Chapter 23

With an easy conscience, also, he had helped himself to the requisite funds for their journey, amply estimated, from the treasury of the Nicolotti, which was in his keeping; and his reasoning savored of Venetian subtlety, with a hint of his toso training. Had not the Lady of the Giustiniani offered to guarantee the funds necessary for the assessments of the state, when Piero, doubtful of their resources, would have declined the position of gastaldo grande, cumbered as it was with the uncomfortable requirement that the chief should be personally responsible for all dues and taxes levied upon the traghetti? Piero was not the first gastaldo who had wished to escape an honor that weighed so heavily, and a very serious penalty was already decreed for such contempt of office by that tribunal tireless in vigilance.

So, without compunction, Piero had taken the needful, sure that when he returned Marina's husband or her father would repay it.

_Could_ he return--after helping a patrician to escape from Venice into the heart of the country with which the Republic was at war? It looked doubtful even to Piero, with his indomitable temperament, but he wasted no sentiment upon this question; for if he might not return there were other countries in which a man could live. Or, should he be pursued and lighted upon by the far-seeing eye of the Ten, he could die but once and get into trouble no more! He crossed himself decorously as he dismissed the matter; but it was not an event that he could change by pondering.

There was another question that interested him more keenly at this moment; when Messer Girolamo should know that his daughter was not in Venice, could he fail to comprehend the hint he had given a few hours before, and would he not follow them to Rome, as Piero devoutly hoped, for he wished to leave Marina in her father's care. It was not easy to predict what Messer Girolamo might do--the case had been too doubtful for a more explicit confession, and Piero had been wise in his generation.

He turned now to Marina with the question: "If thou hadst told thy father of thy wish mayhap he might have come with thee?"

She shook her head sadly and made no answer, but after awhile she said, "He is like the others. They cannot understand the need, for to them the Madonna hath not revealed the desperate state of Venice."

"Yet thou knowest, Marina, that already the great cardinal--but lately come from France--hath started for Rome to make up this quarrel?"

"That is what the Senate will not understand!" she cried, with flashing eyes. "The Holy Father will have submission and penance, in place of embassies and pomp. One must go to him quite simply, from the people, saying, 'We have sinned; have mercy upon Venice!' Piero, thou knowest that awful vision of the Tintoret? It is Venice that he hath painted in her doom--the great floods bursting in upon her--all the agony and the anguish and the desolation of God's wrath! Santa Maria! I cannot bear it!" She closed her eyes, shuddering and sick with terror.

"It was the way with Jacopo," said Pietro irreverently. "He was full of freaks, and some demon hath tormented him. He was a man like others--not one for a revelation."

"Hush, Piero!" she implored; "it breaks my heart! This also may be counted against Venice, for it is the Holy Madonna who hath granted me the vision."

If Piero was silent he was only restrained by deference to Marina from invoking the aid of every saint in the calendar, in copious malediction, on this miserable Jacopo who had so increased the trouble in Marina's eyes--since women had such foolish faith in pictures.

"Jacopo Robusti, posing for a seer, and foretelling the end of the world, like a prophet or a saint! _Goffone_!"[9] Piero was paddling furiously. "Jacopo, of the Fondamenta del Mori--not better than others--with that boastful sentence blazoned on his door!--'The coloring of Titian, with the drawing of Angelo!'"

[9] Great fool!

But he forgot even his resentment against Jacopo in his anxiety as he watched Marina, asking himself if it would be possible for her to pray herself back into healthful life again, even in the dominions of the Holy Father; for he realized that nothing could help her but this one thing on which her heart was set--while he was yet, if possible, more utterly without sympathy for the fear that moved her than her father or Marcantonio had been. But if the one woman in Venice had but one desire, however desperate and incomprehensible,--"_Basta_! It is enough," said Piero to himself,--she should not die with it unfulfilled, if he could compass it.

Yet, at the thought of death his heart sank. "It was the Madonna which thou beheldest in thy vision--not the cross?" he asked her quickly, making the fateful sign as he spoke, to avert this dread presage of death, and afraid of her answer; for Marina was failing before his eyes, and doubtless, in her vision, there had been some apparition of a cross; and even the less devout among the gondoliers were still dominated by some of the superstitions which gave a picturesque color to the habits of the people.

