Tender Is The Tyrant Read online

  ‘At the palazzo you will often find me strict,’ Maxim di Corte suddenly warned Lauri. ‘You have a lot to learn and I mean to teach you—even if you grow to resent me in the process.’

  She caught her breath, for Michael Lonza had said the same thing and it alarmed her more than ever ... made her even more aware of the gulf which separated her from home and the shield of Aunt Pat’s love. She drew back against the cabin door and her fingers sought the handle.

  ‘You child!’ His eyes flashed over her face, with its winged eyebrows expressive of her desire to take wing from him. ‘I shan’t beat you if you put a foot wrong now and again, and the palazzo dungeons were long ago sealed up.’

  ‘You won’t be very patient with me,’ she said, flushing under the mocking light in his eyes. ‘Can you blame a mere member of the corps de ballet for being nervous?’

  ‘Are you really more nervous of me than the young panther you have been so blithely alone with up on the promenade deck?’ He took hold of her chin and made her look at him. His left eyebrow arched sardonically. ‘Am I so very different from other men?’

  ‘I think you are more demanding,’ she said bravely.

  ‘It would not do for the Director of a ballet company to be otherwise,’ he said dryly. ‘He controls a band of wayward and charming children; unbelievably talented and unpredictable. Think of the chaos that would reign if a director was too easy and indulgent. Petrushka would no longer act the fool, the Cruel Doll might weep, and Albrecht refuse to carry his bunch of arum lilies, Lauri had to laugh, and at once she felt the seal of his ring pressing into her chin. She was held like a bird in the hand, and as she met the compelling eyes of the man who had taken control of her future, she felt her heart beat fast with a fear which held a strange fascination. Talent, like a gem, lies buried in clay which must be chipped away piece by painful piece,’ he said. ‘The process cannot be avoided, Miss Garner.’

  ‘What will happen if you keep on chipping away at me only to find clay?’ she asked.

  ‘I shall be very disappointed in my own judgment,’ he replied quizzically, ‘In a private conversation which I had with your aunt, she agreed with me that in Venice you might be able to lay aside your fears and forget your ghosts. I hope so. Venice is rich in history, a city that should appeal to you very much. Let its magic enter your heart, signorina.’

  He then let her go, leaving the pressure of his seal upon her white skin. ‘Buona notte,’ he said, and strode off before she could wish him goodnight.

  She gazed after his tall figure until he disappeared into the gloom at the end of the passageway, then she entered the cabin and was relieved to find her two companions curled up asleep in their berths. She undressed and slipped noiselessly into bed, where she lay for a long time lapped by the rhythm of the ship.

  When she finally fell asleep she dreamed of a palace like a fortress, with a tall tower built against one wall. In a room at the top of the tower dwelt a man who wore a mask. He frightened her, yet she felt compelled to mount the spiral staircase that led to him. She wanted to tear off his mask, but at each step she took he drew farther away from her, and she felt she would never get close enough to find out what he was like behind his mask.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THEY disembarked at the port of Zattere, and the journey across the lagoon to the palazzo was made in a launch. They heard the noon bells pealing as they passed the great Campanile of St. Mark’s, where rows of black gondolas were tied up like the canoes of warriors who had gone ashore to take booty and captives.

  Lauri smiled at her own flight of fancy, and turned to gaze back at the Doge’s Palace, like something out of a fairytale, and the huge golden domes of the Cathedral above which a thousand pigeons fluttered until the bells grew quiet again.

  Spring would come to Venice any day now, but this was the time of the year when this city of fretted steeples, arcaded buildings and old palaces was safe from the invasion of the many tourists who would arrive in the summer with their cameras and their guide-books. This was Venice at its best, its sunshine filtered by a breeze that kept the canals fresh and sparkling.

  They passed a barge laden with boxes of market produce, and turned into a waterway where sunlight and shadow flitted over scrolled balconies, climbing plants and painted shutters. Water swirled across the steps of arched doorways, and there was an atmosphere of bygone days, and signs of Venetian script on the weathered walls. A gondola swooped by and Lauri glimpsed the strong dark face and almost balletic grace of the gondolier.

