Chapter 4

"Sweet Mother--the 'might-have-beens' make faincants of men. It is not love--but duty that calleth me. _There is no choice._ Where is thine honorable teaching?"

"Bethink thee, Aluisi, of this post of dignity in France--a place of power--of service to thy country. How sayest thou 'there is no choice'?"

"Mother--when our stars have ordered otherwise--there is no more to it than that--why then--if men lack strength to bend their wills to meet their destiny,--it is not as they will,--it is not as their honor wills--but far otherwise. And theirs the fault."

She looked up into his noble face as he bent over her--a face not often yielded so fully to her gaze--dear as this widowed mother and her son were to each other, and intimate in friendship; and as she looked a calm fell upon her and she saw strength, truth, valor, judgment--the soul of the man like a rock beneath the light play of his speech.

She no longer willed to oppose his choice. She put up her hand and drew him down beside her on the couch.

"There will be much to think of," she said after a long silence; "thine interests in Venice will be hard to leave. Why--if some of Caterina's house must escort her and abide with her--why not her brother Zorzi? Who should be fitter in her defense?"

"Zorzi is but a youth--less in years than her own. How should she lean on such a boy?"

"Aluisi--thou hast some fear which thou hast not spoken."

He was silent though she waited. How might he declare the bitter need of watchfulness, yet not betray the knowledge gotten in those secret councils of the Republic!

"_Madre mia_," he said at last, when she had reminded him of her question. "Without cause I had made no vow. Canst thou not trust thy knight? And of my fealty, so solemnly sworn, Caterina knoweth naught. It is for me and thee alone--_and least of all for the ear of Venice_. But thou knowest--if it were no more than that the way of a crown be not easy for a young and guileless maid--some one of her own should be with her in that strange land; and he should be wise in counsel."

"As thou?--who dost so qualify thyself?" she asked with a pitiful attempt to rally him--for her heart was sore. "What shall I do without thee--Aluisi!" Her voice had suddenly broken in yearning. It was not often that such emotion escaped her. He folded her hand more closely as they sat on in the silence, in the falling twilight, and his eyes wandered down the length of the splendid ancestral hall, while his resolve strengthened within him--the knights and ladies of the house of Cornaro for centuries back leaning to him out of the quaint carving of their time-dimmed frames--fading from him, like ghosts, into the gloom of the distant corners, yet holding him with a strange, vital fascination--for it was much to leave. The very tapestries rustled with the legends of the Cornelii of long, long ago, on the shores of the Rivo Alto, before the story of Venice had won its honored place in the chronicles of nations--yet not the less for their indistinguishable outlines and mythical color were they woven into the proud consciousness of the duty the Cornari owed their own.

Memories of the state his Mother had held here rose to meet him--memories of his Father, who had been a power in Venice. How could he ask the Lady of the Bernardini, with her whitening hair, to leave it all for Cyprus? Yet that was in his thought. He could not frame the words; it was too much to ask--he must leave it to come from her.

"Is thy fear not to be spoken?" she asked at last. "And must we accept it for the Caterina--who is very fair and tender?"

"It is the ways of Cyprus that I fear," he answered quickly; "and of that strange people--a blending of half-pagan races with the blood of France and Greece. But, Madre mia--there must be no echoes from the Council-Chamber--none of our talk beyond thine own discreet hearing--it would but harm her. And for _acceptance_--'must we _accept_ it for the Caterina?'--thou dost ask--it is an empty word! The will of Venice is _set_ to do this thing."

"Yet our cousin Marco--the child's own father--goeth not heavily; he hath no fear."

"He is mad with the glory of it--after Venice's own temper."

There had been some further talk--not over-much dwelling on vain regrets--and then the Lady of the Bernardini had asked, half-reluctantly:

"How if some Lady of the Cornari went with her?--I--having no daughter of my own--and loving her well? And--thou and I need not be parted."

"I dared not ask it of thee," he cried fervently--"for it is much. I dared not tell thee of the Senate's wish to name thee chief Lady of Caterina's Court."

