Rafael Sabatini - Venetian Masque—a Romance

Domenico took his decision instantly. He ordered two rounds to be fired across her bows as a warning.

For the luggers this was enough. Without more ado they both went about and stood off. Captain Laugier, however, continued defiantly upon his course, breaking out the French tricolour.

It was now that Domenico may well have given thanks to Heaven that to him, as to those martyrs at Verona, it was vouchsafed to strike a blow for Venetian honour without regard to what might follow. He opened fire in earnest. The Libèrateur returned it, until crippled by a shot between wind and water she ran aground on a mudbank to save herself from sinking. Domenico went off with two armed launches to take possession of the ship, and was accompanied by a galliot commanded by Captain Viscovich with a company of Slavonian soldiers.

They boarded the French vessel, and after a brief sharp fight, in which Laugier was killed, made themselves master of her as night was falling.

Among her papers, which he seized, Domenico found abundant evidence of intelligence between Laugier and French residents in Venice. These papers he delivered to the Council of Ten, so that action might be taken upon them. But next morning, under the sternest representations from Lallemant, all were surrendered to the ambassador.

On the day after that Domenico was commanded to attend before the Council of Ten. He was received with enthusiasm, officially praised, and encouraged to continue with the same zeal in the discharge of his duty. To the men who had taken part in the affair the Council voted an extra month's pay.

In Domenico's own eyes it was no great thing that he had done. But in the eyes of the Venetians, exasperated by French insolence, he found himself the hero of the hour, and he was saddened by it. It merely showed him how far had Venice been from ever again hoping to hear the roar of the old Lion of Saint Mark that once had been so powerful and so proud.

The week that followed the affair of the Lido was an uneasy one. Venice was full of rumours, and she was being patrolled now day and night by troops. The soldiers originally brought there to defend the State were thus being employed to repress disturbances among the restive citizens. The Lion of Saint Mark had become as a beast that crouches in expectation of the whip.

At the Casa Pizzamano, despite the pride in Domenico for his fearless performance of duty, it was a week of mourning. The Count recognized the moribund condition of the Republic, understood that its hours were numbered.

Perceiving his dark mood, Vendramin hesitated to remind him that Easter had come and gone and that the marriage date remained unappointed. He hesitated the more because the events had robbed him of a good deal of the power of insistence which he had possessed. He no longer had any influence to market. He raged a little at this, and at his own lack of foresight. He should ruthlessly have beaten down all hesitations whilst it was in his power to do so. He had been too foolishly considerate. Perhaps he had been too trusting even. What if this stiff-necked Count and that cold, proud piece, his daughter, should now refuse to honour the debt they had contracted?

Such a thought brought him more than a shiver of apprehension. Never had he been so debt-ridden; never had his credit been so exhausted. He dared not nowadays so much as approach that traitorous Vicomtesse, who formerly, and to his undoing, had kept him so liberally supplied. At the casinos such prestige as he had enjoyed had never recovered from the blow it had received from Mr. Melville. There was no one from whom he could today borrow a sequin. In his despair he had even gone the length of offering his services secretly to Lallemant. But Lallemant had shown him the door none too politely. He had pawned or sold most of his jewellery, and now little remained him beyond his fine clothes. His state was parlous. If the Pizzamani should play him false, he did not know what would become of him.

The suspense of this was not to be borne. However the intrusion of so personal a matter might be resented at a time of such national anxiety, Vendramin could not suffer any scruples to deter him.

So he sought Isotta, and found her one afternoon in the loggia that overlooked the garden, where all was green again and fragrant, and where early roses were already budding in the sunshine.

She received him with that cold gentleness which he had always found so exasperating: more exasperating perhaps than an active dislike. With dislike he might have wrestled. But this indifference gave him nothing that he could grasp.

Leaning, tall and graceful, upon the parapet of the loggia, and muting his rich voice to a tone of prayer, he reminded her that a week and more was gone since that Easter for which she had promised him the happiness of the appointment of their wedding-day.

