Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  ‘Since we are now friends,’ she said, putting the bag into Gambardella’s hand, ‘you ought to give me back my ring when the thing is done!’

  ‘Madam,’ said Trombin, in his grand manner, ‘you have our word for that. In fact, we only meant to borrow it for a day or two, and for your great kindness in allowing us to do so we have the honour to tender you our sincerest thanks.’

  ‘It is impossible to be more polite, sir,’ answered the lady.

  So they parted, for she slipped away into the dusk and soon left the church by a side door. But Trombin and his companion went forward, and finding the Senator on his knees, they knelt down, one on each side of him. He glanced to the right and left, and was surprised at the improvement in their appearance since he had seen them at supper. They had been distinctly shabby then, and he would not have liked to be seen in their company by his friends; but to-day they were dressed with excellent taste and neatness, in perfectly new clothes. Gambardella wore a suit of dark purple cloth slashed with velvet of the same colour; but Trombin wore black velvet and silk, which he considered most becoming to his infantile complexion and yellow hair. Both had new hats, too, and their feathers, purple and black respectively, were nothing short of magnificent. Only their rapiers were unchanged, the same serviceable, business-like weapons that Pignaver had seen before.

  The three men knelt side by side, putting on an air of devotion; and no one else was very near them.

  ‘Tantum ergo ...’ began the choir, somewhere out of sight.

  ‘I presume you mean business, my lord,’ said Gambardella so that the Senator could just hear him.

  ‘They passed through Padua, and took post to Rovigo and Ferrara,’ answered Pignaver. ‘You cannot miss them if you go that way.’

  ‘A very convenient place, Ferrara, if they would wait for us there,’ observed Trombin.

  ‘... veneremur cernui,’ the choir sang, and many of the people were joining in the ancient hymn.

  ‘When can you start?’ inquired Pignaver.

  ‘As soon as we have funds for the journey,’ answered Gambardella promptly.

  ‘You said one hundred ducats, did you not? Your expenses are to be counted at two ducats per day, and as much of the first hundred as is left when you have finished is to be deducted from the final payment of five hundred. Is that it?’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Gambardella.

  ‘It is impossible to be more accurate,’ observed Trombin, without turning his head, and preserving the expression of a devout, fat-cheeked seraph, which he always put on when at his prayers.

  ‘I have the money with me, gentlemen,’ continued Pignaver. ‘As soon as the Benediction is over I will hand it to you, and I hope you will find it convenient to start at once.’

  ‘We are ready,’ Gambardella replied. ‘To-morrow night we shall be in Ferrara, and if your friends are still there, we may be here again on the third day.’

  ‘Heaven grant us all its favours and a speedy return!’ prayed Trombin.

  ‘Amen,’ said the Senator, calculating that if only three days were consumed, the Bravi would have ninety-four ducats in hand, and he would have to pay them only four hundred and six.

  In his pocket his hand grasped the heavy little bag containing the gold, and he wished that private vengeance and justice were not so dear; but he was not a miser, though he had a real Venetian’s understanding of the value of money, and did not like to part with it till he was sure that he was to receive a full equivalent. For the rest, what he was doing was perfectly justifiable in his eyes: if the couple had been caught within the territory of the Republic, Alessandro Stradella would have had to answer to the law for the atrocious crime of carrying off a Senator’s niece and affianced bride who was a minor, and the law would not have been tender to the Sicilian; the least penalty he would have suffered would have been to be chained to an oar on a government galley, and it was quite possible that he might have been hanged. Most people would prefer to be run through with a rapier, and it was therefore clear that Stradella ought to be satisfied. As for such weakness as a qualm of conscience, Pignaver was as far above such childishness as the Bravi themselves.

  He gave them the little bag of ducats and took leave of them by the monument of Pietro Bernardini, almost on the spot where Ortensia and Pina had put on their brown cloaks three or four days earlier.