But she, too earnest in her faith to take any note of a less serious mood, answered simply:

"It was the very Madonna herself, as thou knowest her in San Donato, who came to me in the palazzo one night when I slept not, and gave me the mission to save Venice,--scarce able to speak for her great sadness, and the tears dropping, as thou knowest her in San Donato,--commanding me to go before the Holy Father and pray for mercy to Venice. She it was who told me that our prayers pass not up beyond the clouds which hang above a city under doom of interdict. Oh, Piero, hasten; for my strength is little, and Rome is far!"

When the Lady of the Giustiniani had sent for Piero to meet her in Santa Maria dell' Orto, to ask him to manage her escape to Rome, it had not been possible to refuse her; all his attempts at reasoning were in vain. "I must go," she said, with that invincible persistence which he never could combat. "If thou wilt not help me, I go alone." She was kneeling before the terrible "Judgment" of the Tintoret, and the face she had lifted to him in appeal was white with agonized comprehension.

The journey had been long and wearisome; all day they had been slowly toiling against the tide; and long since Piero had summoned to his aid a trusted gondolier who had been ordered to follow them at a little distance, and who, at a sign from the gastaldo, had silently left his bark to drift and taken his place at the other end of the gondola in which the fugitives were making their way to Padua.

They had passed the domain of the Laguna Morta, weird and half-forbidding, with tangles of sea-plants and upspringing wild fowl calling to each other with hoarse cries across the marshes--with armies of water beetles zigzagging in the shallows, and crabs and lizards crawling upon the scattered sand heaps among the coarse sea-grasses, while small fish brought unexpected dimples to the deeper pools that lay between. And the mingled odor of waters fresh and salt was broken into a breath now pungent and pleasant, now almost noisome, as the light breeze stirred the shallows of this strange domain which was neither land nor sea. Yet even here the pale sea-holly and the evening primrose made redeeming spots of beauty, with their faint hues of violet and yellow; and a distant water-meadow shimmered like the sea, with the tender blue of the spreading lavender.

They had passed Fusina, and the lagoon lay silvery, like a trail of moonlight behind them--Venice in the distance, opalesque, radiant, a city of dreams. The clouds above them, beautiful with changing sunset lights, were no longer mirrored on a still lagoon, but mottled the broken surfaces of the river with hues of bronze and purple, between the leaves of the creeping water-plants which clogged the movement of the oars; for they had exchanged the liquid azure pavement of their "Città Nobilissima" for the brown tide of the Brenta. On the river's brink the rushes were starred with lilies and iris and ranunculus, and the fragrance of sheeted flowers from the water-meadows came to them fresh and delicious, mingled with the salt breath of the sea, while swallows--dusky, violet-winged--circled about their bows, teasing their progress with mystic eliptical flight--like persistent problems perpetually recurring, yet to be solved by fate alone.

It was the hour of the Ave Maria, and Marina roused herself from her sad reverie. The clouds piled themselves in luminous masses and drifted into the hollows of the wonderful Euganean hills, and a crimson sunset tinged peaks and clouds with glory, as Padua with its low arcaded streets, and San Antonio--cousin to San Marco in minarets and Eastern splendor--and the Lion of Saint Mark upon his lofty column, closed the vista of their weary day. The chimes of Venice were too far for sound, but from every campanile of this quaint city the vesper bells, solemn and sweet, pealed forth their call to prayer--as if no threat of Rome's displeasure made a discord in their harmony.

XXXI

Piero had watched all night before the little inn of the "Buon Pesce," impatient to meet and conquer his fate, while above, in an upper room, the ladies Marina and Beata tried to sleep; but before the dawn they were off again, down by the way of the brown, rolling river, taking the weary length to Brondolo and the sea.

There were two gondolas now, and the men in each pulled as if the prize of a great regatta awaited them--Nicolotti against Castellani--and silently, saving voice and strength for a great need.

