The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (44 page)

Not too much of this Madam Marquess at once. Let me dilate a little what Zadoch did with my courtesan after he had sold me to Zacharie. Of an ill tree I hope you are not so ill-sighted in grafting to expect good fruit. He was a Jew, and entreated her like a Jew. Under shadow of enforcing her to tell how much money she had of his prentice so to be trained to his cellar, he stripped her and scourged her from top to toe tantara.
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Day by day he digested his meat with leading her the measures. A diamond delphinical dry lecher it was. The Ballet of the Whipper
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of late days here in England was but a scoff in comparison of him. All the colliers of Romford, who hold their corporation by yarking the blind bear at Paris garden,
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were but bunglers to him. He had the right agility of the lash; there were none of them could make the cord come aloft with a twang half like him. Mark the ending, mark the ending.

The tribe of Judah is adjudged from Rome to be trudging; they may no longer be lodged there. All the Albumazers,
Rabisaks, Gideons, Tebiths, Benhadads, Benrodans, Zedekiahs, Halies of them were banquerouts
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and turned out of house and home. Zacharie came running to Zadoch's in sackcloth and ashes presently after his goods were confiscated, and told him how he was served, and what decree was coming out against them all. Descriptions, stand by: here is to be expressed the fury of Lucifer when he was turned over heaven-bar for a wrangler.
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There is a toad-fish, which taken out of the water swells more than one would think his skin could hold, and bursts in his face that toucheth him. So swelled Zadoch, and was ready to burst out of his skin and shoot his bowels like chain-shot full at Zacharie's face for bringing him such baleful tidings. His eyes glared and burnt blue like brimstone and aqua vitae set on fire in an eggshell. His very nose lightened glow-worms; his teeth crashed and grated together like the joints of a high building cracking and rocking like a cradle whenas a tempest takes her full butt against his broadside. He swore, he cursed, and said:

‘These be they that worship that crucified God of Nazareth. Here's the fruits of their new-found gospel: sulphur and gunpowder carry them all quick to Gehenna! I would spend my soul willingly to have that triple-headed Pope with all his sin-absolved whores and oil-greased priests borne with a black sant
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on the devils' backs in procession to the pit of perdition. Would I might sink presently into the earth, so I might blow up this Rome, this whore of Babylon, into the air with my breath. If I must be banished, if those heathen dogs will needs rob me of my goods, I will poison their springs and conduit-heads, whence they receive all their water round about the city. I'll tice all the young children into my house that I can get, and, cutting their throats, barrel them up in powdering-beef tubs, and so send them to victual the Pope's galleys. Ere the officers come to extend, I'll bestow an hundred pound on a dole of bread, which I'll cause to be kneaded with scorpion's oil that will
kill more than the plague. I'll hire them that make their wafers or sacramentary gods, to minge
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them after the same sort, so in the zeal of their superstitious religion shall they languish and droop like carrion. If there be ever a blasphemous conjurer that can call the winds from their brazen caves and make the clouds travail before their time, I'll give him the other hundred pounds to disturb the heavens a whole week together with thunder and lightning, if it be for nothing but to sour all the wines in Rome and turn them to vinegar. As long as they either have oil or wine, this plague feeds but pinglingly
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upon them.'

‘Zadoch, Zadoch,' said Doctor Zacharie, cutting him off, ‘thou threat'nest the air, whilst we perish here on earth. It is the Countess Juliana, the Marquis of Mantua's wife, and no other, that hath complotted our confusion. Ask not how, but insist in my words, and assist in revenge.'

‘As how? As how?' said Zadoch, shrugging and shrubbing.
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‘More happy than the patriarchs were I if, crushed to death with the greatest torments Rome's tyrants have tried, there might be quintessenced out of me one quart of precious poison. I have a leg with an issue; shall I cut it off, and from his fount of corruption extract a venom worse than any serpent's? If thou wilt, I'll go to a house that is infected, where, catching the plague and having got a running sore upon me, I'll come and deliver her a supplication and breathe upon her. I know my breath stinks so already that it is within half a degree of poison. Ill pay her home if I perfect it with any more putrefaction.'

‘No, no, brother Zadoch,' answered Zacharie, ‘that is not the way. Canst thou provide me ere a bondmaid endued with singular and divine qualified beauty, whom as a present from our synagogue thou mayest commend unto her, desiring her to be good and gracious unto us?'

