This had single overhand knots in it, about two feet apart, for climbing, and instead of coiling it down, Gorlias had ranged it fore and aft on the forward thwarts so that it came ashore clear. Whatever the astrologer’s original profession had been, it was evident that he understood how to handle rope as well as if he had been to sea. Moreover Zeno, who was as much a sailor as a soldier, understood from the speed at which the rope was now taken up, that there was a tolerably strong person at the other end of it, high up in the topmost story of the tower. The end came sooner than he expected, and a slight noise of something catching and knocking against the inner side of the boat brought Gorlias instantly to the water’s edge.
‘The tail-block is fast to the end,’ he whispered; ‘and the other line is already rove, with the basket at one end of it. When you are aloft, you must haul up the climbing rope and make the block fast — you understand.’
‘Of course,’ Zeno answered, ‘I have been to sea.’
‘Whistle when you are ready and I will answer. As he comes down I can check the rope with a turn round a smooth stone I have found at the corner of the tower. You must come down the climbing rope at the same time, and steer the basket as well as you can with your foot.’
‘Yes. Is all fast above?’
Gorlias listened.
‘Not yet,’ he whispered. ‘Wait for the signal.’
It came presently, the cry of the owlet repeated, as Gorlias had repeated it. Zeno heard it and began to climb, while Gorlias steadied the rope, though there was hardly any need for that. The young Venetian walked up with his feet to the wall, taking the rope hand over hand, as if he were going up a bare pole by a gant-line.
When he was twenty feet above the pier and was fast disappearing in the darkness, something moved in the boat, and a white face looked up cautiously over the gunwale. It was a woman’s face. Zeno had stepped upon her with his whole weight when he was getting ashore, but she had made no sound. Her eyes tried to pierce the gloom, to follow him upwards in his dizzy ascent. Soon she could not see him any longer, nor hear the soft sound of his cloth-shod feet as he planted them against the stones.
Up he went, higher and higher. Gorlias steadied the end below, keeping one foot on the block lest it should thrash about on the stones and make a noise. He could feel each of Zeno’s movements along the rope; and though he had seen many feats in his life, he wondered at the wind and endurance of a man who could make such an ascent without once crooking his leg round the rope to rest and take breath. But Carlo Zeno never stopped till his feet were on the slight projecting moulding of the highest story, and his hands on the stone sill.
As he drew himself up with a spring his face almost struck the chest of a large woman who was standing at the window to receive him. He saw her outline faintly, for there was a little light from one small lamp, placed on the floor in the farthest corner of the oblong room. The tower was square, but the north side of the chamber was walled off to make a space for the head of the staircase and a narrow entry. The single door was in this partition. Zeno looked round while he took breath, and he was aware of a tall man with a long beard who stood on one side of the window, and seemed inclined to flatten himself against the wall, as if he feared being seen from without, even at that height and in the dark.
The woman moved a step backwards, and Carlo put one leg over the window-sill and got in. He took his skull-cap from his head and bowed low to the imprisoned Emperor before he spoke to the woman in a whisper.
‘I will haul up the basket,’ he said, and he laid his hands on the knotted rope to do so.
But the tall man with the beard touched him on the shoulder, and spoke in a low voice.
‘We must talk together,’ he said.
Zeno hardly turned his head, and did not stop hauling in the rope. Below, Gorlias was steering the tail-block clear of the wall, lest it should strike the stones and make a noise.
‘This is no time for talking,’ Zeno said. ‘When your Majesty is free and in safety we can talk at leisure.’
The knotted rope was coming in fast; Zeno threw it upon the floor behind him in a wide coil to keep it clear.
‘Stop!’ commanded the Emperor, laying one hand on the Venetian’s arm.
Zeno set his foot on the rope to keep it from running out, and turned to the prisoner in surprise.
