Читать книгу The Sword of Islam - Рафаэль Сабатини - Страница 10

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ALL through the summer night those men rowed under the spur of hope as they had never rowed under the warden’s lash.

When about a mile out to sea, as he estimated, Prospero had headed the barge westward, so that their course should lie parallel with the coast. His aim was to reach Genoa. He did not overlook the dangers that might await him there. But he was without alternative, since only there could he obtain the supplies that were indispensable. To the sword-belt of which he had deprived Lomellino was attached, in addition to sword and dagger, a leather scrip in which Prospero found a gold comfit-box, a notebook, and six ducats. These he must borrow for immediate needs. It was his intention to attempt to rejoin the Prince of Orange, going by way of Florence, so that he might pay a visit to his mother.

They made such good progress that daybreak found them off that fold in the hilly coast within which Lavanto is almost hidden. Behind them to the eastern horizon aglow with the fires of dawn the sea was empty. Of pursuit there was as yet no sign.

They put in at Lavanto, and Prospero went ashore and adventured into the awakening village. He roused a still slumbering taverner, and after him a shopkeeper, and when he came back to the boat he was accompanied by a boy laden with loaves of rye bread, flasks of wine, and a half-dozen shirts and caps for the men, who were naked save for their cotton drawers. He brought also a couple of files, with which they might deliver their legs from the gyves.

As the barge emerged again from the bay, having cleared the headland, one of the men pointed astern in alarm. A sail had appeared on the horizon. Under a quickening breeze that had sprung up at daybreak a galley was ploughing westward in their wake.

That vessels would have been flung out in pursuit in every direction was not to be doubted, and this might well be one of them.

Prospero, thankful for the breeze, ordered their own triangular sail to be hoisted, and as the light barge plunged forward before the wind, the weary men ate and drank, and then set themselves to file away their fetters.

By the time this was done, they were abreast of the village of Bonassola, perched white against the grey-green of olive trees on a slope above a little cove.

Behind them the galley, not more now than three miles astern, was gaining rapidly. In less than another hour at this rate they would be overtaken, and if the vessel proved a pursuer, as there was every reason to suppose, that would be the end of their adventure. The slaves would be flogged to the bone, and as for himself, it might well be found that he had supplied such reasons for his condemnation that not even del Vasto’s great influence might avail him.

‘We must take to the land,’ he decided, to the great relief of the men.

On the golden sands under Bonassola he shared his meagre resources with them, a half ducat to each, which earned him their grateful blessings. When they had kissed his hands and gone their ways, he went up alone into the village, and contrived to hire a mule that bore him over twenty miles of rugged coastland, to Chiavari. There he exchanged the mule for a post-horse, and on this came in the summer dusk to the walls of Genoa.

Because the Angelus was tolling from a dozen belfries as he approached the Porta del Arco, he spurred on so as to cross the threshold before the gate should close. Nearer at hand there was another sound of ringing, a clang so harsh and insistent as to seem fraught with menace. A man, at the head of a team of mules, harnessed to a cart whose sides were boarded high, swung a bell as he advanced. The cart was followed by two men who carried queer implements that resembled grappling irons. They leered up at Prospero as they passed him under the deep arch of the gateway.

‘Didn’t you hear the bell?’ grumbled one of them, and trudged on without staying for an answer.

A sentry with a halbert, lounging on the steps of the guard-house, eyed him incuriously. None challenged him, for whilst war might be sweeping over the rest of Italy, here in Genoa there was yet no menace of it; nor did Trivulzio, whose government, whatever the factionaries might pretend, was mild and benevolent, apprehend any.

Prospero rode on, following the Via Giulia, past San Domenico, through the Campetto, and then by narrower streets climbing upwards towards San Siro, where dwelt Scipione de’ Fieschi, upon whom he was now depending. As he went the uneasy feeling grew upon him that he moved in an unnatural atmosphere through a city mysteriously stricken, paralyzed, and almost lifeless. It was not only that never had he seen the streets so empty, but the few whom he met or overtook appeared to move in furtive haste, like wild creatures scuttling to cover against an enemy’s approach. There were no saunterers, as might have been expected on so warm a summer evening, no loiterers, and, above all, no groups. The echoing of his horse’s hoofbeats stressed the sepulchral silence of the city. As darkness deepened, the gloom was relieved by few lighted windows or open friendly doorways. The very inns seemed dead, save one near San Domenico, whence light and hilarity fell almost startlingly upon the black, empty street. Here at least men were alive and gay, yet to Prospero this gaiety contained an excessive, abandoned note. Upon the sensuous acuity which is the poet’s equipment, the sound smote horribly. It held an obscene ring. In fancy he likened it to the laughter of ghouls in a charnel-house, and thereby went nearer to the truth than he yet suspected.