  Excitement caught at her heart ... this was a city to fall in love with. Already it was casting a spell over her.

  She turned from gazing after the gondolier to find the dark eyes of Maxim di Corte fixed upon her. For several seconds she couldn’t withdraw her gaze from his, which was as direct as that of a Titian. The entire look and manner of the man blended in with the medieval aspect of the city to which he belonged. In him there was an element of shadow, but something about his mouth and his eyes gave warning of hidden fire.

  ‘Venice is fascinating, signor,’ she felt compelled to say, aware of Andreya’s strange eyes through cigarette smoke, unsmiling and intent.

  ‘Not by daylight.’ Andreya flicked ash at the peeling plaster of an old house that might once have been a patrician dwelling.

  ‘Like a once beautiful woman, Venice needs the cloak of dusk and the soft sparkle of stars to make her glamorous once more,’ Michael Lonza remarked, a faint smile narrowing his eyes and a hint of hidden meaning in his words. Andreya’s cigarette hissed in the water, and with relief Lauri felt the speed of the launch slowing down. They were heading towards a private landing-stage set in front of a great stone house whose upper half overhung the water in the form of a piazza guarded by an ornamental balustrade.

  At the side of the house there was a single tall tower, which held Lauri’s startled gaze as the launch drew in against the water-worn steps that led up to the landing-stage, where a gnarled old man waited with a boathook. He held the launch steady as one by one they mounted the steps and gathered in a group in front of the palazzo its walls mellowed by centuries of sun and water-sparkle to a tawny grey.

  Lauri’s gaze was fixed on the tower about which she had dreamed so strangely last night on the ship. She could, of course, have seen a picture of it in the book of memoirs by Travilla di Corte, but all the same it was mystifying that in every detail her dream tower resembled the reality. Instinct also told her that there was a spiral staircase inside, winding up to the rooms behind those narrow windows, under the roof set round with battlements.

  She didn’t have to wonder who lived in the rooms of that old and romantic tower. Who else but the master of the palazzo!

  She glanced at his tall figure in a stone-grey suit and saw that he was studying his impressive old home with the intentness which he gave to everything ... almost as though he wished that Travilla could appear again on the piazza, a winsome figure in white, leaning over the coping to greet him with a loving smile.

  His group of dancers grew restive and began to chatter in various languages, and the men set to unloading the piles of baggage from the launch. Michael Lonza left his companions to get on with the unloading. He strolled with lithe grace to the entrance of the palazzo and stood gazing at the enormous wooden door in which a grille was set at eye level. Dominating the arched portico was a fierce stone falcon holding lightning in its claws.

  ‘Falconry—sport of the knights.’ Michael turned and leaned against the door. ‘I think you still fly them, maestro. Slim, jewel-eyed creatures who flash upon their prey without warning and take their hearts. Is it not true, signor, that in the old days the falconers punished severely any man who dared to fondle their dark-plumaged pets?’

  ‘A female—and most falcons used for hunting were female—should have only one master. Come, Miss Garner, let me welcome you to the Palazzo Falcone.’

  Lean fingers barely touched her elbow, and yet in the grip of compulsion she walked wit
h Maxim over his threshold into the great chilly hall with its marbled floor. Venetian mirrors and lanterns gleamed duskily, throne-like chairs stood about, and dark panelling lined the walls. The hall would have been forbidding but for a ceiling that glowed with scenes from medieval Venice, a pageant, a feast for the eyes painted by a Venetian master who had lived in the days of carnival and intrigue, elopement by gondola, and family feuds that led to duels.

  Long, long ago this old baronial hall had echoed to the laughter of those Titian ladies and their gallants, as they watched the antics of the Punchinellos. Harlequin in his motley might well have slipped a note into a small, white hand, while a cloaked boatman waited to row the lady to her lover.

  A great horseshoe of a stairway led to the upper rooms, and the peace that had reigned over the palazzo for several months was broken as the rest of the company flocked in, demanding to know where they were to sleep, and when they were to eat.

