Читать книгу The Siege of Malta (St. Angelo) - S. Fowler Wright - Страница 18

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Venetia had looked down on a man with whom she had played till he slept in a sated way, being heavy with the wine which she had coaxed him to drink, and of which she had had more than enough.

He had been hard to bring to that point, and she did not think that his doze was deep, or that it would last long, but a short time should be sufficient for her.

She would have liked well to give him a thrust such as that which had gone up to the steward’s heart, knowing of none whom she hated more, but she would not do that which might bring her down, if she should be caught at a later hour. Besides that, she had no weapon at all, for the man had been prudent to leave his poniard where it could not be brought into that game, having had the steward’s end at the back of his mind. With bare hands, he knew that he could break her across his knee, and he had, in fact, given her bruises that would be black for some days, though in no more than an evil sport, after the manner of such as he when they are brutish with lust and wine.

Her hands were silent and swift as she clad herself with the best she had, and only became slow as she turned the key that it should not grate, for he had locked the door on the inside, as it had been prudent to do for more reasons than one.

She had to trust her own wits beyond that, for he did not carry all the keys of the jail at his belt, as warders would do in the romances which men read at that time, both because it would have been a great burden to bear about, and because it would have been asking men to knock him on the head and go free.

She went along a short passage, and through a door at the end that was standing wide, as he had left it for his return. She closed this, observing a bolt on its outer side, which fell into a socket in the stone floor. As she dropped it, she smiled as one whose vengeance was sure, though it might not come from her hand. He would have much to do (she thought) to explain how he came to be at the wrong side of that door.

After that, she had no trouble at all. She knew the way out, having observed it well as she came in, which those who have been jailed before will have learnt that it is prudent to do. She passed an open door, where a man slept on a bench. She did not see the third man, from whatever cause. She found keys on a wall. It was all as simple as that.

She was sobered by the night air, and the need of caution, which was even greater than when she had been in the jail, but she moved with a settled plan. She was noiseless on the shadowed side of the street, and quick to hide at the sound of a distant step. She came to the quay, and to a place where the skiffs were tied. There was a man set to watch there, and he did not drowse, as she had hoped that he might. He paced the length of the quay, looking out on a water which was covered by a light mist, as it often was in the night hours.

This was the greatest risk that she had. When he was furthest from where she crouched, and near to turn, she crept across, and slipped into a boat, where she lay flat.

He was alert to hear the little noise that she made as she gained the boat. He came back, looking round in a wary way, but she was not seen. When he walked the next time, she unknotted the rope by which the boat was tied, but held it until he had come back and turned again, so that she should have all the time she could at the last.... He heard the plash of an oar, and turned to see a boat thrust off from the quay. He pulled out a pistol and fired, meaning at once to hit her if he could, and to give the alarm.... Men came then at a run, and boats were pushed out in pursuit, but the mist was her friend that she was not found. It had been more perilous than she had thought, but she did not fret about that, it having been safely done.

She wished to make her way to the corsairs’ camp rather than that of the Turks, both because she would rather come to Hassan’s than Mustapha’s hands, and because she knew that among the men of the Barbary coast she would find those who would understand what she said, which those of Turkey or Egypt would have been less likely to do. There was a jargon talked on the sea-coasts, from Morocco to the Levant, which she knew well enough, having learnt it from the seamen who came ashore at Genoa where she was bred.

It would do well enough for the first of those she would be likely to meet, and it was said that Hassan could talk in more tongues than two. She did not doubt that she would be understood when she came to him.

Here were reasons for what would be best to do, but there was no help in them as to how it should best be done. The Barbary ships lay, for the most part, as did the whole fleet, in the great harbour which was on the further side of Sceberras ridge; but she knew that Hassan’s attack on the Sanglea had been at the eastern end, which was on the opposite side of the Turkish girdle which closed St. Angelo in, and it was still there that he would be likely to be. To row up the inlet which was south of the Sanglea would be to invite bullets from either side, as her oars would be heard in the misty light of the dawn. Even in darkness (and if she could find her way) it would be perilous to attempt.

The skiff she had taken was light, being one meant for the harbour alone, and not fit for the open sea. She had been used to boats from her childhood’s days, and could control it with ease. She resolved to lie out in the midst, till the night should be further spent, and then pull up to the head of the harbour, and land where (if there were any Turks about, which was less likely than not), they would not be keeping a watch, as they could not be attacked there by the Christians, unless they should sally out from the inner harbour with all their ships, and even then it would not be a place they would choose. The land at the head of the harbour was of no moment to either side, though it would be within the lines of the Turks, which swept round to Sceberras, and to the further harbour beyond. If she landed there shortly before the dawn, she would be well within the lines of the Turks, where no special watch would be kept, and she thought that, with good fortune’s help, she might find her way to Hassan’s command....

