Sir John Constantine Part 54

We turned all, to see the Queen standing there, on the threshold.

The Princess, suddenly pallid, shot a look at Paoli--a look which at once defied and implored him.

"It is true, dear mother," said she, steadying her voice.

"G.o.d help us all!" The Queen clasped her hands. "The Genoese have no pity."

"Let your Majesty be rea.s.sured," said Paoli, slowly, "The Genoese, to be sure, have no pity; yet I can almost promise they will not proceed to extremities with your son. An enemy, madam, may have good reasons for negotiating; and although the Genoese Government would be delighted to break me on the wheel, yet, on some points, I can compel them to bargain with me."

He lifted his eyes. Mine were fixed on the Princess's, and I saw them thank him for the falsehood.

"Come, dear mother," she said, taking the Queen's hand.

"Though Camillo be in Genoa he can be reached."

"My poor boy was ever too rash."

"He can be reached," the Princess repeated--but I saw her wince-- "and he shall be reached. General, I pray you to send these two men to me. And now, mother, let one sorrow be enough for a time.

There is woman's work to be done upstairs; take me with you that I may help."

I did not understand these last words, but was left puzzling over them as the two pa.s.sed through the turret-door and mounted the stairway. Nor did I remember the custom of the country until, ten minutes later, I heard their voices lifted together in the upper chamber intoning a lament over my father's body.

My father--so my uncle told me--had left express orders that he should be buried at sea. Throughout the long afternoon, with short pauses, the voices wailed overhead, while we worked to set the fortress in order for the garrison which Paoli sent (despatching his second gunboat) to fetch from Isola Rossa; until, an hour before sunset, two monks came down the stairway with the corpse, and bore it to the quay, where Billy Priske waited with one of the _Gauntlet's_ boats. Paoli and my uncle had taken their places in the stern-sheets, and Dom Basilio and I, having lifted the body on board and covered it with the _Gauntlet's_ flag, ourselves stepped into the bows, where I took an oar and helped Billy to pull some twenty furlongs off the sh.o.r.e. Dom Basilio recited the funeral service; and there, watched by his comrades from the quay, we let sink my father into six fathoms, to sleep at the foot of the great rock which had been his altar.

As I landed and climbed the path again, I caught sight of Camilla, standing by the parapet of the east bastion, in converse with Marc'antonio and Stephanu. She had braided her hair, and done away with all traces of mourning, At the turret door her mother met me, equally neat and composed.

"I have been waiting for you," said the Queen. "Come, O son, for I want your advice."

She led me up past the second window of the turret, lifted the latch of an iron-studded door in the opposite wall, and, pushing it open, motioned me to enter.

"But what is this?" said I, gazing around upon two camp beds, spread with white coverlets, and a dressing-table with a jugful of lilac-coloured stocks, such as grew in the crannies of the keep and the rock-ledges under the platform.

"I had no mother," said she, "to prepare my bride-chamber, and rough is the best I can prepare for my child. But it is done with my blessing."

"Madame--" said I, flushing hotly, and paused at the sound of a footstep on the stair.

It was the Princess who came; and in an angry haste. She kissed her mother, thrust her gently from the room, and so, closing the door, stood with her back against it.

"You knew of this?" she demanded.

"Before G.o.d, I did not," I answered.

"It is folly." She glanced around the room. "You will admit that it is folly," she insisted.

I bowed my head. "It is folly, if you choose to call it so."

"I have been wanting to tell you . . . I believe you to be a good man. Oh yes, the fault is with me! This morning--you remember what your father said? Well, I listened, and the truth was made clear to me, that I cannot give you the like of such love--or the like of any such as a woman ought to give, who--who--"

"Say no more," said I, as gently as might be. "I understand."

"Ah, that is kind of you!" She caught at the admission eagerly.

"It is not that I doubted; I see now that some men are not vile.

But until I can _feel_ it, what use is being convinced?"

She paused, "Moreover, to-night I go on a journey."

"And I, too," said I, meeting her eyes firmly. "To Genoa, is it not?"

"You guessed it? . . . But you have no right--" she faltered.

I laughed. "But excuse me, my wife, I have all the right in the world. At what hour will Marc'antonio be ready with the boat?"

CHAPTER XXVIII.

GENOA.

"_Gobbo_. Master young gentleman, I pray you, which is the way to Master Jew's?

"_Launcelot_. Turn up on the right hand at the next turning, but at the very next turning of all, on your left: marry at the very next turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the Jew's house.

"_Gobbo_. By G.o.d's sonties, 'twill be a hard way to hit."

_The Merchant of Venice_.

At eleven o'clock that night we four--the Princess, Marc'antonio, Stephanu, and I--hoisted sail and stood away from the north sh.o.r.e of Giraglia, carrying a fair wind with us. Our boat had been very cunningly chosen for us by Marc'antonio out of the small flotilla which my father had hired at Cape Corso for the a.s.sault. She was undecked, measured some eighteen feet over-all, and carried a fair-sized lateen sail; but her great merit for our purpose, lay in her looks. The inhabitants of Cape Corso (as the reader knows) have neither the patriotism nor the prejudices of their fellow-islanders; and this (however her owner had come by her) was a boat of Genoese build. So Marc'antonio had a.s.sured me; and my own observation confirmed it next day, as we neared the coast off Porto Fino.

