Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  “See for yourself,” replied Ottavio, saying nothing about the Petrarch which he had destroyed.

  Antonelli confessed that he could not understand. But he could understand Messer Ottavio’s irritation. He hoped, however, that Zanetto was not so grievously injured as he represented.

  It proved that he was not. A doctor summoned to examine his hurt pronounced him to be suffering from no more than a few bruises and a sprain. In three or four days he should be about again.

  “When he is, he may go to the devil,” said Ottavio. “I do not want him near me again. You may tell him so, Antonelli.”

  Thus, having dismissed him from his service, Messer Ottavio dismissed the rascal from his mind, and did not permit the thought of him to change his course of life.

  He continued to haunt the resorts in which he might feast his eyes upon Lucrezia Loredano. He saw her twice in the next three days, each time at the opera. People had begun to notice him. After all, with his fine figure, rich apparel and great air, he was sufficiently remarkable. But while in any case his obsession must have left him unconscious of this general observation, he remained the more unconscious of it now since he saw signs which made him suspect that he was being observed by Madonna Lucrezia.

  Was it possible that at last, aroused perhaps to consciousness of his worship by that aubade of his, her interest in him was awake? But if so, what could possibly ensue? Thus, with reflection, hope came to be stifled. But in the young and in the lover hope is of an obstinate, persistent growth. Messer Ottavio actually began at last to ply his wits to discover some means by which he might create a climax. And then a climax was created for him of quite another sort, the very climax which had been predicted for his adventure, and of which he had disregarded every warning.

  Its author, of course, was the despised Zanetto.

  Unbidden, the rascal came limping into Messer Ottavio’s room one evening as dusk was falling.

  In the failing light Messer Ottavio sat dreaming at his writing table, on which were spread before him the sheets of all his riming essays. But scant as was the light, he caught something of the leering insolence on the servant’s lean face, sensed it in the fellow’s very attitude of body. It was the first time Ottavio had seen Zanetto since he had flung him down the stairs a week ago.

  “What do you want here?” he asked him. “Were you not told that I have dismissed you?”

  “Oh, I was told.” There was an infinite mockery in the croaking voice, very odd in one whom hitherto Ottavio had known only and always of a fawning servility. “Oh, I was told. But it’s my turn to tell you something. I’ve a score to settle with you, my fine lord.”

  Ottavio got up quickly, conceiving that he was about to be attacked and looking for weapons in the other’s empty hands.

  “Why, you rogue, what tone is this? Must I break the bones of your neck in earnest?”

  ZANETTO laughed softly. “It’s the bones of your own neck are in the greater danger now, my master. Last time you were violent with me, you thought you could buy me off with two sequins. You thought I’d be false to my duty for that paltry sum, didn’t you? If you did, you wronged me. Your bribe only confirmed my suspicions of you. Not another day would I have remained in such service as yours, but that I needed proof of what you are. Let me tell you that I have that proof. When you threw me down those stairs you were already too late. I had seen all I needed to see; and I knew. I’ll not say that if you had been less brutal with me I might not have had some pity on you. But I pay you back in your own coin, my lord. I have a duty to the Republic, and I’ve performed it. I’ve denounced you to the Inquisitors of State, my fine patrician. You’d have broken my neck, would you? Well, now, I’ve a notion I shall be there to see them do something of the kind to yours.”

  Ottavio stood as stiffly as if he had suddenly been frozen. The rage surging in him at this insufferable insolence, he contrived to stifle. This he realized was, in the circumstances, a trivial emotion which must not be permitted to obscure his wits. If he was denounced, but one thing remained: instant flight, thanking God that the meanness of this creature’s soul and the desire to gloat should have betrayed him into uttering this timely warning.

  But even as the determination took shape, Zanetto crushed it. “Look from your window, noble sir, and behold the stately arrival of Messer Grande,” the rascal mocked him.

