“Of course I am not alone in the direction of the Benedetto, but we might talk it over,” and across his shoulder he called to the footman who was still standing within the door. “Tomaso, bring a jug of ratafia and some biscuits on to the balcony.”
“At once, your Excellency,” said Tomaso, and he went out of the room. The balcony overhung a quay busy with stalls of fruit and the passage of people to and from the Rialto. Behind it the long room stretched away to the door.
“We shall talk here unheard,” said Vigano with a smile.
Even now, Julian, with his experience of Sandro, thought it a fantastic thing that men of high place like the Count, should sit surrounded by spies in their own houses and take it easily as an ordinary practice of the day. Tomaso brought to a little table on the balcony the biscuits, the glasses and the jug of ratafia.
“You will shut the door after you, Tomaso. I don’t like draughts and Signor Marelli, as you know, has a throat to be nursed.”
“Certainly, your Excellency.”
But Onocuto Vigano made sure. He crossed the room and tried the handle of the door. When he came back to the balcony all the liveliness had gone from his face. It was still friendly but there was a gravity in the friendliness, as though he sat by a death bed.
“You have something new to tell me? Let me tell you at once that although you have never breathed a word of it to me, or I to you, I know of the peril in which you stand.”
The boy’s spirits, which had been rising ever since he had dumped the accursed books in the water of the Giudecca, sank as deep and as fast as the books themselves had sunk.
“Yes, I have something new to tell you.”
Vigano poured out two glasses of the ratafia; and that heady mixture of brandy, apricot stones, cinnamon and white sugar brought the colour back into the lad’s white face. He told Vigano the story of the parcel smuggled into his apartment and its final disposal; and he saw his host’s distress grow heavier and heavier as he spoke. Even when he described the silent dive of the anchor into the depths of the wide water of the Giudecca, Vigano’s expression just lightened for a second with the sympathy one might feel for a child who goes out in the fairy stories to battle with the giants. Panic seized again upon Julian. He must get to England — he lived for that! — and soon.
“You see,” he cried, “what false evidence there was to ruin me, I have destroyed. Once I am brought face to face with my accusers...” but he might have been appealing to an image of stone.
“Why should you be brought face to face with your accusers?” asked Vigano.
“The natural justice in the hearts of men would demand it,” cried Julian, but even to his ears the argument sounded weak. What justice had he met with in his short life? Wasn’t he planning — hadn’t he been for years planning to do the work of justice, since justice stood aloof, veiled and silent?
“The natural justice in the hearts of men,” the Count repeated with a gentle mockery. “A phrase, my friend. A phrase for Achilles or Timanthes or Megacles, and worth many many scudi sung by you. But take another glass of this excellent ratafia and listen to the truth.”
He took a pinch of snuff, refilled his glass and adjusted the order of his thoughts.
“The grand tribunal of the State of Venice consists of the Council of Ten with the seven secretaries to the Seigneurie, that is to say, the Senate and the whole College of government. But these seventeen men were thought too many to occupy themselves with breaches of the law. So every year they elect from their number three State Inquisitors, of whom one is specially concerned with matters of heresy. Understand that he is not appointed by the Church of Rome. He has nothing to do with the Roman Inquisition. The Pope fought for representation, the State of Venice forbade it. He is one of the three State Inquisitors and he can act only on charges of heresy. And those charges, before a sentence can be passed, must be confirmed by his two colleagues.”
“Ah!” said Julian, but the Count Onocuto Vigano shook his head.
“It would never do to count upon a division. Heresy might be held to be subversive of the State, and on political grounds the two might — nay, would — agree with the one. And there is no confrontation of accusers and accused. The prisoner is not even told on what charge he was arrested, or on what evidence condemned. He has no appeal, no knowledge of the length of his sentence. He is sous les Plombs.”
“And Marie Baretti’s lover?” Julian asked in a whisper of despair.
