Читать книгу The Siege of Malta (St. Angelo) - S. Fowler Wright - Страница 11

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“He shall be buried,” the Grand Master said, “with all the honour his deeds deserve, for it was a most valorous act to so stand his ground when the line sagged, and against one of Hassan’s repute, he having, as we may say, but one arm.

“I have a confident hope that God allowed him thus to assoil his soul, putting aside the feeble counsel he gave before, which came, as I suppose, from the lecherous life which he then led, by which devils had entrance to whisper behind his ear. But we may hope that he had also renounced that lechery from his soul, its cause having been vanished away.”

He said this in Sir Oliver’s room, Del Monte also being there. He was exultant at the great success of the last day, for if they had to provide for the burial of two hundred who had been slain, including such knights as it was pity to lose, yet the attack had been thrown back upon every side, and with such loss that the Turks might not be over-quick to attempt it a second time. It was talked that, including those who had been drowned from the boats, their loss was not far short of four thousand men, which may be hard to believe; but if we suppose it to include such as would soon be healed for another bout, we may say that it is no more than may be the lot of those who set flesh against stubborn stone, if it be defended well from above.

The Grand Master spoke less as one expecting reply, than as giving judgment over the dead, but Del Monte was a man of plain words, though not contentious of mood, and he would make it clear that he did not agree.

“You are right,” he said, “as to half, and perhaps more. But as to St. Elmo, and the counsel he gave, I would advise, if you will not take it amiss, that there should be no such words over his tomb, if you should have occasion to speak in a public way when our brothers are laid to rest. For there are many who hold that he said no more than a good knight should, giving honest counsel of war; and he has shown by his end that he did not speak from any faintness of heart, as was said by some at that time.

“And as to putting lechery from his soul, it is between God and him now, and there is no need to say more; except only this, that as he died he made his appeal to me, that I should speak on his part, if you should seek to do him further despite.

“That I said you would never practise to do, and so I lightly swore that I would take his part in such case; but if I should prove to be in error in that, then, by the high Passion of God, I will not be dumb.

“Yet I will say that at the time I swore I did not clearly perceive (hearing but the faint words of a dying man) that his thoughts were on her whom you supposed he had put aside, his petition being made for the wanton who fled away, and for one (as I understood) who had sheltered her from the law’s pursuit.”

The Grand Master listened to this with a look in which resentment followed surprise, but he controlled himself as a smaller man would have been less able to do.

“Del Monte,” he said, “we will have no quarrel for this, and on a day when Heaven’s mercy has blessed our arms. La Cerda’s soul is with God, and its judgment His, and we have our own, which are still to save. But having sworn such an oath to maintain his part, I will say that you have spoken knightly and well, though it may have been little honour to me. Nor would I be wroth at honest words which are spoken for me to hear, knowing that worse are said when I am further away, by those who are worthy of less esteem.... And as to the wanton who could so corrupt the soul of a knight of God, I will go so far as to hope she may not be found. But if she be, I will do justice without reprieve, thinking only of the high office I hold, and neither to favour the living, nor to heed the pleas of the dead.”

Having said this, he went out, being more deeply moved even than his words showed, for he thought at times that he was hated by all, and was less than sure that he had such support of God as should make him deaf to the contemning voices of men.

Sir Oliver looked after him, and spoke with a friend’s voice.

“I would that he were not so deeply stirred as he often is, for he is not young” (La Valette was sixty-eight at this time), “and he spends his strength in too free a way. He is wrong at times, as we may be tempted to think, but I suppose that he was sent by God to support this hour, and he lives for Malta alone.”

“You are his good friend,” Del Monte replied, “and have spoken nothing to which I do not agree.... I will tell you this, that I was, as it were, trapped to the oath I gave, from which I cannot think that I am therefore absolved, for I do not conclude that La Cerda meant to trap me at all. But he thought of a woman he loved, as a man will at the gates of death, and St. Elmo was in my mind.”

“So I have no doubt that it was; yet, if you will heed my guess, the woman of whom you speak, as she is not one to deserve a love of a constant kind, so she did not have it from him. It was pride that stirred, rather than love, in a dying man. It was, in your own word, which I take for his, that the Grand Master should not do him further despite.”

Del Monte did not dispute that. He said: “Well, there was one hope the Grand Master had, with which we may both accord. It will be well that she be not found.”

It was at this time that Francisco was with Venetia in his rock-hewn cell, and they talked of La Cerda’s death. It was a joy to her which she knew she must not show. She had contrived a tear, which may have been slower to fall, knowing that there were no more of its kind to come.