  At the mention of that official name of the Republic’s dread captain of justice, Messer Ottavio, who had been in the act of moving, was suddenly arrested.

  Through the open window floated the gurgle of waters before a prow, the swish and wash of oars and a sound of voices.

  An instant the young man paused, peering through the gloom at the white gleaming face of the vindictive valet, then without a word he stepped out upon the balcony and looked down.

  The great black barge, unmistakable, with the shield of the Republic on the prow, for that of Messer Grande, was drawing alongside the steps of the Casa San Michele. Even as he looked, forth from it stepped the bulky figure of the captain of justice, all in black, followed by four of his pursuivants with their short halberds.

  Instinctively Ottavio stepped back, and then his heart missed a beat when he heard the voice of Messer Grande announcing to the porter that he came in quest of a man named Ottavio Malatesta.

  His recovery of his wits was instantaneous. After all, he possessed both courage and resource, and he carried them in a vigorous athletic body. It would take Messer Grande perhaps two minutes to ascend the stairs to the mezzanine. It was a meagre enough measure of time. Yet in less time than that, many a man had cheated fortune.

  FROM an instant’s reflection he passed to action, moving like a whirlwind; and like a whirlwind he descended upon Zanetto, so that Zanetto, caught up unawares, before he even conceived himself menaced, screamed first for assistance, then for mercy.

  History was repeating itself for the valet. In that powerful grip he was swept from the room, borne across the threshold, and hurled down the staircase upon the ascending captain of justice. As if launched from a catapult he hurtled into Messer Grande, precariously balanced in the moment of impact. They went down together in a whirl of legs and arms and a storm of imprecations.

  Thus were precious seconds added to the little margin of time upon which Messer Ottavio was depending. Having launched the valet upon that ballistic journey, he sprang back into his room, slammed the door and drove home the bolts. They would not hold long against a resolute attack. But they might hold long enough. From this room he passed into the next, likewise closing the door and bolting it; and before the halberds of the pursuivants had fallen upon the first of the two doors that now presented obstacles to pursuit, Messer Ottavio was on the balcony of that farther room, making fast to the rail of it the end of a sheet which he had hastily dragged from his bed. Under this balcony, tied to a mooring pile that was striped red and black, rode his own light gondola.

  The barge of Messer Grande stood by the steps, held there by the boathook of one of the watermen, who squatted in the stern. The captain had placed a lieutenant and two men on guard there. These, however, had been drawn into the house by the uproar caused by the flying descent of Zanetto, and only the watermen now remained. Ottavio could not hope that they would not observe his flight. But taken by surprise and under the necessity of recalling the pursuivants and turning their clumsy craft about before they could set out in pursuit, he seemed assured of a considerable start.

  Luck and the dusk favoured him. The watermen, engaged in talk among themselves, were inattentive. He slid down the sheet, and swinging outward with it, he hooked his toes into the gunwale of his gondola, drawing it directly under him, and so dropped into it. To cast the boat loose was the work of a couple of seconds, and it was not until his oar smote the water that one of the watermen looked round. Even then, the dusk protecting the fugitive, that gondolier might have paid little heed to the receding boat but for the sight of the sheet dangling from the balcony in the gatherin
g gloom.

  Ottavio heard a shout go up behind him, and knew it for a view halloo. Without looking back, he thrust with all his weight upon his single oar and sent his gondola ripping through the water.

  He had certainly gained a considerable start before the pursuit began. But the swift action of the others made it less than he had hoped. First, there was the promptitude of the watermen themselves. While bawling the news of the hunted man’s flight they were swinging their boat about so as to be ready to follow the moment Messer Grande should return aboard. Then there was the promptitude of the lieutenant. Without waiting for his captain, who was battering down the door of an empty room above, he leaped aboard the black barge, followed by the two men who had remained with him and ordered the rowers to give chase.

