I hardly understood the question and paid no heed to the answer for the voice of the questioner had sounded a chord in my memory, and suddenly and sickeningly I knew who he was.
This was that Giacomo Basadonna with whom I had quarrelled at the table of the podesta of Padua.
But it was not fear of a renewal of our quarrel that gripped my stomach. Under Godfrey’s tutelage, I felt confident to take on such a popinjay as this though he should wield a scimitar and I a stick of bread!
No, it was my awareness that if Basadonna’s touching up of Margharita was but the dark and secret side of a public courtship, then very rapidly would he not only remove the one dowry available to Molini’s daughters, but also so slander my name that I might find Felicia cut off from me forever!
7
I HAVE often noticed in human affairs that just when things seem at their blackest, they get worse.
As I rose to take my leave when the tedious babble of the Mascherati had finally dried to a trickle, my mask, which was hooked carelessly over my ears, fell off. Quickly I replaced it, but Basadonna’s eyes must have been roaming as freely as his hands, for I saw him stiffen for a second, then speak to Margharita, who laughed and was long in her reply.
Perhaps I was being over-suspicious, but when I told Quevedo what had passed as we made our way to the ridotto to round off the evening with a game of cards, he too seemed concerned for me. Before he settled down at the tables, he made some inquiries and the news he brought me was not good.
This Basadonna had been a kind of suitor of Margharita before he went to Padua. The affair had blown hot and cold, each of them keeping a weather eye open for a more advantageous match, for Basadonna bore much the same relationship to the central and important line of his family as Lazzaro Molini did to his. This, and his continued absence in Padua, explained why the Molinis still kept open the option of which daughter would get the dowry, and why such an ambiguous figure as I was permitted to cross their threshold. Now at last Basadonna seemed to have gained the State employment he had always complained was so unjustly withheld from him (though what employment was not clear) and had returned to Venice on a permanent basis.
My mind clouded with worry, I settled to play – something I rarely did, partly through lack of money but mainly because no man is totally vicious and the gambling fever has never tainted my blood. That night I played for diversion, and I won. And the more I won the gloomier I grew for the old superstition stuck in my mind that a man may not prosper in gambling and love together.
Finally, my purse weighted with gold, I rose and went home to my sleepless bed.
Morning came at last. I had no appetite for any breakfast, but made ready as early as I decently might to go on my visit. Just as I was on the point of departure, Maria came to me with a summons from Benetto.
‘Better hurry,’ she observed, grinning maliciously. ‘He is not in his best temper with you this morning.’
‘Yes, yes, I will go,’ I said irritably. She did not move, but stood grinning in the doorway so that I had to push past her and her hand snaked out and grasped me familiarly.
‘Why ’tis wasting from neglect!’ she mocked.
‘Away, filth!’ I cried, pushing her from me, but she only laughed the mote and cried after me, ‘Has the Signorina Molini no healing poultice to apply?’ which filled me with such wrath that I ignored Benetto’s summons and rushed angrily from the palace into the dull morning air.
Whether without this anger I would have allowed myself to be provoked as I was at the Molinis’ I do not know. But when I reached the house and found entrance was refused me by the servant who opened the door, I shouldered him. aside and strode in unannounced.
The family must have risen late for they were still at their breakfast. Lazzaro stood up, his gut shaking with an indignation greater than the interruption of his meal could occasion.
For a moment he was speechless, partly through his emotion, partly through the presence in his mouth of a great gobbet of cold goose, and I had time to observe his family.
His wife, Teresa, regarded me without indignation, but with a cold unwelcome; Margharita smiled at me with clear enjoyment; and my life, my joy, Felicia, stared at the floor and looked so pale and ill that my heart broke to see it.
‘What? canal spawn!’ thundered Lazzaro finally, showering me with pellets of masticated fowl. ‘What? bestial peasant! Dare you appear before me, you lascivious Croat? Felicia, Margharita, to your rooms before this shameless beast defiles you!’
