When the thread broke, leaving her in the unreality, her lip quivered, and she was a little pale. Zeno was standing beside her, holding her hand.
‘Good-night, Arethusa,’ he said in a tone that frightened her.
The words sounded like ‘good-bye,’ for that was what they might mean; he knew it, and she guessed it.
‘You are going away!’ she cried, springing to her feet and slipping her hand from his to catch his wrist.
‘Not if I can help it,’ he answered. ‘But you may not see me to-morrow.’
‘Not in the evening?’ she asked in great anxiety. ‘Not even after they are gone?’
‘I cannot tell,’ he replied gravely. ‘Perhaps not.’
She dropped his wrist and turned from him.
‘You are going to be married,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I was sure of it.’
‘No!’ he answered with emphasis. ‘Not that!’
She turned to him again; it did not occur to her to doubt his word, and her eyes asked him the next question with eager anxiety, but he would not answer. He only repeated the three words, very tenderly and softly —
‘Good-night — Arethusa!’
She knew it was good-bye, though he would not say it; she was not guessing his meaning now. But she was proud. He should not see how hurt she was.
‘Good-night,’ she answered. ‘If you are going away — then, good-bye.’
Her voice almost broke, but she pressed her lips tight together when the last word had passed them, and though the tears seemed to be burning her brain she would not shed them while his eyes were on her.
‘God keep you,’ he said, as one says who goes on a long journey.
Again he was turning from her, not meaning to look back; but it was more than she could bear. In an inward tempest of fear and pain she had been taught suddenly that she truly loved him more than her soul, and in the same instant he was leaving her for a long time, perhaps for ever. She could not bear it, and her pride broke down. She caught his hand as he turned to go and held it fast.
‘Take me with you!’ she cried. ‘Oh, do not go away and leave me behind!’
A silence of three seconds.
‘I will come back,’ he said. ‘If I am alive, I will come back.’
‘You are going into danger!’ Her hand tightened on his, and she grew paler still.
He would not answer, but he patted her wrist kindly, trying to soothe her anxiety. He seemed quiet enough at that moment, but he felt the slow, full beat of his own heart and the rush of the swelling pulse in his throat. He had not guessed before to-night that she loved him; he was too simple, and far too sure that he himself could not love a slave. Even now he did not like to own it, but he knew that the hand she held was not passive; it pressed hers tighter in return, and drew it to him instead of pushing it away, till at last it was close to his breast.
‘Oh, let me go with you, take me with you!’ she repeated, beseeching with all her heart.
He was not thinking of danger now, he had forgotten it so far that he scarcely paid attention to her words or to her passionate entreaty. Words had lost sense and value, as they do in battle, and the fire ran along his arm to her hand. It had been cold; it was hot now, and throbbed strangely.
Then he dropped it and took her suddenly by her small throat, almost violently, and turned her face up to his; but she was not frightened, and she smiled in his grasp.
‘I did not mean to love you!’
He still held her as he spoke; she put up her hands together and took his wrists, but not to free herself; instead, she pressed his hold closer upon her throat, as if to make him choke her.
‘I wish you would kill me now!’ she cried, in a trembling, happy little voice.
He laughed low, and shook her the least bit, as a strong man shakes a child in play, but her eyes drew him to her more and more.
‘It would be so easy now,’ she almost whispered, ‘and I should be so happy!’
Then they kissed; and as their lips touched they closed their eyes, for they were too near to see each other any longer. Her head sank back from his upon his arm, for she was almost fainting, and he laid his palm gently on her forehead and pushed away her hair, and looked at her long.
‘I had not meant to love you,’ he said again.
Her lips were still parted, tender as rose-leaves at dewfall, and her eyes glistened as she opened them at the sound of his voice.
‘Are you sorry?’ she asked faintly.
‘I did not mean to love you!’
He kissed the question from her lips, and her right hand went up to his brown throat and round it, and drew him, to press the kiss closer; and then it held him down while she moved her head till she could whisper in his ear: —
‘It was only because you were angry,’ she said. ‘You are not really going out to-night! Tell me you are not!’
He would not answer at first, and he tried to kiss her again, but she would not let him, and she pushed him away till she could see his face. He met her eyes frankly, but he shook his head.
‘It must be to-night, and no other night,’ he said gravely. ‘I have made an appointment, and I have given my word. I cannot break it, but I shall come back.’
She slipped from his hold, and sat down on the broad divan, against the cushions.
‘You are going into danger,’ she said. ‘You may not come back. You told me so.’
He tried to laugh, and answered in a careless tone: —
‘I have come back from far more dangerous expeditions. Besides, I have guests to-morrow — that is a good reason for not being killed!’
He stood beside her, one hand half-thrust into his loose belt. She took the other, which hung down, and looked up to him, still pleading.
‘Please, please do not go to-night!’
Still he shook his head; nothing could move him, and he would go. A piteous look came into her eyes while they appealed to his in vain, and suddenly she dropped his hand and buried her face in the soft leathern pillow.
‘You had made me forget that I am only a slave!’ she cried.