  Messer Ottavio, by now nearly two hundred yards down the narrow rio and heading for the Grand Canal, glanced over his shoulder, and in the lights gleaming from a house had a glimpse of the police boat under way. Perceiving that the hunt was up, he thrust yet more vigorously upon his oar so as to increase the distance. Although there were six oars to Messer Grande’s barge, it was a ponderous, sluggish vessel. His own craft, after all, was a very light one, lightly laden with only himself, and he saw no reason to despair.

  He shot recklessly from that narrow waterway into the Grand Canal, barely missing a collision with a passing peota. He paid no heed to the objurgations of her crew as he swung away to the left in the direction of the Rialto. It was his hope that in the labyrinth of narrow and tortuous channels thereabouts he would succeed in baffling the pursuit, and so reach the open lagoon to the north, whence he might head for Mestre and safety.

  INEXPERIENCED waterman though he was, he nothing doubted his strength and endurance to push this boat all the way to Mestre if only he could get clear away. But while he might succeed in covering the journey at a leisurely pace, he certainly would never do it at the present rate of progress. A backward glance as he had been turning out of the Rio of San Barnaba had again shown him Messer Grande’s barge, recognizable now by a great square lantern that had been lighted in the prow, and to his dismay it did not seem to him that the distance between them had been increased at all. He looked behind him now at every stroke for the reappearance of that square lantern, and when at last he saw it swing into the broad waters of the Grand Canal, he perceived that, in spite of the advantages upon which he was depending, his pursuers were already gaining on him.

  Thus he was spurred, with a lessening hope, to greater effort. Very soon he began to find the pace too hot. He had none of the practiced gondolier’s strength-saving science. He grew conscious in alarm of aching sinews and of laboured breathing. He glanced behind him again. From the position of the great square lantern he gathered that at least he was maintaining his distance, and by now, the darkness having deepened, he must be lost in the gloom to those on board her.

  A festive galley travelling in the opposite direction was approaching him, aglow with lanterns and alive with music. Once that were past and the darkness again screened him, he would turn off into the first rio that presented itself, and hope thus to leave his pursuers questing and baffled.

  With this intent he pushed vigorously on. On his right, a couple of boats’ lengths away, he observed a two-oared gondola with a curtained felze which, strongly propelled, was sweeping parallel with him. Without slackening speed, he yet must wait until it had gone by before attempting to cross the canal.

  Thus he came alongside of the brilliantly lighted galley, and for a moment was fully revealed in the blaze from her lanterns. Chatter and laughter seemed to perish aboard her when this happened. The impression upon him was as if the galley herself had paused to stare at him.

  HE WAS in a suit of violet taffeta, the full skirts of his whaleboned coat with its rich gold lace standing out with fashionable stiffness. His lavender stockings, with fine gold embroidery at the sides, were modishly rolled above his knee, and the lacquered shoes in which he trod the little stern deck of the gondola were red-heeled and buckled with brilliant paste. His head was bare, revealing the careful clubbing of his luxuriant hair, and the hands grasping the oar were lost in lace.

  The moment’s silence on the galley was followed by an explosion of laughter, so oddly, incredibly incongruous did Messer Ottavio’s modish figure appear in the rôle of a gondolier.

  Nor was it only by the occupants of the galley that he had been observed. Momentarily revealed in that blaze of light, he had caught the attention of the occupant of the overtaking gondola on his right. One of the loose curtains of the felze was drawn aside, and — unobserved by him — a lady considered him in grave astonishment. She issued an order, the result of which was that her gondola instead of speeding ahead now kept parallel with that of the fugitive, and so thwarted him in his intention to cross and pass into one of the narrower channels.

  REDUCED to despair by this, Messer Ottavio deliberately paused on his oar to let the other gondola go ahead, so that he might pass behind it.

  To his dismay, however, the other gondola paused likewise. Perceiving this, he swung his boat to the right, and attempted to shoot ahead and so cross in front of the other. But the larger gondola moving at the same time, the result was that Messer Ottavio only just avoided colliding with it, and, as it was, he brought up against it with a glancing impact.