Emerging into the open space of the Campetto, where all was again silence, his horse shied suddenly and swerved to avoid a man lying prone upon the ground. Prospero drew rein, dismounted, and bent over the body, to discover that it was stiff and cold. He drew back, and stood up again.

Across the square a man was moving quickly, the only other human thing in sight. ‘Hi!’ Prospero called to him. ‘There’s a dead man here.’

The wayfarer never checked his stride. ‘He’ll have to lie till morning now,’ he called back, and added cryptically: ‘They’ve already gone.’

To Prospero the answer was not merely cynical. It was senseless. He stood hesitating whilst the man hurried away. Did no watch patrol the streets at night under this French government? Then it occurred to him that if he roused the place, he would probably be asked to account for himself, which might offer inconvenience. So he climbed his horse again and pursued his way.

He came at last to San Siro and the Fieschi Palace. It was completely in darkness, and the heavy doors that normally stood open to the courtyard were now ominously closed. With a stone he hammered on one of the panels, sending a hollow echo through the mansion. After a silent while he knocked again, and was answered at last by shuffling steps within. The drawing of a bolt rang like a shot on that uncanny stillness, and a small, narrow door practised within the greater one swung inwards. A lantern was hoisted to the level of Prospero’s face and a querulous elderly voice assailed his ears.

‘What do you want?’

Behind the lantern an old man’s eyes, rheumy and malevolent, were considering him. ‘Who are you? Why do you knock?’

‘Faith, you’re gracious,’ said Prospero. ‘I seek Messer Scipione. Is he within?’

‘Within? Messer Scipione? Why should he be? Gesù! Who are you to ask such a question?’

‘I’ld thank you to begin by answering it.’

‘Why, good sir, Messer Scipione has been gone these weeks. Like all the rest.’

‘Gone? Where has he gone?’

‘Where? What do I know? To Lavagna, perhaps, or perhaps to his country-house at Acqui. Perhaps farther. How could you think to find him here?’

‘In God’s name, what ails the place? What is amiss with you all?’

‘Amiss?’ The old voice chuckled scornfully. ‘Have you landed from the New World, or whence?’ He stepped out through the narrow doorway, and held the lantern higher so that its rays reached a doorway across the narrow street. He pointed. ‘See that?’

But Prospero saw nothing. ‘See what?’ he asked.

From the old man at his elbow there was again that ghoulish chuckle. ‘The cross, noble sir. The cross.’

Prospero looked again, more intently. Very faintly he could discern on the door opposite the sign of a cross that was rudely smeared in red. ‘The cross?’ he echoed. ‘What then?’

‘What then? Why—Gesumaria!—an infected house. The plague has been that way. They’re all dead.’

‘The plague?’ Prospero was stricken into ice. ‘You have the plague here?’

‘It has fallen on us from the hands of a God weary of men’s iniquities; fallen on us as the fire fell on Sodom and Gomorrah. They say it was brought here from Naples, where it was first sent to destroy the godless bandits who laid the hand of sacrilege on Rome and the Holy Father. Many have fled, like Messer Scipione, as if God’s punishment can be escaped. Messer Trivulzio and his French have shut themselves up in the Castelletto, as if its walls could defy God’s wrath. Faith, noble sir, you come to Genoa in an evil hour. Here we have only the dead who care not, and the poor like myself who have nowhere else to go.’ Again he muttered his malevolent little laugh, and turned to re-enter the house. ‘Go with God, noble sir. Go with God.’

But Prospero did not yet depart. Even when the door had closed again, he remained there listening to the retreating shuffle of the steps beyond it. At last he shook off his palsy, climbed again to the saddle, and with the nausea of a fastidious man in an unclean environment took his way through the darkness of steep, narrow, tortuous streets down towards the waterfront.

