MESSER OTTAVIO considered. At first he was assailed by a natural hesitancy to disclose the truth. Then, be it because invention failed him, be it that he concluded that the truth, after all, was too fantastic to be accounted falsehood, he decided upon a full and frank avowal. After all, the occasion seemed to justify it.
“Why, no,” he answered her. “I should have gone again on the day after Ascension. But it happened that on that day I saw here something which has kept me in bondage ever since, robbing me of the power to depart, however urgently prudence might command it. It is a madness, you will say, madonna. Judge it so if you will; but I must tell you of it, lest judging it perhaps otherwise you should account it your duty to surrender me to justice.”
And so, sitting there in the darkness of the gondola’s felze, at the feet of the woman he could not see, he related the story of his enchantment, painted a radiant portrait of the lady on the bucentaur, the lady at the palace window at the hour of dawn, the lady whose whereabouts for a month he had haunted to no other end but that he might nourish longings which he could never hope to allay.
And since the theme was undeniably poetical, poetical too became the phrases in which he found expression for it, and by the very glamour in which they wrapped the story compelled belief in it, fantastic though it was.
WHEN at last he had done, there fell a silence, broken only by the dip of the long oars and the gurgle of water against the gondola’s prow.
He was aroused from it by the sound of a sigh from his companion. At last she spoke.
“And for this you have daily risked your head!” Her voice was so ineffably sweet and gentle that he judged he must deeply have moved her compassion. “By such a cobweb, by such a net, woven by moonbeams, you have suffered yourself to be held here in the very shadow of the axe! Almost it transcends belief. Are you real, or do you live in a romance?”
He sighed in his turn. “I have lived in a poem this month past, all the ugly verities of life forgotten until tonight.”
“She is enviable who can inspire so spiritual, so ethereal a passion. Pity that Messer Grande should have come to awaken you so rudely from your dream.”
“That, no,” he answered firmly. “From that dream there is no awakening until the Great Awakening comes. I sought to put the very soul of my love, the very expression of this pure passion, into one of the songs I made in her honour. That song I sang to her, so greatly daring.” And he recited the refrain, recited it in a voice that held a throb of awed devotion:
“I dare not pray, since prayer invites reply.
All that I ask of life is just that I
May breathe the air she breathes until I die.”
There was no answer from his protectress. As the gondola swung inward toward the Rialto steps at which Messer Ottavio had begged he might be landed, the lady, raising the curtain of the felze, turned to look behind her to make sure that all was well. What she saw, however, drew from her an exclamation of dismay. The justiciary’s barge, which had been almost entirely forgotten in these past moments, was not only following again, as was revealed by its swinging lantern, but was fairly close behind them.
“Messer Grande has resumed the chase,” she announced. It was an exclamation of dismay, of dismay amounting to fear. “Someone must have seen you leave your gondola.” She seemed to pant a moment. “If I land you here the lights of the bridge will betray the movement to them. Where shall you find shelter now?” And then, before he could answer her, her tone changed from distress to command.
“Straight on, Giannini,” she called to the gondolier in the prow. “To the palace! With all speed!”
As the gondola darted forward Messer Ottavio protested. “Madonna! Madonna, I would not have you incur risks for me. Already I owe you too much. Land me here on the Rialto and let me shift for myself. To harbour me is a dangerous offence.”
“Let be. Let be After all, need I know your name?” She was almost impatient. “Deep calls to deep; romance evokes romance. I give you your deserts, Messer Ottavio. Danger is joyously incurred in the service of so devout a lover.”
IV
AHEAD of them on the right across the canal stood the Loredano Palace, its windows aglow, but a mere mist of light about its open portals. Ottavio’s companion was giving him orders in a brisk, imperative voice.
“Leap out the moment we touch, and hasten indoors before the porter brings lights that might betray your landing. Thus I shall appear to land alone. And pray heaven Messer Grande’s barge will not be through the bridge until after.”
