Part 70

But as time slipped by in apparent tranquillity and growing prosperity, with constant evidences of judicious thought bestowed by the Queen upon the well-being of her subjects--with the coming and going of artists and men of letters to her court, and the resuming of all those ancient Cyprian customs that might minister to the content of the nobles--whom it was ever most needful to satisfy with a sufficient show of gaiety--there had nevertheless been an imperceptibly increasing tightening of the threads of government which stretched far across the waters to Venice's own blue Adriatic, into the very Council-Chambers of the Palazzo San Marco.

Even the moneys of Cyprus were flowing somewhat overfreely into the coffers of the Venetian Provveditori who kept vigilant watch over the island kingdom--which was, in truth, no longer anything but a Venetian province, except in name. Yet Caterina, while she chafed at many hampering restrictions which she was powerless to overcome, loved her people and her work with the strength of desperation, and struggled bravely on.

It was a relief that the petty warfare of conflicting claimants without and within her kingdom had ceased; even the importunity from aspiring suitors came no more--since the same cold answer was ever ready for all, alike: and to Caterina this also was a relief. For, although of her own will she could have given but one reply, she had bitterly resented the imperative command of the Signoria forbidding her second marriage, as an indignity assuring her that she was not free--and each fresh importunity was a reminder of her bondage.

If the Cyprian members of the Council of the Realm also saw that the meshes of Venice were steadily gathering more closely about them, they had no longer power of resistance against that craftiness of the Republic which had known how to divert the moneys that should have gone to the making of a Cyprian Marine, while tickling their love of splendor with some outward show--yet had kept the island kingdom from appreciating this great need, by the readiness with which full-manned Venetian galleys protected the Cyprian coasts whenever they were threatened with devastation.

More than one letter of resistance and impotent pleading in Caterina's own hand, had gone from this Daughter of the Republic to the Doge himself, and passed from the Serenissimo into the secret archives of San Marco; but the very fact of the appeal was an acknowledgment of Venetian right, and the evils steadily increased. While Caterina tried to forget that the clasp of a velvet paw may fatally crush, when the force of an angry lion is behind it: or--if she remembered it too cruelly in the hours of her desolate midnight vigils, what could she do but ignore the insult, with a woman's power of endurance, that she might defer the day that should separate her from her work and her people with whom her last dim hopes of happiness were inextricably bound up: for to them she knew that she was still the Mother Queen--"Nostra Madonna," and the dear title was a cure for much heart-anguish.

More than once the good Father Johannes--his hair and beard now falling in thin gray locks about his throat and breast, but the spirit within him still gleaming fiercely from his deep eyes--had come with painful steps down the long way from his distant Troödos to help and comfort her.

"Daughter," he said, "for thy brave wrestling I absolve thee from thy vow. Christ and the Holy Mother are merciful. They ask no more than man may do. If thou hast not the strength----"

"Father, without my work I have naught to live for. I have not the strength to leave it."

"Then God help thee! and the prayers of all the pilgrims to the Troödista help thee! And of all who have tasted of thy bounty; and of all who have known thy care!"

"Unless, my Father," she interrupted painfully, "there should be one who might better hold this trust, to whom I may yield it? If Carlotta----"

"Is she not like her Mother, the Paléologue?" the Lampadisti answered angrily. "Hath she not plotted murder and treachery to compass her ends? Aye--even a fratricide--because forsooth of the crime of the grace that her brother possessed? Is there a record of good deeds, that the people should wish her back?--Did she strive to uphold the laws, or to know them?--To have her people taught and comforted?"--his eyes blazed.

"Thou dost verily comfort me, my Father."

"For that I am sent. The Holy Relic on the altar of the Troödista seemed to point me hither, with every Sacred Thorn. I could pray no prayers but for thee; I could hearken to no other tales of woe. My feet turned ever thither without my will: and thus I knew that thou hadst need of me!"

But once when he came, and she knew not that it was the last time, she said:

"I have somewhat to ask of thee, my Father."

"Say on."

"That thou wilt receive me into the Holy Sisterhood of St. Francis--as a lay sister; that if I find the world more weary than I can bear, I may be sure of a retreat which thou my faithful friend and spiritual Father will have prepared for me. So that the act of my admission may be known only to thee and me and the directors of the Chapter of St. Francis, and to the Holy Sisterhood, of which I shall be one--yet living in the world, so long as my duty shall call me."

"Thou hast deserved it by thy constancy," he said. "And may the Holy Madonna be gracious to thee: and our blessed St. Francis sing to thy sorrowing soul sweet measures of content, by the voices of 'his brothers, the birds of the air.'"

It was evening, and the Queen had bidden him to her summer terrace over the gardens, where in the luxuriant shrubberies below them the birds were vying with each other in the loud-voiced evening orisons for which the brief flame of the Cyprian sunset was ever a signal.

"The years will make of thee a poet, my Father," Caterina said, smiling at the turn of phrase so unusual from his lips.

"It is not the years but thou, my Daughter, who hast taught me that beauty may be holy and lift the soul."

XXXVI

An Embassy from Venice was expected upon important affairs of State, and there was an unusual radiance in the face of the Queen, for it had been announced that the Illustrissimo, the Signor Zorzi Cornaro, brother to Caterina, was chief of the Commission, and it was long since one of her very own had been with her.

"Zia mia," she said eagerly to the elder Lady of the Bernardini. "Thou wilt see that no courtesy of reception shall be omitted--it is to welcome one of my very own!"

She dwelt on the phrase with a pathetic accent of delight, returning to it again as she discussed some details of the welcome that should be offered to her brother, whom, for years she had not seen.

Never had an ambassador been received with higher honors in the Court of Nikosia, or with such glad faces by all the attendant circle--for was not His Excellency of the Queen's own household?--and it had been rare to see such a light of happiness in her beloved eyes.

And well did the Cornaro seem to carry the honors due to his house--being very noble in bearing, as befitted the brother of the Queen; and so eloquent in speech that already before the first day had passed, the scholarly men of the Court were exchanging glances of admiration at the skill with which he parried their compliments; while Caterina, noting their courtesy and the deftness with which he had won them, grew more than ever radiant, with a certain look of restfulness and of heart-satisfaction which, since the death of the child, those who loved her had scarcely seen her wear.

But Aluisi Bernardini grew somewhat graver than his wont, as the banquet proceeded, while he watched his cousin, the newly-arrived Ambassador, less graciously, his lady thought, than he need have done on this first evening when all were hastening to shower honors upon him.