His horse was to be surrendered at the hostelry of the Mercanti, facing the quay of the same name, between which and the inn at Chiavari, where Prospero had hired it, a posting service was established.

Since the friend upon whom he depended was no longer in Genoa to house him, since others to whom he might have turned would no doubt be similarly absent, and since the city gates would now be shut, so that he could not if he would escape from this necropolis, he must hope to lie the night at this inn of the Mercanti. Tomorrow he would consider what to do.

He went slowly and cautiously on a horse that slithered under him on the steep declivity and at moments would stand still, shivering in the dark. He met no one. Twice only was that graveyard silence broken, and then by sounds of lamentation from houses that he passed.

He came at last from the blackness of the steep, narrow ways into the open, lighter space at the waterside. A sickle of moon was rising over the sea, and in the faint light the old mole made a long, black silhouette athwart the dark gleam of water. Lofty rigging of galleons and shorter rigging of galleys at anchor in the spacious harbour reared a faint tracery against the sky. Here where normally even to a late hour the activity was that of a hive, there were at least some feeble signs of life. He met odd stragglers who called a greeting to him as they went. And at a distance of half a bowshot from where he had emerged a rhomb of yellow light clove the darkness to illumine the quay of the Mercanti and the boats that were moored against it. He caught oddly discordant sounds of hilarious voices, snatches of song, and the twanging of some stringed instrument. This would be the Inn of the Mercanti. At least they were alive here, though Prospero wondered was this liveliness less than horrible. Again, and more vividly now, because he was more informed, he gathered the impression of ghouls at play, of creatures obscenely merry in a graveyard. And the impression when presently, his horse surrendered, he beheld the company was confirmed.

Hitherto he had known that inn as a house frequented by the better class of those concerned with the business of the port: merchants, officers from the ships or of the harbour, owners of vessels, and even some of the lesser patricians whose interests were maritime, whilst women were never seen, at least in the public apartments of the hostelry. But tonight under the vaulted ceiling of the long common-room the company at the trestle tables was made up of the scourings of the port. The best of them were under-wardens from the galleys or the bagnio, the worst just common seamen and quayside porters with a sprinkling of the waterside queans and harpies who in every port lie in wait for seafaring men, but none of whom in ordinary times would have dared to cross the threshold of the Mercanti.

And they were gay in there, under the smoking oil-lamps that hung from the beams overhead, gay with a noisy, hysterical, abandoned gaiety into which fear and defiance seemed compounded. It was laughter with a shudder behind it; the loud, hollow laughter with which men dissemble the panic in their hearts whilst they deride their gods. Just so, must Prospero have thought, might they laugh in hell, for so he expresses it in a line of The Liguriad:

Cosi ridean i pravi in Malebolge.

His advent among them gave a moment’s pause to their mirth.

A pale, lean youth bestrode a table twanging a lute to accompany the bawdy lyrics sung in alternate couplets by two women improvisers. The song broke off, and with it the chatter and the laughter, whilst the obscene crowd stared at this courtly stranger who in that foul environment was like a being from another world. For he still wore del Vasto’s finery of black damask and Lomellino’s brave scarlet cloak.

For perhaps a dozen heart-beats the astounded silence reigned. Then like an explosion came the renewal of hilarity, louder and fiercer than before. With rattle of discarded drinking cans and a crash of overturned stools they came in a rush to press about him, to hail him, to leer at him, to bid him welcome to their revels.

‘Back!’ he stormed. ‘Give me air. Into what anteroom of hell have I blundered?’

Some laughed the louder. Others growled. Others, more daring still, laid hold of his cloak to draw him with them. And then, cleaving roughly through the crowd at speed, came Marcantonio, the landlord, a big, hot man who showed little regard for his patrons.

In a moment, with cuffs and roars, he had cleared himself a space in which to stand and bow to this newcomer, panting from exertion and emotion. ‘My Lord Prospero! My Lord Prospero!’

‘What witches’ sabbath do you hold in the Mercanti?’

The booming voice fell to a whine. ‘These are the only patrons the times have left us. You return in an evil hour, my lord. But come with me, I beg you. There are rooms above. All my house is your nobility’s. An honour. Come, my lord. Come.’

