When I had finished, Benetto regarded me uncertainly. Eagerly I followed up my advantage and offered to take him to the very spot where I had been approached that morning and I think he was close to agreeing when his wife cried, ‘Husband, do not go out with this devil’s fry! It’s certain he has an accomplice who, seeing you together, will be warned and escape.’
‘I had thought the same, Zanetta,’ he answered reprovingly. ‘Let us send for the provveditore di notte. He will advise us on what is best to do.’
I didn’t like the sound of this. I guessed, rightly, that these provveditori must be in charge of security within the city and I had a natural reluctance to get mixed up with official organs of the law, particularly with the still misty horrors of the Ten swirling in the background.
The lady Zanetta once more came to my assistance.
‘Do you think those who watch the house will be any more reassured by the arrival of the signore di notte?’ she demanded, scornfully. ‘No, we must act swiftly and arouse no suspicions.’
‘So I was thinking myself,’ said Benetto approvingly. I guessed he’d learned by experience that the only way of not letting his wife make him look completely stupid was to claim precognition. ‘What we must first do is …’
He paused like a man of high intellect about to deliver a weighty judgement. His wife, supporting herself on his shoulder, plucked my dagger from his grasp and handed it to the major domo.
‘Geld him,’ she said.
‘Yes lady,’ he said with that lack of surprise which marks the good servant and well-disciplined soldier alike.
Next thing, he kicked my legs from under me, knelt on my stomach and flourished the knife like one who had served a long apprenticeship in the household kitchens. Benetto looked on with horror, the woman, Maria, with excited anticipation, and Zanetta with blank indifference.
The art of being tortured is not easy. Anyone can tell the truth. The thing is to convince your torturer you are telling the truth and also to tell it in such a way that he has a reason for leaving you alive. Such have been the philosophical conclusions of my mature years. In the palazzo Priuli, though, I had no aid from philosophy. All that occupied my mind was that next moment my hot balls might be steaming on the cool marble floor.
So I screamed in terror, begged for mercy, and babbled all I knew.
Yet not all. For some kernel of affection or gratitude in my soul made me say nothing of Godislav. Or perhaps it was simply that in my haste to confess, it seemed less complicated to give the impression that I had been sent alone from the hiding place in the lagoon to bear the letters.
But this altruism, however caused, was rewarded by producing that effect which I have since come to see as the main objective of a thoughtful confession. For, if I had come alone, then I must be able to return alone. So instead of being killed, or cut, or (at best) bound and incarcerated, I was taken with my hands tied behind my back and my own dagger pricking at my kidneys into a gondola on the Grand Canal in front of the house and commanded, on peril of death, to lead a hastily assembled band of armed men to the Uskok hiding place.
Zanetta Priuli, more wise than her menfolk, still believed I might have an accomplice without, who would quickly be warned by all this activity. But Benetto was by now rapt by the picture of himself as a man of action and paid her little heed as he ran around giving unnecessary orders. One thing she called out after us as we launched on our doubtful voyage did sow a seed, however – that the approach of a gondola full of armed men would alert these fearsome pirates – and when we reached the mouth of the Grand Canal, Benetto copied the Uskok strategy and redeployed his small force into a leaky fishing tub.
Now everything was ready, except for one small matter.
I had not the slightest idea which was the island I’d come from!
We had arrived in the lagoon with other returning fishermen at dusk and in a rising sea-mist. When Godislav and I came to the city in our cockleshell, I had merely pulled on the oars and left the steering to him. I had little aptitude for seamanship and might well have been confused even at the height of noon! But in these conditions I was left with as much idea where that island lay as I had of the location of the Hesperides.
Well, there were plenty of islands to choose from. I stared ahead, trying to look as if I knew what I was doing and praying that a chance for escape might occur while the kindly Benetto’s influence still prevailed, for many of his companions were eager to heal my ailing memory with the chirurgeon’s catholicon, that is, the letting of blood.
