"Will the most Reverend Mother bless the boat of a gondolier of the people; and his sister, who hath been ill and craveth the morning air?"
Piero, who had discarded every emblem of his office, and wore only the simple dress of the Nicolotti, put the question easily, without fear of recognition. "And there is no great trouble in the city which calleth these ill.u.s.trious ladies so early from Murano?"
"Nay; but the Senator Giustiniani hath prayed us for a grace to his sweet lady, for the chapel hath been closed while she hath been too ill for service; and to-day it will be opened, dressed with flowers, and we--because she loveth greatly our Madonna of San Donato and hath shown bounty, with munificent gifts, to all the parish--will chant the matins in her oratory."
They gave the benediction and pa.s.sed.
While Marcantonio, with his tender thought for Marina fresh in his heart, was waking to find only her note of farewell.
"Only because I love thee, Marco mio, I have the strength to leave thee.
And it is the Madonna who hath called me. Forgive, and forget not thy sad Marina."
"Marina--" Piero began awkwardly, for argument was not his forte, and Marina had always conquered him. ""Chi troppo abbraccia nulla stringe,"
one gains nothing who grasps too much. Thou wast ever one for duty, and if the Senator Marcantonio will not take thee to Rome----"
"No, Piero, he cannot; he is one of the rulers of Venice."
"Thou, then--his wife----"
How could he venture to counsel her, of whose will and wisdom he had always stood in awe? It seemed to Piero that he had already delivered an oration; yet he felt that there was more to say, but his thoughts grew confused in seeking for expression, and it was a relief to him to communicate his uncertainty to the motion of his gondola.
The unsteady movement said more to her than words, for Piero was an unfailing stroke.
"It is the men only of whom the Republic hath need," she explained, unflinchingly; "but for the women there is no conflict of duty--the Holy Church is first. "Prayers for the women and deeds for the men"--thou hast seen it written."
"And thy father?" Piero questioned, unconvinced, recalling the interview of a few hours before.
A quick, tender light flashed and pa.s.sed in her eyes; a ray of color trembled on her cheek. "I shall grieve him," she said, "but he will forgive, for ever hath he bidden me choose the right." Her voice broke and she was silent, while she sought for some token in the folds of her robe. "Thou wilt take him this when thou returnest, that he may know I hold him dear."
"Marina!" he pleaded, growing eloquent, with a last desperate effort, "thou wast ever an angel to the Zuanino--thou canst not leave thine own bimbo!"
She did not answer immediately, but she clasped and unclasped her hands pa.s.sionately. "He is safe," she said at last, very low and struggling for control. "He hath the blessing of the Holy Father, given when it might avail; and the little ones are ever in the care of the Blessed Mother. It is not for my baby that I needs must go--but for Marco and my father, and for Venice. Santissima Maria, because thou sendest me, shalt thou not grant the strength!"
There was a silence between them while they floated on, for Piero had many things to think of. He was accustomed to accomplish whatever he undertook, for he was not a man to fail from lack of resource, nor to be overcome by fears and scruples. By means of his pa.s.ses and his favor with the government he could reach the borders of the Venetian dominions without suspicion, from whence he would escort Marina to the nearest convent and place her in safety with the Mother Superior, to whom he would confide the story of her distinguished guest and secure for her the treatment due to a Venetian princess; which, under the circ.u.mstances, would be an easy matter, as no member of a n.o.ble Venetian house espousing the side of Rome would be met with any but the most flattering reception. To provide Marina with companionship, Piero had confided her intended flight to the Lady Beata Tagliapietra, being sure of her devotion; and she would be waiting for them at Padua with two trusted gondoliers and whatever might be needful from the wardrobe of the Lady of the Giustiniani. The fact that he had broken his promise of secrecy did not trouble him, since it was in Marina"s service, which made the action honorable; and were it not so, the little perjury was well atoned for by a keg of oil anonymously sent to the traghetto of San Nicol e San Raffaele, "pel luminar al Madonna";[8] and Piero had much faith in anonymous gifts, for confessions were not always convenient for an officer of his dignity. But it was perhaps too much to expect that these poor little traghetto lamps should be more than dimly luminous, since the oil was so largely provided by fines for delinquencies!
[8] To light the Madonna.
With an easy conscience, also, he had helped himself to the requisite funds for their journey, amply estimated, from the treasury of the Nicolotti, which was in his keeping; and his reasoning savored of Venetian subtlety, with a hint of his toso training. Had not the Lady of the Giustiniani offered to guarantee the funds necessary for the a.s.sessments of the state, when Piero, doubtful of their resources, would have declined the position of gastaldo grande, c.u.mbered as it was with the uncomfortable requirement that the chief should be personally responsible for all dues and taxes levied upon the traghetti? Piero was not the first gastaldo who had wished to escape an honor that weighed so heavily, and a very serious penalty was already decreed for such contempt of office by that tribunal tireless in vigilance.
