‘ “Here is a young man who has been looking for you and wants to talk to you,” said the sentry.
‘ “And what does he want to say?” asked the man who was acting as captain in their leader’s absence.
‘ “I want to say that I am tired of being a shepherd,” said Vampa.
‘ “Ah, I understand,” replied the lieutenant. “You have come to ask to be admitted to our ranks?”
‘ “Let him be welcome!” several bandits from Ferrusino, Pampinara and Anagni cried, having recognized Luigi Vampa.
‘ “Yes, except that I am requesting something else, apart from being your companion.”
‘ “What is your request?” the bandits said in astonishment.
‘ “I want to ask to be your captain,” the young man said.
‘The bandits burst out laughing.
‘ “So what have you done to aspire to such an honour?” the lieutenant demanded.
‘ “I have killed your leader, Cucumetto, whose clothes these are,” said Luigi. “And I set light to the villa of San-Felice to give my fiancée a wedding dress.”
‘An hour later, Luigi Vampa had been elected captain to replace Cucumetto.’
‘Well, my dear Albert,’ said Franz, turning to his friend. ‘What do you think now of Citizen Luigi Vampa?’
‘I think he’s a myth,’ Albert replied. ‘He never existed.’
‘What is a myth?’ Pastrini asked.
‘It would take too long to explain, my good friend,’ Franz replied. ‘So you are telling us that Signor Vampa is currently exercising his profession in the environs of Rome?’
‘With a boldness that no previous bandit has ever displayed.’
‘So the police have tried in vain to capture him?’
‘What do you expect? He is in league with the shepherds of the plain, the Tiber fishermen and the coastal smugglers. If they go looking for him in the mountains, he is on the river; if they hunt him down the river, he is out at sea; then suddenly, when they think he has taken refuge on the islands of Giglio, Guanouti or Monte Cristo, he reappears in Albano, Tivoli or La Riccia.’
‘And how does he treat travellers?’
‘Very simply. According to the distance from the city, he allows them eight hours, twelve hours or a day to pay their ransom. Then, when the time has elapsed, he gives them an hour’s grace. On the sixtieth minute of that hour, if he does not have the money, he blows out the prisoner’s brains with his pistol or buries his dagger in his heart, and there’s an end to it.’
‘Well, Albert,’ Franz asked his companion, ‘do you still feel like going to the Colosseum via the boulevards outside the walls?’
‘Naturally,’ said Albert, ‘if the route is more picturesque.’
At that moment the clock struck nine, the door opened and the coachman appeared.
‘Excellencies,’ he said, ‘your carriage awaits you.’
‘Very well,’ said Franz, ‘in that case, to the Colosseum!’
‘Via the Porta del Popolo, Excellencies, or through the streets?’
‘Through the streets, confound it! Through the streets!’ said Franz.
‘Oh, my dear fellow!’ said Albert, getting up and lighting his third cigar. ‘I must confess I thought you braver than that!’
Upon which the two young men went down the stairs and got into their carriage.
XXXIV
AN APPARITION
Franz had found a compromise that would allow Albert to reach the Colosseum without passing by any antique ruin, avoiding a gradual approach that might deprive the colossus of a single cubit of its massive proportions. This compromise was to go down the Via Sistina, turn due right at Santa Maria Maggiore and take the Via Urbana, past San Pietro in Vincoli, to the Via del Colosseo.
There was an additional advantage in this route, which was that it would not at all distract Franz from the effects of the story which Signor Pastrini had told them – and in which his mysterious host from the island of Monte Cristo had made an appearance. So he was able to sit, resting, in a corner of the carriage and to consider the endless succession of questions that had arisen in his mind, though without finding a satisfactory reply to any of them.
