Читать книгу The Admiral - Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen - Страница 10

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I SHOULD have said that ten minutes before the barge left, the Admiral hailed me.

“Go and make yourself ready, Trinder. Mr. Hardres must not steer the barge now.”

And so I went with him. But though I was his particular mate, and never away from him for five minutes when he was not with the Admiral, he took no more account of me than any common seaman. He seemed wrapt up in his mission, and I saw that he had the Admiral’s great quality of not letting an opportunity pass.

When we reached the long landing steps under the Marina, we were met by a ragged rabble of a guard under an officer who spoke French. Now, I knew a very little of French, and could make out that Will demanded to be taken at once into the presence of the Governor, with myself and his guard.

“Oui, Monsieur the Vice-Admiral,” said the officer with the greatest possible alacrity.

Like every one else in the city, he was bursting to know the reason of the advent of this formidable fleet. England was at peace with the Two Sicilies, he knew. So, for the matter of that, was France; though all the time his King, and, what was more to the point, his Queen, were dying to cut the throat of every Frenchman, and ready to declare war the moment they could get sufficient protection from the Allies. In the state of confusion Europe was then in no one would have been surprised at any of the belligerents seizing any point of vantage they happened to require, in the territories of the feeble principalities of Italy. The townspeople, mad with delight, imagined that this fine fleet had come to occupy Syracuse, and defend it against the dreaded operations of the French. So delighted were they to see us, that the Governor wrote afterwards to Sir John Acton, that they would have carried the ships one by one to their houses, if it had been possible. And in any case resistance would have been impossible. For centuries it had been the cardinal belief that no large ship could cross the bar at the entrance to the Great Port. Consequently, the inner face of the city all along the Marina was hardly fortified; certainly not in a state to resist any kind of naval attack more formidable than an assault by boats. A frigate could have defied the landward guns of the Castle, and laid the town in ashes. If the Syracusans had not been too ignorant to know anything about the political questions with which Europe was boiling, they might have thought that the English had come there to seize the town, because the Two Sicilies had not declared war upon the French. That the town was about to be seized upon some pretext or other, they felt certain; else why this imposing force—the greatest expedition which had ever come to the city since the famous siege by the Athenians? And the Athenians, God bless them, came before the days of gunpowder.

The officer, forming his ragged troops in some sort of order, led the way to the ancient castello, built by the Greek, Georgio Maniace, when he reconquered Syracuse from the Arabs, before the Norman conquest. A lovely, but rather tumbledown black-and-white marble gateway had been built by him to support the two famous bronze rams, made by ancient Greeks in classical times. Seven hundred and seventy years afterwards the gate and its rams were still there to give our entry becoming state. The rams were really very comical, and I had it just on my lips, when I caught Will’s hard blue eye, and brought my face to attention. Nor was that the only comical thing about the castle, which was so little used that a fine crop of dwarf stocks were growing right up to the guns.

The Governor, Don Giuseppe delle Torre, had chosen rather an al fresco scene for the reception.

To be brief, he had had a space cleared among the powder and shot and flour barrels in the deep bomb-proof vaults, which are a feature of fortresses in these parts. There was hardly any light, and there were only three chairs, two of which he hastily assigned to us. I noticed that a bed, with very fine but much-worn Spanish hangings, was being erected in one corner; and I wondered if, as the next move, he would not have the powder taken out and thrown into the sea. In which he would have shown his wisdom, as the castle could not possibly have made any resistance to our fleet, and it might have blown up if a chance shot had found its way into the magazine.

Also, I wondered if Will was noticing all these comical details, and looked at him. The icy contempt on his face showed that he had taken the Governor’s measure.

When we had been bowed into our seats, the Governor bowed again and waited for Will to begin.

Generally the stronger waits for the weaker, but in this case the explanation could only come from us. Will began by inquiring, could his Excellency speak Italian? His Excellency, for a wonder, knew what was nominally his native language. Will came to the point at once. He presented the Royal despatch, written in the name of His Majesty, and signed by the Captain-General, the Chevalier Acton, enjoining the Governor in the most pressing manner to welcome and admit the English squadron, going beyond what is usual, and mentioning many novel and unexpected possibilities by reason of His Majesty’s good-will and friendship towards the English nation.