Margharita obviously found the idea as ludicrous as I did, and made no move, but Felicia rose in an instant and with one piteous glance towards me was gone.
‘Signora,’ I said, turning to Teresa, ‘why am I so abused? I love your daughter – have I thereby caused you harm?’
‘You have deceived us,’ she answered coldly. ‘You have no money, no family, no prospects. How may you be her match?’
‘Why, let her come to me without dowry or hope of inheritance,’ I replied. ‘Then are we not matched? As for family, Signora, have you found these Venetian gentlemen so refined that they made you ashamed of your own dear father?’
Such an appeal might have struck an answering chord in the down-to-earth mind of Teresa but, alas, it was sadly undiplomatic with Lazzaro in the room. Screaming with rage, he seized a fork from the table and attacked me. The door burst open and a pair of servants, doubtless listening with vast entertainment at the keyhole, rushed to his aid.
I leapt on the table, seized the carcase of the goose, and rammed it down on Lazzaro’s head so that it, lodged over his eyes with the drumsticks giving him the horns that I’m sure the earthy Teresa had already set there without his knowledge. Drawing my stiletto I now confronted the servants, who rightly concluded that Lazzaro’s niggardly wages might run to blows but stopped short of bloodshed, and went to help unhelm their master.
The respite was like to be short-lived and even in my fury I had no desire to inflict any wounds, for that would bring me into direct conflict with the law, while all that had happened so far would merely amuse the most of Lazzaro’s peers.
I jumped from the table and ran from the room, but I did . not leave the house. First I had to talk with Felicia, however briefly, so I sprinted up the main staircase calling her name. No answer came, but I threw open door after door, till finally I found her crouched low on a sofa, pale and trembling in terror.
‘My love!’ I said dropping on my knees before her. ‘Fear them not, I shall protect you.’
‘Please go,’ she murmured faintly.
Touched by this concern for my well-being, I would have embraced her, but the sound of many footsteps running up the marble stairs made me realize she was right.
‘I’ll come for you at midnight!’ I whispered. ‘Be ready for me here at midnight. I’ll have a priest waiting, we shall be married, then away to a new life.’
‘Go!’ she repeated. ‘Go now, I beg you.’
I kissed her hand. The footsteps were very near.
‘Till midnight,’ I said.
Then I went through the window, clambered over the balcony and slid down a pillar on to the narrow terrace which ran between the side of the house and the small rio which flowed alongside it. A second later Lazzaro appeared at the window above, his nose burning like a whore’s lamp.
I touched my cap politely, turned and went my ways.
Back at the palazzo I discovered I was in deep trouble.
Basadonna had gone to work with a craftsman’s delight. Besides the black picture he had certainly painted of me and my morals, he must have suggested to Lazzaro that the whole of Venice was laughing at him and that the Priulis in particular were privy to the plot against his honour. That morning an angry and offensive message had been delivered to Benetto demanding to know why he permitted a depraved criminal (me) of low birth (me again) to masquerade as his (Benetto’s) adopted son and under this guise to attempt to debauch his (Lazzaro’s) virtuous daughter. This, with much rhe
toric about honour and threats of appeal to the Senate, had been the cause of Benetto’s peremptory summons, and my failure to answer this had magnified his wrath to a point where this usually mild and weak man became a creature to fear.
I was told in terms whose hysteria did not lessen their force that I was indeed a depraved criminal whose continued freedom depended on the mercy of those whose trust I had betrayed, name besmirched, and friendship belied. Nothing in my birth or my background entitled me to any but the most rigorous treatment under the law. The Quevedo business was brought up again, my presence in gambling houses, brothels and at meetings of the Mascherati referred to, and Benetto even suggested I was still in touch with the Uskoks, passing on information about shipping movements!
At the end of it all I thought, they must surely hang me! But Benetto suddenly seemed to run out of steam and abruptly he dismissed me from his presence, saying that I was not to leave the palace on any account and that he would pass his decision on my future the following day.
