Marietta: A Maid of Venice

by F. Marion Crawford

The officer and his men came to their senses, one by one, bruised and terrified. The man who had been thrown into the shallow canal got upon his feet, standing up to his waist in the water, sputtering and coughing from the ducking. Before he tried to gain the shore, he crossed himself three times and repeated all the prayers he could remember, in a great hurry, for he was of opinion that Satan must still be in the neighbourhood. It was not possible that any earthly being should have picked him up like a puppy and flung him fully ten feet from the spot where he had been standing. He struggled to the bank, his feet sinking at each step in the slimy bottom; and after that he was forced to wade some thirty yards to the stairs in front of San Piero before he could get out of the water, a miserable object, drenched from head to foot and coated with black mud from his knees down. Yet he was in a better case than his companions.

They came to themselves slowly, the officer last of all, for Aristarchi's blow under the jaw had nearly killed him, whereas the other five men had only received stunning blows on different parts of their thick skulls. In half an hour they were all on their feet, though some of them were very unsteady, and in a forlorn train they made the best of their way back to the Governor's palace. Their discomfiture had been so sudden and complete that none of them had any idea as to the number of their assailants; but most of them agreed that as they came within sight of the church, Zorzi had slackened his pace, and that an unholy fire had issued from his eyes, his mouth and his nostrils, while he made strange signs in the air with his crutch, and suddenly grew to a gigantic stature. The devils who were his companions had immediately appeared in great numbers, and though the archers had fought against their supernatural adversaries with the courage of heroes, they had been struck down senseless where they stood; and when they had recovered their sight and their other understanding, Zorzi had long since vanished to the kingdom of darkness which was his natural abode.

Those things the officer told the Governor on the next day, and the men solemnly swore to them, and they were all written down by the official scribe. But the Governor raised one eyebrow a little, and the corners of his mouth twitched strangely, though he made no remark upon what had been said. He remembered, however, that Giovanni had advised him to send a very strong force to arrest the lame young man, from which he argued that Zorzi had powerful friends, and that Giovanni knew it. He then visited the scene of the fight, and saw that there were drops of blood on dry stones, which was not astonishing and which gave no clue whatever to the identity of the rescuers. He pointed out quietly to his guide, the man who had only received a ducking, that there were no signs of fire on the pavement nor on the walls of the houses, which was a strong argument against any theory of diabolical intervention; and this the man was reluctantly obliged to admit. The strangest thing, however, was that the people who lived near by seemed to have heard no noise, though one old man, who slept badly, believed that he had heard the clatter of wood and iron falling together, and then a splashing in the canal; and indeed those were almost the only sounds that had disturbed the night. The whole affair was shrouded in mystery, and the Governor, who knew that his men were to be trusted as far as their limited intelligence could go, resolved to refer the matter to the Council of Ten without delay. He therefore bade the archers hold their tongues and refuse to talk of their misadventure.

On that night Giovanni had suffered the greatest disappointment he remembered in his whole life. He had found without much trouble the stone that rang hollow, but it had cost him great pains to lift it, and the sweat ran down from his forehead and dropped upon the slab as he slowly got it up. His heart beat so that he fancied he could hear it, both from the effort he made, and from his intense excitement, now that the thing he had most desired in the world was within his grasp. At last the big stone was raised upright, and the light of the lamp that stood on the floor fell slanting across the dark hole. Giovanni brought the lamp to the edge and looked in. He could not see the box, but a quantity of loose earth lay there, under which it was doubtless buried. He knelt down and began to scoop the earth out, using his two hands together. Then he thrust one hand in, and felt about for the box. There was nothing there. He cleared out the cavity thoroughly, and tried to loosen the soil at the bottom, tearing his nails in his excitement. It must be there, he was sure.

But it was not. When he realised that he had been tricked, he collapsed, kneeling as he was, and sat upon his heels, and his crooked hands all dark with the dusty earth clutched at the stones beside him. He remained thus a long time, staring at the empty hole. Then caution, which was even stronger in his nature than greed, brought him to himself. His thin face was grey and haggard as he carefully swept the earth back to its place, removing all traces of what he had done. Then he knew how foolish he had been to let Zorzi know what he had partly heard and partly guessed.

Of course, as soon as Zorzi understood that Giovanni had found out where the book was, he had taken it out and put it away in a safer place, to which Giovanni had no clue at all. Zorzi was diabolically clever, and would not have been so foolish as to hide the treasure again in the same room or in the same way. It was probably in the garden now, but it would take a strong man a day or two to dig up all the earth there to the depth at which the book must have been buried. Zorzi must have done the work at night, after the furnaces were out, and when there were no night boys to watch him. But then, the boys had been feeding the fires in the laboratory until the previous night, and it followed that he must have bailed the box this very evening.

Giovanni got the slab back into its place without injuring it, and he rubbed the edges with dust, and swept the place with a broom, as Zorzi had done twice already. Then he took the lamp and set it on the table before the window. The light fell on the gold piece that lay there. He took it, examined it carefully, and slipped it into his wallet with a sort of mechanical chuckle. He glanced at the furnace next, and recollected that the precious pieces Zorzi had made were in the annealing oven. But that did not matter, for the fires would now go out and the whole furnace would slowly cool, so that the annealing would be very perfect. No one but he could enter the laboratory, now that Zorzi was gone, and he could take the pieces to his own house at his leisure. They were substantial proofs of Zorzi's wickedness in breaking the laws of Venice, however, and it would perhaps be wiser to leave them where they were, until the Governor should take cognizance of their existence.

His first disappointment turned to redoubled hatred of the man who had caused it, and whom it was safer to hate now than formerly, since he was in the clutches of the law; moreover, the defeat of Giovanni's hopes was by no means final, after the first shock was over. He could make an excuse for having the garden dug over, on pretence of improving it during his father's absence; the more easily, as he had learned that the garden had always been under Zorzi's care, and must now be cultivated by some one else. Giovanni did not believe it possible that the precious box had been taken away altogether. It was therefore near, and he could find it, and there would be plenty of time before his father's return. Nevertheless, he looked about the laboratory and went into the small room where Zorzi had slept. There was water there, and Spanish soap, and he washed his hands carefully, and brushed the dust from his coat and from the knees of his fine black hose. He knew that his patient wife would be waiting for him when he went back to the house.

He searched Zorzi's room carefully, but could find nothing. An earthen jar containing broken white glass stood in one corner. The narrow truckle-bed, with its single thin mattress and flattened pillow, all neat and trim, could not have hidden anything. On a line stretched across from wall to wall a few clothes were hanging—a pair of disconsolate brown hose, the waistband on the one side of the line hanging down to meet the feet on the other, two clean shirts, and a Sunday doublet. On the wall a cap with a black eagle's feather hung by a nail. Here and there on the white plaster, Zorzi had roughly sketched with a bit of charcoal some pieces of glass which he had thought of making. That was all. The floor was paved with bricks, and a short examination showed that none of them had been moved.

Giovanni turned back into the laboratory, stood a moment looking disconsolately at the big stone which it had cost him so much fruitless labour to move, and then passed round by the other side of the furnace, along the wall against which the bench and the easy chair were placed. His eye fell on Marietta's silk mantle, which lay as when it had slipped down from her shoulders, the skirts of it trailing on the floor. His brows contracted suddenly. He came nearer, felt the stuff, and was sure that he recognised it. Then he looked at it, as it lay. It had the unmistakable appearance of having been left, as it had been, by the person who had last sat in the chair.