Francisco sat by her couch, and a soft hand fell on his wrist, as though by an idle chance, and was not taken away.

“I cannot grieve,” she said, “as I should, having been so friended by you.”

Francisco kissed her hand for so kind a word.

His fingers moved on her arm, and were sharply withdrawn, for he had thrilled to a sudden passion at which he feared, lest his knighthood be brought to shame. Yet La Cerda’s death had been joy to him, with the birth of a better hope than he had been able to feel before. It was a hope he could not obtrude in this moment of natural grief.... But at a near day.... When this siege would be done, as it soon might (how many more boats must be first sunk? What a slaughter it must have been to a nearer view!) and when people would come and go in a free way, so that she could be removed without fear—or perhaps sooner than that—he had eager, impatient dreams, over which honour shone, an unclouded star....

An hour later, when they were talking still, between silences which were more pregnant than words, he was roused by Captain Antonio’s voice. He stood discreetly without. He said: “Captain, the Grand Master is nearly here. I suppose I am not to hold him at bay?”

Francisco went out with an elation that he found hard to conceal beneath the cloaks of shyness and pride, for he knew that the Grand Master must be coming to inspect the battery which had worked such havoc the day before, and perhaps to give him some tangible honour, or more certain praise for the part which he had been able to play.

He did not meet the Grand Master alone, for Sir Oliver Starkey was there; and three other Commanders of the Order; and a file behind of the gay-uniformed Castle Guards showed that the visit was of an official sort. There was one other that Francisco had not expected to see, for Sir Oliver brought Angelica at his side.

“You shall come,” he said; “for it must be pleasure to hear that your cousin will have a merited praise, and to him alike to know that you hear it said.”

Angelica would have preferred to have kept away, but she had been alert that Sir Oliver should have no guess that Francisco and she were estranged, lest he should guess further toward the cause, and the same caution had kept her dumb now, being unable to think of a plausible pretext that she would not be glad to be there.

The Grand Master was generous in his praise, and particular in the inspection he made. He must see not only the Santa Martha’s guns, by which the boats had been overset, but the ways in which the battery had been made strong, beyond the thought of its first design.

“I had no purpose in this,” he was frank to say, “beyond to here establish guns of such range that they would command the boom which they overlook. But you have brought guns of a greater range, and made it an outwork of solid strength, so that both harbour and castle are more secure; and, beyond that, you have been able to strike in a vital way from where they thought we had no such fangs.... I marvel that it had not been betrayed before now, for there is little they do not learn.”

Francisco must answer that with explanation of the care with which he had chosen those who must handle the battery guns, and the discipline which made spying hard, and the Grand Master approved again.

“You are of your Uncle’s blood,” he said, “and it is pleasure to know that it does not fail. For it draws the venom of death if we can feel that we live again in those that are of a near blood.” He sighed, as he spoke, from a private grief, having had his own son (or nephew as he must be called by the etiquette which the Statute of De L’Isle Adam required, and which he had himself been stern to enforce, since he had come to his present power) killed but a few days before, which may be held to show that he had been less austere in his younger days than he now was; but he said nothing of that.

He asked how the guns with which the battery had been first supplied would be put to use, and gave praise again when he was shown that preparations to mount them at a new angle were well advanced.

“By which time,” Sir Oliver said, “I must make allotment of further men for this post. Can you give good shelter to such?”

Francisco said there need be no doubt about that, and the Grand Master, who was ever one to see all, to the last item there was, must inspect the excavations in which men might crouch secure against hostile shot, when they were not working the guns.

Venetia heard the voices without, which approached her cell. She could tell they were looking into that which Captain Antonio had, being next to hers. She was in her bed at this time, being the sole one that the cell held, for Francisco would lie on the floor. There she would be most of these days, having no purpose for which to rise. She had lain as they had talked for the last hour, with Francisco on a stool at her side.

Now she looked round in a sudden fear. Was there no place where she could hide from intruding eyes? She sprang out to the floor. As to clothes, she could have had more on, and not much. She ran round, like a trapped rat, seeking a hole that was not there. She heard Captain Antonio’s voice without: “There is naught to be seen here, it is like to mine.” She stood in the midst of the floor, not daring to move. Was the danger past?

She heard a more austere voice, being that of the Grand Master, though that was more than she knew. “But the angle should be sharper than that, if it is to keep out a fragment of flying stone. Now you observe here——”

Footsteps approached round the bend.

