One thing was quite clear; so long as he did not draw from the house of Cornèr the money which Marco Pesaro had sent to the banker for the commission, the merchandise was his property, since he had paid for it. But he must make up his mind whether he meant to call it his own, or not. If he decided to keep Arethusa, he must at once set about finding another slave for Marco Pesaro, or else write to say that he declined to execute the commission.
In that case, Arethusa remained his. The reason why he had so suddenly determined to buy her was that he fancied she was a girl of good family whom some great misfortune had brought into her present distress. But she had calmly declared that she was a slave, and expected nothing better than to be sold.
If this were true he had paid four hundred ducats for a foolish fancy. She was perhaps the child of some beautiful slave, and had been carefully educated by her mother’s owner; and the latter, needing money perhaps, had sent her to the market; or perhaps he had died and his heirs were selling his property.
All this was very unsatisfactory. If she was slave-born, Zeno’s best course was to send Arethusa to Pesaro, as soon as the Venetian ship sailed, for he had not the least intention of wasting money in a futile attempt to free slaves whom the law regarded as born to their condition. Their position was a misfortune, no doubt, but they were used to it, and no one had then dreamed of man’s inherent right of freedom, excepting one or two popes and fanatics who had been considered visionaries. To Zeno, who was a man of his own times, it seemed quite as absurd that every one should be born free, as it would seem to you that everybody should be born an English duke, a Tammany boss, a great opera tenor, or Crown Prince of the Empire. Moreover, in the case of a beauty, especially of one sold to live in Venice, there were palliations, as Zeno knew. Arethusa would live in luxury; she would also soon be the real dominant in Marco Pesaro’s household, as favourite slaves very generally were in the palaces of those who owned them. They had not yet all the vast influence in Venice which they gained in the following century, but their power was already waxing balefully.
Zeno did not hesitate long; he never did, and when he had made up his mind he sent for one of Arethusa’s maids.
‘What is your name, child?’ he asked, scrutinising the girl’s commonplace features and intelligent eyes.
‘Yulia, Magnificence,’ she answered. ‘If it please you,’ she added diffidently, as if half-expecting that he would choose to call her something else.
‘Yulia,’ repeated Zeno, fixing the name in his memory, ‘and what do you call your mistress?’ he asked abruptly.
The girl was puzzled by the question.
‘Her name is Arethusa,’ she answered, after a moment’s reflection.
‘I know that. But when you speak to her, what do you call her? When she gives you an order, how do you answer her? You do not merely say, “Yes, Arethusa,” or “No, Arethusa,” do you? She would not be pleased.’
Yulia smiled and shook her head.
‘We call her Kokóna,’ she answered. ‘Is not that the Greek word for young lady, your Magnificence?’
‘Yes,’ said Zeno, ‘that is the Greek word for young lady. But Arethusa is only a slave as you are. Why do you give her a title? What makes you think she is a lady?’
‘She is a different kind of slave. She cost much gold. Besides, if we did not call her Kokóna she would perhaps pull our hair or scratch our faces. Who knows? We are only ignorant little maids, but so much the big negress at the slave-prison taught us.’
‘She taught you manners, did she?’ Zeno smiled at the idea.
‘She made us cry very often, but it was the better for us,’ answered the maid, with philosophy beyond her years. ‘We have fetched a good price, and we have a good master, and we are together, all because we waited cleverly on the Kokóna one night and one morning.’
‘One night?’ asked Zeno, in surprise.
‘She was only brought to the slave-prison yesterday evening, Magnificence.’
‘At what time?’
‘It was the third hour of darkness, for the black woman sent the others to bed as soon as she was brought.’
Zeno thought over this information for a moment.
‘Tell her,’ said he, ‘that I shall sup with her this evening. That is all.’
Yulia, who had kept her hands respectfully before her, made a little obeisance, turned quickly, and ran away, leaving the master of the house to his meditations. She found Zoë still sitting by the window, and the dainty dishes which Lucilla had received on a chiselled bronze tray and had placed beside her were untasted.
‘The master bids me say that he will sup with you to-night, Kokóna,’ said Yulia.
Zoë made a slight movement, but controlled herself, and said nothing, though the colour rose to her face, and she turned quite away from the maids lest they should see it. They stood still a long time, waiting her pleasure.
‘Will it not please you to eat something?’ asked Yulia timidly, after a time. ‘You have eaten nothing since last night, and even then it was little.’
‘I thought I ate all the sweetmeats,’ answered Zoë, turning and smiling a little at the recollection of the girls’ terror.
The hours passed and nothing happened. Some time after dinner she saw from her upper window that Zeno came out of the house and went down the marble steps to a beautiful skiff that was waiting there. As he stepped in, she drew far back from the window lest he should look up and see that she had been watching him. She heard his voice as he gave an order to the two watermen; their oars fell with a gentle plash, and when she looked again they were pulling the boat away upstream, towards the palace of Blachernæ and the Sweet Waters.
