Mutiny

_{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.'}