Would his Excellency, then, give the proper orders for the fleet of his High and Mighty Majesty, the King of Great Britain and Ireland, to be supplied at a proper price with such water and other stores as it might need?

His Excellency’s face fell. Then, noticing Will’s youth, he began a long and specious apology. His High and Mighty Majesty, the King of Great Britain and Ireland, was, he admitted, a very good friend of his August Majesty the King of the Two Sicilies; but in order to prevent a French fleet being quartered upon him, his August Majesty the King of the Two Sicilies had been compelled to enter into a compact not to admit more than three or four ships of any nation into any of his ports at one time. At the same time the French declared that they would treat it as an act of war if any nation at war with them (meaning, of course, us) was allowed to take in supplies in his August Majesty’s ports. He would therefore be unable to accede to the request, much as he desired to do anything for the great Admiral Nelson, the good friend of his country. Would the Illustrissimo Vice-Admiral convey to the Admiral his most profound and heartfelt apologies for not being able to comply? For himself, he must again say that, if only he were able, it would give him the deepest gratification, and so on and so on.

There was a look of unmitigated scorn on Will’s fine face. He did not believe one word that the Don was saying, and waited with diplomatic impatience, formally restrained but clearly hinted, until the Governor had finished; when he replied in cold, calm tones that the Governor had here orders from his Sovereign, countersigned by the Chevalier Acton, superseding all general orders, and directing him to act as Admiral Nelson might wish. The Governor stoutly maintained that the despatch gave no instructions about the admission of the entire squadron; whereas we, through the good Lady Hamilton, by whose influence they had been procured for us, knew positively that this was intended. And here, perhaps, Will’s diplomacy failed him, for he had such a contempt for the whole nation, that he could not but consider the possibility of further secret orders having been issued that the Royal despatch, overriding the general policy of the country, should itself be ignored. He did not know then—in fact none of us, from the Admiral downward, did know—how completely Ferdinand gave over politics to his imperious spouse in order to be allowed to devote himself to the pleasures of the chase, the pleasures of the table, and intrigues of a non-political kind.

In brief, the Governor refused to allow us to take in water or stores of any kind until we withdrew our squadron.

“Then,” said Will, looking positively majestic as he felt himself the mouthpiece of his country, “I have the honour to present your Excellency with the schedule of the Admiral’s requirements.” This with a deep bow. And, with another deep bow, “I have the honour to inform your Excellency that if permission for their supply is not sent on board within twelve hours, the Admiral is prepared to enforce his requirements with the guns of his ships. I have the honour to wish your Excellency,” this with a still deeper bow, “a very good morning.”

“Stay! stay! not so fast, Illustrissimo. Would you graciously write down this cartel, so that I may make no mistake? Ah, you have been reading it!” he said, catching sight of a second scroll.

“I am afraid this will not do. It is in English—the Admiral’s note of the words I should use for the manifesto.”

“And you assure me that what you have said is the exact translation of this?”

“Put into the roundabout and compliment-paying phrases which your language demands—yes.”

“Then it is quite sufficient, Illustrissimo. Tell your terrible Admiral that he will not have to fire his guns into us; that I shall be rejoiced from the bottom of my heart to supply him with whatever he requires, water, provisions, powder even, at the most reasonable prices. With this piece of paper in my hands, I have only yielded to force. His August Majesty will not declare war upon his High and Mighty Majesty for this breach of the peace.”

But he added to himself, as we learned from the ladies of his party on the next evening, that he did not feel so certain that France would not regard it as an act of war.

This whole affair of Syracuse has not even yet been cleared up, and it must be remembered that I am writing a good many years after the event. To this day the Admiralty is in the dark as to whether the Governor did receive secret orders, overriding the Royal despatch, and supposing he did, if it formed part of those orders that he was to yield, but only to yield to a pretence of force. One thing is quite certain—that, as soon as force was mentioned, he showed the greatest good-will; and the Admiral wrote in two separate letters to Sir William and Lady Hamilton, both written the day before he left: “I have no complaint to make of private attention. Every body of persons have been on board to offer me civilities.” And in the other letter: “My dear friends, thanks to your exertions we have victualled and watered; and surely, watering at the fountain of Arethusa, we must have victory. We shall sail with the first breeze; and, be assured, I will return either crowned with laurel or covered with cypress.”