He perceived the shrewdness of her instructions and prepared to act upon them. But he was not prepared to accept the Loredano Palace for his haven.
He obeyed her, it is true, and so implicitly that he was no more than a shadow as he flashed across the wide threshold. But the obedience was mechanical. Action preceded thought. And not until he stood within that vast cavern of a hall, dimly lighted by a great ship’s lantern swinging overhead, did he weigh the astonishment in his mind.
He was surely dreaming. If this was the Loredano Palace, then could the unseen lady who had rescued him, the lady whose voice had thrilled him so oddly, be Doge Loredano’s daughter? Could it be Lucrezia Loredano at whose feet he had sat in the darkness of the felze, telling her the story of his love? It was too fantastic for belief. But if this woman who gave orders here was not Lucrezia Loredano, who could she be?
FROM the porter’s lodge emerged a fellow in a livery of scarlet and gold, lantern in one hand and halberd in the other. But even as he began to challenge this intruder, the cry of the watermen at the steps drew his attention. He swung round to bawl an order, and from the lodge, bearing lanterns, came half a dozen lackeys.
Followed by them she swept regally into the hall, a tall figure cloaked in sapphire velvet that bulged over the hoops of a white satin gown beneath. The proud, pale face under its gold-laced three-cornered hat showed itself gently smiling to the panic-stricken gaze of Messer Ottavio. For beholding at last his saviour, he beheld, indeed, Lucrezia Loredano.
“Dismiss your fears,” she bade him. “You are in the house of the doge, where Messer Grande’s warrant does not run. Although my father is absent from Venice, no officer will dare to cross this threshold without my leave.”
“Madonna, if I am afraid, it is not now of Messer Grande.”
“Why? What else have you to fear?” Her voice held a gentle, caressing remonstrance, which served but further to startle him.
Observing her now, he found her subtly changed from the great lady he had worshiped from afar. The austerity in which he had ever seen her wrapped was now discarded as if it had been a cloak. Before him, and so close to him that he must touch her if he but put forth his hand, stood a new Lucrezia Loredano, a woman as accessible as she was adorable.
He sighed as he surveyed her. “One fear you have dispelled,” he said. “But the other still remains. Messer Grande’s warrant may not run in the Palace of the Doge. But heavy consequences must be incurred by giving sanctuary to—”
In a flutter of panic she clutched his arm in a warning grip. “Will you be silent!” she muttered.
He obeyed, although it seemed to him to matter little that he should proclaim his identity, since it must very soon now be known to all the world.
“And in any case,” she added, “Messer Grande may not know that you are here. There is a chance for you in that.” And then: “What was your other fear?”
“The fear of your displeasure, of your anger even, with the tale I told you in the dark when neither of us guessed the identity of the other.”
She smiled up into his grave face, and now there was something odd in her smile, something between shyness and mockery.
“As to that, you can speak only for yourself. You did not know me, it is true. But how can you say I did not know you?”
“You knew me!”
“Oh, but merely for one who in these past weeks had dogged my steps and haunted me with eyes of fearful worship,
for one who had awakened me very early one morning with a song, a sweetly wistful and reverent aubade.”
He was incredulous. “You knew me for that, and you did not resent my temerity! Do you say that you knew me for that before you offered me assistance?”
“I offered you assistance because of that. When the lights of the galley revealed you to me, I marvelled as they did on the galley to see a man of fashion playing the gondolier. But when I had recognized you I was not moved to laughter as they were. I sought the reason, and fancied I beheld it in the following barge of Messer Grande. I realized that you were urgently in need of help, and I went to offer it.”
“Madonna!” he cried, as if he were uttering a prayer.
“Come now,” she said. “Will that knowledge abate your pride, your obstinacy? Will you accept now the sanctuary I offer you?”
He bowed his head, almost ashamed. “I am in a miracle. I must let it work.”