It might have seemed a pleasure party, save for the stress of their speed, as they swept by the groves of poplar and catalpa, which bordered the broad flood, to the sound of the waters only and the song of the birds in the wood; water-lilies floated in the pools along the shore; currents of fragrance were blown out to them on wandering winds; and in the felze, as they were nearing Brondolo, Marina and the Lady Beata, soothed by the gliding motion and the monotonous plash of the oars into the needed sleep which the night had failed to bring them, were unaware of the colloquy between Piero and his gondolier.

"Antonio!" Piero called cautiously to the man who was rowing behind the felze, "I have somewhat to say to thee; are there those within thy vision who may hear our speech?"

"Padrone, no; but the time is short for speaking much, for we reach the lock with another turn of the Brenta."

"May the blessed San Nicolò send sunshine to dazzle the jewels in the eyes of Messer San Marco till we are safe beyond it and out of Chioggia!" Piero exclaimed fervently. "And thou, Antonio, swear me again thy faith--or swear it not, as thou wilt. But thou shalt choose this moment whom thou wilt serve; and it shall go ill with thee if thou keep not thy troth."

"By San Marco and San Teodoro," Antonio responded readily, crossing himself devoutly as he spoke, "I swear to do thy bidding, Messer Gastaldo."

"And thou wilt die for the people against the nobles if need should be?"

"If thou leadest, Gastaldo Grande."

"Hast thou a pouch beneath thy stiletto where thou mayest defend with thy life what I shall give thee?"

Antonio displayed it silently.

"This for the need of the cause in thy hand," said Piero, passing him a purse of gold. "But gold is worthless to this token which shall win thee the hearing of the bancali, and the aid of every loyal son of San Nicolò, and shall be proof that thou bearest my orders and my trust."

The trust was great--the bancali were the governing board of the traghetti.

Antonio unfastened his doublet and secured the precious token under his belt.

"Command then, caro padrone."

"Slacken thy pace, for this may be our last speech together. Are those who follow true as thou?"

"Messer Gastaldo," Antonio answered with reluctance, "by signs which be but trifles to relate,--by a word dropped in Padua, and not for mine ear,--one of them--I know not which--hath, perchance, affair with a master mightier than thou." He made the usual gesture which indicated the Three of that terrible Inquisition whose name was better left unsaid--a sign much used in Venice where the very walls had ears.

It was a blow to Piero, but he wasted no words.

"They then--both--are apart from this and all my counsel. It shall be for thee alone, Antonio."

"So safer, Messer Gastaldo. I listen--and forget, save as it shall serve thee."

"First, then, Antonio; I have sworn to escort the Lady of the Giustiniani in safety to Rome, from which naught shall keep me--save if the Ten have other plans, the Madonna doth forgive the broken vow!"

It was a strange admission from a man stalwart and fearless like Piero, but he made it without shame, as a soldier acquiescing in destiny.

"Santissima Maria!" Antonio ejaculated with unusual fervor and crossing himself in full realization of the meaning.

"At Brondolo a brig is waiting--orange and yellow of sail, device of a blazing sun; a hunchback, with doublet of orange above the mast for luck, and a fine figure of a _gobbo_ upon the deck--a living hunchback--by which thou shalt know it for mine, and bound to my order whether it come by me or by my token. If we reach and board her it shall be well--and Rome, so will it heaven, before us all! But if the dreaded ones are on the search and overtake us----"

Again the sign.

The tragedy of the situation was in his face as he looked steadily at Antonio, who did not flinch.

"Thy duty, then, Antonio, shall lie elsewhere. Thou must escape, unseen, while they lay hands upon the lady and me, whom first they will secure before they give thee a thought."

Antonio instantly touched his stiletto, and looked his question with a fearless glance.

"Nay," said the gastaldo scornfully, and drawing a line quickly about his own throat. "Thou wilt serve me better with thy head in its place. Thou shalt return to Venice--by Fusina or Brondolo, as thy wit shall serve thee--leaving the precious gondolieri to prove whether their silken sashes be badges of men or traitors! Art thou listening?"

"Command me, padrone!"