The cushion muffled her voice, and the sentence was broken by a sob, though no tears came with it.
‘I would go to-night, though my own mother begged me to stay,’ Zeno answered.
Zoë turned her head without lifting it, and looked up at him sideways.
‘Then much depends on your going,’ she said, with a question in her tone. ‘If it were only for yourself, for your pleasure, or your fortune, you would not refuse your own mother!’
Zeno turned and began to walk up and down the room, but he said nothing in reply. A thought began to dawn in her mind.
‘But if it were for your country — for Venice — —’
He glanced sharply at her as he turned back towards her in his walk, and he slackened his pace. Zoë waited a moment before she spoke again, looked down, thoughtfully pinched the folds of silk on her knee, and looked up suddenly again as if an idea had struck her.
‘And though I am only your bought slave,’ she said, ‘I would not hinder you then. I mean, I would not even try to keep you from running into danger — for Venice!’
She held her head up proudly now, and the last words rang out in a tone that went to the man’s heart. He was not far from her when she spoke them. The last syllable had not died away on the quiet air and he already held her up in his arms, lifted clear from the floor, and his kisses were raining on her lips, and on her eyes, and her hair. She laughed low at the storm she had raised.
‘I love you!’ he whispered again and again softly, roughly, and triumphantly by turns.
She loved him too, and quite as passionately just then; every kiss woke a deep and delicious thrill that made her whole body quiver with delight, and each oft-repeated syllable of the three whispered words rang like a silver trumpet-note in her heart. But for all that her thoughts raced on, already following him in the coming hours.
With every woman, to love a man is to feel that
she must positively know just where he is going as soon as he is out of her sight. If it were possible, he should never leave the house without a ticket-of-leave and a policeman, followed by a detective to watch both; but that a man should assert any corresponding right to watch the dear object of his affections throws her into a paroxysm of fury; and it is hard to decide which woman most resents being spied upon, the angel of light, the siren that walketh in darkness, or the semi-virginal flirt.
Zoë really loved Zeno more truly at that moment, because the glorious tempest of kisses her speech had called down upon her willing little head brought with it the certainty that he was not going to spend the rest of the evening at the house of Sebastian Polo. This, at least, is how it strikes the story-teller in the bazaar; but the truth is that no man ever really understood any woman. It is uncertain whether any one woman understands any other woman; it is doubtful whether any woman understands her own nature; but one thing is sure, beyond question — every woman who loves a man believes, or tells him, that he helps her to understand herself. This shows us that men are not altogether useless.
Yet, to do Zoë justice, there was one other element in her joy. She had waited long to learn that Zeno meant to free Johannes if it could be done, and he had met all her questions with answers that told her nothing; she was convinced that he did not even know the passwords of those who called themselves conspirators, but who had done nothing in two years beyond inventing a few signs and syllables by which to recognise each other. Whether he knew them or not, he was ready to act at last, and the deed on which hung the destinies of Constantinople was to be attempted that very night. Before dawn Michael Rhangabé’s death might be avenged, and Kyría Agatha’s wrongs with Zoë’s own.
‘I want to help you,’ she said, when he let her speak. ‘Tell me how you are going to do it.’
‘With a boat and a rope,’ he answered.
‘Take me! I will sit quite still in the bottom. I will watch; no one has better eyes or ears than I.’
‘More beautiful you mean!’
He shut her eyes with his lips and kissed the lobe of one little ear. But she moved impatiently in his arms, with a small laugh that meant many things — that she was happy, and that she loved him, but that a kiss was no answer to what she had just said, and that he must not kiss her again till he had replied in words.
‘Take me!’ she repeated.
‘This is man’s work,’ he answered. ‘Besides, it is the work of one man only, and no more.’
‘Some one must watch below,’ Zoë suggested.
‘There is the man in the boat. But watching is useless. If any one surprises us in the tower, I can get away; but if I am caught by an enemy from the water the game is up. That is the only danger.’
‘That is the only danger,’ Zoë repeated, more to herself than for him.
He saw that she had understood now, and that she would not try to keep him longer, nor again beg to be taken. She went with him to the door of the vestibule without calling the maids, and she parted from him there, very quietly.
‘God speed you!’ she said, for good-bye.
When he reached the outer entrance and looked back once more, she was already gone within, and the quiet lamplight fell across the folds of the heavy curtain.
CHAPTER X
ZENO LEFT HIS house noiselessly half an hour later, after changing his clothes. He was now lightly clad in dark hose and a soft deerskin doublet with tight sleeves, a close-fitting woollen skull-cap covered his head, and he had no weapon but one good knife of which the sheath was fastened to the back of his belt, as a sailor carries it when he goes aloft to work on rigging. The night was cool, and he had a wide cloak over his shoulders, ready to drop in an instant if necessary.
It was intensely dark as he came out, and after being in the light he could hardly see the white marble steps of the landing. He almost lost his balance at the last one, and when he stepped quickly towards the boat, to save himself, he could not see it at all, and was considerably relieved to find himself in the stern sheets instead of in the water.