It was two hours after dawn that Hassan sat in his tent, taking the first meal of the day. Most of the Turkish leaders, when they saw how long the siege was likely to be, had found roofs for their heads from the deserted villas which the knights had built in time of peace in all parts of the island. But Hassan would choose a tent when he was not on a moving deck, having the desert ways in his blood, though he had a great house at Tripoli where he kept his wives, and would sometimes be, and Dragut’s palace at Algiers, which was splendidly built in the Moorish style, and was now his, and he would spend some time there in the future years, if he did not die at this siege.

He had a pavilion, ample and rich, with partitions within itself, and here he sat on the cushioned, carpeted ground, and ate and drank in a frugal way, for which Dragut would have had a jest of contempt.

A servant entered, and said: “Lord, there is a giaour woman without, who says she has escaped from the town, having been wrongly accused, and fled where she supposes she will be safer than there. She says that she has matter you will be grateful to hear.”

“Is she one of a common kind?”

“She has been well-kept, and is white and clean.... She is richly attired, and fair enough in the Christian way.”

Hassan saw that the man gave grudging praise. He said: “There is one woman who is, as I suppose, in St. Angelo now, whom I would be thankful to get, but I suppose it is not she.”

“She is soft of speech, and her hair is paler than gold.”

“Then it is not. But I will hear what she has to say. Bring her in, and leave her with me alone.”

Venetia came, looking confident in a quiet way, for she was always equal to an event which she expected to meet. With a woman’s art, she had contrived to bear little sign of the way in which she had toiled and walked during the night. She was one who would always save that which she wore, at the cost, if not of her skin, at least of a pain which would be less easy to see.

Hassan looked at her with friendly, approving eyes, but she knew too much of Saracen ways to give much value to that. She knew that, if he should order her to the strangler’s hands, it would be done in a smooth way, without hardening his voice, as a Christian would be likely to do.

“You have come,” he said, “from St. Angelo during the night? By what way did you do that?”

“I came from the quay that is under the castle wall. I took a boat and rowed to the end of the harbour, and then I walked here.”

“It is as easy as that? Why have you walked so far from the place where you came ashore?”

“It was to you that I came.”

“Why to me?”

“I preferred you to the Turkish leaders, thinking you would listen to what I have come to tell.”

“Why should you think that?”

“I was born on Genoa quay.”

Hassan considered this reply, which he understood. Mustapha would have been likely to put her to torture as the readiest way of getting the truth from lips which, being Christian, would be likely to lie to him; and when he had done, he would have made an end of a woman’s body that was no longer of marketable condition. He might have acted better than that, but it was not a chance that any woman would choose. Piali might have been worse than he. But the corsairs of the Barbary coast had a reputation for destroying little that they would be able to sell. Their mercies were no better than that. But a Christian woman who came to their hands would be stripped and examined with a slave-merchant’s eye, and if they cut her throat when they had done, she might be sure that she was of little good, either for man’s pleasure or woman’s toil.

Hassan looked at her with considering eyes, and there was a silence which was not easy for her to endure. She knew that he would act without haste, but when his next words should come they would be likely to make her fate plain. When he spoke at last, it had the form of a threat, and yet it put a better confidence in her heart than she had yet had.

“I am about to ask you some questions which you will do well to answer with great care; for if you attempt to lie, I do not say you will find a quick death, but you will wish that you had.”

“I shall not stumble on that stone.”

“Many do. You are Christian?”

“I am Christian born.”

“Would you betray those of your race and creed?”

“I seek to save my own life, taking the only way that I have. Had they left me in peace, I had not been here. If their own lives are in more hazard from me, it is no more than they threatened mine.”

She spoke the thoughts which had come as she had lain and planned on the previous day, and which were in part what she truly felt, but more largely what she had considered that she must be ready to say. They held a logic which is less likely to be perceived by the rulers of states than by those whom their laws pursue. For a state will make war on the life of a single man who is born on its own land, and think that he should still be loyal to it in separate ways, which is to ask much, and especially so of one whom it esteems unworthy to live.

Hassan asked: “You have no more reason than that?”

“It is said that the Grand Master once rowed as a Turkish slave.”

“So he did. What then?”

“Would you have him do it again?”

“Do you mean that you would?”

“It would give me a special joy.”

