The tenderness deepened in her brown eyes, eyes which he had known so proud, but out of which all pride seemed now departed. Very tenderly they were pondering this romantic fellow who made of love an abstract piety.
“Do you ask what more? How do you know what more life may still hold for you? Already tonight, you say, more has been given to you than your hopes could ask. Perhaps it may be so again. If I were in your place I should cling desperately to life, so as to ascertain what it may yet offer.”
“To ascertain?” He was staring at her, bewildered. “What can there be to ascertain?”
“That is, indeed, the question. The future alone can answer it. But if you turn your back upon the future, you will never know. Are you not curious?”
“Curious? Dear God!” He leaned a little nearer, staring ever and so intently that she grew confused.
She shook his grasp from her hands, drew back and rose. “Have patience, then, Messer Ottavio; patience and a little faith.”
She moved to the bell rope and pulled it, and when presently Giovanni, the chamberlain, appeared in answer to that summons, she ordered food and wine to be served to them at once. Giovanni, vainly seeking to preserve his countenance mask-like so that his disapproval should not appear, passed out to obey her.
OVER the noble supper presently spread for them in the dining room they sat for fully an hour. Two lackeys waited upon them under Giovanni’s quiet directions, so that their conversation was perforce of a restrained and general character. But this which might have troubled many another in his place troubled Messer Ottavio not at all. To sit with her in this intimacy, in her father’s palace, at her own table; to consider her at close quarters in the soft golden candlelight; to pledge her silently, as he raised the gold cup to his lips, his soul in his eyes — here was a bliss such as three hours ago he could not in his wildest imaginings have supposed would ever be vouchsafed him. So wide of all earlier reasonable expectation did it seem, and so unreal did it appear, that again he was assailed by a suspicion that he was dreaming. A prayer shaped itself in his mind, so fervently that unconsciously he uttered it aloud:
“May it please God that I should never awaken.”
She looked up quickly, smiling a question, and then there came a tap at the door to interrupt them.
They had been an hour and more at table, and in that time the bargeman dispatched by Scalza to Messer Grande had returned. As a result the lieutenant now sent a message to madonna. Giovanni received it at the door of the dining room. Impassive he came to bow before his mistress and deliver it.
“THE officer in charge below sends word, madonna, that Messer Grande has gone before the Inquisitors of State for a warrant to enter the palace in pursuit of the fugitive harboured here.” And despite himself his eyes strayed to Messer Ottavio, and they were not friendly.
Madonna Lucrezia caught her breath, and then, breathless, scornful, laughed.
“He wastes his pains, this Messer Grande. For his office he should be better learned in the laws of Venice. The Inquisitors of State have no such power as he supposes. They will never dare to grant this warrant.”
The chamberlain, grave and pale, raised a hand that shook a little.
“Madonna, I should do less than my duty if I did not warn you that what he says is true. The absence of the Doge cannot arrest the functions of the State. In a case of urgency his authority passes, be it to the Council of Ten, be it to the Inquisitors of State. So runs the law to everyone’s knowledge, madonna. Can you suppose that Messer Grande would trouble, otherwise, to invoke it?”
Staring at him, suddenly convinced, she changed colour. “What can we do, Giovanni? What can we do?”
Messer Ottavio came forward. “The comedy is played. Let us ring down the curtain. I will go, madonna.”
She was almost impatient with him. “How can you go when Messer Grande’s men are before the house?”
“How can I remain when they may presently be within it? I must relieve you of further concern on my behalf.”
HER lips parted to answer him. Then she checked, and dismissed Giovanni by a wave of the hand. When the two were at last alone, she turned to him.
“You will relieve me of further concern on your behalf? And you will do this by delivering yourself up. Will that end my concern for you? Your assumption does me little honour.”
“Oh, never that, madonna. You are Charity incarnate. But I must not abuse your goodness.”