"The court of the child! The little Caterina!" she exclaimed impetuously, rising and taking a few steps away from him with the irresistible impulse of offended dignity.

"I was bidden to lay their desire before thee--if it should be also of thy will, my Mother; it was not a command," he hastened to assure her.

But she had already conquered herself--being strong as proud, and prompt in decision, but ruled above all by her deep affections, and she came back to his side before he had found words with which to propitiate her.

"It was strange to me," she said, "but Venice would be more strange without my boy. Let us go together."

"Thou canst verily bear to leave it all?" he asked when he could trust himself to speak.

Her eyes followed the direction of his motion around the vast hall, then came back to rest upon his face.

"The past is ours," she said, "but not to make us weak. Thy 'might-have-beens' are not less wise for women than for men. I have only thee."

"San Marco atone to thee for thy sacrifice," he cried devoutly.

VII

Never was a more brilliant pageant imagined to do honor to the symbolic rite of the _Wedding of the Adriatic_ than the triumphant Signoria had called forth to speed the young Queen to her distant island.

Never did father more solemnly promise his protection to the child from whom he was parting, than did Cristoforo Moro, the Serenissimo, pledge the faith and support of Venetia to the Daughter of the Republic, as with slow majesty, to the rhythm of an ancient wedding canticle, the Bucentoro, escorted by all the galleys of the arsenal of Venice, the mighty galléasses of her patrician merchants and the gondolas of her nobles, moved forward, beyond the Lido, where the Ambassador Filippo Podacatharo waited with the fleet of Cyprus--most sumptuously outfitted--to receive the bride of Janus.

And never sailed fairer maiden, more fearlessly, into the far sea of her unknown future, flooded with dreams, as with sunshine. Was it only a glamour, tissued of myth and of legend, that lay on the face of the waters, dazzling her eyes?

The rejoicings of the people speeded her; the bells of all the campanili of Venice came echoing to the shores of the Lido; a tumult of voices--the voices of the _popolazzo_, shrill and jubilant, called down the blessings of all the saints upon her--of Santa Caterina--her own name-saint, fair patron of Betrothals; of charming San Luigi--the blessed guardian of love; of San Nicolò, Saint of the Sea; of Messer San Marco and San Tadoro; and shrilly, above them all, rose the babel of women's voices, invoking the Madonna, "Star of the Sea, Sancta Maria!"

But most of all, deep within her girlish soul, love speeded her--love, grown strong through these years of waiting on the image she had fashioned for herself as the portrait of her lord--painted with all the glowing lights of a true and gracious heart that knew no shadows.

As the galleys passed beyond the Lido into the wider water and the Daughter of Venice stood in her royal wedding-robes beside the Doge, under the golden canopy of the Bucentoro, a rosy light flashing from the circlet of rubies which, like the espousal ring of the Serenissimo, had been consecrated with solemn mass and benediction by the Patriarch of Venice,--did the words of the ancient rite occur to some among that throng of nobles, perchance, as an omen?

"_Sea, we wed thee, in token of our true and perpetual dominion over thee._"

But now, with a memory of the gracious legend of San Francisco del Deserto--that where the birds should light the favor of Heaven would follow, as they passed the convent on their outward way, a multitude of birds set free from their golden cages burst upon the air with a flood of song, inspired by their sudden liberty, then came throbbing and overwrought, to seek shelter among the silken sails of the Cyprian galleys--mere specks of iridescence, flashing like jewels in a chance ray of sunlight.

The people saw and shouted, "_Benedizion della Madonna! Viva Messer San Marco! Viva la Regina!_"

When the chimes of the campanili had dimmed to a faint cadence, like some unuttered rhythm of thought, as the distance grew between the outsailing fleet and all that pageantry of Venice, two faces stood forth like visions from the bewildering pictures of the morning and dwelt with Caterina forever.

The pleading face of the Mother deep with tenderness, yet shadowed by an unspoken dread of the unknown that lay beyond:

And the gaze of the saintly Patriarch, Lorenzo Giustiniani, full of strength and inspiration.

