‘No offence, my son,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You would not then be averse to lending the strength of your prayers to bringing such sadly erring lambs back to their safe fold?’
‘My prayers and my crook too in such holy shepherding,’ I replied.
I looked up and our eyes met. Or rather I looked deep into those dismal caverns from which he regarded me as a lurking beast observes its prey.
‘Quevedo,’ he said finally. ‘You will stand surety for this pious youth’s continuance on this good but strait path?’
‘I will,’ said Quevedo.
‘So be it,’ said Ignatius. ‘Take him apart and give him what instruction you think necessary. Gentlemen, let us have some wine. It is, after all, carnival time.’
10
QUEVEDO, you will understand, knew only so much of my story as I had told Benetto Priuli and the rest, with advantages of course, for while I wished to impress Benetto with my innocence, I wanted to amuse the Spaniard with my cleverness. But I had sense and loyalty enough to remain constant on one point – Godislav had died on the fishing boat.
Quevedo now questioned me more closely than ever before about my arrival in Venice, but with Jaraj in the offing it was more important than ever before to drop no hint of Godislav’s new identity.
Finally we left the others and went out into the night where I breathed deeply like one who has just been released from a long incarceration. Yet scarce two hours had passed since Zeus had cast his thunderbolt, and the city, though no longer so openly gay, still throbbed with the rhythms of carnival.
We walked to the Molo where we took a gondola. Quevedo gave instructions to the gondolier, commanding him to take us to one of the islands on the lagoon, for what purpose I knew not, only I was very happy to see the Molo receding, for behind it ran the Ducal Palace and the lair of the Ten.
Once out on the lagoon, Quevedo tossed our pilot a coin and commanded him to sing. This surprised me for barcaroles are most commonly the prelude to a duet for male pipe and girlish theorbo beneath the canopy.
‘No, Carlo,’ laughed my companion. ‘I am not going to claim a captain’s rights. But I do want to talk and with that noise going on, neither he nor any passing on the water can overhear us.’
This precaution both assured and frightened me. His next words did more.
‘Carlo, you are no fool. You must have guessed that what we are planning is treason and revolt.’
Of course I had, but I didn’t want to hear anyone saying it. I regarded him with a puzzled smile. He ignored it and continued.
‘At least, that is how the Senate, or most of them, will regard it, though the true title of what we intend is liberation.’
Well, I have served in many armies of ‘liberation’ since that time, but then I was not yet expert in the euphemism of death, destruction, rape and ravin.
‘Liberation from what?’ I asked.
‘Why, from those things you yourself described so eloquently to Father Ignatius. From creeping protestantism, from civil corruption, from heresy, debauchery, and the encouragement of anti-Christ in the form of the heathen Turk, the usurious Jew.’
‘And in their place you would set …?’
‘The rule of Holy Mother Church and the Pope in Rome,’ he said promptly.
‘Do you not mean,’ I said slyly, ‘the rule of the Habsburgs and the Inquisition in Madrid?’
‘That’s what I said!’ he replied laughing.
‘But, Quevedo, how can you?’ I asked heatedly. ‘Sure there are evils in this State and much that offends men of conscience. But a man may live here without overmuch fear and with a great deal of pleasure if he takes but a little care of his tongue and company. While under the Inquisition …!’
What things these words are! Always in Quevedo’s company I talked thus, and half-believed what I said.
But he was harder to riddle even than I, for while ultimately for me words and ideas are but shifting shadows through which hard deeds rise like rocks through a sea-mist, to Quevedo ideas had reality as solid as stone and in him the man and the spirit clashed like boulders rolled together by a mighty tide.
He said as much now.
‘Carlo, as a man, I hate repression and enjoy tolerance. But as a Christian I have to recognize that the evils of tolerance are often far worse than the hardships of repression. We are in this life but as children and require a father’s sternness to hold us in the right way.’