“Then do not talk of surrendering. If surrender you must, it will be time enough to do so when the Council or the Inquisitors make this order. They have not made it yet, and they may not make it.”
But Messer Ottavio shook his head.
“Madonna, it is idle to struggle. Let us bravely face the fact and bow to it.”
“That I never shall.”
“Patience, sweet lady! Listen. To resist this inevitable thing is merely to add to the present evil the further unnecessary evil of embarrassments for you. To what I must undergo, will you have me add the tormenting thought that through me you must suffer vexations, perhaps indignities? That would be more than I could bear. As for this...why, dear madonna, let me say again that I have so much now for which to be thankful that I can meet my fate not only resigned but uplifted. That song of mine was so sincere — that prayer of mine — I asked but to breathe the air you breathe until I die. Behold how much more I have been accorded. I have spoken to you, which I had never hoped to do. I have moved your concern, aroused your interest in me. I may look upon you thus at close quarters, actually touch you. I have been the recipient of your sweetness. It is so much, so much, that it makes the brief little life I have lived a very full one.”
HE SEEMED transfigured as he spoke. Silent before such an incredible, fantastic manifestation of devotion, she let him run on.
“Remember, madonna, hereafter the happiness you have brought one man. Forget all else. Compared with it there is nothing worth remembering — unless it be to say a prayer for me, afterward. Out there in eternity some echo of that prayer may reach me and bring to my poor soul a glow of pride and joy to be so remembered by you. If you will—”
But she would hear no more. She pressed her hand upon that poetical mouth, to silence its devastating, torturing eloquence.
“I cannot bear it! I cannot bear it! Quiet, Ottavio! Do not talk so. You tear the soul from me. This must not be. It shall not be.”
Gently he took the muffling hand from his mouth. He caught her other hand, and holding both in one clasp he bent to kiss them, finding no resistance.
“Are you real?” she asked him. “Are you real?”
“I am a lover, madonna; and sometimes a lover is above reality.”
“How brave you are! And yet how timid! Had you faced love one-half so bravely as you face death, you might have avoided this and now be safely away.”
He looked up, smiling. “I would not have avoided this for a hundred lives.”
“Not this; not this moment, Ottavio; but all that may follow is what you might have escaped. And in life you might have found all that you could desire of it — that is, if you had faced love boldly.
“Why do you think I opened my shutter to you that morning when you sang beneath my window? Was it to display my indifference to you, or was I moved, did you suppose, by mere idle curiosity? Oh, Ottavio, I have told you that I had remarked you, your haunting presence and your hungry, worshiping eyes. Since it was this that urged me tonight to come to your rescue when I saw that you were being hunted, can you suppose that I had remained indifferent? And now, since I have heard your story, since I know what danger you ran so that you might possess no more of me than your eyes could hold, do you conceive me indifferent still? You are facing death, Ottavio, and in a sense you are facing it for love; for love of me. And you face it calmly. You have the courage to die for a love which you had not the courage to utter.”
“TO UTTER?” he echoed, and faltered even now that she had given him assurance. “To utter? How c
ould I utter it, how approach you save under a false name, I, who am proscribed? Do you reproach me for that?”
“I do,” she answered him, an anguish in her glance.
“It is unjust,” he told her gently. “After all, if I have been foolish, it has been a sweet folly, and it is for me to pay.”
“And what of me? Do I not pay with you if they take you? Not for lingering do I reproach you, but for your reticence. Don’t you understand? It is because of this that you are caught, and being caught you are now to cheat us both.”
She sank against him as she spoke, this woman so austere and inaccessible, and he, rid now of every hesitation, took her in his arms, and held her half swooning on his breast. Holding her thus he murmured endearments, tendernesses and words idly meant to hearten her in a voice that broke at last from the extremity of his emotion.
Time sped. Then a term was set to the matter by the arrival of Messer Grande himself.
He bowed low, hat in hand.