‘I have, I am for you,' quoth Zadoch. ‘Diamante, come forth. Here's a wench,' said he, ‘of as clean a skin as Susanna. She hath not a wem on her flesh from the sole of the foot
to the crown of the head. How think you, Master Doctor, will she not serve the turn?'.

‘She will,' said Zacharie, ‘and therefore I'll tell you what charge I would have committed to her. But I care not if I disclose it only to her. Maid (if thou beest a maid), come hither to me. Thou must be sent to the Countess of Mantua's about a small piece of service, whereby, being now a bondwoman, thou shalt purchase freedom and gain a large dowry to thy marriage. I know thy master loves thee dearly, though he will not let thee perceive so much. He intends after he is dead to make thee his heir, for he hath no children. Please him in that I shall instruct thee, and thou art made for ever. So it is, that the Pope is far out of liking with the Countess of Mantua, his concubine, and hath put his trust in me, his physician, to have her quietly and charitably made away. Now, I cannot intend it, for I have many cures in hand which call upon me hourly. Thou, if thou beest placed with her as her waiting-maid or cup-bearer, mayest temper poison with her broth, her meat, her drink, her oils, her syrups, and never be bewrayed. I will not say whether the Pope hath heard of thee, and thou mayest come to be his leman in her place if thou behave thyself wisely. What, hast thou the heart to go thorough with it or no?'

Diamante, deliberating with herself in what hellish servitude she lived with the Jew, and that she had no likelihood to be released of it, but fall from evil to worse if she omitted this opportunity, resigned herself over wholly to be disposed and employed as seemed best unto them. Thereupon, without further consultation, her wardrop was richly rigged, her tongue smooth filed and new edged on the whetstone, her drugs delivered her, and presented she was by Zadoch, her master, to the Countess, together with some other slight newfangles, as from the whole congregation, desiring her to stand their merciful mistress and solicit the Pope for them, that through one man's ignorant offence were all generally in disgrace with him, and had incurred the cruel sentence of loss of goods and of banishment.

Juliana, liking well the pretty round face of my black-browed Diamante, gave the Jew better countenance than otherwise she would have done, and told him for her own part she was but a private woman, and could promise nothing confidently of his Holiness; for though he had suffered himself to be overruled by her in some humours, yet in this that touched him so nearly, she knew not how he would be inclined; but what lay in her either to pacify or persuade him, they should be sure of, and so craved his absence.

His back turned, she asked Diamante what countrywoman she was, what friends she had, and how she fell into the hands of that Jew. She answered that she was a magnifico's daughter of Venice, stolen when she was young from her friends, and sold to this Jew for a bond-woman, ‘who,' quoth she, ‘hath used me so jewishly and tyrannously that for ever I must celebrate the memory of this day wherein I am delivered from his jurisdiction. Alas' (quoth she, deep sighing), ‘why did I enter into any mention of my own misusage? It will be thought that that which I am now to reveal proceeds of malice, not truth. Madam, your life is sought by these Jews that sue to you. Blush not, nor be troubled in your mind, for with warning I shall arm you against all their intentions. Thus and thus' (quoth she) ‘said Doctor Zacharie unto me. This poison he delivered me. Before I was called in to them, such and such consultation through the crevice of the door hard-locked did I hear betwixt them. Deny it if they can, I will justify it. Only I beseech you to be favourable lady unto me, and let me not fall again into the hands of those vipers.'

Juliana said little but thought unhappily. Only she thanked her for detecting it, and vowed, though she were her bondwoman, to be a mother unto her. The poison she took of her, and set it up charily on a shelf in her closet, thinking to keep it for some good purposes; as, for example, when I was consumed and worn to the bones through her abuse, she would give me but a dram too much, and pop me into a privy. So she had served some of her paramours ere
that, and, if God had not sent Diamante to be my redeemer, undoubtedly I had drunk of the same cup.

In a leaf or two before was I locked up. Here in this page the foresaid goodwife Countess comes to me. She is no longer a judge but a client. How she came, in what manner of attire, with what immodest and uncomely words she courted me, if I should take upon me to enlarge, all modest ears would abhor me. Some inconvenience she brought me to by her harlotlike behaviour, of which enough I can never repent me.