‘Every moment is precious,’ he said. ‘If we are discovered from outside the tower the game is up, and we shall be caught like rats in a trap. I have a basket at the end of this rope in which you will be quite safe from falling, if that is what makes you hesitate. Fear nothing. We are two good men, I and my companion below.’
‘You are a good man indeed, to have risked your life in climbing here,’ answered Johannes.
He made a few steps, bending his still handsome head in thought. He limped slightly in his walk, and he was said to have only four toes on his left foot.
Zeno at once continued hauling up the rope, but a moment later the Emperor stopped close beside him.
‘It is of no use,’ he said; ‘I cannot go with you.’
Zeno was thunderstruck, and stood still with the rope in his two hands.
‘You will not go?’ he repeated, almost stupidly. ‘You will not be free, now that everything is ready?’
‘I cannot. Go down your rope before there is an alarm. Take God’s blessing for your generous courage, and my heartfelt thanks. I am ashamed that I should have nothing else to offer you. I cannot go.’
‘But why? Why?’
Carlo Zeno could not remember that he had ever been so much surprised in his life, and so are they who gather round the story-teller and listen to his tale. But it is a true one; and many years afterwards one of Carlo Zeno’s grandsons, the good old Bishop of Belluno, wrote it down as he had heard it from his grandsire’s lips. Moreover it is history. The imprisoned Emperor Johannes refused to leave his prison, after Zeno had risked life and limb to prepare a revolution, and had scaled the tower alone.
‘Andronicus has my little son in the palace,’ said the prisoner; ‘if I escape he will put out the child’s eyes with boiling vinegar, and perhaps mutilate him or kill him by inches. Save him first, then I will go with you.’
There was something very noble in the prisoner’s tone, and in the turn of his handsome head as he spoke. Zeno could not help respecting him, yet he was profoundly disappointed. He tried one argument.
‘If you will come at once,’ he said, ‘I promise you that we shall hold the palace before daybreak, and the little prince will be as free as you.’
Johannes shook his head sadly.
‘The guards will kill him instantly,’ he said; ‘the more certainly if they see that they must fight for their lives.’
‘In short, your Majesty is resolved? You will not come with me?’
‘I cannot.’ The Emperor turned away, and covered his face with his hands, more as if trying to concentrate his thoughts than as if in despair. ‘No, I cannot,’ he repeated presently. ‘Save the boy first,’ he repeated, dropping his hands and turning to Zeno again, ‘then I will go with you.’
Zeno was silent for a moment, and then spoke in a determined tone.
‘Hear me, sire,’ he said. ‘A man does not run such risks twice, except for his own blood. You must either come with me at once, or give up the idea that I shall ever help you to escape. The boy may be in danger, but so are you yourself, and your life is worth more to this unhappy Empire than his. To-night, to-morrow, at any moment, your son Andronicus may send the executioner here, and there will be an end of you and of many hopes. You must risk your younger boy’s life for your cause. I see no other way.’
‘The other way is this; I will stay here and risk my own. I would rather die ten deaths than let my child be tortured, blinded, and murdered.’
‘Very well,’ answered Zeno; ‘then I must go.’
He let the knotted rope go over the sill again till it was all out, and he sat astride the window mullion ready to begin the descent.
‘Cast off the rope when I whistle,’ he said, ‘and let it down by the line, and the line after it by the twine.’
He spoke to the big woman, who was the wife of the keeper, himself a trusted captain of veterans. She nodded by way of answer.
‘For the last time,’ Zeno said, looking towards Johannes, ‘will you come with me? There is still time.’
The Emperor looked prematurely old in the faint light, and his figure was bent as he rested with one hand on the heavy table. His voice was weak too, as if he were very tired after some great effort.
‘For the last time, no,’ he answered. ‘I am sorry. I thank you with all my heart — —’
Zeno did not wait for more, and his head disappeared below the window almost before the prisoner had spoken the last words. Five minutes had not elapsed since he had reached the chamber.
