Читать книгу The Siege of Malta (St. Elmo) - S. Fowler Wright - Страница 8

Table of Contents

Angelica waked with the ease of youth when the dawn was no more than a line of light along the eastern horizon of the Mediterranean. She looked down from her turret-window upon a harbour which was already astir. Boats moved over the water in the growing light. There was bustle and loading of stores where the two great galleys lay warped along the side of the quay. It seemed that men had not slept at all under the urgency of the preparations that Don Manuel’s instructions required. She distinguished Señor Ramegas giving orders upon the quay.

Further out, she saw Rinaldo’s galley, the Flying Hawk, with the Maltese cross fluttering at its peak: the eight-pointed cross, red on its ground of white, which had been the terror of the infidel through five hundred years of a war that had never ceased. The Flying Hawk had its own reputation too. It was not of a weight to face the largest Turkish galleys, but it had a speed which rendered it careless of them. In the five years since it had been built in a Venetian dockyard it had a record of raids and captures, of battles with galliots of its own kind, which it would not have been easy to match.

Angelica looked and was bitter of heart that a mere difference of sex should hold her back from part or place in the great adventure which these preparations forecast. Bitterer still, perhaps, in her secret mind, in the deep instincts of womanhood, that she was destined to a life which would be frustrated in its more natural purpose, in the fulfilment of the very difference which held her separate from the busy crowd that she watched below.

It would be no use till her uncle had gone, but then, though she could deceive herself into no more than a little hope, she would try what could be done when she had only Ramegas and Francisco to cross her will.

She went down to breakfast at a later hour, and felt a new depression when she saw that Rinaldo’s seat was empty and was told that he had already gone.

“He has consented,” Ramegas said, “to aid us by taking some stores on board which must else have gone on our own decks, which will be burdened enough without them. But, for some reason, which must be a better one than he gave, he will not have the Flying Hawk warped to the quay. It must all go out in barges, and be hauled aboard where he now lies. When he had consented to this, he went in haste, as though he feared it might be put in hand before he would be there to control. It might be thought that the Flying Hawk were his own babe, instead of a boat that has had five years’ buffets of storm and shot, and of which he has no more than charge for this voyage. It would not be hurt by a bump, if a hawser broke.”

Angelica was not interested in the bruises that Rinaldo’s galley was not to get. She asked: “Will he be here again for this night?”

“No. He said he would stay aboard. We must sail to-morrow at dawn, or, to be more exact, at an hour before.”

Angelica made no answer to that. What was she to him, that he should dally to say good-bye or come back for so small a cause? What, also, was he to her? It seemed that nothing was all he could ever be. Yet she would have been glad to have had him to talk to now; and for him, perhaps, to say such things to her again as it would be easy to bear in mind. But she saw that that dream was done.

And while she put this folly back from her mind, Don Manuel came to the meal, which it was seldom that he would share, it being his habit to eat alone at this hour. But now he would have all the time that he could to talk to Ramegas and Francisco, as he was taking horse in an hour from then, and Angelica found that she could be silent, and none would notice at all. She felt that she had already gone out of their lives.

She had thought that a short respite from what she feared might be won in another way, when it occurred to her that she might go with Don Manuel to Seville, and to this she almost gained his consent.

“Uncle,” she said, “it is four years since I have seen Seville, and I would gladly do so again. And the King I have never seen. Would it not be well that you should present me to him? They say he never forgets any whom he has once met either for evil or good. Who can say that I might not be grieved on a far day that I had missed such a chance as this?”

Don Manuel thought, and was not averse. He saw that there was a shrewd reason in what she said. An abbess might have times when she would have petition to make to a king’s throne. It may be well to be able to say you are known of him.

Angelica, watching his face, thought that her point was won.

“I see no reason against that, if it will give you joy,” he said, in the way of distant kindness he had, “and it would mean but a short delay in that which you have to do. You shall surely come, if you will; though I shall be in haste for one end, and—nay, but it is useless to think, for I am not like to return here. I am more likely to sail from Cadiz, when I have put the case to the King.”

“Yet,” Angelica urged, “I could return alone. I could take Morayma, if you desire. It is but twenty Spanish leagues to Seville.”

“It is not to be thought. I ride with but two knaves, whom I must have with me where I may go. Morayma will have much to do here. Could she leave in an hour’s time? I am grieved, but it cannot be.”

“Yet it is a safe road——”, Angelica began, but she let the word drop, for she saw that his attention was gone. He was talking to Francisco as though he did not know she was there. It would be useless to ask again.... And, after all, it would have spoiled her chance of a larger hope.

So Don Manuel bade her a kind farewell, which would yet have been kinder had he had fewer calls upon his emotions in other ways, and rode off on a steed which was still powerful and proud, though, like himself, it had seen days when it had been more supple of limb, and had thought him a lighter weight; and on the next day he came to the King’s court at Seville.

Seville was a great city at this time, very splendid and gay. It was the frequent home of the Spanish kings, and though Spain was losing strength every year, she still seemed to be of an impregnable power.

It was more than fifty years since she had driven the Moors out of the southern end of the land. She sought to make it one of her own blood, and was now doing herself more harm than good by the severity of her Inquisition against the Jews. It was less than fifty years ahead that she would complete her ruin by driving out all her subjects of Moorish blood, being 600,000 of the best that she had.

But, at this time, the Spanish monarchy was of a great and very arrogant power, and Seville, which was the favourite residence of its kings, was magnificent in its palaces and splendid with silk and gold.

There was the glorious cathedral, which had been building for more than a century, and completed forty years ago. There was La Lonja, the great Exchange, which had been built by the present King. There was La-Torre-del-Oro, a building of still greater significance, which had been erected to receive the cargoes of gold which every year the galleons brought in to Cadiz from the mines of the Spanish Main.

There also was the Palace of Pilate, where the dukes of Alcala lived, and which was said to be an exact replica of that which had been built in Jerusalem by the Roman governor; and, strangest and loveliest of all, there was still the Moorish royal palace, the Alcazar, now become the southern residence of the kings of Spain.

Philip II received Don Manuel with the royal courtesy and munificence which it was his habit to offer to all visitors of importance. There may never have been a more accessible monarch nor one whose courtesies were of smaller worth. He had just returned from Madrid, where he had parted from Count Egmont, the prince of Gavre, after entertaining him with the lavishness which befitted his rank, and showering more substantial favours upon him. Yet he may even then have been contriving within his heart the murder which was soon to follow. He knew, already, more of the contemplated assault upon Malta than Don Manuel would have been able to tell him, and had used it with Egmont as the reason why he was unable to pay a visit to the Netherlands which (he said) he had been eager to undertake.

Now he praised the energy and devotion which the lord of Vilheyna had shown at this crisis of the fortunes of the great Order to which he belonged. He gave promises of support of the most lavish kinds, which he might mean or not, for in either event it would be his policy to give them in an equal profusion. He urged Don Manuel to convey these assurances to the Grand Master, which he was naturally eager to do.

As the news at the Spanish court indicated that the besiegers might already be surrounding the Maltese island, with such a fleet that the entry of a single vessel to its harbour would be a precarious enterprise before Don Manuel could be expected to arrive before it, he decided to proceed to Sicily in a frigate of that country which was sailing from Cadiz, and to complete his journey by such means as should seem most prudent, in the light of what he would be able to learn on arrival there.