The air was still ringing with the loyal shouts of the multitude when Vettore Soranzo with that eagerly expected Venetian fleet, weighed anchor in the port of Famagosta and with his men streamed through the unresisting gates of the Fortress into the Piazza San Nicolò, where the young Queen still stood radiant.
With the holy calm of night peace brooded over the distracted city and the Cyprian stars looked down on the old, sweet story of mother and child—as closely clasped beneath the gilded roof of the royal palace as under the thatch of a peasant shed—smiling, forgetful of the days of anguish that had parted them.
XXV
The Venetian Admiral Mocenigo, god-father to the little prince, had followed close upon the coming of Vettore Soranzo, and they had lost no time in examining into the causes of the difficulties and in fixing the responsibility for the treachery where it belonged: disloyal officers were replaced by men in sympathy with the government, men of weight and character were sought for to fill the vacancies in the Council of the Realm, and it seemed that days of sunshine were dawning for Caterina, guarded by the affection of her people and the invincible arm of Venice.
These Venetian nobles would have made short work in meting out justice to those chiefs who had been the instigators of the conspiracy, but as yet they had eluded the search; though it was rumored that Saplana, the Turkish commander of the Fortress of Famagosta, with his nephew Almerico to whom the conspirators would assign control of the castle of Cerines,—had been in hiding in the palace of the Archbishop. And a tale was brought to Bernardini by a group of agitated peasants from the hamlet of Varoschia, that at early dawn a man fully armed, with the semblance of Rizzo—"not an apparition, Signore sa—but how could one know the face of him with his vizor down?—was riding like the wind to Famagosta, and with him a multitude of horsemen, coming very silently. We saw them from the vineyards high up on the hillside. And then—quite suddenly—we looked and they were gone—they came no more—by San Nicolò and the Holy Madonna, it is true!"
Significant gestures gave a certain mysterious color to the peasant's tale; but whatever its truth, it was actually known that Rizzo and other of the conspirators had been seen in the neighborhood of Nikosia; and the whereabouts of these intriguers was a topic of absorbing interest, for it was felt that the sunshine would be clearer when Rizzo with his accomplices should have been found and made to suffer the full penalty of their crime.