  Before he could veer away again, the gondolier in the prow had laid hold of his gunwale. In a frenzy of despair he naturally imagined that here some busybody, perceiving the situation and volunteering assistance to the law, had come to hinder his flight. And then, suddenly, he heard himself addressed by a voice from the deep shadow of the felze:

  “If you are pursued, sir, you would do well to step into my gondola and abandon your own. Your pursuers may then suppose you have fallen into the lagoon.”

  It was a woman’s voice, richly musical, yet of a calm authority; and that voice as much as its message deeply moved the hunted man. If he was taken by surprise, at least the surprise did not check his action for more than a couple of heart-beats. The way of escape so suddenly and unexpectedly opened to him was not one over which he could afford to hesitate.

  Messer Ottavio let his oar slide into the lagoon, and without awaiting any further invitation stepped from the stern of his own boat into the felze amidships of the other one. There he sank instantly upon one knee before his invisible rescuer, and in that moment felt the gondola under him leap forward away from his pursuers.

  “LADY, as you discerned, I am a hunted man, although I swear to you that I am innocent of evil. Nevertheless, if I am taken it is certain that I shall lose my life. By this you may measure my gratitude for your very timely charity. If you will land me at the Rialto, I will not further trouble you.”

  He heard again that melodious voice, so calm and assured that it must belong to one whom fear had never touched.

  “You are pursued, I think, by Messer Grande.”

  “By Messer Grande,” he agreed.

  “Yet you say that you have done no wrong; that you are innocent of evil.”

  “I swear it, madonna. By the Throne of Grace.”

  She did not answer him. From her silence he supposed that she accepted his sworn assurance. In that pause Messer Ottavio leaned out to look back. Faintly he could discern the great dancing lantern which proclaimed the whereabouts of his pursuers. He watched that lantern, what time he was recovering his breath; watched it until it came to a halt, beside his own abandoned craft. Then he saw other lights, the lights of torches held this way and that to tell him that they searched the waters. This moved him to a little sound of mirth.

  “Do you laugh?” said his invisible protectress, on a note of surprise.

  “I LAUGH to think that they must be supposing I have drowned myself.” And then the mirth passed out of his voice. His tone became solemn. “But for your charity, madonna, it is what must have happened to me this night. I must have preferred the lagoon to the headsman.”

  He told her more
than he supposed, declared by his words his patrician rank, since the axe as an instrument of death was reserved for patricians only.

  “Is your plight so desperate?” that calm voice asked him, but it seemed now less calm. “What is your crime?”

  “Faith, a very common one. I am my father’s son.”

  “Ah! What, then, was his?”

  “The same as mine. No more. He, too, was his father’s son. His father suffered banishment from Venice for himself and all his line forever. To break that ban is death for any of us.”

  “Why, then, have you broken it?”

  “So that I might see Venice. I swear, madonna, that I had no other purpose.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Here I go by the name of Ottavio Malatesta,” he answered cautiously, and there paused an instant, hesitating. Then reflecting that secrecy here was an ungenerous return to one who had dealt so generously with him, he added: “But my real name is Ottavio Sagrado.”

  “Sagrado!” She uttered it on a rising inflection. “You are, then, the grandson of a traitor.”

  “If that were true of Vincenzo Sagrado, it must still remain to be said for me that a man is not his own grandfather.”

  From her gentle answer he imagined a wistful smile upon that face which was no more than a pallid blur upon the all-encompassing gloom within the felze. “It is a law among men that we shall reap what our forbears have sown.” On another incredulous note she added: “And you say that you came only so that you might see Venice?”

  “Is it so very odd? I was moved, irresistibly moved, to come and see the city of my race. I desired to behold for myself her far-sung wonders. Above all, I desired to witness the wedding of the sea.”

  “It is a month since Ascension Thursday,” she reminded him.