to be known, which has served the ends of many a less self-expressive lover since.

  Sweetly its refrain throbbed upward:

  I dare not pray, for prayer invites reply;

  All that I ask of life is just that I

  May breathe the air you breathe until I die.

  On the third repetition of that tender refrain a slatted green shutter opened like an eye in the silent marble face of that house, and framed in the embrasure he beheld her, all in white, her hair unbound, like a sable cloak draped about her shoulders.

  Beholding her there and grown conscious of her glance upon him, he fell suddenly mute, in a paralysis akin to that which he had known when first he had seen her on the bucentaur. An instant, in fascination, his face remained upturned. Then, panic robbing him of breath and urging flight, he dropped the guitar, snatched up the oar again and sent the long black boat racing over the still bosom of the water.

  He felt as one who had been caught in an act of profanation. If ever she had noticed him before when he so constantly haunted her environment, what but contempt could so noble a creature entertain for him now, accounting him one who sought by such crude devices to bring himself to her attention.

  He went home maddened by these thoughts, and coming there while all still slept, he quietly moored his boat and as quietly crept into the house so that he might disturb no one.

  IT WAS as a result of this unheralded approach that he came for the second time upon Zanetto, in doublet and breeches, rummaging among his books. For Zanetto the moment could not have been more inauspicious. Messer Ottavio’s ill-humour found here a ready channel for its venting. With an imprecation of annoyance he caught the trembling lackey by the scruff of the neck with one hand and by his waistband with the other. Holding him thus, and abusing him fiercely the while, he propelled him from the room and flung him bodily down the stairs. Zanetto rolled and bumped to a crumpled heap on the stone floor in the hall below, and there, after a moment’s gasping for breath, set up a bellowing that threatened to rouse the house.

  In pain and rage he screamed at Ottavio, who remained above surveying him.

  “You’ve broken my leg! Holy Mother of Heaven! You’ve broken my leg!”

  “It should have been your neck, you meddlesome rat. Then you would be making less noise. If you don’t hold your foul tongue, I’ll come down and throw you into the canal.”

  In terror of a ferocity which he nothing doubted would perform what it threatened, Zanetto’s howls subsided into whimpers.

  Messer Ottavio, however, was deeply perturbed. He remembered all his earlier vague suspicions that his valet spied upon him; he remembered in particular that phrase of Marcantonio’s of which the Abbé Daugers had reminded him, that the Republic had as many eyes as Argus and that no stranger ever escaped her scrutiny, and the conviction grew upon him that the eyes of Zanetto were in the hire of the authorities, that Zanetto had been placed in his service precisely so as to observe him and report upon him.

  BUT what, after all, could the fellow have discovered? The attraction of those books would be obvious. A book will so often bear witness to the identity of its owner. It is a common practice for an owner to inscribe his name in a book. Would this be what Zanetto was seeking? If so, then he must have some grounds for suspecting that Ottavio’s identity was other than it was represented. What grounds? Searching his memory, it occurred to Ottavio at last that he had been addressed as “My Lord” by the Abbé Daugers within the hearing of Zanetto.

  The more he considered, however, the quieter became his apprehensions. After all, there was nothing in those books that could betray him. He had not been such a fool as to bring any volume that contained his name. Of this he was quite sure. And yet, as men in his circumstance will, he went to verify the conviction.

  But as he turned the books over he felt himself go suddenly cold. On the back of his copy of Petrarch, bound in dark brown calf, the arms of his house were stamped in gold. By what crass blindness had he overlooked this until now? Here was blatant advertisement of his identity. It was as if the book he held shouted his name aloud for all the world to hear it.

  III

  IN THE first shock of the discovery Ottavio was numb with apprehension. Then, reason gradually supervening, panic was thrust out. After all, Zanetto was a common, unlettered clown. It was unlikely that he was able to read a heraldic device. And if he were? What, then, after all? To have this book in his possession did not definitely prove that the arms it bore were Ottavio’s own. But it might have to be explained. Suppose the volume were placed before the Inquisitors of State. What inquiries might it not set on foot?

  Messer Ottavio stood considering for only another moment. Then he took his resolve. He went to lock the door. Next he sought flint and steel and tinder, and by these means lighted a taper which stood upon his writing table. Then he carried book and taper to the hearth, and with a sigh of regret watched the flames consume his beloved Petrarch. When only a heap of black ashes remained, he gathered them up carefully to the last flake and, going out on to the balcony, cast them from him and watched them borne
away on the morning air to settle quietly in the waters of the canal.

  Relieved, he re-entered his room. With that destruction of the only clear piece of evidence against him, he grew calm again.

  A prudent man in Messer Ottavio’s place would have considered that the event constituted a sufficient warning, and must at once have departed from surroundings of such peril to him. Even if we concede that a man in love is seldom prudent, and that a lover will incur appalling risks to attain his object, it still remains that Messer Ottavio aimed at the attaining of no object, had, in fact, no object to attain, and, therefore, that by sane canons it is impossible to condone the aimless obstinacy which still kept him fast in Venice. It is merely to be chronicled that remain he did.

  When Antonelli came to inquire more closely into the reason of his violence, Messer Ottavio accounted that he had nothing to conceal. It was not the first time that he had caught Zanetto rummaging amongst his books and papers. Antonelli confessed that it was extremely odd, particularly considering Zanetto’s illiteracy. What interest could books possibly possess for the clown?

  “It is what I ask myself,” said Ottavio.

  “Perhaps the pictures attracted him,” ventured Antonelli.

  “Pictures!” Ottavio was scornful. He opened the Copernicus to display its astronomical figures, and the Euclid, so that Antonelli might gaze upon the geometrical designs. “Are those pictures to interest a clown?”

  ANTONELLI considered them. Then he looked through the other volumes, in which there were no images of any kind Baffled, he asked at last: “Have you nothing else?”