In the end even the gullible Benetto’s patience was wearing thin when there came a small diversion. Someone spotted a man’s head in the water some distance away. We made towards him and as we drew near it was plain to see he was wounded, for the water about him, which else has a most marvellous clarity, was all clouded with blood. His arms were moving, but he was making no progress. Twice he went under, and twice reappeared as our oarsmen strained their muscles.
We were almost at him when he went down for the third time, and this time he did not reappear. Beside me I heard the pious Benetto utter a prayer for the drowned man’s soul, and when I echoed his Amen! most fervently, he regarded me curiously. What he did not know, of course, was that my prayer had been one of thanksgiving for, as we drew near, I thought I recognized the wounded man in the water as that disgusting villain, Black Jaraj! What this meant, I did not know, but I did know I’d rather have him out of the way than in this boat beside me.
Some fool who claimed to have knowledge of the currents here about now informed Benetto that there might still be some slight hope for the man’s life if we concentrated our search in such and such an area, but before this plan could be carried out there came another interruption which pushed Black Jaraj’s fate to the back of everyone’s mind.
From an island two or three furlongs distant, one which I had just dismissed from my reckoning, there came an outcry of voices, a clashing of steel, and finally a couple of pistol-shots, all clearly audible through the still, warm air.
With all haste we now headed for this island and as we rounded its easternmost point, I saw at once this was the place. There moored close to the shore was the old fishing boat with a gondola alongside it. At Benetto’s command, our galliot approached most cautiously, not because there were signs of life, but rather too many of death. Over the curiously shaped prow of the gondola sprawled the gondolier with a shot wound in his throat, while over the gunwale of the fishing smack hung one of the Uskok crew with his head half-severed by a cutlass slash. A second lay on the deck with a sword wound in his fat gut wide enough to spill even the largest life.
That (if it were Jaraj I had seen in the water) accounted for all the crew save Stevan, a big blond Serb who was one of the few Uskoks whom I really liked. He had been kind to me and sometimes protected me from the more painful horseplay of his companions.
Where was he? – and where too was Papa Priuli? Could it be that he had broken out of the stinking hold in which he was locked, and had perpetrated all this slaughter?
It seemed most unlikely. But when we scrambled on to the deck (myself being hauled like a net of fish because of my bonds) the first thing I saw was that the hatch was open.
Something moved below. Benetto motioned his men around the open hold. A thin thatch of grey hair appeared, then a pair of watery eyes blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight.
‘Cousin?’ said Benetto uncertainly. ‘Is that you?’
‘What? What? Can it be so? Is it so? Cousin Benetto? Oh, the Lord be praised, the Lord be praised!’
And amidst much weeping and Lord-be-praising, Papa Priuli was helped up on to the deck. I used the cries of joy and universal embraces to cover my final efforts as I slipped my hands from their bonds with a view to emulating Jaraj and taking my chances in the water.
Then from the hold behind Papa Priuli emerged another figure, a tall clean-shaven, fair-haired man, in a fine suit of clothes, all silver and gold silk, with in his left
hand a smoking pistol and in his right a steaming sword.
All sound ceased.
Till Papa Priuli, who was clinging to his cousin as though to the paps of Juno, cried, ‘This, this is he! My saviour!’
And the old fool fell on his knees and kissed the feet of the embarrassed-looking stranger.
Soon, delayed only by the appalling Italian of the newcomer, the story emerged. An English traveller, newly arrived in Venice, he had hired a gondola to take him on a tour of the lagoon. He was, it appeared, one of these newfangled kind of men, as interested in what beasts and growing things he might observe in his travels as in antiquities, and he had desired the gondolier to put him ashore on this uninhabited island so that he might study its flora and fauna. But when they approached, the men on the fishing boat had spoken to him most rudely, which insolence he might have ignored had not a faint cry for help reached him from within the ship.
Courageously, he had boarded her single-handed. The crew had resisted. There had been a struggle. He had been fortunate, or so he claimed most modestly, but alas! an errant ball had taken off his gondolier.