"Within two days, if I be free, the bancali shall have news of me. Listen well, Antonio,"--again the hand and eyes went up with the dreaded unmistakable sign,--"if thou seest THEM seize me before thou takest leave, wait no longer than to plan with the bancali to come and demand my release. Thou shalt tell the bancali that I sent thee; thou shalt tell them there are affairs of moment for the Nicolotti which shall go hard for the traghetti if I be not there to work them--Art listening, Antonio?" he questioned feverishly.

Antonio's eyes were fastened upon his. "Padrone, yes!" he answered breathlessly.

"With my token thou canst command the loyalty of every Nicolotto--is it thine oar that made that rustle?--and perchance, if there were a rising of the traghetti to demand aught of the Signoria--come nearer, Antonio!--the Castellani also, if they willed to join with their traghetti in asking for justice--would not serve under my token the less heartily for the word, confided low to their bancali--dost understand?--_that if their taxes and their fines oppress them_, these also, I being free, will pay this year to the maledetto Avvogadoro del Commun."

Antonio gravely bowed his head in assent.

"This at thy discretion--thou understandest, Antonio--and so that no violence come from the massing of the people, but only the proof of its will and of the numbers who make the demand. Only--if it be not granted, they shall make a stand at the traghetti and _fight_----"

"Padrone, yes!"

"For--thou dost mark me, Antonio?--this Lady of the Giustiniani hath been a saint among the people; she hath given them much in gifts--she hath given almost her life in prayers and penances, that heaven may avert its wrath from Venice, which she in truth believeth the Holy Father--may the saints make him suffer for it!--hath brought upon the people by his curse--may heaven forbid! And she, being now noble, hath preferred the cause of the _people_ to the cause of the _nobles_, and bringeth upon her the displeasure of the Signoria by her flight to Rome. For--see it well, Antonio!--if the Senate hold the Lady of the Giustiniani for fault in this,"--Piero paused and uttered the last words with a slow, mysterious emphasis, while Antonio listened with an intensity that missed no shading of meaning,--"_it will be the cause of the people against the nobles_."

"If they harm her not," he resumed in his usual tone, after a moment's pause, "my fate shall be avenged in the judgment and command of the bancali of the Nicolotti only. They shall not risk the people's good for the poor life of one leader!"

"Padrone!" Antonio cried, with flashing eyes. "Commandi altro?" ("Hast thou other commands?")

"None, save that if I return not--and not otherwise--thou shalt seek with my token the Master Girolamo Magagnati; thou shalt tell him of this my confidence, holding nothing back; and thou shalt pray him, of his honor, to discharge the debt which may be found lacking in the treasury of the Nicolotti,--since the moneys have been taken for the need of the lady on her journey,--the which, if I return, I have means, and more, to repay."

The two men grasped hands and looked into each other's eyes for a brief recording moment, having each touched that _best_ in the other which was not shown to all men, and so begotten trust each in each.

"By the Holy Madonna and San Nicolò, I will not fail!" Antonio promised, and in a moment had seized his oar again and was springing forward on the bridge of his gondola, as if his thoughts were light and rhythmic as his motions.

They sped on with a few swift, silent strokes--then, "Brondolo!" he cried brightly; but a sudden desperate steadying of resolution was felt in the fierce stroke which sent the gondola forward with a jerk.

The fishing-skiffs of Chioggia fluttered like gaudy butterflies before them, dipping their wings of orange and crimson and every conceivable sunset tint to catch the breeze; and the air was suddenly vibrant with sounds of traffic and busy life. Men called to each other with song and jest from heavily laden barks, while they waited the hour of sailing; or lay at ease on the top of their wares, smoking luxurious draughts of content from their comrade pipes,--lords of their craft, though their couch was but a pile of cabbages or market produce,--exchanging some whimsical comment upon the affairs of busier neighbors which brimmed these frequent hours of _dolce far niente_ with unflagging interest.