At the bottom of all his wrath, of course, was the simple distaste of a man of importance at finding his honour impugned, not without justice, by a man of no importance at all. But this did not lessen the perils of my own position. Lazzaro, especially after my visit that morning, would demand my hide. While Benetto, if he saw any advantage to the family name in letting him have it, in his present mood would hardly hesitate. The best I could hope for was the galleys – the worst I feared (more, I believe, than death) was some disabling torture such as the strappado.
So it was a motive stronger even than love that set me stealing from the palace soon after eleven o’clock that night.
There had been no opportunity to make any real preparations. I had with me a small bundle of clothes, the money I had won at the ridotto the previous night, and nothing more by way of provisions, except for a length of rope I had knit together from various curtain hangings about the palace. The promised priest would have to be found when we reached the terrafirma. I had not got the time to find one, nor would we have the time to visit one before we fled from Venice. But Felicia’s natural disappointment would soon be salved by my gentle behaviour, for I was resolved to refrain from all carnality till our love was sanctified by Mother Church.
I borrowed one of the Priuli gondolas and paddled it quietly away from the palace. Benetto, I hoped sentimentally, would regret his outburst against me when he heard of my romantic elopement and subsequent honourable marriage. I saw us meeting again, some ten years hence, when I had made my fortune and returned to Venice as a rich and honoured gentleman with a large and beautiful family.
Such were the foolish pictures which warmed my young heart against the cold dank mist of that winter’s night.
The Molini household was in darkness and silence. In truth, very little seemed to be astir that evening, especially once I had turned off the main canals into the network of little waterways which run between them. Mooring my gondola about fifty yards from the house, I approached on foot, praying that Felicia would be alert and ready. I had wrapped a piece of cloth around a stone and tied it to the end of my rope, and this I now lobbed up and over the balcony of the room in which our assignation was made. It made a noise as it landed, not enough (I hoped) to rouse the household, but sufficient (I prayed) to attract Felicia from within.
Great was my joy when within seconds my prayers were answered. The rope was taken and made secure about the marble balustrade. I could dimly see my love’s slim figure in the murk above. She had had the good sense to put on a dark cloak and hood and her gentle face gleamed palely in its shade like a wake-light in a chapel. I felt such a gush of love well up in my heart that I could scarcely begin the climb. But love’s strength soon replaced love’s weakness and I began the ascent, moving like a practised sailor in the rigging till I reached the balcony where her soft hands, made strong like mine by the promise of love, seized my wrists and helped me to safety.
‘My angel!’ I whispered, reaching for her slender figure.
‘My angel!’ echoed a mocking female voice and suddenly all around the shutters fell off dark lanterns and I saw that the room beyond was full of armed men and the cloaked figure in front of me was not Felicia but Margharita.
‘Now shall we see if it’s true that a Croat has boar-piss in his veins!’ said another familiar voice and I observed without surprise that Giacomo Basadonna stood close behind her.
He had a rapier in his hand. I had nothing more than a stiletto in my belt and there were a dozen men at his back.
The greater the odds, the greater the honour, so they say.
Good for ‘they’ whoever ‘they’ are! thought I, and turned to leave. But when I looked over the balcony I saw the opportunities for honour had just doubled.
Down below at the bottom of my rope stood another dozen men, all with weapons out, looking upwards expectantly.
So, hating to disappoint expectation, I turned again quickly, punched Margharita Molini in the stomach and as she doubled up and fell forward, I caught her across my shoulder and flung her over the balcony.
Basadonna, I was glad to see, had sufficient of chivalry to rush forward and peer after her before attempting to kill me. And this gave me time to take the only possible route left. With enemies below and enemies within I had to go up. So I hopped on the balustrade, reached to the terrace above and drew myself up onto the next storey.