Hassan saw that there might be more in this than he had first thought. It was a fact that La Valette had spent a year of his earlier life toiling on the bench of a Turkish galley, and with a back raw from the driver’s stripes. It was an experience such as fell to many of the leaders of both sides in the fierce naval strife that had raged for centuries on the Mediterranean Sea. For, if they were captured, their ransoms would be fixed so high that the money could not be quickly raised, and meanwhile it was held by some that the worse they were served the more their friends would strive to provide the gold.

La Valette had been a captain in the fleet of the Knights of Malta, before any thought that he would come to his present power. He had been a scourge to the Turks, and they had shown him no love when he came into their hands. It may have been his treatment at that time which urged him now (among higher motives than that) to be their so bitter foe.

Hassan had been captive too, and had been one of those slaves who were chained in couples to work at the walls by which Malta was now strong to protect the Cross which its ramparts flew. He also might remember that, when a mood of mercy must be put by.

Now he clapped his hands, at which an attendant came quickly and silently to receive his commands.

“Alif,” he said, “I will talk to this woman apart. You will see that none enters here, till you are again summoned by me.”

The man bowed without words, and withdrew.

Venetia did not understand what was said, it not being in any tongue that she knew; but as Hassan rose and raised the curtain of the inner pavilion, she could make a good guess at what it had been, and that Hassan did not regard her coming as a matter of no account.

She felt that the first skirmish was hers, but she knew that she had yet to tread on a very perilous edge.

He motioned her to go first, in an abrupt imperative way. He may not have thought that she would have failed to understand what was said before. The precedence was not courtesy to herself, which he would have thought an unseemly thing, even had she been a princess of his own blood, it was no more than the routine prudence of one who did not wish to offer his back to be stabbed by those who might not be friends.

Venetia looked round on a couch and cushions of silk, and on coffers of metal and ivory which she knew to be of a great price, and may have been of the best that the world held at that time. She saw that one, having an open lid, was filled with books which were richly bound, in the style that Morocco had made its own. Her eyes passed over them in a heedless way, as might be excused at the pass at which she then was. But she would have had no use for them at another time, even had they been in her tongue. The world was her book, and she found it to be one of which the last page would be hard to reach.

There were rich arms hanging on the pavilion wall. She saw jewelled hilts, and gilded bucklers finely engraved, and the dark-blue of Damascus steel. In all she saw there was demonstration of culture and wealth.

The pavilion contained other personal, intimate things which she was more quick to observe than a chest of books, but she resolved at the first glance that it was a place where no woman came.

His words sounded as though he had heard her thought: “You may say all you will here without danger of other ears, for I bring no woman to war, no more by land than by sea.”

He motioned her to a heap of cushions upon the ground, and stretched himself on his couch.

“And now,” he said, “you can tell me much, and by that path you can win safety and ease; for what you sell (if the goods be sound) I will fairly buy. But I warn you again that, if you give me false word, I will have no mercy for that. So when you speak, you should think well.”

“I can tell you much,” she said, “and I have no purpose to lie. But I have had no food since I left the jail in the Bourg, which was ten hours before now.”

“I had thought that, but my time is short. I suppose that you can sit there and not faint; and when I go you can have better food than the town gives, if I am content that you give honest replies. Can you tell me the weakest points at which we could make attack on the town?”

“I could tell you some things it might be useful to know, and of one that may be the best way, but you would judge better than I. I will not boast that I can do more than is true, for (except in the first days) I have been little abroad since I came to Malta when April began, so that there is much that I do not know.”

“Then we will leave that, for this time.” He began to question her upon many matters which she could not see that it would be much gain for him to know, and on which she soon had reason to think that he knew more than herself, which made her the more careful to answer with exactness, and not to profess familiarities which were not hers.

She was, in fact, in more peril than she could guess, for he was using the knowledge that he had gained when he had been prisoner within Malta’s walls, added to and revised by that which he had had from the lips of his present spies, to test both her truth, and her value as to any witness which she might give.

He rose abruptly when these questions were done. “I shall be away,” he said, “till the noon hour, or beyond. After that, you shall tell me more.”

He returned with her to the outer pavilion. “You can wait my return here,” he said. He called Alif, to whom he gave instructions that she was to be well served.

He left her with a sense that she had commenced well. She had not hoped so much as that she would be sheltered in Hassan’s own tent, even for some hours of the middle day when he was not there.

When he was outside, he gave commands that she should not be allowed to leave (but this she would have too much sense to attempt, as he might have guessed), and that enquiry should be made as to who she was, and the circumstances under which she had fled from the town. Then he went to join a Council of War that Mustapha had called.