“Madonna, I am grieved to intrude upon you. But the matter is serious. I am authorized by this warrant from the Council.” And he proffered a paper, which she disdained to take.
“What do you want here?” she demanded, breathing hard.
“THE man who calls himself Ottavio Malatesta, whom your compassion has foolishly betrayed you into sheltering, no doubt in ignorance of the gravity of the offence.”
“It was in no such ignorance that I sheltered him,” she answered proudly.
But before she could say more Messer Ottavio forestalled her.
“It would be inhuman and foolish in the Council to take any other view of Madonna Lucrezia’s charity to an unknown.” His eyes implored her not to contradict him. “I am the man you seek. Let us go, sir.”
Messer Grande gravely inclined his head to him, bowed again to Madonna Lucrezia, and half turned, silently waving his prisoner to precede him from the room.
Messer Ottavio stayed but to take her hand, and as he bowed over it to utter a farewell that was in tune with the statement he had already made:
“Madonna, I have no words in which to utter all that is in my heart; my deep, deep gratitude to you for the sanctuary you sought to give me, and for all else. Believe and remember only that it sets a shining effulgence upon my last hours.” He bore her slim hand to his lips, while a dry sob from her was his only answer.
V
CALMLY, with Messer Grande guarding him, he stood in the presence of the inquisitors, the inquisitor in red between the two inquisitors in black. On the table before them were piled some books and papers, which at a glance Messer Ottavio recognized for his own.
Near a window on his right, under guard of a sergeant-at-arms, stood the slight figure of Zanetto.
The red inquisitor, who presided, opened the proceedings by a question to Zanetto: “Do you identify the prisoner?”
“I do, excellency,” said Zanetto meekly.
The inquisitor nodded. “Remove him. I will make known our decision presently.”
Zanetto was led out, and Ottavio braced himself for whatever might now await him. Regarding himself as a man foredoomed, he supposed that the proceedings would be brief.
Erect of head and proud of eye he stood before the dread three. The lips of the red inquisitor seemed actually to smile.
“Messer Ottavio Malatesta,” he said, “we are distressed that the spite and ignorance of a vindictive servant, whom it shall be our concern to punish, should render us guilty of having unjustly subjected you to a night in prison.”
The inquisitor paused there, as if waiting for some word from the prisoner.
“With what am I charged, excellency?” asked Messer Ottavio.
GENTLY the inquisitor shook his head. “We have no charge to prefer,” he answered. “The accusation laid against you by your servant was the grave one of practicing magic. We were promised proof of the accusation in these books and papers of yours. It is unfortunate only for your accuser that instead of damning you, these books acquit you.” He took from the top of the pile the heavy red-bound tome of Copernicus. “This seven-pointed star on the cover was mistaken by him for the seal of Solomon; the zodiacal belt in which it is set was assumed by him to be a magic circle, for which, indeed, it has often served. The drawings it contains, and those in this copy of Euclid, appeared, not unnaturally to an ignorant and unlettered mind, to be cabalistic signs. And this image of Satan above the word ‘Inferno’ on your Dante made him assume it a work of infernal purport.”
Ottavio was swept by indignation. He thought of the suffering and anxieties caused Madonna Lucrezia.
“Do you arrest men in Venice upon such foolish denunciations?”
One of the other inquisitors answered him gruffly in reproof: “The denunciation may be foolish, but it had to be investigated. It is not one that can ever be treated lightly. Moreover, your servant testified upon oath that you spent long hours of the night in study and in writing. This, while natural enough in the owner of such sober learned works, would be natural also in the case of one engaged in the dark practices for which he denounced you. He testified that once in the dead of night he heard you uttering incantations. He accused you further of having in his presence blasphemed the Mass, and he alleged that this it was which first aroused against you his suspicions.”
“He did not suspect, of course,” sneered Ottavio, “that it might be because I threw him out of my room for meddling with my books.”