‘Oh, most bravely done, sir!’ cried Benetto. ‘We are greatly in your debt! Are all these villains killed?’
‘Aye, sir,’ said the Englishman. ‘I am sorry to say, as it grieves me much to take anyone’s life, no matter how deserving.’
‘Yet still we have one to pay something on earth of what these others are most certainly paying already in hell,’ said the Venetian regarding me vengefully.
‘This youth you mean, sir? He is one of them? Then he deserves the subtlest of your famed tortures,’ said the Englishman pompously. ‘But hold! This is not the boy, Carlo, is it?’
They all looked at me questioningly and I nodded. I kept my hands close together behind my back as though still bound, but I had postponed my plans of a watery flight as there seemed to be some hope of a better option emerging.
‘One of these villains, their leader as I guess, spoke of him before he died,’ explained the Englishman gesturing towards the small cabin. ‘There must have been still some itch of a Christian conscience in his stony soul, for he begged me to, what were his words? Have a care for the hoy, Carlo, whose only guilt lies in his over-fond simplicity. Is it true, child?’
‘True or not,’ said Benetto with a frown, ‘yet must he be taught by pain the peril of his sinful ways.’
‘Let him see the fate of his evil master,’ suggested the Englishman. ‘That may still be lesson enough.’
So saying, he seized my ear, dragged me to the cabin door and thrust me inside.
Face down on the floor lay the body of a man. I knelt beside him and turned him over and saw my mistake. He was not ‘face down’ for most of his face had been removed by a pistol blast at short range, so that only a mop of blond hair spread in all directions from that ruined centre, like a sunburst. As the smell of seared flesh stung my nostrils I jerked back crying, ‘Godislav! Godislav!’ and fell with my arms clasped round Benetto’s legs in a paroxysm of weeping.
‘Sire, sire, have mercy, have mercy,’ I sobbed piteously.
‘Nay, unhand me,’ he said trying to push me away, but I seized his hand and kissed it, saying, ‘One master I had who was evil and false. I pray you, let me have another who is virtuous and noble. Do not turn me away, in the name of the Master of us all who turned no one away.’
Through my tear-misted eyes, I could see that the fellow was, despite himself, flattered.
‘Well, we shall see, we shall see,’ he said, but he did nothing now to break the moving tableau of the repentant sinner on his knees kissing the holy hand that would lead him to salvation.
As I knelt there, I noticed on the floor close to my feet a basin half covered with a cloth. In it I could see some suddy water clogged with shanks of long blond hair. I shifted my position and contrived to push the basin beneath a wooden bench, while above me Benetto addressed the Englishman.
‘I pray you, sir, will you tell us your name and your degree, so that we may know to whom we owe such a debt?’
‘Willingly sir, though in matters of Christian action, there can be no talk of debts,’ replied the stranger. ‘My name is Godfrey Hatfield, sir, and as for degree, I claim no higher, nay, no lower either, than that of an English gentleman.’
I caught his eye as he spoke and flickered mine towards the basin.
‘But let us leave this stinking hulk,’ he continued,’ and take your friends to the comforts they deserve and must long for.’ So saying he left the cabin and jumped agilely from the deck of the smack to the galliot, where he gave commands to cast off with such authority that the rest of us had to make haste not to be left behind.
It was as well we did, for scarcely had we moved a ship’s length from the fishing boat when a loud explosion rent it atwain and the blast threw us all in heaps on the deck.
I raised my head a few moments later to see the fiercely burning boat sink hissingly in the water.
‘Praise God for our preservation!’ said the Englishman. ‘The villain Godislav must have fused a petard before his life left him. Truly the Lord’s hand is here!’
Amen! we all said.
But Benetto said, ‘I am sorry that those bodies, villains though they were, should not have a Christian burial.’
To which one of his less pious companions replied with the merriment of one who has had a close escape, ‘All is done most fittingly. They have flame to purge them and water to lave them, and all without expense or bother to the State!’