  When he was gone, Trombin and Gambardella looked at each other in silence; the dark man’s thin lips, visible on each side of the point of his nose, but quite shaded by it in the middle, were smiling faintly, but Trombin’s cherubic countenance expressed, or caricatured, the utter beatitude of one of those painted angels to which his friend always compared him.

  They walked slowly up the church towards the sacristy, and at the door they met the sacristan, a lay brother, coming out with his long extinguisher in his hand. They stopped him politely.

  ‘We desire to offer two candles to Saint Francis,’ said Gambardella, ‘one for each of us. We also desire to leave a gold ducat for masses to be said for the soul of a departed friend.’

  ‘I will serve you at once, gentlemen,’ answered the sacristan. ‘What was your friend’s baptismal name, if you please, that I may write it on the list?’

  ‘Alessandro,’ answered Gambardella.

  ‘Do you wish to mention the date of his death, sir?’

  ‘No. It is of no use.’

  The lay brother took the money and went into the sacristy to deposit it, and to fetch the candles, which the Bravi then lighted and put up themselves.

  CHAPTER VII

  TROMBIN HAD RIGHTLY guessed that the fugitives would rest themselves in Ferrara, where they would be safe within the Pope’s dominions, and beyond the reach of Venetian law. By the old road the city was nearly a hundred miles from Padua, and it was only by a lavish use of money that Stradella succeeded in reaching it at midnight, after leaving Padua soon after sunrise. Ortensia was utterly exhausted, and even Pina, who was very strong, was beginning to be worn out. They had trouble in getting into the inn at that hour, and when they at last succeeded, they found that there was only one room to be had, although, as the sleepy servant who had let them in added, they might have the whole house to themselves the next day, for all the travellers would be gone again long before noon.

  Pina slept with her mistress, while Stradella and his man rolled themselves in their cloaks and lay down outside the door, with valises for pillows; for they expected to be pursued, and though they had made good time, they knew that mounted men, with frequent relays of horses, might overtake them before morning. It was not Stradella’s first adventure, though it was his last, and he fully realised that Pignaver would use every means to wreak his vengeance. It could not have occurred to the runaways that three days would be wasted in searching Venice before the pursuit actually began.

  Even that knowledge could not have made Alessandro sleep more soundly, since the fear of danger to Ortensia could not keep him awake, and he slept as peacefully on the stone pavement of the corridor as ever he did in the most luxurious bed.

  But his man was awake and was watching for all the four, though he lay quite still, rolled up in his brown cloak. For Cucurullo was one of those people who sleep little at the best of times, and generally have to content themselves with resting their bodies by lying motionless, while they deaden thought as best they can with those melancholy devices that are familiar to the sleepless.

  The hunchback rested now, but was glad to lie awake, though he was well aware that he deserved no especial credit for watching while his young master slept soundly by his side. But he did not try to cheat time by fancying that he was counting a flock of sheep that crowded through a narrow gate into a field, or by saying the alphabet backwards, or by repeating all the prayers he knew, which were many, for he was a religiously inclined person, nor did he laboriously reckon how many Apostolic florins there were in seventeen hundred and sixty-three and a half Venetian ducats. On the contrary, he concentrated his mind to the b
est of his ability on a problem which it seemed to him of the very highest importance to solve at once; for it involved nothing less than the salvation of Alessandro Stradella’s soul.

  Now Cucurullo, as I have said, was religiously inclined. He was not devout in the same sense as the two cut-throats who lighted candles before the image of Saint Francis for the success of their murderous enterprise, and paid beforehand for masses to be said for the soul of the man they were going to kill. He would not have denied that this was a form of piety too, if any one had asked him his opinion. Everything, he would have argued, was relative; and if you were going to stab a man in the back, it was more moral to make an effort to save his soul than to wish to destroy it with his body. He would have admitted this, for he was charitable, even to such people as professional murderers. But his own religion was quite of another sort; he was devotedly attached to his master, he was deeply concerned for the latter’s future welfare, and it looked just now as if Stradella’s chances of salvation would be slender if any accident carried him off suddenly. Moreover, such an accident might occur at any moment, for, like Stradella himself, he anticipated that Pignaver would seek a speedy revenge.

