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MESSER Prospero Adorno, naked to the waist, his red-brown hair cropped short, savoured the ignominy of the rowers’ bench.

Chained by the leg, his body broiled by the ardent midsummer sun of Southern Italy and scarified by the lash of the warden’s whip, he toiled at the oar, slept in his place with no more than a strip of verminous cow-hide between his body and the unyielding wood, and was nourished on the galley-slave’s fare of some thirty ounces of biscuit daily, with a bucket of water from which to slake his thirst.

For a man fastidious by nature and by habit there could scarcely be a lower depth of animal existence. Only an abnormal fortitude in that situation could prevent the degradation of the body from inducing a similar degradation of the soul, until of humanity only the outward form remains.

Of such fortitude an example was offered to Prospero by his immediate oar-companion on the padrona galley of the fleet, the fifty-six-oared Mora, under that Niccolò Lomellino who at the battle of Amalfi had commanded the reserve. The black eyes of that stalwart, brown-bodied fellow-slave had opened wide, first with amazement and then with laughter in their depths when Prospero was brought to the place made vacant for him. In that swarthy, aquiline face with its black stubble of beard, its vivid, full red lips that parted at last in a broad grin to display two lines of strong white teeth, Prospero had recognized the great Corsair commander Dragut-Reis, the first of the captains of Kheyr-ed-Din, Barbarossa. That he should happen to be chained to the same oar as this Dragut, his own captive, taken in the famous action of Goialatta, had seemed to Prospero, as it had seemed to Dragut, much more than coincidence.

‘Ya anta!’ the Muslim had cried when he recovered from his stupor. ‘Bismillah! Unfathomable are the ways of the One.’ Then he had laughed his deep, rich laugh, and in a queer mixture of Spanish and Italian he had exclaimed: ‘The usage of war, Don Prospero!’

The armourer was making fast Messer Prospero’s gyves, whilst Lomellino himself, a tall, limber man of forty, with a narrow, stern, patrician face, looked on, his eyes dark and troubled. Yet, not to be outdone by an infidel in light-heartedness under misfortune, Prospero laughed to the tune of the clanging metal.

‘And a change of fortune for both of us, Señor Dragut.’

The trouble in Lomellino’s eyes deepened as he listened.

‘So the axe goes to the wood from which it had its helve,’ said Dragut. ‘But be welcome. Marhaba fik! If I must defile my shoulder against that of an unbeliever, be it at least the shoulder of an unbeliever such as thou. Yet I say again, unfathomable are the ways of Allah the Pitiful.’

‘I think, Señor Dragut, we have to do with the fathomable ways of man.’ For it became plain to him that he was being chained at Dragut’s side in a superlative expression of that vindictiveness which inspired Filippino Doria to doom a prisoner of Prospero’s station to the oar.

At Amalfi, on the day after that bloody encounter in which two thousand men had lost their lives and a half-score of officers of rank had fallen captive to the Genoese commander, the weedy Filippino’s mud-coloured eyes had gleamed when in the line of prisoners ranged on his deck he had beheld Prospero Adorno. From the arched entrance of the tabernacle he had looked down in appraisal, whilst an officer at his elbow made the captives known to him by name. Then, his gaze upon Prospero, he had slowly descended the steps to the vestibule, and had come to take his stooping stand before him.

‘Well come,’ was his greeting, with a sneering twist to his thick lips. ‘There was talk of a reckoning when last we were together, and you made some boast. We shall see now how you fulfil it.’ On that he had turned, and summoning Lomellino from among his captains, he had issued aloud the order which doomed Prospero Adorno to the oar.

It brought an explosion of indignation from Prospero’s fellow-prisoners. With one voice they cried shame upon Filippino, whilst Alfonso of Avalos went further.

‘Sir, you think to dishonour by that sentence. And so you do. You dishonour yourself.’

Filippino had winced. A man of less consequence than del Vasto might for that speech have gone to join Prospero on the rowers’ bench. But this intimate of an emperor must be used more gently. Charles V had a long arm. So, swallowing his gall, Filippino condescended to explain.

‘My Lord Marquis, if you conceive me moved by personal rancour, you do me wrong. It has no part in the order I have given. This man is no ordinary prisoner of war. Last year, when in command of the fleet of our ally the Pope, he deserted his post, and for this he is required to answer to Pontifical justice. With duty to the King of France goes a duty to His Majesty’s ally, the Holy Father; and in the fulfilment of this, I must treat this deserter as a felon until I can hand him over to the Pontifical authorities so that he may purge his felony on the gallows.’ He humped his round shoulders and spread his hands. He smiled odiously. ‘You will see, my Lord Marquis, that I have no choice.’