And there, among the lighter shipping, was the brig bound to the order of the gastaldo grande, with the yellow sails and device of the rising sun--with the gobbo in orange doublet on the masthead for good luck, and the gobbo on the deck to make it sure. Piero turned and looked for it, as they passed the lock. And there too----

"_Corpo di San Marco_!" ejaculated Antonio under his breath, for he stood higher than Piero upon the bridge of the gondola and facing forward.

There, full in sight, and riding proudly at anchor, the beautiful curves of her swan-like prows made cannon proof with plates of shining steel,--and below, in lieu of figurehead to promise victory, those letters of dread omen, C.D.X.,--with thirty oars-men from the arsenal of Venice, to ensure her speed, each ready at his oar-lock to wield his oar, with a band of marksmen trained to finest tempered arms to quell the resistance which no Venetian would dare offer with those letters on the prow; the gold and scarlet banner of San Marco, for good fortune, at her masthead; the wind swelling her impatient sail, as the curb but frets the steed--_the galley of the Ten was not waiting without a purpose_!

The shock of the boats as they passed through the lock had roused the sleepers rudely, and Piero had time but for a swift glance of command to Antonio, bidding him escape, when a gondola bearing the ducal colors floated out from the sea of small waiting craft and saluted them courteously. The dignified signor who addressed them wore the violet robe and stole of a secretary of the Doge, and his face was the face of that secretary in whose silken hand the gastaldo's had lain prisoned when he took the oath of office!

Resistance was impossible.

"Messer Gastaldo," said the secretary suavely, "it hath pleased those who have ever the welfare of Venice at heart to provide for the most noble Lady of the Giustiniani an escort which better fitteth her rank than the size of thy _barchetta_ permitteth, and a dwelling more honorable than the 'Osteria del Buon Pesce,' where, in company of the Lady Beata Tagliapietra, she hath passed the night."

The secretary paused and placidly noted the effect of his words upon Piero, who could have gnashed his teeth for anger at those talking walls of Venice which had betrayed him--so cautiously had he told his secret to the Lady Beata only, in that short moonlight stroll!

At a sign from the secretary a second gondola, wearing the ducal livery and filled with the gorgeous costumes of the palace guards, came out from the floating mass and approached the gondola of the people, where the Lady Marina sat trembling like a frightened fawn.

There was a struggle among the lesser craft to draw closer to this dramatic centre; they jostled each other unceremoniously; a splash, like a falling oar, was heard, but scarce noted in the absorbing interest of the moment; only a bare-legged boy jumped off from a tiny fishing-skiff near which the oar had floated, and swam with it to to the gondola from which it had fallen--since it was this boat which was making the carnival for them! Piero, alone, had slightly turned his head and noted that no one now stood on the _ponte piede_ behind the felze of his gondola.

"The galley waits to receive the noble ladies to whom I am commissioned _by those who have sent me_ to offer my respectful homage," said the secretary, bowing low before the felze. "The noble ladies will proceed thither in the ducal gondola which attends them. And thou, Messer Gastaldo, wilt graciously aid me in their escort--since, verily, they owe much to thy chivalry."

It was a pleasant scene for the onlookers.

But the Lady Marina sat motionless, and gave neither word nor sign in response to the invitation of the ducal secretary.

"Shall the pleasure of the lady of this noble house not be consulted?" Piero questioned, struggling to cover his defiance under a tone of deference.

But his answer was only in the secretary's eyes,--smiling, imperious,--more defiant than his own impotent will; and in the courtly waiting attitude, which had not changed, and which seemed unbearably to lengthen out the passing seconds.

The Lady Beata, winding compassionate arms around her friend, had raised her veil, whispering words of tenderness.

But there was no recognition in the glance that met hers--only the immeasurable pathos of a hopeless surrender; the fervent passion of Marina's will and faith had made all things seem possible of achievement, though Venice was against her, for had not the mission been given her in a vision by the Holy Madonna of San Donato--Mother of Sorrows--and was not the issue sure? And yielding all thought of self she had braced every faculty to accomplish the holy task of which she alone felt the urgency. But the overtaxed heart and brain could endure no longer thwarting; their activity and unquestioning purpose had been her only power; and the moment she ceased to struggle will and reason fled together.

Pitifully acquiescent, she went with them unresisting.

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