‘Gorlias!’ he whispered, leaning forwards.
‘Yes!’ answered the astrologer-fisherman.
The light skiff shot out into the darkness, away from the shore, instead of heading directly for Blachernæ. After a few minutes Gorlias rested on his oars. Zeno had grown used to the gloom and could now see him quite distinctly. Both men peered about them and listened for the sound of other oars, but there was nothing; they were alone on the water.
‘Is everything ready?’ Zeno asked in a low tone.
‘Everything. At the signal over eight hundred men will be before Blachernæ in a few minutes. There are fifty ladders in the ruined houses by the wall of the city. The money has had an excellent effect on the guard, for most of them were drunk this evening, and are asleep now. In the tower, the captain is asleep too, for his wife showed the red light an hour ago. She took up the package of opium last night by the thread.’
‘And Johannes himself? Is he ready?’
‘He is timid, but he will risk his life to get out of the tower. You may be sure of that!’
‘Have you everything we need? The fishing-line, the tail-block, and the two ropes? And the basket? Is everything ready in the bows, there?’
‘Everything, just as you ordered it, and the rope clear to pay out.’
‘Give way, then.’
‘In the name of God,’ said Gorlias, as he dipped his oars again.
‘Amen,’ answered Zeno quietly.
The oars were muffled with rags at the thole-pins, and Gorlias was an accomplished oarsman. He dipped the blades into the stream so gently that there was hardly a ripple, and he pulled them through with long, steady strokes, keeping the boat on its course by the scattered lights of the city.
Zeno watched the lights, too, leaning back in the stern, and turning over the last details of his plan. Everything depended on getting the imprisoned man out of the Amena tower at once, and he believed he could do that without much difficulty. At first sight it might seem madness to attempt a revolution with only eight hundred men to bear arms in the cause, against ten or fifteen thousand, but the Venetian knew what sort of men they were, and how profoundly Andronicus was hated by all the army except his body-guard. The latter would fight, no doubt, and perhaps die to a man, for they had everything to lose, and expected no quarter; but for the next two hours most of them would be still helplessly asleep after their potations, and if they woke at all they would hardly be in a condition to defend themselves. Money had been distributed to them without knowledge of their officers, purporting to be sent to them from Sultan Amurad, now in Asia Minor. It had pleased the Turk more than once to keep the guards in a good humour towards him, and the soldiers were not surprised. Besides, they cared very little whence money came, provided it got into their hands, and could be spent in drink, for they were not sober Greeks or Italians; most of them were wild barbarians, who would rather drink than eat, and rather fight than drink, as the saying goes.
For nearly twenty minutes Gorlias pulled steadily upstream. Then he slackened speed, and brought the boat slowly to the foot of the tower.
The windows were all dark now, and the great mass towered up into the night till the top was lost in the black sky. During the hours Gorlias had spent in fishing from the pier he had succeeded in wedging a stout oak peg between the stones; he found it at once in the dark, got out and made the boat fast to it by the painter. His bare feet clung to the sloping surface like a fly’s to a smooth wall; he pulled the boat alongside the pier, holding it by the gunwale, and held up his other hand to help Zeno. But the Venetian was in no need of that, and was standing beside his companion in an instant. It was only then, a whole second after the fact, that he knew he had stepped upon something oddly soft and at the same time elastic and resisting, that lay amidships in the bottom of the boat, covered with canvas. The quick recollection was that of having unconsciously placed one foot on a human body when getti
ng out. He had taken off his shoes, but the cloth soles of his hose were thick, and he could not feel sure of what he had touched. Besides, he had no time to lose in speculating as to what Gorlias might have in the skiff besides his lines and his coil of rope.
Gorlias now got the end of the fishing-line ashore, and took it in his teeth in order to climb up the inclined plane of the pier on his hands and feet, ape-fashion. In a few seconds he had found the end of a string that hung down from the blackness above, with a small stone tied to it to keep it from being blown adrift. To this string he bent the fishing-line. Until this was done neither of the men had made the least sound that could possibly be heard above, but now Gorlias gave a signal. It was the cry of the beautiful little owl that haunts ruined houses in Italy and the East, one soft and musical note, repeated at short and regular intervals. The bird always gives it thus, but for the signal Gorlias whistled it twice each time, instead of once. No living owl ever did that, and yet it was a thousand to one that nobody would notice the difference, if any one heard him at all, except the person for whom the call was meant.
He had not been whistling more than a quarter of a minute when he felt the twine passing upwards through his fingers, and then the line after it. He let the latter run through his hand to be sure that it did not foul and kink, though he had purposely chosen one that had been long in use, and he had kept it in a dry place for a week.
Zeno had dropped his cloak in the stern of the boat before getting out, and he now sat at the water’s edge with his hands on the moving line ready to check the end when it came, in case it were not already fast to the rope that was to follow it. But Gorlias had done that beforehand, lest any time should be lost, and presently Zeno felt the line growing taut as it began to pull on the rope itself.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1176