“Is Ascanio Cavaletti, a patrician, a lawyer as so many of our patricians become, but of greater qualities than most of them, and this year — I beg you to mark this — the State Inquisitor who is concerned with heresy. The grimoires, the ceremonial of the Black Mass — tricks? Yes, but who practised them? The books were in your room, hidden under your shirts. Yes, but who hid them? You sank them in the Giudecca? Yes, but why? You were afraid they would be discovered.”
Julian imagined these questions put by the lawyer Cavaletti, not to him but to his fellow Inquisitors. Julian knew Cavaletti, a bilious, dark man with thin lips and a pointed face and a grave dusty look as of one who lives amongst old tomes in unswept offices. He had spoken, from time to time, to the young soprano a word of praise with a disconsidering contemptuous manner which Julian had borne with what patience he could. It was the unluckiest thing in the world that such a man should have become enamoured of Maria Baretti. There had been no other woman in his arid existence and beyond her there would be none. She had lit a fire in his heart which utterly consumed him. She was romance, poetry, the complete amenity of life; and anyone who caused her an inquietude or a tear must receive so long a lesson for his temerity that he would remember it to his dying day. All this Julian had only begun to understand during this last week, but now as he watched the sorrowful face of his friend, he once more sat shivering in a panic.
“There’s little that I can do,” Vigano considered. “But something I have done. I have arranged, and to-night it will be announced, that on Sunday, the last night of the season, you shall appear again in Achilles in Scyros. It was the first opera in which you sang. It established your fame. And the fact that you will make it your farewell will create an excitement and draw a crowded house. I think the Police will persuade the Government not to interfere with it. They want no riots, no popular indignation.”
“But after that performance is over?” Julian asked.
“Yes,” Vigano agreed. “Yes, the next morning whilst you are still in your bed, Messer-Grande, with his sbirri, is likely enough to call upon you.”
Julian rose from his chair and leaned over the balcony, his eyes on the garden of a house across the canal. The greenery and the colour of flowers caught suddenly at his heart. This silent city of water and palaces and small streets, where few trees grew and no birds sang, became a horror to him. He must escape from it.
“Then I must not be asleep in bed the next morning,” he said, turning again to Vigano.
“No.”
“There is a canal at the back of the Opera House. I will have my gondola waiting there.”
“You can trust your gondoliers?”
“Yes. I am sure of them,” said Julian, and his plan of escape became clear in his mind. “I shall leave my apartment just as it is with nothing packed. I shall tell Sandro that I shall remain in Venice for a week or two. Fortunately, I have already been measured and fitted for some travelling clothes. Giuseppe shall collect them and buy for me in the Merceria what else I want. These he will pack into a portmanteau and have ready in the gondola.”
“Yes. That would be wise,” the Count agreed.
“I’ll have a cloak ready in the wings. I’ll slip it over my dress and whilst the stage is still crowded and the theatre full, I’ll slip out to my gondola and go as fast as it will carry me by the Canal di Canaregio to Mestre.”
“Good!” cried Vigano.
“It will take me two hours to reach Mestre.”
“And there I can help you.”
�
�You?”
“Yes.”
“But you will run a risk, Count.”
“Oh no, no.”
“Yes, you will be helping a criminal to escape.”
“No! I am clever enough to guard against that.”
Vigano waved the objection aside. His anxiety had gone. He was alight. He began to pace the room, smiling and chuckling and helping himself to great pinches of snuff.
“At Mestre I’ll have a chaise waiting for you — hired not in my name nor in yours. I have a friend at Mestre who’ll see to it.”
“But then he’ll run the risk,” objected Julian.
“Risk! Risk!” cried the Count, stopping in front of his friend. “I never saw such a pernickety, argumentative fellow in my life. There’ll be no risk. My friend’s the discreetest little man you’ll ever come across. You can change your clothes in the gondola and the gondoliers can bring the Achilles dress back. That’s right. There will be two spanking horses in the chaise, and before the alarm’s given, you’ll be over the frontier.”