  Like the early Christians he was a pessimist about this world and an optimist about the next; for that is usually the state of mind of those who labour under any material or bodily disability, from slavery, which is the worst, to blindness or deformity.

  As a pessimist, therefore, Cucurullo thought that his master, Ortensia, Pina, and himself had a most excellent chance of having their throats cut within twenty-four hours, and he was rather surprised that it should not have happened already.

  As an optimist, on the other hand, he trusted that by his own exertions he might so dispose matters as that his master and Ortensia should be murdered while in a state of grace, and not in mortal sin; to be plain, he was determined that they should be duly married before Pignaver’s agents despatched them. For he had been constrained to aid and abet his master in more than one romantic adventure before now, and nothing had come of any of them that was at all conducive to the young man’s salvation.

  Poor Cucurullo knew the whole process of those affairs, as the conjurer’s assistant knows how the tricks are done. Even when Stradella was at home, in his own room, his man had always been able to tell whether he was in love or not. When he was not, he industriously composed oratorios, or motets, or some other kind of serious music; but when he was, he sang to himself, as a bird does in spring, improvising both the words and the melody; or else he would sit still for an hour at a time, doing nothing, but dreaming with open eyes and slightly parted lips; or he would pace the floor impatiently, and go to the door every five minutes to listen for a light footfall on the stairs. All this Cucurullo had observed frequently; often, too, he had carried letters and tokens, and had brought others back; and not a few times, by night, he had held cloak and lute and rapier, while his master climbed up to a balcony or a window high above. Many such things had Cucurullo done, and had confessed them afterwards as misdeeds. Wretched sinner that he was, he had even paid flattering compliments to a chambermaid to sweeten her humour till she promised to take a message to her lady. This had seemed to him particularly wicked, yet he had done it and would do it again, if Stradella required such service, simply because he could not help it.

  Now, however, all former adventures sank to nothing in comparison with the present one. So far, the musician had lightly loved and ridden away; but this time he had not ridden away alone, and, moreover, he was not carrying off the buxom wife or daughter of some meek citizen who would appeal in vain to the law and could do nothing without it, and who would probably let the erring lady return to his home at the trifling price of a sound beating when Stradella was tired of her. That would have been bad enough, in all conscience; but this time the hare-brained singer had done much worse, even from a worldly point of view; and looking at it from another, Cucurullo thought that the irreparable nature of the deed made it more wicked, besides the fact that all the persons concerned might lose their lives by it. He was a very simple person in some ways. Under the circumstances it seemed necessary before all things to convert moral wrong into moral right by the simple intervention of a priest and a wedding ring, after which the question of civil right, as the law would regard it, would take care of itself well enough.

  In the grey dawn Cucurullo’s large unshaven face emerged from the ample folds of his cloak, and his mild blue eyes seemed to review the situation by daylight as he looked from his master’s half-muffled figure to Ortensia’s closed door, and then towards the window at the end of the passage. Then he sat up cautiously and drew his heels under him, and because his body was so short and so completely covered up, he looked as if he had none at all, and as if his big head were lying in a nest of brown cloth on a pair of folded legs. Then, from just below his chin, an immensely long arm stole out quietly, and his hand drew up Stradella’s cloak which had slipped from his shoulder; for the morning air was chilly, though the spring was far advanced. Any one, coming on him suddenly as he sat there, would have been startled as at the sight of a supernatural being, consisting of a head, legs, and arms, all joined together without any body.

  The dawn brightened to day, and all sorts of noises began to come up from below, echoing through the staircase and long passages of the house; a distant door was opened and shut, then some one seemed to be dragging a heavy weight over a rough floor; far off, some one else whistled a tune; and then, all at once, came the clatter of many horses’ feet on the cobble-stones in the yard.