We had laid this course of set purpose, intending to work up to the great harbour coastwise from the southward and enter it boldly, pa.s.sing ourselves off for a crew from Porto Fino with a catch of fish for market. The others had discarded all that was Corsican in their dress, and the Princess had ransacked the quarters of the late garrison on Giraglia to rig us out in odds and ends of Genoese costume. For the rest we trusted to fortune; but an hour before starting I had sought out my Uncle Gervase and made him privy to the plot. He protested, to be sure; but acquiesced in the end with a wry face when I told him that the Princess and I were determined.

This understood, at once my excellent and most practical uncle turned to business. Within ten minutes it was agreed between us that the _Gauntlet_ should sail back with General Paoli and anchor under the batteries of Isola Rossa to await our return. She was to wait there one month exactly. If within that time we did not return, he was to conclude either that our enterprise had come to grief or that we had re-shaped our designs and without respect to the _Gauntlet's_ movements. In any event, at the end of one calendar month he might count himself free to weigh anchor for England. We next discussed the Queen. My uncle opined, but could not say with certainty, that the General had it in mind to offer her protection and an honourable retirement on her own estates above the Taravo. I bade him tell her that, if she could wean herself from Corsica to follow her daughter, our house of Constantine would be proud to lodge her--I hoped, for the remainder of her days--for certain, until she should tire of it and us.

The rest (I say) we left to chance, which at first served us smoothly. The breeze, though it continued fair, fell light soon after daybreak, and noon was well past before we sighted the Ligurian coast. We dowsed sail and pulled towards it leisurably, waiting for the hour when the fishing-boats should put out from Porto Fino: which they did towards sunset, running out by ones and two's before the breeze which then began to draw off the land, and making a pretty moving picture against the evening glow. When night had fallen we hoisted our lateen again and worked up towards them.

These fishermen (as I reasoned, from our own Cornish practice) would shoot their nets soon after nightfall and before the moon's rising-- to haul them, perhaps, two hours later, and await the approach of morning for their second cast. Towards midnight, then, we sailed boldly up to the outermost boat and spoke her through Marc'antonio, who (_fas est ab hoste doceri_) had in old campaigns picked up enough of the Genoese patois to mimic it very pa.s.sably. He announced us as sent by certain Genoese fishmongers--a new and enterprising firm whose name he invented on the spur of the moment--to trade for the first catch of fish and carry them early to market, where their freshness would command good prices. The fishermen, at first suspicious, gave way at sight of the Genoese money in his hand, and accepted an offer which not only saved them a journey but (as we calculated) put from three to four extra livres in their pockets.

Within twenty minutes they had transferred two thousand fish to our boat, and we sailed off into the darkness, ostensibly to trade with the others. Doubtless they wished us good night for a set of fools.

We did not trouble their fellows. Two thousand fish, artfully spread to look like thrice the number, ought to pa.s.s us under the eyes of all Genoa: so for Genoa we headed forthwith, hauling up on the starboard tack and heeling to our gunwale under the breeze which freshened and blew steadily off the sh.o.r.e.

Sunrise found us almost abreast of the harbour: and the clocks from the city churches were striking seven as we rounded up under the great mole on the eastern side of the entrance and floated into the calm basin within. I confess that my heart sank as Genoa opened in panorama before us, spreading in a vast semicircle with its dockyards and warehouses, its palaces, its roofs climbing in terrace after terrace to the villas and flower-gardens on the heights: nor was this sense of our impudence lessened by reflecting that, once within the mole, we had not a notion to which of the quays a fishing-boat ought to steer to avoid suspicion. But here, again, fortune helped us.

To the right, at the extreme inner corner of the mole, I espied half a dozen boats, not unlike our own, huddled close under a stone stairway; and I had no sooner thrust down the helm than a man, catching sight of us, came running along the mole to barter.

Marc'antonio's conduct of the ensuing bargain was nothing short of masterly. The stranger--a fishmonger's runner--turned as he met us and trotted alongside, shaping his hands like a trumpet and bawling down his price. Marc'antonio, affecting a slight deafness, signalled to him to bawl louder, hunched his shoulders, shook his head vehemently, held up ten fingers, then eight, then (after a long and pa.s.sionate protest from above) eight again. By this time two other traffickers had joined the contest, and with scarcely a word on his side Marc'antonio kept them going, as a juggler plays with three b.a.l.l.s. Not until our boat's nose grated alongside the landing was the bargain concluded, and the first runner, a bag of silver in his fist, almost tumbled upon us down the slippery stairs in his hurry to clinch it.

I stepped ash.o.r.e and held out a hand to the Princess who, in her character of _paesana_, very properly ignored it. Luckily the courtesy escaped notice. Stephanu was making fast the boat; the runner counting his coins into Marc'antonio's hand.

The Princess and I mounted the stairs and, after a pretence to loiter and await our comrades, strolled off towards the city around the circuit of the quay. We pa.s.sed the great warehouses of the Porto Franco, staring up at them, but impa.s.sively, in true country fashion, and a little beyond them came to the entrance of a street which--for it was strewn with cabbage leaves and other refuse--we judged to lead to the vegetable market.

"Let us turn aside here," said the Princess. "I was brought up in a cabbage-market, remember; and the smell may help to put me at my ease."