Marietta: A Maid of Venice by F. Marion Crawford (novels to read for beginners .txt) 📕

"I thought he would never sleep to-night," she whispered.

Her eyelids drooped, and her cheeks grew deadly white, and the strong man felt the furious beating of her heart against his own breast. He was Aristarchi, the Greek captain who had sold her for a slave, and she loved him.

In the wild days of sea-fighting among the Greek islands he had taken a small trading galley that had been driven out of her course. He left not a man of her crew alive to tell whether she had been Turkish or Christian, and he took all that was worth taking of her poor cargo. The only prize of any price was the captive Georgian girl who was being brought westward to be sold, like thousands of others in those days, with little concealment and no mystery, in one of the slave markets of northern Italy. Aristarchi claimed her for himself, as his share of the booty, but his men knew her value. Standing shoulder to shoulder between him and her, they drew their knives and threatened to cut her to pieces, if he would not promise to sell her as she was, when they should come to land, and share the price with them. They judged that she must be worth a thousand or fifteen hundred pieces of gold, for she was more beautiful than any woman they had ever seen, and they had already heard her singing most sweetly to herself, as if she were quite sure that she was in no danger, because she knew her own value. So Aristarchi was forced to consent, cursing them; and night and day they guarded her door against him, till they had brought her safe to Venice, and delivered her to the slave-dealers.

Then Aristarchi sold all that he had, except his ship, and it all brought far too little to buy such a slave. She would have gone with him, for she had seen that he was stronger than other men and feared neither God nor man, but she was well guarded, and he was only allowed to talk with her through a grated window, like those at convent gates.

She was not long in the dealers' house, for word was brought to all the young patricians of Venice, and many of them bid against each other for her, in the dealers' inner room, till Contarini outbid them all, saying that he could not live without her, though the price should ruin him, and because he had not enough gold he gave the dealers, besides money, a marvellous sword with a jewelled hilt, which one of his forefathers had taken at the siege of Constantinople, and which some said had belonged to the Emperor Justinian himself, nine hundred years ago.

Then Aristarchi and his men paid the dealers their commission and took the money and the sword. But before he went from the house, the Greek captain begged leave to see Arisa once more at the grating, and he told her that come what might he should steal her away. She bade him not to be in too great haste, and she promised that if he would wait, he should have with her more gold than her new master had given for her, for she would take all he had from him, little by little; and when they had enough they would leave Venice secretly, and live in a grand manner in Florence, or in Rome, or in Sicily. For she never doubted but that he would find some way of coming to her, though she were guarded more closely than in the slave-dealers' house, where the windows were grated and armed men slept before the door, and one of the dealers watched all night.

More than a year had passed since then; the strong Greek knew every corner of the house of the Agnus Dei, and every foothold under Arisa's windows, from the water to the stone sill, by which he could help himself a little as he went up hand over hand by the knotted silk rope that would have cut to the bone any hands but his. She kept it hidden in a cushioned footstool in her inner room. Many a risk he had run, and more than once in winter he had slipped down the rope with haste to let himself gently into the icy water, and he had swum far down the dark canal to a landing-place. For he was a man of iron.

So it came about that Jacopo Contarini lived in a fool's paradise, in which he was not only the chief fool himself, but was moreover in bodily danger more often than he knew. For though Aristarchi had hitherto managed to escape being seen, he would have killed Jacopo with his naked hands if the latter had ever caught him, as easily as a boy wrings a bird's neck, and with as little scruple of conscience.

The Georgian loved him for his hirsute strength, for his fearlessness, even his violence and dangerous temper. He dominated her as naturally as she controlled her master, whose vacillating nature and love of idle ease filled her with contempt. It was for the sake of gold that she acted her part daily and nightly, with a wisdom and unwavering skill that were almost superhuman; and the Greek ruffian agreed to the bargain, and had been in no haste to carry her off, as he might have done at any time. She hoarded the money she got from Jacopo, to give it by stealth to Aristarchi, who hid their growing wealth in a safe place where it was always ready; but she kept her jewels always together, in case of an unexpected flight, since she dared not sell them nor give them to the Greek, lest they should be missed.

Of late it had seemed to them both that the time for their final action was at hand, for it had been clear to Arisa that Jacopo was near the end of his resources, and that his father was resolved to force him to change his life. There were days when he was reduced to borrowing money for his actual needs, and though an occasional stroke of good fortune at play temporarily relieved him, Arisa was sure that he was constantly sinking deeper into debt. But within the week, the aspect of his affairs had changed. The marriage with Marietta had been proposed, and Arisa had made a discovery. She told Aristarchi everything, as naturally as she would have concealed everything from Contarini.