  Cucurullo sprang up and ran on tip-toe to the window, instantly fearing the arrival of mounted pursuers; but he only saw the stablemen leading out the post-horses to be watered and groomed. When he turned to come back he saw that he had waked Stradella, who was sitting up, yawning prodigiously, and rubbing his eyes like a sleepy boy. He raised his hand to stop his man, and then got up without noise and joined him near the window.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked in a whisper, not without some anxiety.

  ‘Only the post-horses, sir, but I was afraid of something else.’

  ‘I wish we were already in Florence. This is too near Venice!’

  ‘Better still in Rome,’ said Cucurullo, gloomily. ‘Still better in Sicily, and altogether much better in Africa; but best of all in heaven, sir, if you can manage to get there!’

  ‘It is not the first time you and I have run a risk together,’ observed Stradella, slowly moving the back of his hand up and down against his unshaven cheek.

  ‘It is the first time you have risked the life of a lady,’ answered Cucurullo quietly, for he understood his master very well.

  ‘We had better go down and see about getting horses,’ Stradella answered, and he led the way to the stairs, his man following in his footsteps.

  The sun was rising now, and there was much bustling and clattering in the yard, and sousing and splashing of cold water about the fountain; a dozen horses were tied up to rings in the wall on one side, and the stablemen were grooming some of them industriously while others waited their turn, stamping now and then upon the cobble-stones, and turning their heads as far as they could to see what was going on behind them and on each side. Three men were washing the huge coach that ran to Rovigo one day and back the next, and several smaller conveyances stood beyond it in a row, still covered with dust from yesterday, for the weather had been dry.

  As in many inns of that time, the innkeeper was also the postmaster. Stradella found him under the arched entrance to the yard, giving instructions to the cook, who was just going to the market accompanied by a scullion; the latter carried three empty baskets on his head, one inside of the other.

  ‘You can have no horses to-day,’ said the host, in answer to Stradella’s demand, and he shook his head emphatically.

  ‘No horses! It is impossible! It is absolutely necessary that we should go on at once.’

  The innkeeper was a square-shouldered Romagnole with grey hair, red cheeks
, and sharp black eyes. He shook his head again.

  ‘I have not a horse to give you,’ he said. ‘Everything in my stable was engaged beforehand for the Nuncio. I cannot give you the Government’s horses from the Rovigo coach, can I? Patience! That is all I can say.’

  Stradella began to ask questions. The Nuncio, on his way to Verona and Austria, had spent three days in the inn, both to rest himself and also to be sure of having enough horses ahead to go on with, and word had been sent to Mantua to make all the necessary arrangements. He should have gone by Modena, but the road was in a bad state. A bridge had broken down, and he had been forced to pass through Ferrara.

  ‘But surely,’ said the musician, ‘I can hire a pair of horses of some sort in the town, by paying a good price for them!’

  No. The Nuncio had hired everything. Did the gentleman suppose that a Papal Nuncio could travel with as few as eight or ten horses? He needed about fifty in all. That was why he proceeded so slowly. There was not another animal to be had in the town, horse or mule, that could be put to a wheeled vehicle — not one! The gentleman might hire a riding-horse or two, but the innkeeper had been told that he had a lady and her tire-woman with him. Patience! A day would soon pass, Ferrara was a fine town, well worth seeing, and he could go on to-morrow morning in the Bologna coach, which would arrive from that city at noon to-day.

  Clearly there was not the smallest possibility of being able to get on during the next twenty-four hours. Stradella’s face was very grave as he turned away, and Cucurullo was paler than before.

  Upstairs Ortensia had wakened just then and had called Pina, who got up and opened the window wide, letting in the air with the morning sun. Utterly unprovided as the two women were, they had slept half-dressed, and as Ortensia rose the nurse threw one of the two brown cloaks over her bare shoulders and fastened it round her neck.