Well, perhaps he was right. I remembered my own father dragging me kicking, naked and erect, from my sister’s bed. Perhaps I should have submitted to his punishment and stayed on the farm.
No! I answered myself. What lad of spirit would hump hay and shovel shit when he could do what I had done, see the world and live in its most civilized society?
And end up plotting treason against it in a gondola!
I wanted none of this! I thought in alarm. Better an old farmer than a young corpse dangling by one leg between the pillars in the piazzetta!
But Quevedo was not to be quieted. He gave no details but outlined a plot larger in scope than anything I had imagined, involving the land forces of Austria and the Spanish dependencies in Italy in league with the Uskok fleet.
‘I tell you this, Carlo, for this is what you may guess, or at least what the Ten may guess from what you tell them after they have tortured you.’
‘Tortured me?’ I cried. ‘Why should they use torture if I go freely to them and reveal what I know?’
Not the most diplomatic of things to say to a conspirator, but it seemed a time for frankness.
‘Because,’ replied Quevedo, ‘they may think you have not told all that you know, for fear of serf-incrimination. Or, even accepting your innocence, they may wonder if perhaps you know more than you believe you know, and pain is a fine aidemémoire. Or, even failing that, do you not guess that we have sympathizers on the Senate, aye, and within the Ten themselves, men who will be eager to see you racked and broken beyond speech?’
I thought about this for a while as the gondola skimmed across the placid lagoon. Our gondolier still sang, urged on by Quevedo whenever his voice began to fade away. In the end I said, ‘Well, since you put it like that, I will help you. There’s my hand on it.’
‘Keep your hand, Carlo,’ said Quevedo. ‘You’re thinking, I’ll say what he wants me to say. But at the first chance I’m off out of this lot! So, what happens? You have neither the money nor the knowledge to get further than Fusina, if that far! There you’ll be picked up, tortured a bit, tell what you know as I said before, and end up at the bottom of the lagoon. You’re not even important enough for a public execution! So forget it, Carlo. I want you to stay alive because you’re my friend. But I want you to help me too. You’re in the Priuli household – you can help us a lot if you keep your ears and eyes open.’
‘I’ve said I will,’ I protested.
‘But you have to mean it,’ he said sadly. ‘This girl you love, Felicia Molini. Have you forgotten her by now?’
‘No!’ I answered angrily. ‘Nor ever shall. But what has she to do with this or anything. She is quite beyond my reach now.’
‘She need not be,’ said Quevedo.
‘What?’
‘When the Doge is overthrown and the new government comes to power, rewards will be given to those most loyal to it.’
My heart beat fast with sudden excitement.
‘But this new religious strictness will hardly permit a nun to be given in marriage,’ I objected.
‘Fiddlesticks,’ said Quevedo. ‘The girl is but a novitiate and will be for some time yet. No vows need be broken for none will have been given. And in any case ….’
‘Yes?’
‘Nothing. See, we are almost arrived. Come, Carlo. The night is young. Enough of these weighty matters. Let’s enjoy ourselves!’
We had arrived at the island and the gondola slipped between a whole flock of others already moored by the quay. Whatever it was that the place had to offer, it was c
ertainly popular, and with many of the best families too. But I had no thought for pleasures in store. My mind was too occupied wrestling with the problems Quevedo had just dumped there.
To have Felicia – this was the revival of a passionate hope I had thought deader than Lazarus. But I still misdoubted much whether this new and strict regime would commence by removing a maid from a religious house to satisfy the desires of a Croatian farmer’s son!
In addition, I had no stomach for spying and treachery. The State was not my State, but it had treated me more gently than I knew I deserved. And, as for the Priulis, despite the harsh words I had used of them to Father Ignatius, I owed them much more than the betrayal of an informant.
My experiences at the hand of Jaraj had squeezed all the wine out of my veins, but now my brain reeled anew with all these problems of love and loyalty.
I had paid no heed to where Quevedo was taking me and when he finally paused, I bumped into him.