Marcantonio led him down the long room, clearing a way ahead by objurgations and by arms that waved as if to scare vermin from their path. The revellers gave way, with jests and gibes that provoked screeches of revolting laughter. The nobleman, they jeered, was too fine for such humble company. Perhaps he’ld be less proud when the pestilence made free with his nobility. Wait till the swellings showed. He’ld remember then that he was as mortal as the meanest. A great leveller, the plague. Long live the plague!

At last he was out of their foul company, and lighted by a serving-wench who tripped ahead, he was going up a winding stair, with Marcantonio now following. He was ushered into a room of fair proportions and decent furnishings, but close-smelling and stiflingly hot, the windows shuttered.

From the candle she bore the girl was lighting others in a copper branch on the table. Marcantonio, mopping his red face, confronted his guest with tragic eyes.

‘God have mercy on us. The hand of affliction is heavy upon us all.’

‘And Genoa grows lewd in the shadow of death. Most reasonable.’

‘Men’s reasons are turned, my lord.’

‘Into swine’s, I see.’

‘Compassionate them, my lord. They are mad with terror. They try to smother it in drunkenness and debauchery. God help us all. Times have been hard since Messer Doria brought in the French to govern us. There’s many a fool who listened to him and lent a hand in the change who’s cursed himself since and wished himself back in the days when your nobility’s father was Doge—God rest his soul!’ Marcantonio crossed himself. ‘And now, for our sins, this exterminating pestilence is upon us. But your nobility’s commands. Your needs?’

For that night his needs were supper and a bed. Tomorrow he would take order for the future.

He was provided. The windows were flung wide despite the prejudice against it, from the belief that to let in the air was to let in the plague with which it was laden. Supper was served him with abject excuses for its quality from a host who in happier times had ever been proud of the fare he set before his guests, and in the adjacent room a bed was made ready.

Eufemia, the girl who had lighted him, was left to minister to his wants. She was young, plump, and black-haired, with a moist, red mouth that smiled readily, and dark, moist eyes of deliberate wantonness. In her ministerings she was assiduous. She poured water for him, so that he might wash, and added to it a quantity of vinegar, assuring him that it was a safeguard against infection. He must preserve himself from that, and she would help him. To this end she fetched some glowing charcoal in a copper dish, and cast on this some aromatic herbs, to fumigate the chamber. Herself, she informed him, she had no fear of the infection, being protected from it by a scapulary she wore, which had been blessed on the coffin of Saint John the Baptist in the church of the martyred Saint Lawrence. Not for all the gold of the New World would she part with it. But his nobility might ask for anything else that was hers, she assured him, and the inviting smile on the red mouth, the languishing glance of the velvet eyes left him in no doubt of the potency she attributed to her prophylactic. She was clearly persuaded that not even wantonness could impair its efficacy.

She waited upon him at table with the same solicitous assiduity. Boiled kid was the backbone of the meal. She protested that it was nauseous food to set before his nobility, thus repeating the apologies of Marcantonio; but it had been boiled with plenty of vinegar, and that made it safe from the contagion. At the end of the meal she urged him to drink more wine, and uninvited set him the example by pouring for herself. She knew that it was harsh and acid. But that made it all the better medicine against the plague.

She made bold to pledge their better acquaintance. She liked him, she confessed.

‘You are kind,’ he mumbled drowsily.

The food was acting as a drug upon his weary body. All last night awake at the tiller, all today in the saddle, and some emotional labours as well, from the smothering of Lomellino to the discovery of the plague in Genoa, left him exhausted. His chin drooped to his breast, and the girl’s crooning tone as she babbled on of kindness and how kind she would be to him became gradually fainter until he heard it no more.

He awoke with a start to find an arm about his neck and a cheek against his cheek.

To come to his feet and hurl her violently from him was a single action, and more instinctive than reasoned. For not until he had seen her white face and fiercely puckered mouth was he fully awake. Then, realizing the situation, he laughed.

‘It’s the plague, I suppose.’

‘The plague?’ There was almost a note of hope in the question. ‘Did you think I have it?’

Fate was astir to prompt the jesting answer. ‘A plague of some kind is certainly at work in you, my girl. You need to wear an amulet of another kind.’

Very gradually there came a kindling of hatred in those dark, liquid eyes that had been so fond. Then, abruptly, she was gone.

With a shrug of disdain he staggered off to find his couch, and there sink into an exhausted sleep, undisturbed by the roar of revelry below, which did not cease until the break of day.