A day or two afterwards the breeze did come in the afternoon, as it always does at Syracuse. In the morning the Admiral wrote:

“The fleet is unmoored, and the moment the wind comes off the land, we shall go out of the delightful harbour, where our present wants have been most amply supplied, and where every attention had been paid to us.”

But I am anticipating. The Governor was as good as his word, and we were soon in the thick of taking in stores and water; and as there was no hope of going out in less than two days at the earliest, the inhabitants began to organise a round of hospitalities.

The very next evening, the Governor, who had recovered so far from his fright of our cannon as to have his state bed moved back from the subterranean magazine of the castle, gave a ball in our honour at his palace. The Admiral had in the afternoon paid him a state visit, accompanied by his staff.

To the English it might sound a formidable undertaking to ask the officers of a whole fleet to a ball at a few hours’ notice, but in Sicily it is very different. The palaces of the nobles were built, many of them, in the Middle Ages, when it was necessary to house the retainers, who were, in fact, the nobleman’s army, within the walls of his town palace when he happened to be there, as much as it was necessary to house them within the walls of his castle when he was in the country on his estates. When the custom of each noble maintaining a private army died out, their palaces were naturally a great deal larger than they required for their diminished establishments, and each palace could afford to have noble suites of entertaining rooms not used at ordinary times, but ready, with a little taking off of covers, for any fêtes, like a ball at carnival time. As most nobles grew their own wine, they had an unlimited supply maturing in their cellars, and fruit in Sicily is as a drug in the market. There remained nothing, therefore, but for the ladies to bring out their gala dresses from their chests, and to summon all the banquet-cooks in Syracuse to the Governor’s kitchen.

I must say that we were received with very great ceremony, for though they were of an old-fashioned style and sadly needed freshening up, a plentiful supply of private coaches met us at the landing steps, and drove us along the Marina, and up through the sea-gate to the Governor’s palace, which was situated in the main street near the centre of the town. It was quite light when we drove in through the lofty gateway, under the great Spanish balcony of heavy ironwork bulging out like the bows of a first-rate, and ornamented at the ends with splendid hammered-iron roses. Once through the gateway we found ourselves in a courtyard, round which the palace was built. At the far end was a wide sweeping stone outside-stairway, with a heavy stone parapet, which went almost round two sides of the court. On the post at the bottom end of the parapet was seated a queer lion, carved out of the post itself at some time during the Middle Ages. This stairway, and the terrace which led from it into the principal apartments, were strewn with rich carpets of very ancient date, but more out of repair than any gentleman would use in England. The rooms inside, too, reminded me more of an English nobleman’s seat which was never used by its owner, but maintained in its ancient condition as a show place; for the silk hangings of the walls were broken or threadbare in places, and the carpets, likewise ancient, were in the like state. And though chandeliers of rock-crystal hung in all the state rooms, and we saw fine old cabinets here and there, there did not seem to be a good new piece in the whole establishment, and the servants, whose name was legion, were as dilapidated as the hangings.

The dresses of the ladies, too, were not such as we saw at Palermo, when the King and Queen were holding their Court there after the flight from Naples; but, while made of most valuable brocades, they had the appearance of being used for a lifetime on the rare occasions on which they were required. The ball consisted largely of eating the fine fruits and drinking the good Sicilian wines, both of which were very welcome in a Sicilian July, after a long spell at sea. For but few of the English officers and the Sicilian ladies were able to dance sufficiently well together, and it seemed not to be etiquette for the Sicilian gentlemen to be dancing while any English officers were without partners.

The few officers who spoke the language of the country conversed with the younger ladies, who never moved from the sides of their mothers, except to dance; and as the music was of the poorest order, the proceedings were sufficiently doleful. But I must say that Will, as I afterwards found was his invariable fortune, fell upon his feet.