She set a hand upon his arm, and under the suasion of it he obediently turned, while she was issuing her orders, and with her followed the lackeys, who lighted them up the great marble staircase beside walls which Tiepolo had frescoed. At the head of this they were met by a chamberlain who conducted them into a lofty pillared library.
Here he might take his ease and rest awhile. Then they would consider by what means he was to be smuggled out of Venice. Whatever followed now, nothing could rob him of this hour; nothing could rob him of the rapture brought him by the knowledge that in discerning his worship of her she had not, herself, remained unresponsive.
But below-stairs that was happening which seemed effectively to promise that this ecstasy of his was to provide not merely the climax but the close of his amorous adventure.
The black barge of the law, emerging from the shadow of the Rialto Bridge, had swung without hesitation to the steps of the Loredano Palace, where madonna’s gondola still lingered.
MESSER GRANDE, as we know, had been left at the Casa San Michele, but the lieutenant who had come in his stead was a brisk, competent fellow with a sharp sense of duty.
He stepped nimbly from the vessel as it glided along the marble steps, his two pursuivants following him, and he addressed himself to the first of Madonna Lucrezia’s two red-hatted gondoliers who stood in the misty light that emerged from the palace.
“Now, my man, what has become of this fugitive rascal?”
“Fugitive rascal?” echoed the gondolier, faltering on the words and whipping up his wits to meet the occasion.
“Pay attention, my lad! Don’t play the simpleton with me, or you may come to smart for it. What of the runagate you took aboard this side of the Basin of St. Mark? Is he in the palace with your mistress?”
Great was the gondolier’s loyalty and devotion to his lady. But greater was his dread of Messer Grande, and therefore of this officer who represented him. All that the man reflected at the moment was that, after all, Madonna Lucrezia was the daughter of the Doge, and that, whoever might be threatened no harm could possibly touch her. This being so, it was not for him to incur a risk of imprisonment for the sake of the fugitive she had befriended. And so, sullenly, he answered:
“Where else should he be? What use to deny it?”
“So.” The officer, whose name was Scalza, summoned his men to follow him, and briskly mounted the steps.
But at the head of them he was met by the liveried porter, a resolute Cerberus who knew his duty, and who handled now his halberd as if he would not hesitate to use it.
“Halt there! What may your business be, my master?”
“You know my business well enough. Let me pass.”
The porter laughed at him. “I may know your business; but it would seem that you yourself don’t know it; or else you don’t know whose house this is, and that here you do not enter without the permission of His Serenity the Doge.”
The officer displayed impatience. “His Serenity would never withhold that permission.”
“I may not take your word for that.”
“You are trifling with me.” The officer began to lose his temper. “I warn you it is dangerous. In the absence of His Serenity, Madonna Lucrezia must permit me to enter.”
“Must! Oho! Must, eh?”
“Don’t stand there grinning, you impertinent. Convey my message to your lady. Tell her that I ask admission in the name of Messer Grande.”
“For what purpose, sir?”
“To execute a warrant from the Inquisitors of State upon a runagate criminal who is sheltered here, a man who calls himself Ottavio Malatesta.”
“I am to tell Madonna Lucrezia that you charge her with sheltering a criminal? You are oddly daring to send such a message to the daughter of His Serenity.”
“For what I dare, the risk is mine. It cannot be that madonna is aware of the character of the man whom she is protecting. It is not for the daughter of the Doge to stand between the law and a criminal. Besides, it would be futile. We know that this man is in the palace. You may tell your lady that. I have no thought to violate the ducal privilege, but I shall report to Messer Grande, and meanwhile I guard the palace front and back, so that I must take this fellow when he comes forth again. Carry that message, fellow. About it.”
The porter met peremptoriness with peremptoriness. “Stay you there,” he bade the officer, and withdrew to dispatch the message.
Meanwhile Messer Scalza, fuming at the obstacle raised against him, took his measures. He hailed an empty gondola that was passing, and in it dispatched his two pursuivants to guard the rio behind the Doge’s house. Himself with his bargemen he would watch the front. Further, appropriating another gondola, he sent off one of his bargemen in it to the Casa San Michele to inform Messer Grande of what was happening.