So, without compunction, Piero had taken the needful, sure that when he returned Marina"s husband or her father would repay it.
_Could_ he return--after helping a patrician to escape from Venice into the heart of the country with which the Republic was at war? It looked doubtful even to Piero, with his indomitable temperament, but he wasted no sentiment upon this question; for if he might not return there were other countries in which a man could live. Or, should he be pursued and lighted upon by the far-seeing eye of the Ten, he could die but once and get into trouble no more! He crossed himself decorously as he dismissed the matter; but it was not an event that he could change by pondering.
There was another question that interested him more keenly at this moment; when Messer Girolamo should know that his daughter was not in Venice, could he fail to comprehend the hint he had given a few hours before, and would he not follow them to Rome, as Piero devoutly hoped, for he wished to leave Marina in her father"s care. It was not easy to predict what Messer Girolamo might do--the case had been too doubtful for a more explicit confession, and Piero had been wise in his generation.
He turned now to Marina with the question: "If thou hadst told thy father of thy wish mayhap he might have come with thee?"
She shook her head sadly and made no answer, but after awhile she said, "He is like the others. They cannot understand the need, for to them the Madonna hath not revealed the desperate state of Venice."
"Yet thou knowest, Marina, that already the great cardinal--but lately come from France--hath started for Rome to make up this quarrel?"
"That is what the Senate will not understand!" she cried, with flashing eyes. "The Holy Father will have submission and penance, in place of emba.s.sies and pomp. One must go to him quite simply, from the people, saying, "We have sinned; have mercy upon Venice!" Piero, thou knowest that awful vision of the Tintoret? It is Venice that he hath painted in her doom--the great floods bursting in upon her--all the agony and the anguish and the desolation of G.o.d"s wrath! Santa Maria! I cannot bear it!" She closed her eyes, shuddering and sick with terror.
"It was the way with Jacopo," said Pietro irreverently. "He was full of freaks, and some demon hath tormented him. He was a man like others--not one for a revelation."
"Hush, Piero!" she implored; "it breaks my heart! This also may be counted against Venice, for it is the Holy Madonna who hath granted me the vision."
If Piero was silent he was only restrained by deference to Marina from invoking the aid of every saint in the calendar, in copious malediction, on this miserable Jacopo who had so increased the trouble in Marina"s eyes--since women had such foolish faith in pictures.
"Jacopo Robusti, posing for a seer, and foretelling the end of the world, like a prophet or a saint! _Goffone_!"[9] Piero was paddling furiously. "Jacopo, of the Fondamenta del Mori--not better than others--with that boastful sentence blazoned on his door!--"The coloring of t.i.tian, with the drawing of Angelo!""
[9] Great fool!
But he forgot even his resentment against Jacopo in his anxiety as he watched Marina, asking himself if it would be possible for her to pray herself back into healthful life again, even in the dominions of the Holy Father; for he realized that nothing could help her but this one thing on which her heart was set--while he was yet, if possible, more utterly without sympathy for the fear that moved her than her father or Marcantonio had been. But if the one woman in Venice had but one desire, however desperate and incomprehensible,--"_Basta_! It is enough," said Piero to himself,--she should not die with it unfulfilled, if he could compa.s.s it.
Yet, at the thought of death his heart sank. "It was the Madonna which thou beheldest in thy vision--not the cross?" he asked her quickly, making the fateful sign as he spoke, to avert this dread presage of death, and afraid of her answer; for Marina was failing before his eyes, and doubtless, in her vision, there had been some apparition of a cross; and even the less devout among the gondoliers were still dominated by some of the superst.i.tions which gave a picturesque color to the habits of the people.
But she, too earnest in her faith to take any note of a less serious mood, answered simply:
"It was the very Madonna herself, as thou knowest her in San Donato, who came to me in the palazzo one night when I slept not, and gave me the mission to save Venice,--scarce able to speak for her great sadness, and the tears dropping, as thou knowest her in San Donato,--commanding me to go before the Holy Father and pray for mercy to Venice. She it was who told me that our prayers pa.s.s not up beyond the clouds which hang above a city under doom of interdict. Oh, Piero, hasten; for my strength is little, and Rome is far!"
When the Lady of the Giustiniani had sent for Piero to meet her in Santa Maria dell" Orto, to ask him to manage her escape to Rome, it had not been possible to refuse her; all his attempts at reasoning were in vain.