But the young Marquis, very cold and haughty, answered with insult piled on insult. ‘What I see is that you are skilled in subterfuge, or else that your conception of duty is such as any man of honour must despise. It does not become a gentleman to play the catchpoll, Messer Doria.’

Filippino shook with anger.

‘Whilst you are my prisoner, my lord, you will oblige me by keeping to matters that are your own concern,’ was all that he could find to say. He turned his back upon the Marquis, and curtly ordered Lomellino to convey his prisoner aboard the Mora.

Lomellino did not obey until he had remonstrated that it was to him that Prospero Adorno had surrendered and that, therefore, by all the usages of war, he possessed the right to dispose of him, whilst holding him to ransom. But he had been stormily overborne.

‘Did you not hear me say that he is no ordinary prisoner of war? That he is a felon, and that it is my duty to hand him over to justice? Am I to betray my duty for the sake of some ducats that he might bring you?’

To Lomellino the hypocrisy was clear; yet he dared not denounce it, since fundamentally Prospero’s guilt of desertion made good Filippino’s shabby pretence.

Meanwhile del Vasto, raging on his friend’s behalf, had done what he could. Treated, like the rest of the officers captured, as became his rank, and kept aboard Filippino’s galley merely on parole, he contrived to send a strong letter of protest to Marshal de Lautrec. Chivalrously to oblige him, Lautrec, as the supreme commander of the forces before Naples, demanded of Filippino the surrender to him of the prisoners taken at Amalfi. But Filippino, with his private spite to pursue, and with that eye to profit which distinguished every member of his family, returned the answer that the prisoners belonged to the Lord Andrea Doria, for whom he acted. Lautrec insisted, with a stern reminder that Andrea Doria was but the servant of the King of France, whose chief representative in Italy was Lautrec himself. In that quality he demanded once again, peremptorily, that the captives be delivered to him. Filippino’s obstinacy was shaken, but by no means quelled. He replied that it was in his instructions that by the terms of Andrea Doria’s service all prisoners taken were the Admiral’s property, their ransom to be regarded as his prizes of war; but in view of the Marshal’s insistence, Filippino would write at once to his uncle for definite orders.

There the matter hung, and Filippino, in angry uneasiness, kept his prisoners. He cared little about the main body of them or the ransoms they would bring his uncle, and he would have surrendered them rather than give Lautrec a cause for grievance, if from their surrender he could have excepted Prospero. It was not only that he was urged by rancour. He feared the vengeance of the House of Adorno, and he beheld in the enterprising and turbulent spirit of its present head a menace to Doria supremacy in the Ligurian Republic. Rancour, however, was probably the only mean emotion that spurred him one day to visit Messer Adorno in his chains.

With Lomellino and a warden to attend him, Filippino sauntered down the gang-deck of the Mora until he came to the oar at which Prospero sat, with Dragut beside him. Looking past Prospero, he addressed the Corsair, and his metallic voice was keenly edged with malice.

‘I hope you like the company I’ve provided for you, Messer Dragut. Your sometime captor is now your fellow-captive at the same oar. That is delicately to avenge you. Is it not?’

Dragut looked up at him, frank and fearless, his lip curling.

‘Which of us do you mock in your knightly valour?’ he asked.

Filippino’s eyes narrowed.

‘Separately at the oar, either of you would be a diverting sight. Conjointly you are something more; you make a spectacle that should amuse the Lord Andrea Doria when he comes to view it.’

‘Or any other shameless dastard,’ said Prospero.

‘Ha!’ Filippino’s grin drew his long lip back from his teeth. He fingered his ragged beard. ‘You mention shame, you poor runagate?’

‘I mentioned shamelessness, which you should better understand. The sight of Dragut-Reis and me at the one oar may remind you of how I saved my Lord Andrea’s reputation at Goialatta. For that you may call me a fool, and I’ll agree with you. But I was young, you see. I hadn’t learnt my world. I still believed in chivalry and in gratitude, in honour and nobility of heart, and other such qualities with which you have no acquaintance.’

Filippino swung to the warden who stood behind him. ‘Give me your whip,’ he said.

But Lomellino, who had looked on with just such trouble in his eyes as when Prospero had been chained to the bench, now intervened. It may be that his sense of decency revolted. Or it may be that aware of how things stood in Genoa, he feared a Doria eclipse which would carry the Fregosi with them and bring the Adorni back to power, with sorry consequences to those who had abused them in the hour of their defeat. Be that as it may, he put forth a restraining hand.