The message transmitted by the porter was borne to Madonna Lucrezia by her chamberlain.
She heard it unperturbed. “This underling officer is insolent. It is not to be supposed that Messer Grande will venture to countenance his presumption.”
But Messer Ottavio started up from the divan. “Madonna, it would be monstrous in me to continue—”
“A little calm, Messer Ottavio,” she interrupted him, so calm herself that he could but contemplate her in ever deepening wonder. She addressed the chamberlain. “You will remind this impertinent fellow that the Doge’s palace is outside the law, inviolate, and that it may not be entered by force, but only by the express permission of His Serenity. Say that in the absence of His Serenity this permission, obviously, cannot be obtained. That is all.”
The chamberlain’s grave countenance became graver. “If I might venture, madonna—”
“Venture nothing beyond the bearing of that message.”
Her tone was sharp. The man bowed low and withdrew.
But Messer Ottavio restrained himself only until the fellow had departed.
“Madonna, this is most nobly generous. But it can avail me nothing, and there may be danger to you in this resistance. That I could not suffer. Besides, to what end? The game is played, and lost. Messer Grande holds the pass. Whether he invades the house or not, I am inevitably his prisoner. If not tonight, why, then, tomorrow or the next day. What does it matter? Shall I bring trouble upon you for no ultimate good to myself?”
“Give yourself peace,” she begged him. “It is not all so clear as you suppose.”
“ONLY your goodness makes you think so. The conclusion is foregone. So let me go now, madonna, before more harm is done, leaving behind me a thankfulness too deep for words. Ah, believe me, whatever may await me now will be a light matter. I am glorified by having known you, and spoken to you and deserved your dear protection. It is more, far, far more, than I have ever hoped to wrest from life. I may depart content.”
He took her hand, bowed low over it, and pressed his lips upon it in farewell. But she would not yet hear of parting. Though pale, she smiled, and her tone was gently rallying.
“To protest so much, and to be in such haste to leave me!”
“T
o leave you? No!” His tone was almost violent. “In haste to deliver you.”
“But to deliver me from what? From yourself? Sit down again, Messer Ottavio.” Gently she thrust him back toward the divan from which he had risen. Yielding to her command he resumed his seat, despite the unuttered remonstrance in his mind. She sank down beside him and placed a hand upon his arm. “You take too much for granted sometimes, and sometimes too little, it seems. There are possibilities you have not reckoned. Be sure that until my father’s return, none will dare to invade this house. So that until his return, in two or three days’ time, you will be safe here—”
“But in the end, when he returns—” he was interrupting her, to be interrupted in his turn.
“Why will you be so impatient? When he returns I may persuade him in your favour. There is little that he will not do for me. At my prayer he might win from the Council for you a lifting of the ban. After all, he is the Doge, and his wish is no light thing.”
HE STARED at her in white-faced wonder. His lips twitched oddly, so oddly that none could have said whether they threatened tears or laughter.
“You would do this for me? Oh, the miracle of having heard you say it!” Slowly the smile broke at last upon his face, but it was infinitely wistful. Slowly he shook his handsome head with the heavy clubbed hair that was of the colour of bronze.
“But not even the Doge’s power would suffice to achieve so much. Do not let us deceive ourselves, madonna. All this might have been accomplished could I have enlisted your sweet interest before I violated the ban. But now it is impossible. The offence has been committed; the penalty incurred. Too well I know the laws of this Republic. I am beyond saving, madonna.”
And then as holding her hands he looked into her face and beheld the dismay his words had summoned to it, his own countenance became transfigured and his eyes were aglow.
“Besides, for what should I be saved? Have I not this night touched the highest good, the loftiest bliss that life can give me? What more remains? What, indeed, could be tolerable hereafter?”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 553
