As evening approached
the gloom in the musty warehouse deepened. Muffled shouts and random disorder
erupted at intervals, a scuffle breaking out not far from the door. The
situation was apparently resolved with a grunting, despairing cry, then silence.
There was a feeble oil
lantern in the spaces by the wall, but it served to keep the darkness at bay.
Kydd could hardly bear
the inactivity, the inability to do anything. He yearned for the lift and fall
of a deck under his feet, but realised that, with the stranglehold now
established by the French, it was probable he would never again know the
sensation.
The darkness outside
was absolute when their visitor arrived. A hurried double knock and hoarse, 'Il
giramondo — ehi!’ Dressed in a black cloak, the man kept his face averted in
its hood. 'Dove il ufficiale di marina inglese?’ he asked tensely, the eyes
glittering within the hood.
'He wants the English
naval officer,' Renzi said.
Griffith stepped
forward to a quarterdeck brace and said crisply, 'I am Lieutenant Griffith of
His Britannic Majesty's frigate Bacchante'
The man hesitated, then
seemed to come to a decison. He threw off his hood and snapped smartly to
attention. 'Tenenfe di vascello Bauducco - Paolo Bauducco.'
'Lieutenant Paolo
Bauducco,' Renzi murmured, and in turn made an appropriate introduction of
Lieutenant Griffith.
'Prendendo in
considerations la grandest della marina inglese . . .'
'The stream of
passionate Italian appeared theatrical in the drab confines of the warehouse,
the weak lanternlight picking up the occasional flash of rank and decorations
under the cloak.
Renzi held up his hands
to pause the flow, and tried to put across the officer's plea. 'Er, it seems
that, in deference to the regard he has for the Royal Navy, he wishes to put
forward a proposition.'
Griffith frowned, but Leith showed
instant interest. Bauducco resumed, his ardour transparent.
'Ah, he is a loyal
Venetian, and today he was profoundly ashamed of the perfidy of the Doge and
his ministers. He learned as well that the Arsenale, the famous naval dockyard
and all the ships of Venice, are to be turned over to General Buonaparte.'
Bauducco's
voice swelled in anger.
'This is intolerable. It seems ... if I
understand him aright, that there are many men in the Venetian service who feel
as he does.' Renzi cocked his head, as if in doubt of what he was hearing, and
continued carefully, 'He goes on to say, sir, that this night he and his men
intend to rise up against his captain and carry his vessel to sea. Would he be
right to put before them that his vessel — a xebec only, but well armed — would
then be taken into the sea service of Great Britain against the French?'
There was a
disbelieving silence. Griffith recovered first. 'Tell him that a British
frigate at this moment lies to seaward, and we have but to reach her — and tell
him too, damn it, that his offer is handsomely accepted.'
The hours passed in a fever of
waiting. They had been warned that when the time came they were not to delay an
instant: there could be no turning back. But they were safe where they were —
when they broke for freedom anything might be waiting for them out there in the
night.
The lantern had
sputtered and died from lack of oil, and they had only the shadows of men and
terse orders to assure them that deliverance was at hand. They emerged from
their refuge, stepping warily behind the unknown emissary, past shuttered and
silent buildings, sinister by their very quiet.
In the open,
noises, of disorder and signs of a gathering tumult were much clearer on the
night air, sounds that were both distant and near, chilling in their portent of
chaos to come. They hurried along the claustrophobic streets in a tight group,
this way and that, until they reached yet another of the small humped bridges.
On the other side was a
rich gondola, its varnished black sides glittering in the illumination of a
single street-light. A pair of gondoliers stood tense and ready. The party
tumbled in, and packed into the cabin, falling against each other in their
haste. The gondoliers poled off, but not before Renzi, raising the slats of the
cabin window to catch a last sight, noticed a figure detach itself from the
shadows and a gloved hand lift in silent farewell.
The motion of the craft was
purposeful and steady, the men in the cabin having no difficulty in visualising
its track along the narrow canals, then the straight course and lively movement
of the open lagoon.
The regular creak and
thrust of the gondoliers ceased unexpectedly, leaving the gondola to an aimless
bobbing. Renzi peered out. 'We're in the lagoon, more to the south, and off the
Arsenale — I can see the entrance.' This would be where the xebec would break
out, through the twin towers of the gate from the internal basin and through
the channel to open waters — if the rising were successful.
Few craft were abroad
that could be seen in the rising moon, and a motionless gondola was a dangerous
curiosity. It couldn't be helped: if attention was diverted to the water by
some incident their fate would be sealed. This was the Carradini gondola and
Lucrezia would have paid the gondoliers well for their night's work — but
enough?
Renzi checked the flint
and steel he had been given. It was essential that they attract the attention
of the xebec at the right time or they would be left behind in its desperate
flight. It was time, but there was no sign of insurrection or riot in the
brighdy lit dockyard.
Lifting more of the
slats, he scanned the lagoon. At night there was no reason to sail about, the
wharves had no men to work cargo and no one to account for its movement. A
couple of other gondolas, far off, moving at speed, and some anonymous low
river-boats were all that were in sight.
Then from round the
northern point of Venice came a larger vessel, a lugger. It altered course
directly towards them.
'Trouble,' he muttered, and alerted the
others. Their die was cast: there was no way they could make it back into the
maze of canals before the lugger closed with them.
'Somethin' happenin'.' Kydd had been
watching the dockyard. Renzi snatched a look. They could not see into the
basin, but he could have sworn that a gunflash briefly lit up the front of one
of the buildings.