"I must go," she said, with that invincible persistence which he never could combat. "If thou wilt not help me, I go alone." She was kneeling before the terrible "Judgment" of the Tintoret, and the face she had lifted to him in appeal was white with agonized comprehension.
The journey had been long and wearisome; all day they had been slowly toiling against the tide; and long since Piero had summoned to his aid a trusted gondolier who had been ordered to follow them at a little distance, and who, at a sign from the gastaldo, had silently left his bark to drift and taken his place at the other end of the gondola in which the fugitives were making their way to Padua.
They had pa.s.sed the domain of the Laguna Morta, weird and half-forbidding, with tangles of sea-plants and upspringing wild fowl calling to each other with hoa.r.s.e cries across the marshes--with armies of water beetles zigzagging in the shallows, and crabs and lizards crawling upon the scattered sand heaps among the coa.r.s.e sea-gra.s.ses, while small fish brought unexpected dimples to the deeper pools that lay between. And the mingled odor of waters fresh and salt was broken into a breath now pungent and pleasant, now almost noisome, as the light breeze stirred the shallows of this strange domain which was neither land nor sea. Yet even here the pale sea-holly and the evening primrose made redeeming spots of beauty, with their faint hues of violet and yellow; and a distant water-meadow shimmered like the sea, with the tender blue of the spreading lavender.
They had pa.s.sed Fusina, and the lagoon lay silvery, like a trail of moonlight behind them--Venice in the distance, opalesque, radiant, a city of dreams. The clouds above them, beautiful with changing sunset lights, were no longer mirrored on a still lagoon, but mottled the broken surfaces of the river with hues of bronze and purple, between the leaves of the creeping water-plants which clogged the movement of the oars; for they had exchanged the liquid azure pavement of their "Citta n.o.bilissima" for the brown tide of the Brenta. On the river"s brink the rushes were starred with lilies and iris and ranunculus, and the fragrance of sheeted flowers from the water-meadows came to them fresh and delicious, mingled with the salt breath of the sea, while swallows--dusky, violet-winged--circled about their bows, teasing their progress with mystic eliptical flight--like persistent problems perpetually recurring, yet to be solved by fate alone.
It was the hour of the Ave Maria, and Marina roused herself from her sad reverie. The clouds piled themselves in luminous ma.s.ses and drifted into the hollows of the wonderful Euganean hills, and a crimson sunset tinged peaks and clouds with glory, as Padua with its low arcaded streets, and San Antonio--cousin to San Marco in minarets and Eastern splendor--and the Lion of Saint Mark upon his lofty column, closed the vista of their weary day. The chimes of Venice were too far for sound, but from every campanile of this quaint city the vesper bells, solemn and sweet, pealed forth their call to prayer--as if no threat of Rome"s displeasure made a discord in their harmony.
x.x.xI
Piero had watched all night before the little inn of the "Buon Pesce,"
impatient to meet and conquer his fate, while above, in an upper room, the ladies Marina and Beata tried to sleep; but before the dawn they were off again, down by the way of the brown, rolling river, taking the weary length to Brondolo and the sea.
There were two gondolas now, and the men in each pulled as if the prize of a great regatta awaited them--Nicolotti against Castellani--and silently, saving voice and strength for a great need.
It might have seemed a pleasure party, save for the stress of their speed, as they swept by the groves of poplar and catalpa, which bordered the broad flood, to the sound of the waters only and the song of the birds in the wood; water-lilies floated in the pools along the sh.o.r.e; currents of fragrance were blown out to them on wandering winds; and in the felze, as they were nearing Brondolo, Marina and the Lady Beata, soothed by the gliding motion and the monotonous plash of the oars into the needed sleep which the night had failed to bring them, were unaware of the colloquy between Piero and his gondolier.
"Antonio!" Piero called cautiously to the man who was rowing behind the felze, "I have somewhat to say to thee; are there those within thy vision who may hear our speech?"
"Padrone, no; but the time is short for speaking much, for we reach the lock with another turn of the Brenta."
"May the blessed San Nicol send sunshine to dazzle the jewels in the eyes of Messer San Marco till we are safe beyond it and out of Chioggia!" Piero exclaimed fervently. "And thou, Antonio, swear me again thy faith--or swear it not, as thou wilt. But thou shalt choose this moment whom thou wilt serve; and it shall go ill with thee if thou keep not thy troth."
"By San Marco and San Teodoro," Antonio responded readily, crossing himself devoutly as he spoke, "I swear to do thy bidding, Messer Gastaldo."