The maids, having eaten of the most delicious food they had ever tasted till they could eat no more, had curled themselves up together on a carpet not far from their mistress, and were fast asleep. The shadow of the house lengthened till it slanted out to the right beyond the marble steps upon the placid water, and the bright sunlight that fell on Pera and Galata began to turn golden; so, when gold has been melted to white heat in the crucible, it begins to cool, grows tawny, and is shot with streaks of red.
As the day waned in a purple haze and the air grew colder, the two maids awoke together, rubbed their eyes, and instantly sprung to their feet. Zoë had not even noticed them, but just then the even plashing of oars was heard again, and she saw the skiff coming back, but without Zeno. She looked again to be sure that it was the same boat, and a ray of hope flashed in her thoughts like summer lightning. Perhaps he had changed his mind, and would not come — not to-night.
The maids reminded her of his message, and she let them dress her again for the evening. They arranged her hair, and twined strings of pearls in it, which they had found in a sandal-wood box on the dressing-table. They took clothes from the wardrobes, fine linen, wrought with wonderful needlework, and pale silks, and velvet of faintest blue embroidered with silver threads; and when they had done their best they held two burnished metal mirrors before her and behind her, that she might admire herself. They had lighted many little lamps that were all prepared, for it was now dark out of doors, and they had spent two hours in arraying Zoë. And she smiled and patted their cheeks, and called them clever girls, for she was sure that Zeno had changed his mind. He would not come to her to-night.
But even as she repeated the words to herself, he came softly through the warm lamplight and stood before her, and her heart stopped beating.
For the first time since she had taken the final step, she felt the whole extent and meaning of what she had done. She was really a slave, and she was alone with her master.
CHAPTER VII
‘ARE YOU AFRAID of me?’
Zeno asked the question gently, for the colour had left her face; and she looked up at him with a frightened stare. He had once seen a like terror in the eyes of a startled doe, as if a clouded opal passed across its sight.
Zoë did not answer, but she moved instinctively, drawing herself together,
as it were, and turning one shoulder to him. He heard her breathing hard.
It was a very new thing that he felt; for often, in fight, and often again, he had seen strong men turn pale before him, just when they felt that he was a master of the sword and was going to kill, but he had never seen a woman afraid of him in his life. In his narrow experience, they had always seemed glad that he should be near them, and should speak to them. Therefore, when he saw that Zoë was terrified, he did not know what to do or say, and he stupidly repeated his question,
‘Are you afraid of me?’
Zoë dug her little nails into the palms of her hands, and looked round the room, as if for help; but the two maids had disappeared as soon as the master had entered, for so they had been taught to do by their trainer. She was quite alone with the man who had paid for her.
All sorts of confused thoughts crowded her brain, as Zeno sat down on a seat beside the divan.
All sorts of confused thoughts crowded her brain, as Zeno sat down on a seat beside the divan. She wondered what would happen if she told him her story in a few words, and appealed to his generosity. She guessed that he was kind; at least, sometimes. But perhaps he was a friend of the new Emperor, and it would amuse him to know that he had bought Michael Rhangabé’s daughter. Or he might send for Rustan, and insist on revoking the bargain, and Rustan might take her back to the beggars’ quarter, and force poor Kyría Agatha to give up the money. Zoë knew at once little and much of the world of Constantinople, but of one thing she was certain, there would be neither mercy nor kindness for any of her name while Andronicus reigned in Blachernæ.
She was terrified by the presence of her master, but she was perfectly brave in her resolve; the sight of death itself before her eyes should not make her do anything whereby those for whom she had sold herself might suffer.
Zeno sat still and looked at her. It seemed to him that she was far more beautiful than he had at first realised. As she leaned sideways against the big cushions, turning her face away and her shoulder towards him, there was something in the line of her cheek and of her neck where it joined the ear, and in the little downy ringlets at the roots of her hair that stirred his blood, against his will. Also, the devil came and whispered to his heart that she was his personal property, as much as his horse, his house and his stores of merchandise. The laws about slaves were uncertain enough in Italy, but there was no doubt of the law in Constantinople. The slave Arethusa, weighing so many talents and minæ, having so many sound teeth, and other good points, was the absolute property of Carlo Zeno. He might kill her, if he liked, in any way he chose, and the law would not call it murder. There would be one slave less, and he would have thrown away four hundred gold ducats; but that would be all.
She seemed to him the most beautiful creature in the world, and the devil was not suggesting that he should kill her; not by any means.
For a long time, the man and his slave were silent, and scarcely moved, and neither of them afterwards forgot those minutes. In their thoughts each was struggling with what seemed an impossibility, a something which could never be done. The high-born girl, for the sake of a mother who was not her mother, and of brothers who were not of her blood, was resolved to be to the end what she had made herself to save their lives, the obedient slave of a merchant who had paid gold for her. It was worse than death, but if she did not die of it, she must live through it, lest the good she had done should be undone again.
The man who had the law’s own right of life and death over her, and whose warm young blood her beauty stirred so profoundly, chose to resist and play that he was not the master after all. His lean face was calm enough in the quiet lamplight, as it would have been in raging battle; but within was that he would not care to feel again, nor perhaps to let others know that he had felt.