‘What would you do?’

‘What I would do? Let me have that whip, and you shall see.’

Lomellino waved back the warden. His narrow face was set. ‘It was to me that Prospero Adorno surrendered. Enough that you should filch the ransom. He is still my prisoner. I have yielded to you in this matter of putting him to an oar. That is shame enough for both of us.’

‘Niccolò!’ Filippino was angrily aghast. ‘Did you hear what the dog said to me?’

‘And what you said to him. I heard.’

For a moment Filippino continued to glare; then he laughed to cover his embarrassment. ‘And as for his being your prisoner, that is a matter you can argue with my Lord Andrea. But listen, my friend.’ He took him by the sleeve, and drew him away, Prospero apparently forgotten. Just below the poop they stood awhile in very earnest talk; then Filippino stepped down into his barge and was pulled back to his own galley.

‘May dogs defile his grave,’ was the pious prayer of Dragut, careless of who heard him. ‘Aye, and the great Andrea’s, who doomed me to this hell.’ Then he looked at Prospero, and flashed his teeth in a grin. ‘The nephew has avenged me on you more subtly than he knows. Had Allah shown me what was in store I’ld have died fighting on my deck before ever I’ld have surrendered. And so, I take it, would you.’

Prospero shook his head. A smile was trembling on his lips, his glance that of a man who looks inwards rather than outwards.

‘Ah, no,’ he said. ‘To me life is a necessity. There are three things that I must do before I die.’

‘You will do them if it is written that you shall. But being dead it will not matter that you did none of them.’

‘Not to me. No. But it will matter to others.’

‘What you shall do is not what you intend, but what Allah wills. What is written is written.’

‘I think that Allah must have written these three things for me. So I’ll be thankful to be even abjectly alive, here at the oar.’

For the best part of a month he continued so to toil in those Neapolitan waters, and it was a month of unparalleled hardship which took heavy toll even from a frame so hardy and vigorous as his own. And there were indignities the least of which was the warden’s lash which fell across his shoulders from time to time. For whilst Lomellino might have refused to have him flogged from personal spite, yet he could do nothing in the matter of the whip impersonally employed by the wardens on the gang when the galley in its patrolling required more than ordinary speed.

Thus for a month, and then at last came the long-expected Venetian galleys under Lando. Originally awaited so that they might reinforce the Genoese, now that they arrived they were destined, instead, to replace them. For on the same day came a swift-sailing felucca from Genoa with letters commanding Filippino’s immediate return. Filippino welcomed the order; for there was no love between those jealous rivals, Genoa and Venice, and he had viewed with no satisfaction the association which France imposed upon him. Additional orders in Andrea Doria’s letters were of such a nature that he found it necessary to request the presence of the Marquis del Vasto in the tabernacle of the capitana. He sent the request almost reluctantly. For the relations between himself and the most exalted of his prisoners, so inauspiciously begun, had never warmed to any cordiality. But there was no help for it. The Lord Andrea’s commands were as definite as they were startling.

Del Vasto came promptly in response, his manner smooth and urbane.

‘I am ordered here,’ Filippino announced, tapping the papers spread on his table, ‘to return immediately to Genoa with my galleys.’

‘Ah!’ Del Vasto’s dark, patrician countenance was instantly alert. ‘And this blockade?’

‘The Venetians will suffice for that.’ Filippino’s tone was careless. ‘The siege cannot in any case continue long. If they are starving and pest-ridden in Naples, Lautrec is in no better case. The plague has spread to his camp. Indeed, it seems to be spreading over Italy. I hear of outbreaks in Genoa.

‘I warned Lautrec when he was opening entrenchments not to interfere with the watercourses. But he would not heed me. Self-opinionated and omniscient, like all Frenchmen.’

At this sudden depreciation of the French del Vasto raised his brows; but he offered no comment. He let Filippino run on.

‘Perhaps he knows better now. The waters have oozed over the land to rot there and poison the air. And in this climate! I told him that he could not take liberties with a Neapolitan summer. But you can teach a Frenchman nothing. Thank God, my uncle seems to have realized it.’