As I write now, I see I give myself too much of that coolness of judgement and aptness of action which age, experience and the love of Our Saviour have brought me to. But I was then still a boy with all a boy’s violence of appetite and emotion and there was more of hot-blooded terror than cold-blooded thought in my actions.
I burst into the room leading off this upper balcony and found myself in the presence of Teresa Molini. She was dressed for bed and as she started back from me, her breath drawn sharp in fear, I saw beneath the dark surface of her filmy robe that ponderous bosom rise like leviathan coming up for air. Naked I had often seen it, but God has made us the strangest of his creation! How soon will the fisherman cast his net for the monster he guesses at, while the sight of its terrible bulk plain before him might make him flee?
Later I was to feel surprise that lust could struggle up between terror for my life and respect for my adored one’s mother, but it did, and I even checked for half a pace till the sound of climbing behind me and running before me drove me on.
There were men coming up the stairs, eyes alight with the pleasures of the chase, and swords naked in their hands – no willowy rapiers these such as gentlemen use, but broad-bladed, double-edged weapons fit for hewing and hacking at a man till he falls like a tree.
Fortunately Molini’s house did not have the broad high corridors of the palazzo Priuli and no more than two men could easily move abreast. Also I guess that Lazzaro or Basadonna must have offered a special bounty to him who gave me my death blow for they were so eager to get at me that they shoved and jostled with each other in their haste as they reached the stair-head and a small jam developed. I drew my stiletto, held its fine point between my finger and thumb and hurled it so that it struck right through the leading fellow’s foot and scratched sparks off the terracotta tiles. He shrieked and went down and in a trice the small jam had become a major blockage.
I was now completely weaponless and only the most rapid of flights was going to save me, for now others had followed me over the balcony and admiration of Teresa would scarcely prevent them all from continuing the pursuit.
I entered another room at random. It was empty. Where, I wondered briefly, was Felicia? And Lazzaro for that matter? But there was no time for speculation. The hounds were at the door already and baying for blood.
I leapt to the window. It was locked so I kicked it open. There was no balcony here, just a long drop to the dully gleaming thread of the narrow rio far below. I changed my mind and turned, saw the bouquet of filed steel being flourished in my face, changed my mind again, but did not have time to turn
again, so jumped backwards.
I hit the surface of the water and that was painful, hit the bottom of the shallow rio and that was more painful still, floated half-conscious to the top and that was most painful of all. For the water seemed covered with gondolas all full of men beating me with oars and paddles and the hilts of their swords. I went down again, felt myself drowning, came up under a gondola, tried to scream and took in great mouthfuls of filthy water; the gondola moved, I was in the air at last. I gasped gratefully, the beating resumed and I tried to sink once more and this time really drown!
But now they had hold of my hair and doublet and I was dragged to the side and thrown retching and groaning on the cold stones.
‘What a hard thing it is to kill a Croat,’ said Basadonna’s voice, high above me. ‘Like a canal rat he turns and turns and will not die.’
Each phrase was punctuated by a vicious kick. I was too exhausted to try to evade them. All I wanted was the coup de grace. If I could have spoken I would have begged for it, but my mouth was not fit for words. I opened the one eye which was still functioning and looked pleadingly upwards. Basadonna loomed over me. Behind him, hooded and in the shadows was another figure. Margharita, I wondered, yet it seemed something too tall for the woman, and in any case she was surely resting after her fall.
Absurdly the thought amused me and I gasped out something which must have been recognizable as a laugh, for Basadonna now became furious and I felt his rapier point at my throat.
Thanks be to God, I thought and composed myself for death.
‘No,’ said a voice which had something familiar in it. ‘Enough.’
The steel remained. Basadonna was not so easily to be dissuaded. The voice spoke again, this time louder and with great authority.
‘No, I said. Not another blow. Enough!’
And the steel withdrew, and the figures withdrew, and the misty sky above me and the cold wet stones beneath me all withdrew and I fell into an emptiness which only the continuance of pain made me suspect might not be death.
The Forging of Fantom Page 11