Marietta: A Maid of Venice by F. Marion Crawford (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📖

he had put on his Sunday hose and his clean shirt. He touched his cap, as he assuredly would not have done ashore, to any one but his master.

"You seem to have been a sailor," said the Greek mate, in an approving tone.

"Yes, sir," answered Pasquale. "Is Zorzi still safe?"

"The captain will tell you about Zorzi," was the mate's answer, as he led the way.

Aristarchi was seated with one leg under him on a inroad transom over which was spread a priceless Persian silk carpet, such as the richest patrician in Venice would have hung on the wall like a tapestry of great value. He looked at Pasquale, and the latter heard the door shut behind him. At the same instant a well-known voice greeted him by name, as Zorzi himself appeared from the inner cabin.

"I did not expect to find you so soon," said the porter with a growl of satisfaction.

"I wish you had found him sooner," laughed Aristarchi carelessly. "And since you are here, I hope you will carry him off with you and never let me see his face again, till all this disturbance is over! I would rather have carried off the Doge himself, with his precious velvet night-cap on his head, than have taken this fellow the other night. All Venice is after him. I was just going to drown him, to get rid of him."

There was a sort of savage good-nature in the Greek's tone which was reassuring, in spite of his ferocious looks and words.

"You would have been hanged if you had," observed Pasquale in answer to the last words.

Zorzi was evidently none the worse for what had happened to him since his arrest and unexpected liberation. He was not of the sort that suffer by the imagination when there is real danger, for he had plenty of good sense. Pasquale told him that the master had returned.

"We knew it yesterday," Zorzi answered. "The captain seems to know everything."

"Listen to me, friend porter," Aristarchi said. "If you will take this young fellow with you I shall be obliged to you. I took him from the Governor's men out of mere kindness of heart, because I liked him the first time I saw him, but the Ten are determined to get him into their hands, and I have no fancy to go with him and answer for the half-dozen crowns my mate and I broke in that frolic at Murano."

Pasquale's small eyes twinkled at the thought of the discomfited archers.

"We have changed our lodgings three times since yesterday afternoon," continued Aristarchi, "and I am tired of carrying this lame bottle-blower up and down rope ladders, when the Signors of the Night are at the door. So drop him over the rail into your boat and let me lead a peaceful life."

"Like an honest merchant captain as you are," added Pasquale with a grin. "We have been anxious for you," he added, looking at Zorzi. "The master is in Venice this morning, to see his friends on your behalf, I think."

"If we go back openly," said Zorzi, "we may both be taken at any moment."

"If they catch me," answered Pasquale, "they will heave me overboard. I am not worth salting. But they need not catch either of us. Once in the laboratory at Murano, they will never find you. That is the one place where they will not look for you."

The mate put his head down through the small hatch overhead.

"I do not like the look of a boat that has just put off from Saint George's," he said.

Aristarchi sprang to his feet.

"Pick him up and drop him into the porter's skiff," he said. "I am sick of dancing with the fellow in my arms."

With incredible ease Aristarchi took Zorzi round the waist, mounted the cabin table and passed him up through the hatch to the mate, who had already brought him to the Jacob's ladder at the stern before Pasquale could get there by the ordinary way.

"Quick, man!" said the mate, as the old sailor climbed over the rail.

At the same time he slipped the bight of short rope round Zorzi's body under his arms and got a turn round the rail with both parts, so as to lower him easily. Zorzi helped himself as well as he could, and in a few moments he was lying in the bottom of the skiff, covered with a piece of sacking which the mate threw down, the rope ladder was hauled up and disappeared, and when Pasquale glanced back as he rowed slowly away, the mate was leaning over the taffrail in an attitude of easy unconcern.

The old porter had smuggled more than one bale of rich goods ashore in his young days, for a captain who had a dislike of the customs, and he knew that his chance of safety lay not in speed, but in showing a cool indifference. He might have dropped down the Giudecca at a good rate, for the tide was fair, but he preferred a direction that would take him right across the course of the boat which the mate had seen coming, as if he were on his way to the Lido.

The officer of the Ten, with four men in plain brown coats and leathern belts, sat in the stern of the eight-oared launch that swept swiftly past the skiff towards the vessels at anchor. Pasquale rested on his oar a moment and turned to look, with an air of interest that would have disarmed any suspicions the officer might have entertained. But he had none, and did not bestow a second glance on the little craft with its shabby oarsman. Then Pasquale began to row again, with a long even stroke that had no air of haste about it, but which kept the skiff at a good speed. When he saw that he was out of hearing of other boats, and heading for the Lido, he began to tell what he intended to do next, in a low monotonous tone, glancing down now and then at Zorzi's face that cautiously peered at him out from the folds of the sackcloth.

"I will tell you when to cover yourself," he said, speaking at the horizon. "We shall have to spend the day under one of the islands. I have some bread and cheese and water, and there are onions. When it is night I will just slip into our canal at Murano, and you can sleep in the laboratory, as if you had never left it."

