Читать книгу The Siege of Malta (St. Angelo) - S. Fowler Wright - Страница 13

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“I must know,” Angelica said, “in what danger my cousin lies, for I can have no peace till I do.”

Sir Oliver did not resent the words or manner of this address, which would have been unfitting from whom she pretended to be, and was not much better from whom she was as they both knew, for the sharp anxiety in her tone was easy for him to hear, and his reply was kinder than may be plain in the written word.

“Then you must know something I cannot tell, for there is nothing resolved. But I tell you all that I may when I say that the Grand Master is agreed that he will do nothing alone. There is Council called for the last hour of the day, when the Commanders will consider your cousin’s case.”

“Then he can be under no restraint till that hour?”

Sir Oliver frowned a little at a question which he thought should not have been asked, and the more so if it were not done in an idle way.

“Why do you ask? It is that which you should be able to resolve in your own mind, without assurance from me.”

“I ask because I would have it clear that he will remain of his own will, as having done nothing which should be dispraised in a just mind.”

“Can you think that?”

“It is not what I think that can be of any account. It is for him I would speak. He is resolved that he will not go, as he has time to do.”

“Can you say where?”

“No. But there are those who could. Of whom he is one.”

“You have learnt this from him?”

“There are things I have heard, and I think there are none that I may not say, or at least to you, so that I mention no name but his. He could have gone if he would.”

“Well, I will not ask where, which is not easy to see. But I will say that I think him wise.... Yet, when I say that, you must not build on it too much, for this is a matter on which I shall have no warrant to deal. It is over me.”

“I should be slow to say that. You have a great power.”

“You may call it more than it is. And against that which the Council resolve it is nothing at all.”

“But you will be there.”

“I shall be one among ten or twelve, and there will be some who can speak with more weight than I.”

“It is what I will not believe.”

“Well, I have said as much as I should. I will not forecast the Council’s resolve, nor disclose what my part may be to one who (I suppose) would soon tell it to him. If he remain (as I have said that he should, for it is that, as I think, that his honour needs), he shall have no warrant from me.”

“Then I will ask no more at this time, except this, which I have promised to do. Will the woman be so confined that she will have no hardship or shame till her trial come?”

Sir Oliver looked at her with eyes which were less grave than before. “Do you speak as a parrot does, or are you grieving for her?”

“It is a promise I gave. I have said that before. But I will say of myself that I do not think she has done very much wrong; or, at least, it is not for that which she has done wrong that she is pursued, but for that which she would not do, and which she denied (as she must) with a dagger’s point. And for one placed as she says she was, I should call it a good way.”

“You speak well for one whom I can still see that you do not love. But I will answer you in two words.

“The first is this. She will be fairly tried, and she will be kept in sufficient honour till then (even if she have not had the help of your cousin’s gold, which is easy to guess); and this is not an Italian town.

“And the second is this. I know not how the man died, about which it is right, as you must allow, that a proper inquest be made; but the woman is one who will work mischief until she have a knife in her own ribs, for which I should say she is no less fit than you would have me think that the steward was. She will find trouble as a wet sponge gathers the dirt.

“But you shall not say that you have asked a small thing which I would not do. You shall indite a note to the Provost-Marshal from me which I think he will not contemn.”

Having obtained all that she could, Angelica went without loss of time to tell Francisco of that, and may have been less than pleased to find that he was away, but she had seen that Captain Antonio was his friend sufficiently for her to leave a message with him.

“You can tell him,” she said, “that the case is one which the Grand Master will not decide on the power he has, as he might do if he were moved by wrathful resolve (for the proclamation, as I understand, gives him power enough, it being a martial time, even to the taking of life), but there will be Council held at the last hour of the day, when there will be debate on what Don Francisco has done. I suppose (though I have no warrant to say) that they will look on the good deed as well as that which they must call by another name, and they should see that the first is of greater weight.”

“So it may be that they should,” the little Captain agreed, “but do you think that they will? There will be those who will contend that a proclamation so strait and clear cannot be flouted in time of war, lest it be said that there is no rule over those who do well in the field, on which any army would break apart.”

“There will be foolish talk,” Angelica replied. “That is sure. But we hope that better words will prevail.”

“So we will. And so it may be, if you have made Sir Oliver friend.”

“He may be of good will. But he says that in this he has little power. We are to build nothing on him.”

“Well, I have given my counsel before. I must hope I am shown wrong.... Is that all you would have me say?”

“Except that I have obtained that the Provost-Marshal shall have written request that she shall be lodged in a seemly way until the trial is due.”

“In a seemly way? I should say that that would not be far from the filth of the middle street.”

“That was not what I meant, as I think you know.”

“So I do. It is strange how a flower-like face will entrap those who are young, even though it may bring nothing to them.”

Angelica laughed at that, though laughter was not near to her heart, for the thought that she had been seduced by Venetia’s face to beg a soft lodging for her was a jest which she could not miss.

But when Captain Antonio went on: “Now a score of years will show her better for what she is, so that it will be a book that the young can read,” she felt the desire to take the part of one whom she did not love which Sir Oliver had noticed an hour before.

“That,” she said, “may be true of all whom God makes, and not only of her. But it may also be that His thought is more surely shown in the freshness of youth than in later years, when the blinds are down, and twilight is on the soul.”

“Well,” he said, “you take her part, and you may know why, at which I will guess no more.”

She thought of why it could be, which had not been clear to herself, and spoke the answer aloud, as she should have been too guarded to do: “It is, as I suppose, that we are caught alike in a world of men.” But her voice fell on the last word, as she became sharply aware of the implication of what she said.

She looked at Captain Antonio in a cool way, which it was not easy to do, and found that he was not looking at her. There was a silence the meaning of which was plain for her to guess, but which she was resolved should be broken by him, that she might judge what he knew, and how he would be likely to act thereon.

There came to both their minds (as they could not know, except each for one) a vision of night and a sloping deck, and of two who met in the light of a lantern that hung aloft. The salt water dripped from her doublet’s folds: there was a cold wind at her back: and overhead were a few stars.

Then he spoke, and still without looking her way: “It is the gain of those who will wander much that they see things that are strange to tell, or which some would doubt, though they might be sworn in the Virgin’s name. And we must see things at times that we do not speak at a later hour.”

She considered this, and it was of her nature to take his word in the best way.

“It is knightly said,” she replied, “as I should have thought that you would,” at which he was well pleased, having some vanity of his own, which was not willing to think himself less than were those of a knight’s degree, though he knew that most men would give him a smaller sum.

She went away with the assurance that what she had been careless to show would not be published abroad, and she left a much-puzzled man.

“We see much,” he reflected, meaning they who wander on the face of the world, “but the enigmas are hard to rede.”

He thought of her as he had seen her first, and of what she had done since to his own sight, and of the position she had come to hold, which was plain to all, at Sir Oliver’s side, as one to whom he gave trust, and whom he would yet send on missions from which she might not return.

Why had she come to this peril in such a dress? What was the place she now held, either as woman or man? Was her sex known, and if so to how many, and who were they? What had she been to Don Francisco, or was she now? He had come on a strange vision of life, and its focus was changed by a word, but it was still blurred.

“And why,” he thought, “she should be friend to that slut, I see less than before. Is it for the reason she gave? That they are two women snared in a world of men?” Well, so he must think, if it could be solved in no better way. But Angelica did not walk as one snared, but rather, though in a quiet style, as one cool and serene. And though Venetia might be closed in a world of men, he did not think it to be of that she would make complaint, but rather that they were not of a more infidel blood when they looked her way.