Something else, as it happens, had brought his friend Sinbad the Sailor to mind: this was the mysterious relationship between bandits and seamen. What Signor Pastrini said about Vampa taking refuge on the fishing boats and smugglers’ craft reminded Franz of the two Corsican bandits whom he had found dining with the crew of the little yacht, which had gone out of its way and made land at Porto Vecchio, solely in order to put them ashore. The name which his host on Monte Cristo had given himself, spoken by the proprietor of the Hôtel de Londres, proved that he played the same philanthropic role on the coasts of Piombino, Civita Vecchia, Ostia and Gaeta as on those of Corsica, Tuscany or Spain; and, as far as Franz could remember, he had himself spoken of Tunis and Palermo, proving that he operated over a wide area.
However powerfully all these ideas occupied the young man’s mind, they vanished the instant he found himself confronted with the dark and massive spectre of the Colosseum, through the openings of which the moon was casting those long pale rays of light that shine from the eyes of ghosts. The carriage halted a few yards from the Mesa Sudans. The coachman came and opened the door; the two young men jumped out and found themselves confronted by a guide who seemed to have sprung up out of the earth. Since the one from the hotel had followed them, they now had two.
In any case, it is impossible in Rome to avoid this over-provision of guides: apart from the general one who takes charge of you as soon as you step over the threshold of the hotel and who does not release you from his clutches until you step outside the city, there is a special guide attached to every monument; one might almost say, to every fragment of every monument. So you can well imagine that there was no shortage of them at the Colosseum, that is to say at the monument of monuments, the one of which Martial1 said: ‘Let Memphis cease to boast of the barbarous marvels of its pyramids and let them sing no more of the wonders of Babylon; everything must give precedence to the vast labour of the amphitheatre of the Caesars and all the trumpets of praise unite in admiration of this monument.’
Franz and Albert did not try to evade this tyranny of the guides, something that would in any case have been all the more difficult, since only guides have the right to visit the Colosseum by torchlight. So they offered no resistance and yielded to their controllers, as it were bound hand and foot.
Franz knew the walk: he had done it ten times already. But since his less experienced companion was stepping for the first time into the monument of Flavius Vespasian, I must say to his credit that he was highly impressed, in spite of the ignorant chatter of his guides. Anyone who has not seen it can have no idea of the majesty of this ruin, its proportions doubled by the mysterious clarity of the southern moon, the rays of which give a light resembling that of a western sunset.
So, hardly had the thoughtful Franz taken a hundred paces beneath the inner arches than he abandoned Albert to the guides, who were unwilling to give up their inalienable right to show him every inch of the Lions’ Pit, the Gladiators’ Box and the Imperial Podium, and slipped away by a partly dilapidated staircase. Then, allowing the others to continue the usual course round the ruins, he simply went and sat at the base of a column, facing a hollow depression which allowed him to take in the full extensive majesty of the granite giant.
He had been there for about a quarter of an hour, seated, as I said, in the shadow of a column and lost in the contemplation of Albert who, accompanied by his two torchbearers, had just emerged from a vomitorium at the far end of the Colosseum and with them, like shadows pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp, was descending step by step towards the seats reserved for the Vestal Virgins, when Franz thought he heard a loose stone tumbling into the depths of the building from the staircase opposite the one that he had just taken to reach the place where he was sitting. No doubt there is nothing exceptional here in a
stone coming away beneath the foot of time and rolling into the depths; but it seemed to him that on this occasion a man’s foot was the cause and that steps were approaching him, even though the person responsible for them was doing his very best to muffle them. And, in effect, a moment later a man appeared, gradually emerging from the shadows as he came up the staircase, the opening of which was in front of Franz and lit by the moon, though its steps receded into the darkness as they went down.
It might be a traveller like himself who preferred solitary meditation to the meaningless chatter of the guides, so there should be nothing surprising in the apparition; but from the hesitant manner in which he came up the last few steps and the way that, once he had reached the landing, he stopped, seeming to be listening for something, it was clear that he had come there for some particular purpose and was expecting someone.
Franz instinctively did his utmost to melt into the shadow behind the column.