* * * * *

It was early summer, when the mere living was a joy; and there was much time for gracious dreaming as the galleys of Cyprus floated down the length of the Adriatic and past the fair coasts of the Mediterranean, before the coming of that wonderful day of days when the bridal fleet was nearing the shores of the _Isola Fortunata_ which had been for long the Mecca of the young Queen's girlish visions.

It lay before her radiant under the Cyprian sky--palaces and ramparts stretching in long lines a-down the coast, against the background of mountain ranges, densely wooded and crowned with the sparkling snows of Troödos; there were gardens rainbow-dyed in bloom, cool with the spray of fountains and the shadows of waving palms; and between the cities were wonderful, fertile plains flowing down to the foam of the sea--a vision of tangled blossoms wreathing with beauty the shattered splendor of temples of outworn divinities, or rippling with tasselled corn and vines and all manner of fruit-bloom, in luxuriant promise of present good.

What could there be but happiness in such a home! Already the spell of the fabled Cyprian isle was upon her,--could she ever forget this first vision of her land of dreams--fairer than even her hope had limned it!

As she stood with beating heart, waiting with impatience that she scarce could bear for the first touch of her new, strange shore, for the first glimpse of her lover's face--all her pulses tuned to this harmonious rhythm of sky and sea and romance, it was told her that a messenger waited to speak with her.

"Let him approach," she said, turning half-unwilling to watch a knight who advanced, unattended, bearing a missive with the pendant royal seal of Cyprus that she knew so well. He knelt before her, vizor down, yet with the customary homage; then, rising--

"I am sent by his Majesty the King," he said, "to bear his greeting to his most gracious Sovereign Lady, or ever her foot shall touch the shore which blossoms for her alone."

She drew a little pace away from him, fearing to utter her thought until she had seen his face.

"Doth it become one so to speak the message of his King, with _visor down_, Sir Knight, to the bride whom his Majesty would honor?" she answered half-playfully--yet a little bashful in her first speech in the Grecian tongue which she had striven to make her own.

"Our Sovereign Lady doth answer right royally," he said, as he bowed his acquiescence in her command, passing his helmet to one of the knights who came thronging behind him, and stood confronting her--very courteous and deferent in his bearing, though the breeze was tossing his waving hair about his throat with a hint of comradery, and there was a world of love and mastery in his charming face.

Her own--very fair and true and radiant with girlish beauty--flushed, then paled again, with the quickened beating of her heart, and her eyes, eloquent in confession, were fixed on his, which deepened to a glow of pride and pleasure; yet he was loth to make an end of her charming confusion.

"Hath this missive from his Majesty no meaning for his bride of Venice?" he asked, coming nearer.

"Janus!" she cried--all her soul shining in her eyes; and then, in her own soft, Italian tongue:

"How should my heart _not_ know thee!"

VIII

Caterina Veneta, Queen of Cyprus, stood on a high balcony of the summer palace in the Casal of Potamia, one beautiful June morning at early dawn, waving farewell to the cavalcade of nobles who were winding up the pass that led to the great forests where the patricians of the island were wont to pursue their favorite pastime. Janus was among them, leading in the chase as in every art that demanded agility and prowess--lithe, strong and beautiful in her eyes as in the first days of their short romance.

It was the one hour of the torrid day when the air was fragrant with the breath of flowers and tingling with the freshness of the sea; and in the sparkle of the morning, with sunshine in her heart and love-light in her eyes, she was very fair to look upon.

The scene had been exhilarating, full of color and motion--laughter and repartee mingling with the adieux of the knights and seigneurs to their ladies, the notes of the hunting-horns, the snorts of impatient steeds, the short expectant bark of the dogs, as the Master of the hounds, the young Count of Jaffa, with his great army of hunters and attendants, moved before the cavalcade into the heart of the forest. A fantastic train it was, with the picturesque costumes of the riders, the tinted tails of their horses and dogs flashing an orange trail in the sunshine, a touch of coquetry much in vogue among the young Cyprian nobles of the day.