  ‘Lorenzo ... Giovanni...!’ The master raised his voice and the servants came running. Miraculously, within less than an hour the dancers were unpacking in their rooms, while down in the great cavern of a kitchen a beaming Venetian woman who liked noise and the laughter of young people bustled about preparing coffee and food for them.

  To Lauri’s relief she was given a small room of her own. She was a girl who rather enjoyed solitude, and after she had unpacked her case and hung her few dresses in the old-fashioned wardrobe, she opened wide the batwing shutters at the window and thought how strange it was to be living in a palace on the water.

  The water swirled below, jade and sapphire, and Lauri felt as though she had arrived in a city of fantasy. She reached eagerly for her writing-pad and pen, and sat down by the window to write Aunt Pat a letter describing the palazzo. Words like rambling and romantic leapt to her pen, and her nostrils quivered as she described the smell that hung in the air, that of water-lapped stone walls and hoarded sunshine. The gilt was tarnished on the great mirrors and portraits, she wrote, the Florentine brocades that swagged windows and alcoves were worn and faded, but there was still something rather sumptuous about the Palace of the Falcon.

  Her pen suddenly faltered and her eyes grew wet. Aunt Pat must be feeling very lonely at Downhollow all on her own. If only it had been possible for her to come to Venice, but the atmosphere was too damp for someone who suffered from arthritis. ‘All I ask,’ she had said to Lauri, ‘is to see you dance in ballet as I never could, up near the footlights, the star of the show.’

  Lauri gazed out across the waters of Venice, and her tears dried on her lashes. When you loved certain people you wanted to please them, to live up to their expectations of you, but it was very difficult at times. Especially when your heart held other, elusive longings.

  She sealed her letter and addressed the envelope, and went along to the room Concha and Viola were sharing to ask them how she went about posting a letter. Several of the dancers spoke English, Concha among them, and she told Lauri to put her letter in the basket she would find on a table down in the hall.

  ‘I’d rather like to go out and post it myself,’ Lauri said, for she was eager to explore the neighbourhood and had noticed there was a bridge at the side of the palazzo which gave on to a calle. A calle, according to her guide-book, was a street or an alleyway.

  She mentioned the bridge, and Concha said at once that the calle on the other side led to a small shopping square, where she would find the local post-office in the grocery store. ‘Are you sure you will be all right?’ Concha added, sweeping rather anxious eyes over the slight English girl in a tweed skirt and a tomato-coloured jersey. ‘Dusk falls quickly in Venice, and it is all too easy for a stranger to get lost.’

  ‘I’m a country girl with a good sense of locality,’ Lauri smiled, waving her letter as she ran off down the grand staircase. Her purse was in the pocket of her skirt, and her jersey was a warm, hand-knitted one. She caught a glimpse of herself in one of the huge mirrors as she crossed the hall—an elfin creature with a dark switch of hair hanging down over one shoulder.

  The palazzo was fronted by a fairly wide pavement that led round to the side of the building, where a small stone bridge arched across the canal to a cobbled street. Lauri sped light of foot across the bridge and’ upon reaching the other side she glanced back at the rambling palazzo with its single tall tower. One of the two hundred palaces of Venice, where she would be staying for several weeks. It was a disturbing thought, and yet as Aunt Pat had said, not every girl had the chance to live for a while in a palace ... very much at the command of its Venetian overlord, Lauri added to herself.

  She hastened on her way to the post-office, which she duly found in a quaint grocery store. The woman behind the counter was accustomed to dealing with tourists and she was able to understand that Lauri wished to buy stamps for her letter. This bit of business concluded.

  Lauri turned to a display of fruit and bought herself a bag of little plums that were like drops of gold.

  Having escaped from the palazzo, Lauri was in no great hurry to return. She wandered along by a canal eating; her plums and tossing the stones in the water breaking for a moment the reflections of the houses with washing hung from old iron balconies. Now and then a gondola sped by like a black swan, its gondolier a lean, weathered sculpture as he handled the great oar with grace and skill. She noticed that the gondolas held boxes and packages of goods ... not the romantic couples of fiction gazing dreamily at one another as their gondolier sang an opera ballad that echoed over the water.