Aye, I thought as I watched the burning ship disappear. And nor would it now bother anyone to inquire who it was on that ship who had so recently shaved off a long blond beard. Nor to wonder how it was that a man with only half a head had managed to lay a petard as well as talk so movingly about the innocence of the young boy, Carlo!
2
THE trick to survival is not personal strength but public protection. Godfrey (for I was punched in the belly whenever I addressed him privately as Godislav, and soon had mastered my lesson) had shown me the way, and he helped me to persevere in it too. I clung to Benetto like a leech, held up his gown to keep it from trailing the dusty ground, sprang ahead of him to clear a way, and burst into adoring tears every time his glance fell directly on me. Godfrey meanwhile, when we had landed in the city and were making our way across the crowded piazzetta, towards the Doge’s palace, drew everyone’s attention to Benetto’s miraculous influence over me.
No one’s averse to being involved in a miracle and by the time we left the crowded square and entered the cool shades of the palace, everyone was talking of strange lights, heavenly voices and visions of St Mark. Only when Benetto and his companions told their story to the hastily summoned Capi di Quarantia, the judicial magistrates, did the narrative assume a little factual sobriety, and not too much at that, for as Papa Priuli assured the Capi, the question of the miracle was merely one of degree for, certes, God’s hand had intervened in the business.
I echoed the general ‘Amen’ fervently, but despite my newfound piety, when the Capi di Quarantia had finished their examination, I was led off under guard. Godfrey caught my eye and gave me what I guess was meant to be a reassuring smile, while I burst into tears ostensibly at being parted from Benetto.
For once the tears were real enough. It was only their object that was feigned. The day had started with me masquerading as a child though I considered myself a man. Now at its end I was being treated like a man but feeling like a child.
It was myself I wept for.
Five or six hours later – I had no way of telling time – I had ceased weeping. But only through dearth of tears, not of terror.
First I was dumped in a cell of the pozzi, the prisons attached to the Ducal Palace. This was bad enough – the rough stone walls dripped with water so that I guessed I was beneath the level of their foul canals – but at least I was alone and temporarily unthreatened.
Then the door opened and an ancient turnkey beckoned
me to follow him. He had no weapons and looked as if a good sneeze would crack him in two. Nor did I see anyone else as I trod obediently behind that slow limping figure. But I made no attempt to escape. Somehow that apparent contempt for security was more terrifying than a platoon of armed guards.
The turnkey spoke no word but eventually when we had reached an upper floor of the palace he motioned me to wait and left me alone. This time my longing for freedom drew me to the window brightly glazed with a most life-like design of the martyrdom of St Sebastian. But the pane of glass at his loins, for decency or through breakage I know not which, was unstained and I was able to peer through his belly into a little courtyard without.
There was no escape here. In the centre of the yard was a tall scaffold of wood with a pulley wheel at its foot. From the pulley over the topmast bar of the scaffold went a rope, its end fastened to the wrists of a poor naked wretch with his arms behind his back. By this fellow stood a priest and a Venetian nobleman, all in black, with one beside him who looked like a secretary with a portable escritoire hanging round his neck. At a signal two burly guards turned the wheel, and with remarkable speed the naked fellow was hoist to the bar with his arms forced most unnaturally high behind his back.
His mouth opened in a scream, but so thick was that glass that no noise could I hear. The man in black seemed to address him once more. Then he nodded to the wheel-man, who released the wheel so that the hanged man fell only to be fetched up short of the ground by a sudden application of a brake-lock so that his arms must surely have been pulled from their joints.
Three times I saw this ghastly dumb-show repeated till the poor wretch’s hands and face (I know not how) grew so full of blood that they seemed to burn with a redness besides which the painted gore of St Sebastian’s wounds was but starlight. Of a sudden the black-robed man turned and looked up at my window. I knew not if he could see me, but I drew back in fear of it all the same.
Him I could certainly recognize. He was the pale-faced, dull-eyed clarissimo whom Godfrey that same morning had pointed out to me as one of the Ten.
The Forging of Fantom Page 5