Caterina had watched the start with pride in her husband's grace and courtly bearing, his beautiful strong youth and the devotion of his chosen group of friends: and the winning charm of his manner, as he looked back with a parting act of homage, brought a flush of pleasure to her cheek. She stood for a moment, her eyes growing deep with delicious memories, as she recalled the romance of their first meeting.

But she was conscious of a little pain at her heart, as she waited, following him with her eyes until the cavalcade was lost to view under the plumy shadows of the distant cypress-trees. Was it thus that kings should spend long summer days when there were rumors of discontent in the air--rumors definite enough to have reached the palace circle in mysterious undertones, quickly repressed when she turned to ask their meaning? Should Janus not have given up his pleasure to stay and examine into the cause which he had laughed away as a mere nothing--a jest of some discontented courtier of one of the old Greek families who had been in Cyprus before the days of the Lusignans; and all the more if they were always alert for fancied slights?

"If he is discontented and it is a mere nothing, why should he not be summoned to state his grievance?" she had persisted, with a trace of pleading in her attitude that fretted the King. She was not to concern herself with questions of state or popular discontent suggesting unpleasantly the ruling spirit of Helenà Paléologue, his father's wife; and he had not brought a girl-bride from Venice to watch his method of holding the reins!

His annoyance had been very real under his laughing exterior, as he kissed the tips of her slender fingers in knightly fashion and assured her that there was nothing to trouble her dainty head about: she should keep her rose-leaf beauty dewy fresh for him, without brooding over the possible meaning of ancient discontented nobles who belonged to an earlier régime.

A passing thought came over him while he made his laughing protest, of the four conspirators who had just been put to the cruel death which Cyprus reserved for her traitors; but their little game was happily over, and he dismissed the memory with a slight shrug of his graceful shoulders. "Was there ever a kingdom without malcontents?" he had asked, turning to his wife. "Was everyone satisfied throughout the length and breadth of Venetia?"

She did not know, for she had been a mere child in her Venetian home, without thought for the things of state which few Venetian women dreamed of discussing--still less of influencing. But now, that she was left alone for a few days, she let her thought dwell upon the question. Was life more strenuous in Venice, or better ordered? As she recalled the ways of her father, the Senator Marco Cornaro, and of the other statesmen of his circle, she could not but recognize the fact that the nobles of Venice made the work of the Government their first concern. She would ask her Secretary-Cousin, Aluisi Bernardini; she felt sure that his knowledge and judgment were to be trusted on Venetian matters, although Janus had already told her with unconcealed disdain that Bernardini's opinion was valueless on Cyprian questions, which were new to him--and far too complicated.

It was not until recently that some dim perception of this complexity had begun to dawn upon her, athwart the sunshine of her life as bride and queen. When she had first landed on this fabled island she had been too much under the influence of the glamour with which her dreams had invested Cyprus during the years of her betrothal for any serious study of conditions, or questions of right and wrong. She had been taught that kings rule by Divine Right, and no question of succession troubled her confidence of the people's choice of Janus as their sovereign. For her there were no disputes to consider, for the troubled state of Cyprus, but too well known in the Council Chambers of the Republic, had never been revealed to her. Janus was the only son of the late King, his father, tenderly beloved by him, supported by the Sultan who was Suzerain of Cyprus, and eagerly welcomed by the people of his realm. These were truths it had been considered wise for her to know, and they had been duly declared to her by her monitors of Venice.

But there were others--conflicting truths--among them the facts of his birth and of his contest with Carlotta--with which they had diplomatically left her to come in contact when there could be no withdrawal, but which time must unerringly reveal to her, and with no gentle hand.

The period of rejoicings for the Royal Marriage had been long and brilliant, as was the custom of the time, and the Coronation-fêtes, the journeyings from city to city of the realm, that she might make acquaintance with her land and people, had brought them far into the early spring. But when the excitement of these days was over, she slowly grew aware of something sinister beneath the smiling surface, and the studied brilliancy of the atmosphere about her made her fear a conspiracy to keep her in childish ignorance of what was passing within the kingdom. But surely, if she were not equal to comprehending these things, she must bend herself to the task and try to grow!