“It has occurred to us, sir,” said the red inquisitor to pacify him. “Therefore, Messer Ottavio Malatesta, you are at liberty to depart, and you may take these books and papers with you. I trust, sir, that you will be generous and account yourself satisfied with the expression of our unlimited regrets. As for your servant, Zanetto, you are within your rights in prosecuting him as the spiteful cause of your unjust detention. If you do so, we must punish him.”
BUT in that hour of ineffable thankfulness, with not only liberty restored to him but also the life with the infinite potentialities it now held which he had accounted forfeit, Messer Ottavio desired no man to suffer. Least of all could he have desired to make Zanetto suffer; for however evil toward him may have been the rogue’s intentions, it remained that no man had ever rendered him, or was likely ever to render him, so inestimable a service. If Zanetto had not uttered against him this ridiculous denunciation, Ottavio would never have found his way into the presence of Lucrezia Loredano, and, consequently, would never have come into the kingdom of his love. When he could trust himself to speak in level accents, he made answer casually: “I shall need the rascal to carry home that parcel for me.”
“Sir, the answer does you honour. You are very generous. The man, even if moved by spite, still believed himself to be discharging his duty to the State.”
FOLLOWED by a very hangdog servant carrying that bundle of books and papers, Ottavio crossed the piazzetta and hailed a gondola.
“To the Loredano Palace,” he commanded the gondolier.
And there very soon Madonna Lucrezia came to him, a pale Madonna Lucrezia, with deep shadows under feverishly lustrous eyes, but something of her old austerity clothing her once more.
“What is this?” she asked sternly. “How do you come to be here?”
“I am free, Lucrezia. Free!”
He would have taken her in his arms. But the frown between her eyes and that resumed austerity gave him sudden pause.
“So I perceive,” she said, a queer restraint in her tone which chilled him. “But not how it happens. Did you play comedy with me last night? Are you other than you declared yourself?”
The question brought him understanding and relief. He poured out the amazing truth that he, who for the violation of the ban against his house owed his head to the Republic, had been arrested upon a vindictive servant’s untenable silly accusation of practicing magic.
This by plunging her into a renewal of last night’s fears melted on the instant her aloofness. “But, then you are still in danger of discovery h
ere?”
“In danger? Pooh!” He snapped his fingers, and boldly took her in his arms.
But she broke out of their clasp, and stood away from him. “You will leave Venice tonight!” she commanded sternly.
He was aghast. “Leave Venice? Leave Venice now? Impossible!”
“You will leave today — at once — so soon as you can collect your belongings. You fool, Ottavio, will you wait until you lose your head in earnest?”
“I would sooner risk the loss of it than go into banishment again, now that Venice holds me by more than her own beauty.”
“And I, then? Could I know peace while you are here in danger?”
“Shall you know it if I go? If you may never see me again?”
Before that dismay of face and tone the last vestige of her sternness melted. She came to him of her own will.
“After last night, my dear, there is no danger of that. Listen. My father returns either today or tomorrow. I will spare no effort to persuade him to move the Council of Ten to raise the ban against your house. But you must not be in Venice when this is done. Your violation of the ban, if it were discovered, could only lead to its perpetuation. Don’t you see?”
“I see that. Yes. But—”
“Therefore, you must go. At once. And not return until we have succeeded.”
“But if you should not succeed?”
“In that case it will rest with you to be insistent with me, my lord. If you are insistent enough I may come to you in Pisa. If I cannot determine your exile, I can share it — that is, if you are insistent.”
“I shall be so insistent that if you do not come to me obediently at once, I shall return to fetch you, and so inevitably lose my head where I have lost my heart.”
“So be it,” she answered him. “Now haste away. God guard you, Ottavio.”
Obediently he departed then, re-entered his gondola, and went to the Casa San Michele. Curtly he dispatched Zanetto to pack his belongings. “Bestir yourself, rogue. I must be away by noon.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 554