For once Venetia did not know what to do. She stood still.

The Grand Master stopped, as must those behind, who could see less. He may be excused that there was a moment when amazement had made him dumb.

He came from the sun to a cell that was dimly lit, and may have wondered at first if he could be deceived by the sudden gloom. But as his eyes adjusted themselves he became assured that he looked at a woman whose body, supple and young, was reserved from sight by no more than a short shift, and a shawl of price, blue and broidered with gold, that was round her neck as a frame for a pale-gold head.

“Oliver,” he said, “what in the fiend’s name do we find here?”

The Grand Master did not suppose that Sir Oliver had any special knowledge of this. He simply appealed to him for any information that he required; as it was his habit to do.

Had he not been directly asked, Sir Oliver might have kept still, and the Grand Master discovered no more than that Francisco kept a wanton within his cell. That might have been trouble enough, but it could not have gone deep or far after the service he had just done, for he was not bound by the Order’s vows.

But, being so addressed, Sir Oliver made explicit reply: “As I think, it is she who is sought for the steward’s death.”

“It is shrewdly guessed.” The Grand Master had advanced into the cell by this time, and it was half filled by those who crowded behind. He looked round to ask in a sharp voice: “Don Francisco, will you explain?”

Francisco had been at the rear of the group, and, as those of better right followed the Grand Master into the cell, Angelica was left at his side. She knew what was to come some seconds before the Grand Master spoke, for it was what she had been fearing to see. For where else could he have hidden the girl, as she had no doubt he had done?

She had watched Antonio turn La Valette adroitly to his own cell, and then his futile effort to prevent the entrance of that before which they stood. At the moment, all other thoughts were swept back by that of the danger in which Francisco lay.

Standing as though dazed, to await that which he had no power to control, he heard her voice, low and intense, at his side: “Francis, will you not go? There is yet time.”

Antonio spoke at his other hand. “There is a boat under the quay, at the hither steps.” It was a provision he had made for such a moment as this, though he had said no word of it before.

And it was clearly a chance. There were none around but the Grand Master’s Guards, who surely would not oppose his way, and some of his own men. If he could reach the boat, he might row round to some part of the island which was still in Maltese hands. With the help of gold, of which he carried a full pouch.... Antonio would have said that a slender chance is much better than none.

There was a moment during which Francisco was unresolved, though it is unlikely that he would have fled, being of too high a pride not to defend that which he had thought fitting to do. But while he paused, he heard Venetia’s voice—a cool, insolent voice—and his resolution was made. “I will not leave her,” he said, “having done nothing beyond my right.”

Venetia had not left it to Francisco to give the Grand Master reply. In that pause of silence she had seen that she was cornered beyond retreat, and her courage rose to the audacity which (as she thought) the occasion required.

“If you will know who I am,” she said, “I am here to ask. I am La Cerda’s amie, as you suppose. I was his who died for your cause in the last day. Would you seek to shame me for that? Is it knightly done, that you do not retire when you see me as I now am?”

Francisco had come forward by this. He faced the Grand Master in the pride of youth and a foolish love, and was neither abashed nor afraid.

“There is not much to explain. I gave shelter to one who came to me in a great need, he who should have been her shield having been jailed for a cause which I do not know. If I may say it with great respect, I am not of the High Order of which you are Head, nor am I under its vows, but I have done in this as my own honour required (or as I so held); and for this you may hold me excused the more if I have been of some service to you, as you have graciously said in the last hour.”

The Grand Master heard them both, but did not directly reply. He looked round the narrow cell, and its meaning did not seem doubtful to him, seeing what she had been, and what she was to his own eyes. He saw that the cell had no exit, except that through which they had come. He said to her: “You will have time to be more seemly attired for this hour, and for walking abroad, but you must do it with speed. You are charged with a man’s death, and you must first answer to that.”

He turned, and those who were there withdrew before him out of the cell, so that Venetia was left alone. He placed two of his guards at the entrance, to make arrest when she should come out. “You will give her,” he said, “to the Provost-Marshal’s hands, letting her have commerce with none till you have delivered her thus, she being charged with a public crime.”

He walked away with no further word till he mounted the castle stairs, letting those follow who would. Then he turned to say: “Oliver, I would be alone. We will talk of this at a later hour.”

He saw that he was alone already, except that Sir Oliver had come closely behind, and there were two guards who had followed to the foot of the stair, as their duty was. He went on to his own room, which he still kept for his official affairs, though his lodging was in the town.