Below, Gorlias had been surprised when he felt the second rope slack in his hand, and when the basket and block, which had been half-way up the wall, began to come down again. The astrologer could only suppose that there was an alarm within the tower, and that Zeno was getting away as fast as he could. The last written message, lowered by the yarn at dusk that evening, had been to say that the Emperor was ready, and that a red light would be shown when the captain was asleep, under the influence of the drug his wife had given him. It could not possibly occur to the astrologer that Johannes would change his mind at the very last moment.
‘Take care!’ Gorlias whispered quickly to the woman at his elbow, as soon as he was sure of what was happening. ‘He is coming down again.’
‘Alone?’ The anxious inquiry answered his words in the same breath.
‘Alone — yes! He is on the rope now, he is coming down, hand under hand.’
The woman slipped down the inclined surface, almost fell, recovered her foothold, and nearly fell again as she sprang into the boat, and threw herself at full length upon the bottom boards. Zeno was half-way down, and before she covered herself with the canvas she glanced up and distinctly saw his dark figure descending through the gloom.
She had scarcely stretched herself out when she was startled by a loud cry, close at hand.
‘Phylaké! Aho — ho — o! Watch, ho! Watch, ho!’
A boat had shot out of the darkness to the edge of the pier. In an instant three men had sprung ashore, and were clambering up the sloping masonry towards Gorlias. The woman stood up in Zeno’s skiff, almost upsetting it, and her eyes pierced the gloom to see what was happening.
Gorlias threw himself desperately against the three men, with outstretched arms, hoping to sweep them altogether into the water from a place where they had so little foothold. The woman held her breath. One of the three men, active as a monkey, dodged past the astrologer, caught the knotted rope, and began climbing it. The other two fell, their feet entangled in the line-rove through the tail-block, and with the strong man’s weight behind them they tumbled headlong down the incline. With a heavy splash, and scarcely more than one for all three, Gorlias and his opponents fell into the water.
There was silence then, while the other man climbed higher and higher.
The woman watched in horror. In falling, the men had struck against the stem of the skiff, dragging the painter from the peg. The other boat was not moored at all, and both were now adrift on the sluggish stream. The woman steadied herself, and tried to see.
The man climbed fast, and above him the dark figure moved quickly upwards. But Zeno’s pursuer was fresher than he, and as quick as a cat, and gained on him. If he caught him, he might crook his leg round the knotted rope to drag Zeno down and hurl him to the ground.
Still he gained, while the boats began to drift, but still the woman could make out both figures, nearer and nearer to each other. Now there were not ten feet between them.
A faint cry was heard, a heavy thud on the stones, and silence again. Zeno had cut the rope below him. The woman drew a sharp breath between her closed teeth. There was no noise, now, for the man that had been as active as a cat was dead.
But an instant later one of the other three was out of the water, and on the edge of the pier, panting for breath.
The woman took up one of the oars, and tried to paddle with it. She thought that the man who had come up must be Gorlias, and that the other two were drowned, and she tried to get the boat to the pier again; she had never held an oar in her life, and she was trembling now. High in mid-air Zeno was hanging on what was left of the rope, slowly working his way upwards, fully fifty feet above the base of the tower.
The skiff bumped against the other boat alongside, and the woman began to despair of getting nearer to the land, and tried to shove the empty boat away with her hands. The effect was to push her own skiff towards the pier, for the other was much the heavier of the two. Then, paddling a little, she made a little way. The man ashore seemed to be examining the body of the one who had been killed; it lay sprawling on the stones, the head smashed. The living one was not Gorlias; the woman could see his outline now. She was strong, and with the one oar shoved her skiff still farther from the other boat, and nearer to the pier. The man heard her, got upon his feet, and slipped down to the water’s edge again.
‘Hold out the end of the oar to me,’ he said, ‘and I will pull the boat in.’