She betrayed no nervousness. She looked at him straightly and candidly with eyes that were full of melancholy.

'If I were to say to you, Leonardo, that it is in my thoughts to take the veil, should you oppose such a desire?'

It took him a moment to realize what she meant. Then he flushed. 'Should I be human if I did not? Are you mad, Isotta?'

'Is it madness to be disillusioned with earthly existence? To perceive the vanity of the world? To centre all hopes upon a future life?'

'In such as you it is no less than madness. Leave that to women who are simple-minded, ugly or decrepit. Let them take that compensation, for the glories of life that are denied them. And, whether it be mad or sane, it is for you to remember that it is not the life to which you are pledged.'

'But if I desire to pledge myself to God, shall not that overrule all pledges made to man?'

He struggled with his rising choler; strove desperately to clutch this thing that he felt was slipping from him. 'Would God accept a pledge that makes you a cheat? Do you suppose they have no sense of honour in Heaven?' Then abruptly he asked yet another question. 'Have you told your father of these crazy notions?'

She frowned at this glimpse of the roughness of which he was capable.

'It was in my mind to tell him today.'

'My God! You are serious, then, in this fraudulent thought; this . . . this swindle? By the Host! Can you dream that your father will be a party to it? Your father—I thank God—is a man of honour, a man who keeps to his pledged word. Have no illusions about that, Isotta. I have loyally done my part in what was agreed between us, and he will not see me cheated of my . . . my just reward.'

She looked away from him. 'Should you consider it a reward to take to wife an unwilling maid?'

He had a sense of beating his head against a cold, unyielding wall of fraudulent obstinacy. Fury blinded him. It almost choked him. 'A maid!' he jeered in a thick voice. 'And are you a maid? Are you?'

That drew her eyes to him, and he laughed brutally, hideously into her face. 'Are you even fit to take the veil? To enter upon the mystic nuptials? Have you asked yourself that? Oh, I understand you. You would cheat me now in this, as you cheated me before with lies; persuaded me of the innocence of your visit to that dog's lodging. Will you so easily persuade your father of it?'

'Do you mean to tell him?'

The question suggested to him where his power might yet lie.

'As God's my witness, unless you come to your senses and fulfil your promise.'

That, he thought, should checkmate her. But she looked at him with her unfailing, disconcerting calm.

'So that, soiled as you believe me to be, false, hypocritical, and lying as you tell me that I am, you are still content to take me to wife for the sake of my endowments? That is noble!'

'Sneer all you please. I have earned you, and I will be paid.'

'Even though you dispute me with God?'

'With God or the devil, madame.'

'Will you ring, Leonardo, and bid them ask my father and brother to come here?'

He made no movement to obey. 'What is that for? What are you going to do?'

'If you will ring, you will discover. I shall tell you in my father's presence.'

He glowered upon her. How baffling and obstinate she could be in that accursed repose which he could not shake.

'Remember what I have said. You are warned. Either you fulfil the sacred promise that you made me, or Count Pizzamano shall learn that he has a wanton for his daughter.'

For the first time she showed a flash of resentment. 'You would do well to remember that I have a brother.'

But that veiled threat he met with a fleering laugh. 'To be sure! The heroic Domenico! You will send him to seek satisfaction of me for imputations upon his sister's honour. He may find it a very different matter from emptying guns upon a French warship from a safe distance.' He drew himself up. 'Send this little hero of the Lido to me, by all means. You may have heard that I can take care of myself.'

'When supported by three bullies. Yes, I've heard that. Will you ring? The longer you delay it, the more disgusting I am finding you. You should judge how this interview has reconciled me to our nuptials.'

'Bah!' he retorted. 'Your hypocrisy nauseates me. You seize on this, so as to buttress your swindling pretences.' As he spoke, he swung round in the loggia to do at last her bidding, only to discover that it was no longer necessary. He had delayed too long. Count Pizzamano and Domenico were in the room beyond.