Let that be forgiven and forgotten. Fleshly delights could not make her slothful or slumbering in revenge against Zadoch. She set men about him to incense and egg him on in courses of discontentment, and other supervising espials to ply, follow and spur forward those suborning incensers Both which played their parts so that Zadoch, of his own nature violent, swore by the ark of Jehovah to set the whole city on fire ere he went out of it. Zacharie, after he had furnished the wench with the poison, and given her instructions to go to the devil, durst not stay one hour for fear of disclosing, but fled to the Duke of Burbon,
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that after sacked Rome, and there practised with his Bastardship all the mischief against the Pope and Rome that envy could put into his mind. Zadoch was left behind for the hangman. According to his oath, he provided balls of wildfire in a readiness, and laid trains of gunpowder in a hundred several places of the city to blow it up, which he had set fire to and also bandied his balls abroad, if his attendant spies had not taken him with the manner. To the straitest prison in Rome he was dragged, where from top to toe he was clogged with fetters and manacles. Juliana informed the Pope of Zacharie's and his practice. Zacharie was sought for, but
Non est inventus
:
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he was packing long before. Commandment was given that Zadoch, whom they had under hand and seal of lock and key, should be executed with all the fiery torments that could be found out.

I'll make short work, for I am sure I have wearied all my readers. To the execution place was he brought, where first and foremost he was stripped; then on a sharp iron stake fastened in the ground he had his fundament pitched, which stake ran up along into the body like a spit. Under his arm-holes two of like sort A great bonfire they made round about him, wherewith his flesh roasted, not burned; and ever as with the heat his skin blistered, the fire was drawn aside and they basted him with a mixture of aqua fortis, alum water and mercury sublimatum,
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which smarted to the very soul of him, and searched him to the marrow. Then did they scourge his back parts so blistered and blasted with burning whips of red-hot wire. His head they nointed over with pitch and tar and so inflamed it. To his privy members they tied streaming fireworks. The skin from the crest of the shoulder, as also from his elbows, his huckle bones, his knees, his ankles, they plucked and gnawed off with sparkling pincers. His breast and his belly with seal-skins they grated over, which as fast as they grated and rawed, one stood over and laved with smith's cindery water
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and aqua vitae. His nails they half raised up, and then underpropped them with sharp pricks, like a tailor's shop window half-open on a holiday. Every one of his fingers they rent up to the wrist; his toes they brake off by the roots, and let them still hang by a little skin. In conclusion, they had a small oil fire, such as men blow light bubbles of glass with, and beginning at his feet, they let him lingeringly burn up limb by limb, till his heart was consumed, and then he died. Triumph, women; this was the end of the whipping Jew, contrived by a woman, in revenge of two women, herself and her maid.

I have told you, or should tell you, in what credit Diamante grew with her mistress. Juliana never dreamed but she was an authentical maid. She made her the chief of her bedchamber; she appointed none but her to look in to me, and serve me of such necessaries as I lacked. You must suppose when we met there was no small rejoicing on either part,
much like the three brothers that went three several ways to seek their fortunes and at the year's end at those three crossways met again and told one another how they sped. So after we had been long asunder seeking our fortunes, we commented one to another most kindly, what cross haps had encountered us. Ne'er a six hours but the Countess cloyed me with her company. It grew to this pass, that either I must find out some miraculous means of escape or drop away in a consumption, as one pined for lack of meat. I was clean spent and done; there was no hope of me.

The year held on his course to doomsday, when Saint Peter's Day
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dawned. That day is a day of supreme solemnity in Rome, when the Ambassador of Spain comes and presents a milk-white jennet to the Pope, that kneels down upon his own accord in token of obeisance and humility before him, and lets him stride on his back as easy as one strides over a block. With this jennet is offered a rich purse of a yard length, full of Peter pence. No music that hath the gift of utterance, but sounds all the while. Copes and costly vestments deck the hoarsest and beggarliest singing-man. Not a clerk or sexton is absent, no, nor a mule nor a footcloth belonging to any Cardinal but attends on the tail of the triumph. The Pope himself is borne in his pontificalibus thorough the Burgo (which is the chief street in Rome) to the Ambassador's house to dinner, and thither resorts all the assembly; where if a poet should spend all his lifetime in describing a banquet, he could not feast his auditors half so well with words, as he doth his guests with junkets.