Ten feet above the level on which both of them were now standing, there was a round hole in the vaulted roof, like the opening of a well, through which could be seen the sky, bestrewn with stars. This opening had quite probably been letting in the moonlight for a hundred years and around it grew bushes whose delicate green foliage stood out sharply against the soft blue of the sky, while great creepers and huge bunches of ivy dangled down from this upper terrace and hung below the arched roof, like trailing ropes.
The person whose mysterious arrival had attracted Franz’s attention was standing in the half-light, so that it was impossible to distinguish his features, but not so much as to prevent one seeing his dress: he was wrapped in a vast brown cloak, one fold of which, thrown over his left shoulder, hid the bottom part of his face, while the upper part was concealed beneath his broad-brimmed hat. Only the outer part of his clothing was lit by the glancing ray of moonlight through the opening in the roof, and it showed a pair of black trousers elegantly framing a polished shoe.
Clearly the man belonged either to the aristocracy or, at least, to the upper realms of society.
He had been there for some minutes and was starting to give visible signs of impatience, when a slight noise was heard on the terrace above. At the same moment a shadow passed in front of the light and a man appeared, framed in the hole, staring intently into the darkness beneath him. Seeing the man in the cloak, he immediately grasped a handful of the dangling creepers and hanging ivy, let himself slide down them and, at about three or four feet above the ground, leapt lightly down. He was dressed in the pure costume of Trastevere.
‘Forgive me, Excellency,’ he said, in Roman dialect. ‘I’ve kept you waiting. Even so, I am only a few minutes late. Ten o’clock has just sounded at St John Lateran.’
‘You are not late; I was early,’ the stranger replied, in pure Tuscan. ‘So, no apologies. In any event, if you had kept me waiting, I should have guessed that it was for some unavoidable reason.’
‘You would have been right, Excellency. I have just returned from the Castel Sant’ Angelo, and I found it very hard getting to speak to Beppo.’
‘Who is Beppo?’
‘Beppo is an employee at the prison, to whom I pay a small sum in exchange for information about what goes on inside His Holiness’s castle.’
‘Ah, I can see you are a man of foresight.’
‘What do you expect, Excellency! One never knows what may happen. I too might one day be caught in the same net as poor Peppino and need a rat to gnaw away the meshes of my prison.’
‘So, briefly, what did you learn?’
‘There will be two executions on Tuesday at two o’clock, as usual in Rome at the start of an important holiday. One of the condemned will be mazzolato: this is some wretch who killed a priest who had brought him up; he deserves no pity. The other will be decapitato: that is poor Peppino.’
‘What do you expect, my dear fellow? You inspire such terror, not only in the papal government, but even in the neighbouring kingdoms; they are absolutely determined to set an example.’
‘But Peppino does not even belong to my band. He is a poor shepherd who has committed no other crime than to supply us with food.’
‘Which undeniably makes him your accomplice. But they are showing him some consideration. Instead of being beaten to death, as you would be if they ever caught you, he will merely be guillotined. In any event, this will vary the entertainment and they will have something for everyone to watch.’
‘Quite apart from the entertainment which I am planning and which no one expects.’
‘My dear friend,’ said the man in the cloak, ‘forgive me for saying this, but I suspect you may be preparing to commit some act of folly.’
‘I shall do everything to prevent the execution of a poor devil who finds himself in this pass because he helped me. By the Madonna! I should consider myself a coward if I were not to do something for the poor boy.’
‘And what do you intend to do?’
‘I shall deploy twenty men or so around the scaffold and, as soon as they bring him, give a signal; then we shall leap on the escort with daggers drawn and carry him off.’
‘This plan seems very risky to me and I honestly believe that mine may be better.’
‘And what is your plan, Excellency?’
‘I shall give a thousand piastres to someone I know and shall succeed in having Peppino’s execution delayed until next year. At that time I shall give another thousand piastres to another person, whom I also know, and have him escape from prison.’