The Count Onocuto Vigano slapped his thigh. His chuckle became a laugh. He was not only helping his young artist to escape from a great danger, he was upsetting the Inquisitors’ apple-cart, he was making fools of Messer-Grande and all his damned interfering sbirri.
“They’ll never look for you that night,” he cried. “Marelli — the last night of the season — there will be a supper party in a casino.... Oh! by the way....”
Vigano suddenly ceased to laugh and sat down again on the balcony opposite to Julian.
“You don’t sing on Saturday night at the Benedetto?”
“No.”
“But you do at the Rezzonico Palace.”
“Yes.”
“There is a concert there. You are the attraction. Yes. I have a card for it somewhere.”
He sat and looked at Julian with his underlip thrust forward and a frown gathering on his face.
“Count Rocca...” he continued.
“He is giving the party,” said Julian.
“Yes, Rocca. An excellent fellow. A great nobleman. Rich as the Chinese Emperor, A friend of mine.”
But the Count Rocca with all these excellent qualities did not satisfy the Count Onocuto Vigano. Vigano sat playing scales with his fingers on the arms of his chair and staring gloomily until the boy felt that if the suspense lasted a moment longer, he must scream.
“A beautiful Palace, the Rezzonico,” Vigano continued. “Ceilings by Tiepolo. I wish mine had been,” and he cast a wistful eye up to his plain white plaster.
“But even my voice won’t shake the paint off the ceiling,” Julian said helplessly.
“No, Giovanni, no,” Vigano replied quite seriously. “I am not afraid of that. There’s no danger there. No! You can loose freely your highest notes, there won’t be a crack across the...” he suddenly became aware of the nonsense he was talking. “I beg your pardon. I forget my manners. I was thinking — I don’t want to exaggerate — that it was perhaps a little unfortunate that you should be singing for Count Rocca.”
“Why?” Julian asked anxiously.
“He’s an Austrian.”
“An Austrian is not an enemy.”
“No. We are very good friends. But the house of a Venetian patrician is safe from the police. Messer-Grande may not enter it. But an Austrian, unless he were an Ambassador or on the Ambassador’s staff, has no such privileges. Messer-Grande can enter at will.”
Julian sat back in his chair. If he had only learned the intricate laws of Venice! There were half a dozen houses belonging to the patricians who would have welcomed his assistance.
“I can’t change my engagements now,” he said.
Vigano nodded his head vigorously.
“It would be fatal if you did. It would be suspected at once that you had laid some cunning plan. You must know nothing of any design against you.”
Vigano rose again from his chair.
“But come!” he cried. “I am making too much of this accident. The last performance of Achilles in Scyros will take place. I am having it billed everywhere. It is afterwards that you must hurry;” and as Julian stepped down from the balcony into the room, Vigano laid a friendly hand on his shoulder.
“Courage! The chaise shall be waiting for you at Mestre and in the autumn I shall give myself the pleasure of hearing you in some new opera, perhaps at Florence.”
Julian had quite other views for the autumn and he was speaking of them to no one. But as he took his leave, he said with a warmth which made his voice shake.
“Whatever happens to me, Signor Count Onocuto Vigano, I shall remember, what I have a great need to remember when I meet them, your hospitality and your friendship.”
Vigano was moved as much by the quiet and candid manner of his young guest as by his words. He held out his hand to him as equal to equal and the two shook hands cordially.
“I have always had a fancy, Giovanni, which the morning has made a conviction, that we both belong to the same world, perhaps to the same rank. I know nothing and I ask no questions. I only say to you words which it may be that you understand,” — and with a pleasant but rather complacent smile, as though he was shaking hands with himself as well as with Marelli, he spoke in English, English with an accent which made havoc of it, but still English—” God send you a good deliverance.”
A wave of red swept over Julian’s face and receded, leaving him white as his shirt. He dared not reply in English; yet it seemed to him that it would be discourteous to a man who wished him well, if he pretended not to understand that courtesy of the English law towards men upon their trial. He was standing at his wits’ end to know how fitly to answer this farewell, but Vigano had made his departure easy. Vigano had turned back to his writing-table, as though Julian had already gone from the room.
