Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Zoë knew all this, and so did Gorlias, and they agreed that unless Johannes could be brought visibly before the soldiers there was little chance of success, and none of saving Zeno. The difficulty lay in the fact that Johannes was kept in a place even more inaccessible than Zeno’s cistern. The whole matter was a vicious circle. He could not be set free unless the troops rose for him; but the troops would not rise unless they saw him in their midst; and if there were no rising Zeno would be starved to death in the well. Gorlias Pietrogliant was a man of resources, but the problem completely baffled him.

  He stood silent and in thought at Zoë’s window; she sat quite motionless on the great divan, watching him and thinking too. Her knees were drawn up almost to her chin, and her folded hands clasped them while she looked straight at the astrologer’s back with unwinking eyes. Neither he nor she knew how long they kept silence; it might have been five minutes, or it might have been half an hour. Time plays queer tricks when people are in great danger or in great distress.

  Then Zoë’s expression began to change very slowly, as an idea dawned upon her. It was as if she saw something between her and Gorlias, something that took shape by degrees, something new and unexpected that presently grew to be a whole picture, and from a picture became a real scene, full of living people, moving and talking; the tender mouth opened a little as if she were going to speak, and the delicate nostril quivered, the colour spread like dawn in her pale cheeks, and a deep warm light came into her eyes.

  When the scene was over and the vision disappeared, she nodded slowly, as if satisfied that in her waking dream she had dreamed true.

  Then, all at once, he felt that she had received one of those inspirations of the practical sense which visit women who are driven to extremities.

  ‘I have thought of a way,’ she said at last.

  Gorlias turned, crossed the room, and stood beside her to listen; but he did not think she had any practicable scheme to propose, and at first, while she was speaking, he was much more inclined to follow his own line of thought than hers. Then, all at once, he felt that she had received one of those inspirations of the practical sense which visit women who are driven to extremities, and which have been the wonder of men since Jacob’s mother showed him how to steal his father’s blessing. It is quite certain that it was a woman who showed Columbus the trick with the egg, when he himself was trying to balance one on its point. Only a woman could have thought of anything so simple.

  And now, after Gorlias had vainly racked his ingenious brain for an idea, it was the girl that suggested the only possible one. He grasped it easily.

  ‘It is a daring plan, and it could not succeed in broad daylight,’ he said, when she had finished, ‘but it may at dusk.’

  ‘It must,’ Zoë said emphatically. ‘If it fails, we shall not see each other again.’

  ‘Not unless it occurs to Andronicus to crucify us together,’ Gorlias answered, rather gravely. ‘Very much depends on our timing ourselves as exactly as possible.’

  ‘Yes. Let it be a little more than half an hour after sunset, just when the dusk is closing in. Have you everything you need?’

  ‘I can get what is lacking. We have three good hours still before us.’

  ‘Go, then, and do not be late. You know what will happen to me if you do not come just at the right time.’

  ‘You are risking more than I,’ Gorlias said.

  ‘I have more to lose, and more to win,’ Zoë answered.

  She was thinking of Zeno, — of life with him, of life without him, and of the life she would give for his. But Gorlias wondered at her courage, for it was held nothing in those days to tear a living man or woman to shreds, piecemeal, on the mere suspicion of treason, and that would surely be her fate if he could not carry out precisely and successfully the plan she had thought of. A delay of half an hour might mean death to her, though it would not of necessity affect the result so far as Johannes and Zeno were concerned.

  Gorlias left her to make his own preparations. When he was gone Zoë sent Yulia for Zeno’s own man, Vito, the Venetian boatman. He came and stood on the threshold while she spoke to him, out of the maids’ hearing, and in Italian, lest they should creep near and listen.

  ‘Vito,’ said Zoë, ‘how is the secretary?’

  ‘Excellency,’ the Venetian answered, ‘fear is an ugly sickness, which makes healthy men tremble worse than the fever does.’

  He either forgot that he was supposed to be speaking to a slave who had no more claim to be called ‘Excellency’ than he had himself, and less, if anything; or else he had made up his mind that this beautiful Arethusa whom he had to-day seen for the first time, was not a slave at all, but a great lady in disguise.

  ‘You are never frightened, are you, Vito?’ she asked with a smile.

  ‘I?’ Vito grinned. ‘Am I of iron, or of stone? Or am I perhaps a lion? When there is fear I am afraid.’

  ‘But the master is never frightened,’ suggested Zoë. ‘Is he of stone, then?’

  ‘Oh, he!’ Vito laughed now, and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Would you compare me with the master? Then compare copper with gold. The master is the master, and that is enough, but I am only a sailor man in his service. If there is fighting, I fight while I see that I am the stronger, but when I see that I may die I run away. We are all thus.’

  ‘But surely you would not run away and leave Messer Carlo to be killed, would you?’

  ‘No,’ Vito answered quite simply. ‘That would be another affair. It would be shame to go home alive if the master were killed. When one must die, one must, as God wills. It may be for the master, it may be for Venice. But for myself, I ask you? Why should I die for nothing? I run away. It is more sensible.’

