Kydd. Without any doubt, Kydd's friendship had saved his sanity and made possible the enduring of his sentence. Renzi knew his own mind needed nurture and satisfaction or it would suffer a sterile withering, and he had found both in Kydd's intelligence and level-headed thinking. And they had shared so much together — what they had shared!
But when Kydd had been in another ship he was robbed of this: he was in an island of himself, no one to relieve the days with insight and an acquisitive mind. It was in those dull, repetitive times that the full hardship of what he had taken on was brought to bear. The lower deck of a man-o'-war was plain, unadorned, uncomplicated, but — and this was the cruel, plain fact - it was not the place for an educated and sensitive man.
'Lucrezia, pray help me. My sentence of exile is for five years, and its course is nearly run. So do I — must I — return then to my family? Leave the sea and my friends — my true friends . . .' It was harder to bear, now it had been given voice.
The gondola rocked gendy in the calm of the lagoon, Lucrezia watching him calmly. But she had no hesitation: 'Niccolo, ragazzo, you know th' answer to that,' she said gently, stroking his hair. 'You have serve your sentence, you can be proud, but you are a gentleman, not low-born. Go to your family an' start life again.'
It was devastating — not what she had said, which was unanswerable, but the discovery that he should have known it would have to finish in this way. A great upwelling of emotion came, sudden and deluging. He covered his face as sobs turned to tears - but in the hot rush a cool voice remained to tell him that this was a final, irreversible decision: before the end of the year he would no longer be in the harsh world of the common seaman.
Kydd picked himself up, more dismayed than hurt. He had always admired his friend's fine intellect, but now he had serious doubts about the balance of his mind. Yet to look for him in this libertine madness was not possible — more to the point was how to steer a course back to their lodgings.
He remembered the big marble bridge. 'Th' Rialto, if y' please,' he asked passers-by, and in this way soon found himself on familiar territory. A quick hunting about found their doss-house.
The Swede looked up curiously. 'Where's Renzi?' A swirl of smoke and coarse shouting eddied from the dark recesses inside, but Larsson was content to stay with his garba.
'He's comin' back,' Kydd snapped. *Renzi knows his duty, ye'll find.' That much would be certain: if anything in this world was a fixed quantity it was that Renzi would fulfil his duty.
But Renzi did not return that night. Kydd waited in the dark loft, hearing the strange sounds of the Venetian night. He slept fitfully.
Minutes before their due reporting time to Lieutenant Griffith, Renzi returned. He gave no explanation, but seemed far more in control — yet distant, unreachable, in a way Kydd had never seen him before.
'We meet the agent at the Rialto,' Renzi said, leading them down to the steps close to the bridge. Amati was waiting for them, and did not reply to their greeting. A gondola threaded through the water towards them, its cabin closed. They stepped aboard and it pushed off to the middle of the Grand Canal.
'Report!' The order came from the anonymous dark of the cabin.
'All quiet, sir,' was Renzi's cool reply, 'but I have heard reliably that the French are at the approaches to Venice, no more than a few miles. It is to be reasonably assumed, sir, that Sir Alastair has been unfortunately taken in trying to get through their lines.'
'Where did you hear this?'
'From ... I have no reason to doubt my source, sir.'
There was no immediate reply. Then, 'Venice is a sovereign republic — the French would never dare to violate her territory. We are safe here for the moment. We shall wait a little longer, I think.'
Renzi frowned. 'Sir, the French commander, General Buonaparte, is different from the others. He's bold and intelligent, wins by surprise and speed. I don't think we can underestimate—'
'Renzi, you are impertinent — this is not a decision for a common sailor. We stay.'
'Aye aye, sir,' Renzi acknowledged carefully.
'You will report here at the same time tomorrow. If you get word of Sir Alastair, I am to be informed immediately.'