It was of this that the young Queen was thinking as her husband rode forth with his suite of gay, young nobles to the chase, and she summoned Aluisi to her presence.

Already a blast of heat was rising over the land and the rasping cries of the cicala fretted their talk; and Caterina bade him follow her down into the _voto_--the vast, cool, underground chambers which, for the patricians of Cyprus, made life possible during this heated term, between the freshness of the morning and the comfort of the evening shadows.

The talk was long and serious.

"There was never a court without some discontent," he answered lightly to her questioning; "fair Madame, my cousin and Queen."

The mingling of protection and affection in his attitude towards her was so natural in the older man who had known her as the petted child and cousin of their house through the years of intimacy in Venice, that she had never allowed him to change it when they talked alone together, and it was only in the presence of the court that he taught himself to remember her queenly estate.

"Nay, Aluisi," she answered, earnestly, "thou art in league with the King--it was his very answer."

"It is but truth, in league with truth, most gracious Majesty," he retorted playfully. "Nay--but no league at all; only two liege men speaking truth; therefore the oneness of speech."

He had employed the stilted fooling of the period to cover his confusion and to gain time; for the matter was of moment and it had taken him unaware--he did not know how to answer her.

"Nay, nay, Aluisi--I am distressed; there is some great trouble; I command thy knowledge."

He had never heard her use the word before, and it became her well.

"Fair cousin, it is not new," he answered deferentially, but pausing to choose his words, for it was no time to fill her soul with alarms. "It is, I hear them say, some question of a mutiny in Cerines."

"It will mean an uprising?--danger for the King?"

"Nay, have no fear; it was quelled at once."

"How quelled?"

"So soon as discovery of the plot was made--before any steps had been taken to carry out their plans."

"_How_ quelled?" she asked again, dissatisfied.

"The manner of it was not reported to me," he answered truthfully enough; "I knew not that the question would be put to me," he added with an attempt to turn easily from a subject on which he dared not speak freely to matter more nearly touching his office--of her commands for Venice for the galley that was to sail on the morrow. But meanwhile the vision of horror rose before him of that which he had seen with his own eyes; and lest, watching him so closely she should learn too much, he dropped his gaze, feigning to seek for some items on the tablet he held in his hand. How should he tell her the story of this plot to influence an uprising, to wrest the stronghold of Cerines for Carlotta, the rival claimant and heir? How explain this conspiracy against her husband when she probably knew nothing of what lay beneath it? How could he speak of the staunch loyalty to Carlotta of the leader of this conspiracy, of whom the disaffected were making a hero, and who had preferred any fate to the necessity of swearing fealty to Janus! He had shuddered at the barbarism which could decree such a fate for the conspirators; nor could he forget the horror of those bodies cut in bits, and swung on high, in the four quarters of the town--a ghastly warning for all men to see--as they walked to and fro in the marvellous great city of Nikosia--the city of luxury and of churches.

But if the treatment of traitors in Venice was scarcely less barbarous, yet the State seemed to each son of the Republic a more awe-inspiring and less personal entity than a kingly head of any other government, justifying severer punishment when betrayed; Venetians had been brought up to feel that a traitor could ask for no milder fate than to swing high upon the Piazzetta between the columns--those who thought otherwise might avoid looking up as they passed.

He would not start her questions when it was not for him to answer them. He caught helplessly at some court trifles, trying to evade her mood; but she silenced him with an impatient exclamation.

When he raised his eyes he found her still watching him, with a pathetic, questioning look.

"They keep things from me, as if I were a child!" she cried indignantly. "Can I be a friend to our people if I do not understand them? There are many things that I would know--the fiefs--the ancient nobles--Carlotta. They told me little in Venice of the things I need to know."

"What things?" the Chamberlain asked helplessly.

She looked at him searchingly. "To whom shall I go if not to thee, Aluisi? Art thou not enough my friend to help me?"