  ‘You need not risk being killed if you do what I am going to ask,’ Zoë said, for after talking with the man she liked his honest face, and thought none the less of him for his frankness. ‘It is a very simple matter.’

  ‘What is it, Excellency?’

  ‘You need not call me that, Vito,’ answered Zoë. ‘I want you to row me at sunset to the landing which is nearest to the palace gate. It must be the dirty little one on this side of the Amena tower, is it not?’

  ‘That is it. But without the master’s orders — —’

  Vito looked at her doubtfully, for he had been reminded that she considered herself a slave, and it occurred to him that she meant to escape in Zeno’s absence.

  ‘Messer Carlo would wish me to go, if he were here,’ said Zoë quietly, and not at all as if she were insisting, for she saw what was the matter.

  ‘I have no doubt it is as you say,’ Vito answered. ‘But I have no orders.’

  ‘There is a message from the master to some one in the palace,’ Zoë explained. ‘No one but I can deliver it.’

  ‘That is easily said,’ observed Vito bluntly. ‘There are no orders.’

  Zoë felt the blood rising to her forehead at the man’s rudeness and distrust of her, but she controlled herself, for much depended on obtaining what she wished.

  ‘It is not a message,’ she said; ‘it is a letter.’

  ‘Where is it?’ asked Vito incredulously.

  ‘I will show it to you,’ Zoë answered, but she first turned to the maids, who waited at the end of the room. ‘Go and prepare me the bath,’ she said.

  The two disappeared, though they did not believe that their mistress really wished to bathe again so soon. When they were gone, she stooped and took the letter from her shoe, unfolded it, and spread it out for Vito to see. The effect it made upon him was instantaneous; he looked at it carefully, and took a corner of it between his thumb and finger.

  ‘This is the paper on which the master writes,’ he said, as if convinced.

  It did not occur to him that the slave Arethusa could write at all, nor any one else in the house except Omobono; and as for the latter, if he had written anything he must have done so under Zeno’s orders. Writing of any sort commanded his profound and almost superstiti
ous respect.

  ‘This is certainly a letter from the master,’ he said, satisfied at last, after what he considered a thoroughly conscientious inspection.

  ‘And he wishes me to deliver it,’ Zoë said. ‘If I am to do that, you must be good enough to take me to the landing in the boat. There is no other way.’

  ‘I could take the letter myself,’ Vito suggested.

  ‘No. Only a woman will be allowed to pass, where this must go.’

  Vito began to understand, and nodded his head wisely.

  ‘It is for Handsome John,’ he said, with conviction, and fixing his eyes on Zoë’s. ‘It is for the other Emperor, whom the master wishes to set free.’

  ‘Yes — since you have guessed it,’ Zoë answered. ‘Will you take me now?’

  ‘You will take one of your slaves with you, as you do when you go out in the boat with the secretary, I suppose?’

  Vito still felt a little hesitation.

  ‘No. I must go alone with you. And I myself shall be dressed like a slave, and I shall have a basket of things to carry on my head to the wife of the gaoler.’

  ‘I see,’ said Vito, who really loved adventure for its own sake, and was much less inclined to run away from danger than he represented. ‘Did you say you wished to go at sunset?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I shall be ready. But it will be better to take an old boat, and I will put on ragged clothes, to look like a hired boatman.’

  ‘Yes; that will be better.’

  Vito went away, delighted with the prospect before him. He was too young and too true a Venetian not to look forward with pleasure to rowing the beautiful Arethusa up the Golden Horn, though he was only a servant and she was the master’s most treasured possession. He felt, too, some manly pride in the thought of possibly protecting her, for he meant to follow her ashore and look on from a distance, to see whether she got safely into the tower, and he would wait until she came out. The master would expect that much of him, at least.

  As yet, neither Vito nor any member of the household, except Zoë, knew that Zeno was a prisoner, held for ransom. It had pleased him to go out of his house during the previous night, and some important business detained him; that was all. When he was at leisure he would come home. The men-servants who had waited on the guests and had heard Tocktamish’s words, to the effect that Zeno had sent him for money, looked upon the statement as a clumsy trick which the half-drunken robber was trying to play in Zeno’s absence, and as nothing more. But they had been far too badly frightened to stay and listen, as has been seen. To Vito, who was, nevertheless, by far the best of them, it had been a matter of utter indifference whether the Tartar cut the throats of the four guests or not, compared with the urgent necessity of keeping out of his reach. If the master had been present another side of their character would have come into play, but as he was absent they had thought of their own safety first.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE SUN HAD set, and the wide court of Blachernæ was filled with purple light to the wall tops, like a wine-vat full to the brim; and everything that was in the glow took colour from it, as silver does in claret, the polished trappings of the guards’ uniforms, the creamy marble steps of the palace, the white Tunisian charger of the officer who rode in just then, and the swallows that circled round and round the courtyard. The world moved in that short deep dream that comes just when the sun has slipped away to rest, when the light is everywhere at once, so that things cast no shadows on the ground, because they glow from within, as in fairyland, or perhaps in heaven.