‘Sorry,’ I said, looking around. We were in the portico of some large building, I knew not what, but from within came sounds of music and merrymaking which made me guess it was some courtesan’s palace, or house of assignation. This was confirmed by what I saw when we entered.
In a long, noble room lit only by a handful of coloured lanthorns, there was dancing going on, but such dancing as owed more to Dionysus than Terpsichore.
Men and maids reeled drunkenly about and wantoned with each other’s flesh as though the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge had been eaten but shame not yet discovered. Many of the men wore masks, so that bestiality seemed heaped upon mere lechery, but of the women, hardly any, though I noted that most of them seemed to wear the same kind of dress, or rather half-wear it, for scarce a one of them but was naked to the waist, aye, and often below. This simple white shift puzzled me much, used as I was to the splendid extravagances of most Venetian dames on festal days. But now, as my eyes grew used to the flickering many-coloured lights, I began to observe the walls and ceiling of that room and a dreadful suspicion began to grow in me. John the Baptist stared unblinkingly at the scene, and all the Apostles. Perched high on the lofty walls, saint after saint appeared to be giving a blessing to the debauchery beneath. While from the ceiling the entire Holy Family gazed down impassively at the humbler creation and never a thunderbolt was hurled.
I seized Quevedo’s arm.
‘What is this place?’ I cried.
‘Why, Carlo, do you not know?’ he asked with a look of pretended surprise. ‘This is one of those holy nunneries to which the noble fathers of Venice send their daughters they cannot finance in marriage. Is it not a fine thing that on occasions like these, they need not miss the joys of that state their families could not afford them?’
I had heard tales of such goings-on but had not given them much credit. Everyone makes jokes about nuns and monks as if by mockery to counter the reproach of their holiness. But this was no joke. And it was certainly no holiness!
I stared wildly about the room, suddenly imagining I saw the curve of Felicia’s cheek, the wave of her fine gold hair, everywhere I looked. Quevedo put his hand on my arm and I turned ready to kill him for this monstrous trick he had played on me. But he did not flinch from my mad expression.
‘Nay, Carlo,’ he said rapidly. ‘This is not the convent to which your Felicia has been sent. Her novitiate will be carried out in a safer and better ordered house than this. But who knows that it may not be such a place as this that she will finally come to? And what think you now of that tolerant, benevolent kind of devil’s rule which permits such places as this to be?’
I looked around again. Most of the men were young, but not all. And of those unmasked, I recognized many as belonging to the most dignified and patrician families of the city.
‘Quevedo,’ I said, my soul reeling with shock and disgust, ‘I am with you. Will you take my hand now?’
He peered into my face, then nodded.
‘Willingly,’ he said, and we clasped hands fervently.
Now I turned to go, but he still held my hand.
‘Whither away?’ he inquired.
‘Why, anywhere, so long as I am out of sight of this vileness,’ I cried. ‘What? you cannot wish to continue here in face of these blasphemies?’
Suddenly he grinned and became again my old Quevedo, the witty, railing, cynical friend.
‘The night is young and conspirators must not draw attention to themselves by unfitting behaviour.’
‘What more unfitting than this?’ I demanded pompously.
‘Unfitting in Madrid or the Vatican perhaps,’ he laughed. ‘But we are not yet in Rome. So let us drink the wine of the country before it turns sour!’
So saying he left me, joining the throng till he found a young girl to his taste and embraced her in a parody of dancing.
I looked on with loathing, horrified at the Spaniard’s lightness, then turned again to leave. But at the door I hesitated.
The first rule of the strict Catholic state is acceptance of hierarchic authority which means that the lowliest can obey his immediate superior in the safe knowledge that the chain of command and example stretches back to the highest.
In the provisional regime of Venice which I was now committed to support, Quevedo was my immediate superior. Surely by following his example I would be doing no more than ultimately His Holiness the Pope himself would want me to do?