It was not the voice of Gorlias that spoke, and the woman did not obey the instructions it gave. On the contrary she tried to paddle away, lest the man should jump aboard. Strangely enough the skiff seemed to answer at once to her will, as if some unseen power were helping her. It could not be her unskilled, almost helpless movements of the oar that guided it away.
But the man rose to his feet, on the lowest course of the stones, where there was a ledge, and he sprang forwards, struck the water without putting his head under, and was at the stern of the boat in a few seconds.
The woman seemed fearless, for she stepped quickly over the after thwart, taking her oar with her, and a moment later she struck a desperate blow with it at the swimmer, and raised it again. She could not see him any more, and she knew that if she had struck his head he must have sunk instantly; but she waited a little longer in the stern, the oar still uplifted in both her hands.
At that moment, the repeated call of the owlet came down from far above. It could only mean that Zeno had reached the upper window in safety. Then the boat rocked violently two or three times, and the woman was thrown down, sitting, in the stern sheets; she saw that a man was getting in over the bows, and was already on board.
‘That was well done, Kokóna,’ said the voice of Gorlias, softly.
Zoë sank back in the stern, half-fainting with exhaustion, pain, and past anxiety.
‘Is he safe?’ she managed to ask.
‘That was his call. He has reached the window again, but it was a narrow escape.’
She could hardly breathe. Gorlias had taken the oars, and the skiff was moving.
CHAPTER XI
ZENO FOUND THE two occupants of the room terrorstruck, and standing on one side of the window, from which they had not dared to look out after the cry of alarm had been given from below. Indeed they were in a dangerous pass, unless all three of the men who had attempted to stop Zeno were dead, or if the first cry had roused the sleeping captain and guards of the tower from their drugged sleep.
But Zeno’s own situation was quite as bad. It was out of the question to shout to Gorlias, on the mere chance of his being still alive and on the pier. No communication was possible, and the rope was cut below. It was true that the whole of the fishing-line still lay coiled on the floor of the room, but even if it were long enough to double it would hardly bear the man’s weight; and Carlo guessed that he had cut off nearly three-quarters of the knotted rope below him.
There was no time to be lost either. He did not know the number of his assailants, and though he gave his signal when he reached the window, on the mere chance of being heard, he would not have trusted the answer to it if it had come. Any one could imitate such a s
ound after hearing it once. If he let down the remaining length of the rope by the fishing-line, and if his enemies were on the pier instead of Gorlias, they would have wit enough to knot the rope where it had been cut, and to send it up again, for him to come down by, and he would drop into their very midst.
He understood all this in an instant, and without hesitation he cast off everything above, and dropped the rope and the fishing-line out of the window. He knew Gorlias well enough to be sure that he would come back before daylight and land if there were no one on the pier, and remove all traces of the attempt.
‘We are all lost!’ moaned the big woman.
‘My hour has come,’ said the Emperor Johannes in solemn terror.
Thereupon he began to say his prayers, and paid no more attention to the others. Zeno took the woman by the wrist.
‘We are not lost unless your husband is awake,’ he said. ‘Take me to him.’
The captain’s wife stared at him.
‘There is no other way. If he is awake, you will tell him that I got into the tower, and that you have betrayed me into his hands. You will be safe at least, and I will take my chance. If he is asleep I have nothing to fear.’
He drew her to the door and began to unbar it himself. She had understood that he was right, so far as her own safety was concerned, and she helped him. A horn lantern stood on the stone floor in the entry at the head of the stair, where she had left it when she had last come up. Before going down she barred the door outside as usual, and then led the way.
At the first landing she opened a door as softly as she could and went in, leaving Zeno on the threshold. It was the sleeping room, and Zeno heard the captain’s stertorous breathing with relief. He went in and looked at the sleeping man’s face, which was congested to a dark red by the powerful drug, and Zeno thought it doubtful whether he would ever wake again. The woman, ignorant of the effects of much opium, was afraid her husband might open his eyes, and she plucked at Zeno’s sleeve, anxious to get him away; but the Venetian smiled.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1177