"We shall be rich," she said, twining her white arms round his swarthy neck and looking up into his murderous eyes with something like genuine adoration. "We shall get the wife's dowry for ourselves, by degrees, every farthing of it, and it shall be the dower of Aristarchi's bride instead. I shall not be portionless. You shall not be ashamed of me when you meet your old friends."

"Ashamed!" His arm pressed her to him till she longed to cry out for pain, yet she would not have had him less rough.

"You are so strong!" she gasped in a broken whisper. "Yes—a little looser—so! I can speak now. You must go to Murano to-morrow and find out all about this Angelo Beroviero and his daughter. Try to see her, and tell me whether she is pretty, but most of all learn whether she is really rich."

"That is easy enough. I will go to the furnace and offer to buy a cargo of glass for Sicily."

"But you will not take it?" asked Arisa in sudden anxiety lest he should leave her to make the voyage.

"No, no! I will make inquiries. I will ask for a sort of glass that does not exist."

"Yes," she said, reassured. "Do that. I must know if the girl is rich before I marry him to her."

"But can you make him marry her at all?" asked Aristarchi.

"I can make him do anything I please. We drank to the health of the bride to-night, in a goblet made by her father! The wine was strong, and I put a little syrup of poppies into it. He will not wake for hours. What is the matter?"

She felt the rough man shaking beside her, as if he were in an ague.

"I was laughing," he said, when he could speak. "It is a good jest. But is there no danger in all this? Is it quite impossible that he should take a liking for his wife?"

"And leave me?" Arisa's whisper was hot with indignation at the mere thought. "Then I suppose you would leave me for the first pretty girl with a fortune who wanted to marry you!"

"This Contarini is such a fool!" answered Aristarchi contemptuously, by way of explanation and apology.

Arisa was instantly pacified.

"If he should be foolish enough for that, I have means that will keep him," she answered.

"I do not see how you can force him to do anything except by his passion for you."

"I can. I was not going to tell you yet—you always make me tell you everything, like a child."

"What is it?" asked the Greek. "Have you found out anything new about him? Of course you must tell me."

"We hold his life in our hands," she said quietly, and Aristarchi knew that she was not exaggerating the truth.

She began to tell him how this was the third time that a number of masked men had come to the house an hour after dark, and had stayed till midnight or later, and how Contarini had told her that they came to play at dice where they were safe from interruption, and that on these nights the servants were sent to their quarters at sunset on pain of dismissal if Jacopo found them about the house, but that they also received generous presents of money to keep them silent.

"The man is a fool!" said Aristarchi again. "He puts himself in their power."

"He is much more completely in ours," answered Arisa. "The servants believe that his friends come to play dice. And so they do. But they come for something more serious."

Aristarchi moved his massive head suddenly to an attitude of profound attention.

"They are plotting against the Republic," whispered Arisa. "I can hear all they say."

"Are you sure?"

"I tell you I can hear every word. I can almost see them. Look here. Come with me."

She rose and he followed her to the corner of the room where the small silver lamp burned steadily before an image of Saint Mark, and above a heavy kneeling-stool.

"The foot moves," she said, and she was already on her knees on the floor, pushing the step.

It slid back with the soft sound Contarini had heard before he came upstairs. The upper part of the woodwork was built into the wall.

"They meet in the place below this," Arisa said. "When they are there, I can see a glimmer of light. I cannot get my head in. It is too narrow, but I hear as if I were with them."

"How did you find this out?" asked Aristarchi on the floor beside her, and reaching down into the dark space to explore it with his hand. "It is deep," he continued, without waiting for an answer. "There may be some passage by which one can get down."

"Only a child could pass. You see how narrow it is. But one can hear every sound. They said enough to-night to send them all to the scaffold."

"Better they than we if we ever have to make the choice," said the Greek ominously.

He had withdrawn his arm and was planted upon his hands and knees, his shaggy head hanging over the dark aperture. He was like some rough wild beast that has tracked its quarry to earth and crouches before the hole, waiting for a victim.

"How did you find this out?" he asked again, looking up.

She was standing by the corner of the stool, now, all her marvellous beauty showing in the light of the little lamp and against the wall behind her.

"I was saying my prayers here, the first night they met," she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "I heard voices, as it seemed, under my feet. I tried to push away the stool, and the foot moved. That is all."

Aristarchi's jaw dropped a little as he looked up at her.

"Do you say prayers every night?" he asked in wonder.

"Of course I do. Do you never say a prayer?"

"No." He was still staring at her.

"That is very wrong," she said, in the earnest tone a mother might use to her little child. "Some harm will befall us, if you do not say your prayers."

A slow smile crossed the ruffian's face as he realised that this evil woman who was ready to commit the most atrocious deeds out of love for him, was still