At last, wondering at the stillness, half-believing and quite hoping that he was no longer in the room, Zoë turned her head. His eyes were on her, but there was something in them that she could not fear.
‘Tell me who you are,’ he said quietly.
Of all questions she had least expected this one, which seemed so natural to him. She waited a moment before she spoke.
‘Are you dissatisfied, sir?’ she asked in a low voice. ‘Has the Bokharian cheated you?’
‘No! What a thought!’
‘Then you know what I am, and I can tell you nothing more, my lord. Can a slave have a pedigree?’
‘I do not believe that you were born a slave,’ said Zeno, leaning forward a little and looking into her eyes.
After a moment, her lids drooped under his gaze, but she would not speak.
‘Have you nothing to say?’ he asked, disappointed at her silence.
Again the temptation seized her to tell him all, since he spoke so kindly; but still she thought of what might happen to Kyría Agatha.
‘I am your bought slave,’ she said, almost directly. ‘I have nothing else to tell.’
‘But you had a mother?’
‘I never knew her.’
‘Your father, then?’
‘I never knew him.’
Zeno was not always patient, even with women, and there was no reason why he should be forbearing with his own property.
‘I do not believe you,’ he said in a tone of annoyance, and he rose and began to pace the room.
Now it chanced that Zoë had been able to answer his last two questions quite truthfully, for she had not the least recollection of her own father and mother, who had died of the plague when she was three months old.
‘I will swear to you on all holy things that it is true,’ she said, watching him.
He made an impatient gesture.
‘A slave cannot take an oath,’ he answered roughly.
Zoë lifted her beautiful head at once, and her eyes shone; but he did not see, for he had turned his back on her in his walk, and a moment later she resumed her former submissive attitude.
Zeno stopped near the door and clapped his hands; the two maids appeared.
‘Bring supper,’ he said.
As they went to obey he came back and sat down again beside the divan. There was just room to place a small table between him and Zoë. The girls came back and waited on them, but neither spoke. Zeno prepared a salad himself with ingredients brought ready for making it, and when it was dressed he helped Zoë to a little of it. She had watched him, for the Italian custom was new to her and she had never known how a salad was composed. Zeno poured Greek wine into her glass, a delicate white goblet from Murano, with faint blue lines round the stem. But she neither ate nor drank.
‘Go,’ said Zeno to the maids. ‘I will call you.’
The two slipped away noiselessly. Zeno had forgotten his displeasure, and he felt her presence again.
‘You must eat and drink,’ he said gently. ‘If there is anything you like, tell me. You shall have it.’
‘You are kind,’ she answered, but she did not lift her hand. ‘I have no appetite,’ she added, after a little pause.
I do not know why no man believes a woman when she says that she is not hungry. Zeno was annoyed, and by way of showing his displeasure he himself began to eat more than he wanted. Zoë looked on in silence while he finished another bird and all the salad he had made. She would not have been a woman if she had not seen that he felt a little shy, all at once, as the most fearless and energetic men may before a woman they do not understand. Then there was a change for the better in her own state; she breathed more freely, her heart beat more steadily, the weight that lay like lead on her chest, just below her throat, was lightened. When a woman sees that a man is shy with her, she is sure that sooner or later he will turn at her will; and though she is sometimes mistaken, the chances are that she is right.
Zeno had never been shy before; but now, when he wished to speak, he could find nothing to say, and Zoë knew it, and would not help him. It was strange that as her fear subsided she thought him handsomer than at first sight, in the morning. When he had finished
eating, he drank some wine, set down the glass, and looked at her with an expression that was meant to show something like anger; for he already regretted the time — distant five minutes — when she had been afraid of him, and he had been master of the situation. He drew his brows together, set his lips, and glared at her, but to his amazement she did not seem frightened. He had lost the thread, for the time, and she had found it. She answered his look with one of gentle surprise.
‘Have you finished supper already?’ she asked sweetly.
A slight flush rose in his brown cheek, as he felt his shyness increase, but he kept his eyes steadily on her.
‘You do not seem to be afraid of me any longer,’ he said, by way of answer.
‘Have I anything to fear from you?’ she asked, in a trusting tone.
She risked everything on the question, or thought she did. She won. His face changed and softened, for by appealing to his generosity she had put him at ease.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘You never were in danger from me. Besides,’ he added, with something like an effort, ‘I have not made up my mind what to do with you.’
Zoë sat up straight, resting one hand on the edge of the little table.
‘The truth is,’ he went on, ‘I did not buy you for myself.’
Zoë made a quick movement in her seat. Then her tender mouth hardened in a look of contempt.
‘So you are only another slave-dealer!’ she cried scornfully. But Zeno laughed at the mere idea, and was glad to laugh. It was a relief.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I am not a slave-dealer. I am a Venetian merchant, I believe. I have been a soldier, and I came near being a prebendary!’
‘A priest!’ Zoë’s face showed her disgust.
‘No, for I never was in orders,’ answered Zeno, growing more sure of himself as she grew more angry. ‘But as for you, a friend of mine, a rich gentleman of Venice, has asked me as a favour to send him the most beautiful slave to be had in Constantinople for the large price he named. As a matter of fact — —’
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1169