He was attending the Admiral, who was, of course, conversing with the Governor, who even in the midst of the festivities would from time to time try and extract a promise from the Admiral to withdraw his ships. The conversation was through the interpretations of Will and the chaplain; and by the Governor was standing a young girl attended by a brother in place of a mother. I may say at once that she was of extraordinary beauty: somewhat tall and slender, distinguished to an unusual degree by the singular grace of figure and carriage characteristic of young Sicilian women. Her hair, which waved beautifully, was dusky rather than dark; and a dusky complexion, almost transparent in its purity, was thrown up by the wonderful Sicilian eyes, which are not brown, but of a very dark grey, looking blue in some lights and black in others; while the note of delicate refinement suggested by the slight, beautifully carried figure, was maintained by the delicacy of the thin nose of classical straightness, and the thin mouth.

Thin mouths are ordinarily taken to be typical of cruelty, but this by no means exhausts the category. There is another kind of thin lips typical of sensibility, and yet another typical of passion, to some degree of animal passion, but more of an intense ardour of devotion. Donna Rusidda’s lips had both these last two elements in them. Devotion and extreme sensibility mingled curiously with the archness of her face.

Donna Rosalia[1] (or Rusidda) di Mardolce and her brother Don Ruggiero, who was the Prince of Favara, were Palermitans. They lived in the old half-Arabic palace of the Favara, which was the great Emperor Frederick II.’s favourite summer residence, and which had come down to them through many generations. But they were connected with Syracuse through their mother, who belonged to the ancient family of the Mont’ alti. The palace of the Mont’ alti, which we saw the next day, must, when it was built, four hundred years ago, have been one of the most beautiful in Syracuse. The Gothic windows, rather in the Venetian style, of its upper storey have an Arabic delicacy and airiness. But in our day quite a mean street had grown up about it, and the last of the Mont’ alti, the widower uncle with whom the young Prince and his sister were staying, lived in a mere corner of his palace, only able to maintain his rusty equipages by practising the strictest economy in every other way. People prophesied that these, too, would go soon, and the last of the Mont’ alti of Milocca, the proudest barons of Syracuse in the Middle Ages, seek death by his own hand, when he could no longer afford the last poor appurtenances of his rank.

[1] Rosalia is pronounced Rōsă-lēă. Rusidda is a pet abbreviation of it.

However, I shall have little more to say of him: he only comes into my chronicle because “Rusidda Favara,” as she was generally called, was staying under his roof when she and Will met.

How far Will admired her I could not tell. There were only certain moods which were easily reflected in his face, such as anger and scorn. He had more than the ordinary English resolution to conceal his gentler moods. Except when he was annoyed, his hard, handsome face was almost inscrutable. He certainly talked to her and her brother a good deal; they had been at the Neapolitan Court much in their richer days, and spoke Italian fluently. During the conversation she seems to have told Will about the windows of her room, the beautiful Arab-Gothic windows which I was mentioning—a conversation which was shortly to show my young sir in a new light. The function did not last late; indeed, it dragged along somewhat too mournfully for that, and we rowed back to our respective ships.

I had not been asleep a great while—I cannot say for certain how long—when I heard my door open, and some one came in with a subdued “H’sh!”

I recognised Will.

“Tubby,” he whispered, coming up to my bunk, “will you come with me?”

I would have gone with Will to the devil, so I made no conditions, but rose and began to put my things on. I only whispered one word—“Ashore?” I felt certain that it was so, because there was nothing else to rise for in this secret fashion, except a practical jest, and Will was the last man in the world to play a practical jest on a brother officer. His aloofness was their principal complaint against him, and but for his fierce temper and remarkable courage he might have been thought young-ladyish, so unlike was he to the ordinary roystering young naval officer of that piping time.

I did not even ask how we were to get ashore, I concluded that Will had seen to that; and I knew that our getting away depended on our not being overheard, so kept silence. Will crept stealthily, I following, to the starboard shrouds of the mizzen. Then he slipped over the side into the mizzen chains, whispering as he went, “Stop in the chains.”