  Lauri was vaguely aware of having lost all sense of time, but it wasn’t until she found herself in an old courtyard beside a stone well-head surrounded by gargoyles that she realized how the afternoon light had deepened. Pink flames quivered in the sky, and a sudden breeze plucked at her hair. Gosh, she had better be getting back to the palazzo before it grew any darker.

  She turned to make her way out of the courtyard and saw old houses looming up all around her. There were twin archways left and right which led out to canals at either side of the courtyard, and even as she took a few steps to the right, she glanced hesitantly over her shoulder at the glimmer of water beyond the other archway. She could, in her abstraction, have wandered in through either one of them, and was quite at a loss to remember which one it had been.

  For a moment she felt utterly stranded in this old city square with a well in the centre. She couldn’t speak a word of Italian, so it was no use knocking on one of those high wooden doors. Neither was it any use getting into a panic. She listened, and when she heard water splash softly in the gathering dusk, she ran out under the nearest archway and saw a slim craft gliding towards her.

  ‘Pope,’ she called out, a word culled from her guidebook which meant that she wished to hire a boat. This one swooped in against the stone quay and the dark eyes of the gondolier flicked her slim, lost-looking figure. ‘Palazzo Falcone—please!’ she entreated.

  He nodded and helped her into the gondola, and as a melancholy beauty settled down over the canal, Lauri was rowed home to the palazzo sitting amidst sacks of vegetables and several crates of melons.

  She hoped she would not be seen when she alighted at the landing-stage, but as she turned from paying for her ride, she blundered into someone tall who caught at her with hands that were none too gentle. ‘Where have you been? You have had us concerned for you.’ She was swung round, and with a gasp found herself face to face in the light of a wall-lamp with the very person she had hoped to avoid ... the padrone himself,

  ‘I had to post a letter, and I wanted to see something of Venice.’ She was on the defensive because in a way she was at fault in having wandered beyond the limits of the post-office. ‘Don’t tell me we have to give notice of our intentions before we’re allowed out of the palazzo?’ she said flippantly.

  ‘Don’t be a child.’ A thread of steel gave his words a cutting edge. ‘You went out without a cup of coffee or anything to eat, and I am responsible for your welfare, let me remind you. If you wi
shed to explore a littler then you could have asked someone to go with you who is used to the intricacy of our waterways. Water has an alluring quality, Miss Garner. You follow it and before you know where you are, you are lost. This happened, of course.’

  It infuriated her that he was so certain, and so right. ‘A moment ago you told me not to be a child,’ she said. ‘It’s because I don’t wish to be dependent on other people that I went out on my own. One learns through one’s blunderings, signor. As a director of ballet dancers you should know that better than anyone.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps I was mistaken to call you a child,’ he allowed, a quirk to his firm lips. ‘You have a woman’s ability for turning a man’s argument against him, because few women like to admit their mistakes,’

  ‘Why do men always have to generalize about women?’ The gold flashed in her eyes. ‘It’s human nature to be self-determined, so why should men possess the royalty rights to independence and expect only humble submission from women? If a man chooses to do something, then it’s always right, no matter how crazy. He can tear himself to bits in a fast car for the sake of a speed record, and he’s a hero. Or fall from a mountain of ice out in the middle of nowhere, leaving a widow and several children, and he’s called a sportsman. Men are the babies, if you ask me!’

  ‘You evidently feel very strongly about the rights of women.’ There was amusement in the deep voice above Lauri’s head, and with a sense of surprise she found that he had guided her through a side door into the walled garden of the palazzo. An illuminated fountain gave out a green light that turned shrubs to goblin shapes, and tall cypresses into giants.

  There was a scent of myrtle, a rustle of ilex trees, and the dimly seen tassels of flowers. The fountain itself was shaped like a great stone goblet, and the tinkling of water was echoed by the twitter of a night bird.