Strange are the ways of religion and difficult to understand for a simple soul!
I seized a passing dame who was wearing little more than a wimple and invited her to light my penitential candle.
What was good enough for the Pope was good enough for me.
11
AFTER Shrovetide comes Lent. After the excesses of carnival came a period of frugal living which made the normal economies of Venetian life seem orgiastic. In the Priuli household we gave up meat and we gave up leavened bread and we gave up wine.
And I personally just about gave up hope.
I felt I was in a trap with no way out except if a choice of deaths be called a way out. Quevedo bothered me little for information, so my loyalty to the Priulis was scarcely tested, but oddly this was small comfort as I began to feel that it was only my silence he wanted, not my service, and all this talk of rewarding me with Felicia was a mere placebo, aye, and perhaps in both significances of the word.
What I needed was someone to talk things over with and the only person I really trusted, Godfrey, had disappeared from Venice during the carnival, none knew where or when to expect his return. I had sought him in the first place to warn him of Jaraj’s survival and presence in the city, for his lot would be perilous indeed if the big Bosnian encountered him. The assassin’s knife or the note of denunciation through the lion’s mouth – either would kill him, but the former much more quickly. So I left a note at his lodging requiring him to contact me most urgently immediately he returned, and I called there daily lest indolence or oversight should run him into danger.
On one occasion as I made inquiry of his landlord and received the usual negative reply, I became aware that another had entered the house behind me, a man of about fifty with an easy manner and a bright intelligent eye. This was that same Henry Wotton, the English Ambassador, whom I had glimpsed once before. He listened to my queries and the landlord’s replies without speaking, then followed me into the street and, with a flourish of his plumed hat which stopped just short of parody, he saluted me and said, ‘Forgive my boldness, sir, but are you not that same Signore Fantom whose unmerited misfortune the noble Priuli family have laboured to mend?’
I faced him squarely and looked blank. I had learned enough not readily to admit my identity to anyone till I knew why they asked.
Seeing I was not going to reply, he repeated his question first (to my surprise) in my own language, then (to my flattery) in Latin, the lingua franca of educated men.
‘Sir,’ I replied in Greek, ‘it is not your words I do not understand, but your intention.’
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‘Why, sir,’ he said in German. ‘My intention is but to make the acquaintance of an interesting fellow and a friend of my old friend, Godfrey Hatfield. But if you are not he, then I beg your pardon, sir, and farewell in any language you care to use.’
‘Wait, sir,’ I said in Spanish. ‘I am he, this same unfortunate Croatian that you know so much of but who knows not you.’
‘Hush!’ he said in alarm and English. ‘Use not that language for the people care not just now to hear Spanish whispered at street corners. Though, by coincidence, I am making my way presently to the Marqués Bedmar’s house. Will it please you to walk with me?’
‘Why not?’ I said, and fell into step beside him.
‘Is your business with Master Hatfield something of urgency?’ he inquired conversationally.
‘No. He has shown me many kindnesses and I merely wished to inquire after his well-being,’ I replied.
‘I also,’ he volunteered, smiling. ‘A friendly call as I passed. I had not realized you were so great a scholar, Master Fantom.’
He was referring to my grasp of so many languages in this change of subject. We were still speaking in English and, showing off as a young man needs to, I switched to French for my reply.
‘No scholar, sir. I have a gift of tongues the Lord was gracious to lay by my cradle, but the porter who followed with the gift of book-learning must have been delayed at some tavern on the way.’
The conceit amused him and we continued on our way in light and social intercourse, though ever I felt he was learning from me much more than I did from him. Well, this is the proper skill of these diplomats. It was this same Wotton who (Godfrey had told me) drew trouble upon himself by writing in a book that ‘an ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for his country’. Each man to his trade! I care not how many ambassadors you show me who can outwit me with words, so long as I do not encounter one whose throat I may not slit while he still reaches for his sword.
The Forging of Fantom Page 14