  The officer rode in on his charger, and after him entered a girl slave, dressed in coarse blue cotton, and carrying on her head a small round basket, which was covered with a clean white cloth. The four corners of the napkin hung down, and one of them would have flapped across her face if she had not held it between her teeth to keep it down. It partly hid her features, and her head was tied up in a blue cotton kerchief passed twice round and knotted upon her forehead. She limped a little as she walked. What could be seen of her face was pale and quiet, and had a rather fixed look.

  She was walking boldly through the gate, without slackening her pace, when one of the two sentinels stopped her, and asked where she was going. She stood still, and one hand steadied the basket on her head, while the other pointed to the Amena tower.

  ‘My mistress sends some fine wheat bread and cream cheese to the wife of the captain who keeps the tower,’ said Zoë, affecting the mincing accent very common with female slaves and Greek ladies’ maids.

  The second sentinel, returning on his short beat, now came up and stood on her other side. He was a big Bulgarian, and he lifted one corner of the cloth and looked down into the basket, merely for the sake of detaining the girl. He saw the wheaten loaves and the cream cheese neatly disposed on a second napkin, and the cheese was nested in green leaves to keep it fresh. Both the soldiers at once thought of tasting it with the points of their daggers, but at that moment the officer of the watch strolled out of the guard-house, a magnificent young man in scarlet and gold. The two sentinels at once turned their backs on the cheese and Zoë, and marched away in opposite directions on their beats, leaving her standing in the middle. The officer was far too high and mighty a person to look at a slave-girl or her basket, and Zoë therefore went on without turning her head, taking it for granted that she was now free to enter. In her baggy blue cotton clothes, and with her face almost covered by the napkin, there was nothing about her to attract attention, unless it were her slightly limping gait; and she instinctively made an effort to walk evenly, for she could not help feeling ashamed of being suddenly lame, as perfectly sound and healthy people do. But she realised that the folded letter was in the wrong shoe and increased her lameness, whereas if she had carried it in the other it might have made walking easier.

  She went from under the great gate into the liquid purple light in the court, and it was pleasant to be in it. But then again it made her think of yesterday, when she had sat in her window at sunset, not dreaming of all that was to happen to her in one night and one day. It made her think of the man she loved so dearly, imprisoned somewhere under the great city, starving and thirsting no doubt, and face to face with thoughts of death; and it was to save him that she was crossing the courtyard of Blachernæ disguised as a household slave. It was because there was no other way; and if Gorlias Pietrogliant failed her, or came too late, the end would overtake her in a few hours, or perhaps quite suddenly, which would be more merciful. She knew what she was doing, and she did not deceive herself. They would put out her eyes first; but that would be the least of the cruel things they would do to her, if Gorlias failed.

  She was only a weak girl, after all, and once or twice, when she thought of the pain, a sharp little shiver ran down her back to her very heels, and things swam before her for an instant in the deep sea of colour; but that only lasted for a moment, and when she reached the foot of the tower and went in under the archway that led to the door, she was thinking of Zeno again, and of nothing else.

  It was as Gorlias had told her. A very different watch was set there since the attempt of the previous night, and she found herself face to face with an obstacle she had not anticipated. The iron door was shut and was guarded by two huge Africans in black mail armour, who stood on either side with drawn scimitars.

  They looked over her head as she approached them, and they seemed to take no notice of her existence. She thought she had never seen such expressionless faces as theirs; the features were as shiny and motionless as bronze, and the purple haze of the sunset without filled the deep arch and lent them an unnatural colour which was positively terrifying.

  ‘If you please, kind sirs,’ Zoë began as she stood still, ‘my mistress sends some fine wheat bread and fresh cream cheese to the wife of the captain.’

  She might as well have spoken to statues; neither of the negroes paid the slightest attention. But she was not to be put off so easily.

  ‘If you please,’
she repeated with pleading emphasis and more loudly, ‘my mistress — —’

  She stopped speaking in the middle of the sentence, suddenly scared by the immobility of the two black men, and by their size, and by the purple glare that was reflected from their great polished scimitars, of which one noiseless sweep could sever her head from her body. They were like the genii in one of those tales of the Arabian Nights which Greek story-tellers were then just learning from the Persians, and from the Tartar merchants of Samarcand and Tashkent. Zoë had listened to them by the hour when she was a little girl, and now she suddenly felt an irrational conviction that she had dreamed herself into one of them, and that the imprisoned Emperor was guarded by supernatural beings.

  However, when she looked at the motionless features and at the broad, polished blades, she did not feel that painful shiver which had run down her when she had thought of being tortured by the people of the palace, and she soon took courage again and began to speak a third time.

  ‘If you please,’ she said, but she got no further, for she had gently plucked at the mailed sleeve of the man on her right, to attract his attention, and he moved at once, and bent down a little.

  He touched his ear with his left forefinger and shook his head slowly to show that he was deaf, and pointed to his companion and back to his own ear and shook his head again; and then, to Zoë’s horror, he opened his enormous mouth just before her eyes, and she saw that it was empty. He had no tongue.