‘Ah!’ said del Vasto again. ‘May I sit?’ He moved into the depths of the cabin and sank to a chair. He was without weapons, of course, but brilliantly dressed in sulphur-coloured silk, his sleeves fashionably puffed, a girdle set with cabochon emeralds at his waist. He had been permitted to procure from Naples his wardrobe, money, and what else he needed, as well as to receive such letters as had arrived there for him. He spoke very quietly. ‘So Messer Andrea has discovered at last that he serves the wrong master.’

Almost Filippino took alarm. ‘That is not to say that he has decided upon a change.’

‘It will follow, I hope.’ Del Vasto was of a cool suavity that continued to disconcert the less subtle Genoese.

‘That will depend.’

‘Ah? Upon what?’

Filippino crossed to the table. ‘I have a letter for you. Better begin by reading it.’

The Marquis received it, broke the seal, and read. When next he looked up he was quietly serious. ‘Messer Andrea asks for nothing that I am not prepared to concede in the Emperor’s name.’

‘In the Emperor’s name? Let us be quite plain, my lord. Have you His Majesty’s authority for the proposals which I understand that you have sent my uncle?’

Del Vasto drew a letter from his breast, unfolded, and proffered it. ‘This is in His Majesty’s own hand. It came to me a week ago. You see that it gives me the fullest powers. Is that enough?’

‘Provided that you are willing to pledge His Majesty to the extent required.’ Filippino returned the letter. ‘My uncle is exigent. First the stipend and the other moneys. You have seen his demands.’

‘They are heavy. But the Emperor is munificent. He does not stint his captains like the knightly King of France, whose substance goes in harlotry and the like. Give yourself no thought on that score.’

‘Then there is the condition touching prizes of war, the booty and the prisoners. The King of France claimed a share of the first and the whole of the second.’

‘The Emperor is not a pedlar. Messer Andrea shall have the whole of one and the other.’

Filippino, keeping a solemn face, inclined his head.

‘There remains the question of Genoa; and that is grave.’

Del Vasto smiled. ‘So grave that I should have thought you would have begun with it.’

Filippino was annoyed. He did not like the suspicion of contempt in del Vasto’s tone, or the expression, faintly, amusedly scornful, on that handsome olive face. Besides, del Vasto seemed to know too much. How much he knew he now went on to disclose.

‘It is no secret to me that French greed has made it impossible for Messer Andrea to fulfil the promise to the Genoese under which he induced them to accept the protection of the King of France. His Very Christian Majesty has proved not the King Log your uncle promised them, but a very voracious King Stork; and your uncle’s position in Genoa becomes difficult; even, I think, precarious. My knowledge seems to take you by surprise. Yet it need not, Messer Filippino. Without it I should scarcely have ventured to invite negotiations so delicate. It was my perception of Messer Andrea’s need to put himself right with the people of Genoa that encouraged me. For, of course, he cannot accomplish that so long as he is in the service of the King of France.’

‘Do not assume too much.’ Filippino spoke with a sharpness of annoyance. ‘I can tell you this: my uncle will make no pact with anyone who does not accord full independence to Genoa.’

‘None could reasonably ask him to do anything so dangerous to himself.’

‘He is not thinking of the danger. He is thinking of Genoa.’

‘Of course. Of course.’

Filippino looked at him sharply. Did this Imperial favourite permit himself sarcasm?

‘The Republic,’ he asserted aggressively, ‘must be emancipated from all foreign dominion.’

‘I understand. But unless the Emperor emancipates her, none other will, for none other has the power.’

‘The question is: Will the Emperor emancipate her? That is the question upon which this agreement depends. For I am to tell you frankly that unless His Majesty pledges himself to this, there can be no agreement between us.’

‘To the Emperor Genoa is no more than a bridgehead. Provided that he is given the freedom of the port, the Genoese may govern themselves as they please. He will see that no one else does.’

‘And there must be no levies on the Republic for the Imperial troops in Italy.’

‘I have said, I think, that the freedom of the port is all that His Majesty will require in return for his protection.’

Filippino could scarcely conceal his satisfaction. ‘Since you can say so much for His Majesty, I am prepared on my side to say for the Lord Andrea Doria that you may account the matter settled, all but the signing.’

‘That is excellent.’ The Marquis rose. ‘We have accomplished, I think, a happy piece of work, Ser Filippino. It follows, of course, that there will no longer be any question of ransom for the prisoners you took at Amalfi.’

Filippino’s satisfaction visibly diminished. His greedy eyes were startled. ‘That is a matter best left to the Lord Andrea. By our accord itself, all prisoners of war are to be his property.’