"If they find me there, they cannot say that I am hiding," said Zorzi with a low laugh.

"Lie low," said Pasquale softly. "There is a boat coming."

For ten minutes neither spoke, and Zorzi lay quite still, covering his face. When the danger was past Pasquale began to talk again, and told him all he himself knew of what had happened, which was not much, but which included the assurance that the master was for him, and had turned against Giovanni.

"As for me," said Zorzi, by and by, when they were moored to a stake, far out in the lagoon, "I was whirled from place to place by those two men, till I did not know where I was. When they first carried me off, they made me lie in the bottom of their boat as I am lying now, and they took me to a house somewhere near the Baker's Bridge. Do you know the house of the Agnus Dei?"

Pasquale grunted.

"It was not far from that," Zorzi continued. "Aristarchi lives there. The mate went back to the ship, I suppose, and Aristarchi's servant gave us supper. Then we slept quietly till morning and I stayed there all day, but Aristarchi thought it would not be safe to keep me in his house the next night—that was last night. He said he feared that a certain lady had guessed where I was. He is a mysterious individual, this Greek! So I was taken somewhere else in the bottom of a boat, after dark. I do not know where it was, but I think it must have been the garret of some tavern where they play dice. After midnight I heard a great commotion below me, and presently Aristarchi appeared at the window with a rope. He always seems to have a coil of rope within reach! He tied me to him—it was like being tied to a wild horse—and he got us safely down from the window to the boat again, and the mate was in it, and they took me to the ship faster than I was ever rowed in my life. You know the rest."

All through the long July day they lay in the fierce sun, shading themselves with the sacking as best they could. But when it was dark at last, Pasquale cast off and headed the skiff for Murano.

CHAPTER XXII

Jacopo Contarini's luck at dice had changed of late, and his friends no longer spoke of losing like him, but of winning as he did, on almost every throw.

"Nevertheless," said the big Foscari to Zuan Venier, "his love affairs seem to prosper! The Georgian is as beautiful as ever, and he is going to marry a rich wife."

It was the afternoon of the day on which Zorzi had left Aristarchi's ship, and the two patricians were lounging in the shady Merceria, where the overhanging balconies of the wooden houses almost met above, and the merchants sat below in the windows of their deep shops, on the little platforms which were at once counters and window-sills. The street smelt of Eastern silks and Spanish leather, and of the Egyptian pastils which the merchants of perfumery continually burnt in order to attract custom.

"I am not qualmish," answered Venier languidly, "yet it sickens me to think of the life Jacopo means to lead. I am sorry for the glass-maker's daughter."

Foscari laughed carelessly. The idea that a woman should be looked upon as anything more than a slave or an object of prey had never occurred to him. But Venier did not smile.

"Since we speak of glass-makers," he said, "Jacopo is doing his best to get that unlucky Dalmatian imprisoned and banished. Old Beroviero came to see me this morning and told me a long story about it, which I cannot possibly remember; but it seems to me—you understand!"

He spoke in low tones, for the Merceria was crowded. Foscari, who was one of those who took most seriously the ceremonial of the secret society, while not caring a straw for its political side, looked very grave.

"It is of no use to say that the poor fellow is only a glass-blower," Venier continued. "There are men besides patricians in the world, and good men, too. I mean to tell Contarini what I think of it to-night."

"I will, too," said Foscari at once.

"And I intend to use all the influence my family has, to obtain a fair hearing for the Dalmatian. I hope you will help me. Amongst us we can reach every one of the Council of Ten, except old Contarini, who has the soul of a school-master and the intelligence of a crab. If I did not like the fellow, I suppose I should let him be hanged several times rather than take so much trouble. Sins of omission are my strongest point. I have always surprised my confessor at Easter by the extraordinary number of things I have left undone."

"I daresay," laughed Foscari, "but I remember that you were not too lazy to save me from drowning when I fell into the Grand Canal in carnival."

"I forgot that the water was so cold," said Venier. "If I had guessed how chilly it was, I should certainly not have pulled you out. There is old Hossein at his window. Let us go in and drink sherbet."

"We shall find Mocenigo and Loredan there," answered Foscari. "They shall promise to help the glass-blower, too."

They nodded to the Persian merchant, who saluted them by extending his hand towards the ground as if to take up dust, and then bringing it to his forehead. He was very fat, and his pear-shaped face might have been carved out of white cheese. The two young men went in by a small door at the side of the window-counter and disappeared into the interior. At the back of the shop there was a private room with a latticed window that looked out upon a narrow canal. It was one of many places where the young Venetians met in the afternoon to play at dice undisturbed, on pretence of examining Hossein's splendid carpets and Oriental silks. Moreover Hossein's wife, always invisible but ever near, had a marvellous gift for making fruit sherbets, cooled with the snow that was brought down daily from the mountains on the mainland in dripping bales covered with