He had, I observed, a coil of rope with him. Nothing happened for a little while. I supposed that there was some boat that he was looking for, and kept as still as a mouse. Apparently he saw nothing, but presently he took a piece of phosphorus out of his pocket and rubbed the sole of his foot. So he told me afterwards, for I only saw a bit of something shining. He chose this part because if the watch came along and peeped over he had only to set his foot down. Directly afterwards I heard a low, muffled sound, and a boat slid almost noiselessly beneath us. Will made fast one end of his rope to the shrouds, and knotted a loop in the rope at a distance as far as he could judge of about five feet from the water, whispering to me to follow if he made a certain signal. The loop was, of course, to enable him to stop if the boat was not all right. We both had our shoes hung round our necks so that we could walk the more silently. I found myself in the high-peaked bow of one of the little boats which all Italians call a barca. The boatmen pulled us to the landing steps very quickly and very quietly. There was a sentry there, but fortunately he was one of the guard who had escorted us to the Governor in the morning. He challenged, Will said something to him, and the man recognised him as the “Vice-Admiral” who had arrived in the Admiral’s barge in the morning. And as his countrymen seldom did important business without some passing of secret messages, he took it that Will bore some such secret communication between the Admiral and the Governor.

The boatman, I observed by the light of the sentry’s wretched lamp—a little flat earthenware vessel with a hole in the top, through which some strands of cotton found their way into the oil—had left his barca and was accompanying us, carrying a mysterious bundle.

We had, of course, put on our shoes in the boat. The man led the way. As soon as we were out of sight of the sentry Will followed close at his heels, and I, who had not the smallest knowledge of what we were to do, unless it were to have a knife put into us in this evil-looking, cut-throat city, kept close to Will, you may be sure. First he led us to a place where we had to climb the city wall, which was not kept too well mended or guarded, on the side towards the Great Harbour. The man went first and drew his bundle up after him by a line which he seemed to have brought for the purpose. We followed, and then went through a very network of narrow, black, winding streets, with great doors every few yards, out of every one of which I expected some one to spring upon us, not very much caring, because after all, I remembered that it was my profession to be killed. At last we crossed a big, open space, and, taking one or two turns more through narrow lanes, came to a great house standing up gaunt and black against the sky, which was clear and starlit, though there was no moon.

As we went along, having no longer any necessity for silence, Will had unfolded his intention to me, and it fairly took away my breath. Indeed, I did not believe that he would put it into execution. But when he came to the great house which was our destination, taking the bundle from the boatman, he unwrapped a stringed instrument, a sort of lute or zither it seemed to me. I waited to see him assemble the passers-by. In Sicily people seem hardly to go to bed all night in the summer. And even more I expected the fortress-like gates of the palace to open and some one to rush out. But nothing of the kind happened. The passers-by smiled, and the gates of the palace remained as sealed as if they never would open until the day of judgment.

Will had, in the meantime, struck up a tinkly little tune—he was evidently familiar with the instrument—with some Italian words which I did not understand, but took to be a serenade. He had a fair voice and played well enough. After a while I let go of the handle of my dirk which I had brought with me and gripped ready to strike. Will went on singing.

As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I made out that the palace under which we stood had the beautiful moresco windows high up on its front which identified it as the palace of the Mont’ alti, concerning which Will had told me—the palace where Donna Rusidda was visiting with her uncle.

Will sang on, and presently the shutter of one of these windows was opened just a chink, and a ray of light stabbed the darkness.

Will sang on, and the opening widened gradually, revealing first a hand and then the graceful head of Donna Rusidda; and finally she flung the shutters right back and stood in full view at the window, inclining graciously. Will sang one or two more songs, and then, making a very fine salute, and bowing, put his lute or zither under his arm and joined me where I was standing in the shadow. The zither was duly wrapped up again by the light of a flickering oil lamp which hung under a much venerated image of the Virgin and Child let into the wall of the Piazza, the open space which I have mentioned as being close to the palace. The boatman then led the way back to his barca, and rowed us swiftly and silently out to the flagship, under the starboard mizzen chains, where we found our rope still hanging. We then took our shoes off and tied them together and hung them round our necks, and Will made the boatman a liberal present, which I dare swear took a month’s money from his pocket.

Creeping very cautiously, we reached our bunks without detection, and I turned round and went to sleep, thinking that Master Will had had monstrous little play for his money.