XVI. THE CONCERT AT THE REZZONICO PALACE THE ESCAPE FORESTALLED
“THE SIGNOR’S COIFFEUR has arrived.”
“The rogue’s late, Sandro. Bring him up instantly.”
It was the evening of Saturday. There were still thirty hours to run before he could hope to feel his chaise bouncing on the road between Mestre and the Frontier. And all was ready. A portmanteau packed with new clothes was hidden on the gondola. The Count Vigano held money to settle all his bills and charges after he had gone. Julian had been careful not to alter by an accent or a look the friendly good-humour with which he had used his servant Sandro; and Sandro, still all smiles and willingness, had obviously not discovered that the damning heretical books were no longer beneath the pile of shirts in the wardrobe.
Julian had nothing to do but to play out his part during the next thirty hours, and a calmness of spirit and with it a sense of amusement were helping him to play it with ease. Thus to-night.
“Vanity and affectation are the badge of our tribe. From Caffarelli, Senesino and the rest of us — graces, impertinences, a superfluity of fine clothes and ornaments are expected. So to-night I’ll be the perfect coxcomb, as difficult and exigent as a woman, with an eye for every mirror in the room.”
And it is to be granted that there was underlying the pretence a real vanity in the boy. He kept watch and ward over it as a rule, being warned thereto by a little book which Durante, the Maestro di Capella, had given him when he took his leave of the Conservatory of Saint Onofrio. But to-night he gave that fault its way. He was young and stirred to a trifle of bravado. This was to be his last appearance in his own person in Venice. Very well. He meant to leave behind him the memory of a gracious and charming picture as well as of an exquisite voice. The vanity of his kind! He railed at it and was aware of it — and seated before a mirror gave his orders to his coiffeur.
For greater convenience in the parts which he took, he wore his own hair which was thick and lustrous. He had it curled now with two rolls above each ear, heavily powdered, drawn back with a black satin ribbon and the ends fixed in the usual velvet bag. His shirt and cravat were delicate with lace, and ruffles of fine Mechlin
lace covered his hands to the finger-tips. The two long ends of the black satin ribbon which gathered his hair at the back were brought loosely round to the front and fixed with a jewelled brooch in a big bow in front of his cravat. With these he put on a coat of the palest blue velvet, lined with white satin and embroidered with gold. The coat was flared so as to stand out round the hips and was decorated at the edges and the cuffs with large buttons of filigree gold. His breeches were of the same colour and material as his coat. But his waistcoat was of white satin worked with gold thread and was embroidered absurdly enough at the hem with a procession of little pale blue monkeys carrying little gold umbrellas. With this dress he wore white silk stockings and lacquered shoes with red heels and big buckles of brilliants. He stuck a little black patch, cut like his seal in the shape of a mermaid with a mirror, high up on the bone of his cheek, buckled about his waist a sword with a jewelled hilt, put a watch with a gold chain hung with tinkling ornaments in each fob, and with a pirouette set himself in front of a long mirror.
“Giovanni Marelli,” he said as he contemplated the slender modish youth before him, and suddenly in the blue eyes which met his, he saw opening such depths of sadness that he turned away with a shiver. A pretty enough fellow, no doubt. But what woman would go home that night with a pang at her heart because he was not beside her in her gondola? And what man would look at him with a fancy that here was a youth who, once free from a youth’s vanities, might take a worthy place in great affairs? Not one! Neither woman nor man.
“So, Giovanni,” and he made to his image a little bow of bitter mockery, “all that remains for you is to sing with a bird’s clear passion and a bird’s breaking heart. Well, I can depend upon you for the last of it.”
The coiffeur, who was standing with his hands joined in an ecstasy, cried: “Oh! If only your Excellency sings the half as well as he looks—”
“The Count Rocca will have a right to think himself cheated,” said Julian. He slung a cloak of a silvery grey damask over his shoulders, took a chapeau-bras under his arm and ran down the stairs to his gondola.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 739