The lugger came on
purposefully. But there were men at the Arsenale entrance — and then the bows
of a vessel emerged into the channel, indistinct and with no sail hoisted.
Renzi hesitated; if this was not the xebec, their one chance . . . but he could
just make out the three counter-raked masts of such a vessel — and not only
that: there was musket firing.
This was their
salvation — if he got the light going. Kydd held the wooden tube close, the
grainy fuse close to Renzi's flint. Renzi struck it once, twice. No fat spark
leaped across. Again — this time a faint orange speck.
The xebec won through
to open water; it was under oars, but a triangular sail was jerking up from the
deck. It angled over.
'For Christ's sake!'
The strangled oath had come from Griffith. The flint must have got wet, and
there was nothing for it but to keep trying, hard, vicious hits. A bigger
spark, but it missed the fuse. Renzi steadied and struck again. The spark
leaped, and landed squarely on the fuse with an instant orange fizz. Kydd
stepped out into the well of the gondola, and the light caught, a pretty golden
shower.
The xebec
immediately lay over towards them, but the lugger would reach them well before
it could. But then the lugger unexpectedly abandoned its pursuit and resumed
its course along the foreshore of St Mark's.
As the xebec slashed
towards them, Kydd laughed. 'It thinks th' shebek is takin' us in!'
It was the work of moments for the
sailors to tumble over the low gunwale and on to the narrow deck, then turn to
heave in Leith and his servant. The two gondoliers scrambled up, leaving their
smart black gondola to drift away into the night. It was now clear how Lucrezia
had secured their loyalty. The lump in Renzi's throat tightened.
Instinctively they made their way aft,
to the narrow poop where Bauducco stood searching for signals. 'Dobbi amo
stare attenti alia catena’ he muttered.
Renzi heard the
warning, and told the others. 'It seems the lagoon entrance to the open sea is
chained. If this is so, I fear we cannot break through it in this light
vessel.'
The dark hummock of
land that was Rochetta loomed, and a pair of lanterns appeared on the shore.
They danced up and down energetically — Bauducco whooped with joy.
'The chain is evidently
lowered for us,' Renzi murmured, and the xebec passed through to the darkness
of the sea beyond.
They
were free.
Chapter
5
The noon rendezvous had been made, the
passengers transferred and Bacchante's crew made whole again. Now the xebec was
curving in a respectful swash under their lee as they set course for Gibraltar,
a lieutenant and midshipman of the Royal Navy aboard this newest addition to
King George's fleet.
Kydd saw Renzi at the
fore-shrouds, looking back at the wasp-like lines of the xebec, and wandered
over. The last few days had been too intense, too contrasted, and he needed to
make sense of them — but what was bedevilling Renzi, threatening the friendship
of years? 'So it's all over f'r Venice?'
'I believe so,' Renzi responded. His
hand twisted the shroud. 'Venice is old, ancient, and now extinct as a military
power. That is all.'
The little frigate
stumbled to a wave and recovered in a hiss of foam. Kydd grabbed at a rope and
shot an exasperated look at Renzi. His stiff manner perplexed him: he had done
nothing to cause it that he could think of, and it had been the same since
Gibraltar. 'Nicholas, if there's anything I've done that troubles ye, then—'
'No!' Renzi's fierce
response was unsettling. 'No. Not you,' he went on, in a more controlled tone.
'At the least, not in the proximate cause.'
'Then—'
'I
will tell you — as my friend. As my dear friend.'
'Nicholas?'
said Kydd, with a numbing premonition.
'And as one who I know
will honour my — position.' He composed himself. 'This, then, is the essence.
You will know that my presence on the lower deck of a man-o'-war is by choice.
It is the self-sentence I have assumed to relieve my conscience of a family
sin. And you may believe that it has been hard for me, at times very hard — not
the sea life, you understand, which has its attractions, but that which bears
so dire on the spirit.'
It had always been a
given, an unspoken acceptance that Renzi would never allow his origins to
prevail over his convictions, never let the harsh, sometimes crude way of life
on the lower deck affect his fine mind and acute sensibilities.
Renzi continued: 'I
mean no derogation of the seamen I have met, no imputation of brutishness — in
fact, since making their close acquaintance, these are men I own myself proud
to know, to call friend. No, it is the absence of something that to me is
proving an insupportable burden - the blessed benison of intellectual
companionship.'
His eyes lifted to
Kydd's face. 'Those years ago, when we met for the first time, it was as if you
were a gift from the gods to help me bear my private burden. Now, it seems, the
exigencies of the service have taken this solace from me, and I spend my days
at sea in isolation, in a bleakness of spirit, day in, day out. The fo'c'sle is
not the place for a child of learning. In short, my dear friend, the five years
of my exile reaches its end in December and I shall not be continuing this life
beyond that point.'
Wordless, Kydd stared
at him. He had no idea that Renzi had valued their friendship on that plane; he
had gone along with the Diderot and the Rousseau to experience pleasure at the
display of fine logic and meticulous reasoning as well as for the evident
pleasure it gave his friend. As Renzi's words penetrated, he became aware that
he had gained so much himself by the friendship: his own mind had been opened to
riches of the intellect, he had glimpsed life in polite society, and now it was
over. He would become like so many fine old seamen he knew, the very best kind
of deep-sea mariner, but rough-hewn, without the graces, inarticulate.