‘Are you sure this will work?’
‘Pardieu!’ said the man in the cloak, in French.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said the Trasteveran.
‘What I mean, my dear fellow, is that I shall do more by myself with my gold than you and all your people with their daggers, their pistols, their carbines and their blunderbusses. So let me do it.’
‘Willingly; but if you should fail, we shall still be ready and waiting.’
‘Be ready, that’s up to you; but you may be sure I shall have him pardoned.’
‘Tuesday is the day after tomorrow, so beware. You only have tomorrow.’
‘Yes, agreed. But there are twenty-four hours in a day, sixty minutes in an hour and sixty seconds in a minute. A lot can be done in eighty-six thousand four hundred seconds.’
‘How will we know if you have succeeded, Excellency?’
‘Simple. I have rented the last three windows in the Café Rospoli. If I have obtained a stay of execution, the two corner windows will be hung with yellow damask, but the middle one with a red cross on white damask.’
‘Perfect. And how will you deliver the pardon?’
‘Send me one of your men, disguised as a penitent, and I shall give it to him. Dressed in that way, he will easily get to the foot of the scaffold and pass the decree to the head of the Order of Penitents, who will give it to the executioner. Meanwhile, have the news given to Peppino. We don’t want him to die of fear or go mad, because in that case we would have been to a lot of needless trouble and expense on his behalf.’
‘Listen, Excellency,’ said the peasant. ‘I am deeply devoted to you, you know that, I suppose?’
‘I hope so, at least.’
‘Well, if you can save Peppino, it will be more than devotion from now on, it will be obedience.’
‘Careful what you are saying, my good friend! I may perhaps remind you of this one day, because the day may come when I shall need you in my turn…’
‘Well, then, Excellency, you will find me in your hour of need as I found you at this moment. Even if you should be in the other end of the earth, you have only to write to me: “Do this!”, and I shall do it, by my…’
‘Hush!’ the other man said. ‘I can hear something.’
‘It’s some travellers visiting the Colosseum by torchlight.’
‘There would be no sense in letting them find us together. The guides are all informers and they might recognize you; honourable though your friendship is, my dear friend, if
people knew that we were as close as we are, I fear that my reputation might suffer from it.’
‘So, if you do obtain the stay of execution?’
‘The middle window will have a damask hanging with a red cross.’
‘And if you fail to obtain it?’
‘The yellow hangings.’
‘And in that case?’
‘In that case, my good fellow, feel free to exercise your dagger: I give you my permission and I shall be there to see it.’
‘Farewell, Excellency. I am counting on you. Count on me!’
With these words, the Trasteveran disappeared down the stairway, while the stranger, wrapping his face still more tightly in his cloak, passed within a couple of yards of Franz and went down into the arena by the outside steps. A second later Franz heard his name echoing beneath the vaults: Albert was calling him.
He waited until the two men had got well away before replying, not wishing to let them know that there had been a witness who, even though he had not seen their faces, had not missed a word of their conversation.
Ten minutes later, Franz was driving back towards the Hôtel d’Espagne, listening with quite unmannerly lack of attention to the learned discourse that Albert was making, based on Pliny and Calpurnius, about the nets furnished with iron spikes which used to prevent the wild animals from pouncing on the spectators.
He let him chatter on without arguing. He was anxious to be left alone so that he could give his whole mind to what had just taken place in front of him.
One of the two men had certainly been a stranger to him, and this had been the first time he had seen or heard him; but the same was not true of the other. And, though Franz had not been able to make out the man’s face, which was constantly wrapped either in darkness or in his cloak, the sound of that voice had struck him too forcibly the first time he heard it for him ever to hear it again without recognizing it. There was, above all, something strident and metallic in those mocking tones which had made him tremble in the ruins of the Colosseum as before in the caves of Monte Cristo. He was utterly convinced that the man was none other than Sinbad the Sailor.