There was a shade of contempt in del Vasto’s smile. ‘Ser Filippino, that answer might serve for Monsieur de Lautrec. It will not serve for the Emperor, or, meanwhile, for me. By the accord, your uncle becomes the servant of the Emperor. He can hardly pretend to hold fellow-servants to ransom.’

‘Hardly, as you say,’ Filippino grudgingly admitted. He studied del Vasto’s face, and found it uncompromising. ‘I think I can promise that the signing of the agreement will relieve these gentlemen of their parole and leave them free.’

‘It will have to,’ del Vasto insisted. ‘Still, on this matter of your prisoners, there is one that cannot wait until the signing. I require the deliverance of Messer Prospero Adorno from his present situation, and that he be treated as his rank requires.’

The colour darkened in Filippino’s sallow face. It was a moment before he replied. ‘You do not know what you are asking, my lord. Prospero Adorno is not an ordinary prisoner of war. He is a felon, who——’

Peremptorily del Vasto interrupted. ‘I’ve heard that already. It will not profit you to repeat it.’ He advanced to the table’s edge, and stood eye to eye with the Genoese. ‘I cannot suffer you to pursue for another moment a personal vindictiveness against a captain in the Imperial service, and one with whose high worth I propose to acquaint His Majesty.’

As much the words as the manner of them were fuel to Filippino’s inward wrath. Del Vasto’s tone was that of the master, and whilst Filippino might take such hectoring from the Emperor, he would take it from no one of lesser rank. At least so he told himself, and on that thought he snarled a timely reminder.

‘We are not yet in the Emperor’s service, we Dorias.’

‘And you never will be if you oppose me in this,’ was the swift, alarming counter. The Marquis smote the table. ‘What is the fact? Do you hire the Emperor, or does the Emperor hire you? So far I’ve heard a deal of your conditions. You must have this, you must have that, you must have the other. Well, well! Now you’ve heard of something that we must have.’

If that did not extinguish Filippino’s wrath, at least it had the effect of submerging it in the fear of wrecking a compact that was nothing short of a necessity to Andrea Doria if he was to save his credit and authority in Genoa.

‘But consider, sir,’ he pleaded, ‘that this man is not as the others. They are gentlemen of untarnished honour. He is——’

The Marquis cut him short. ‘He is my friend.’

Filippino bowed a little, spreading his hands. ‘Even so, my lord. There is here a question of duty for me. A year ago, when in the Pope’s service, Adorno abandoned his command, and——’

‘That is the Pope’s affair. Not yours.’

‘Ours, too, permit me. The Pope is in alliance with the King of France, whom we serve.’

‘I have already expressed myself upon that quibble. Do not force me to repeat unpleasant words. And, anyway, that alliance is at an end, all but the signing, as you’ve said.’

‘But it existed at the time of the offence, and it remains that——’

Yet again del Vasto interrupted him. ‘No more!’ He was peremptory, contemptuous. ‘You merely shame yourself in vain by this mean subterfuge. Do you suppose that I do not know from what it was that Messer Adorno deserted, as you call it in your duplicity?’

‘My lord, this is not to be endured!’

‘You would have it by your insistence.’

‘But duplicity!’

‘I can find another name for it if you are not satisfied with that.’

Filippino faced him in angry silence for a long moment, breathing hard, his nostrils dilated. Then he recovered himself.

‘Your lordship does me a great wrong. With me this is purely a matter of duty. My motives are no more than I have said.’

‘Then they are worthless.’ On that del Vasto lowered his tone. Who holds the whip is not always in need of using it. ‘Come, sir. To wrangle over this is a foolish waste. The facts are too stubborn. It is not to be forgotten that Prospero Adorno’s father was driven to flight from Genoa so as to escape assassination for his loyalty to the Emperor. For it amounts to that. This being so, do you conceive that His Majesty would condone any such action as you may have contemplated; or that I, acting for the Emperor, could tolerate it? A word in season, Messer Filippino. Do not compel me to draw the Emperor’s attention to Prospero Adorno’s case. It would not make a good impression. It might provoke the Imperial wrath, against those responsible for what you describe as a desertion. What then would become of our agreement?’

That word in season scared Filippino at last into a reluctant, mortified surrender. His low-lidded eyes sullenly considered the haughty countenance of the Imperial representative. Then he turned, and paced away, still battling with his chagrin.

‘For myself,’ he said at last, I’ld yield the point. But——’

‘Yield it,’ del Vasto advised him.

Filippino shrugged away the sweet cup of rancorous gratification, and quaffed instead the draught that the Marquis thrust upon him.