by Howard Pyle
HE LAID THE MANTLE OVER THE GIRL’S SHOULDERS
Ay, doubtless that was why they held him so, and yet — He stirred restlessly. Such great eyes! With such illimitable depths! How came a wandering child by such eyes? They moved him oddly. The child would seem to be an uncommon child. Those steady, burning eyes of hers had some uncommon power, worked some strange spell, some sorcery, not evil, but unfamiliarly sweet, unknown to his experience.
He gave a little, confused laugh and raised an uncertain hand towards his head, but the girl had, at the same moment, put out one of her own hands to fasten the clasp of Zuan’s mantle at her throat, and his fingers touched her arm.
At that, as if it brought back her injuries to mind, she dropped her eyes, and the man was loosed incontinently from his chains.
“Lord!” she cried again, flushing red in the light of the lanterns, “they put their foul hands upon me! They put their hands upon me!” The very present peril in which she might well have believed herself to stand seemed not to occur to her. It seemed that only those rough, befouling hands were in her mind. Her face gave once more its little, shivering twist of anger and repulsion.
“They shall be punished, child!” said Zuan Gradenigo, between tight lips. “Oh, they shall suffer for it, you may be sure. And now” — he took a turn away from her, for her great eyes were upon him again, level and unafraid— “now will you tell me who you are and how you came to be found with those barbarians to-night? Surely you can have no traffic with such. Surely you are a lady. I have seen that.” And indeed he had seen, while the girl stood in her thin white shift, how beautifully she was made — deep-bosomed, slim-waisted, with tapering wrists and ankles, and round white throat. No common wench was there. There was good blood under that white skin of hers.
“Surely you are a lady,” said young Zuan, but the girl bent her head from him.
“Nay, lord,” she said, very low, “I am only — a serving-maid to the Princess Yaga.”
The red flamed into Zuan’s cheeks.
“That woman!” he cried. “You serve that vile fiend in human flesh, that royal strumpet, that wanton at whose name men spit? You?” The girl stared at him under her brows.
“Oh!” cried Zuan Gradenigo. “Where is God that hell could devise such a wrong? What was God doing that you should stray into such clutches and He not know? That — that monster of vice and uncleanness!” He pointed a shaking hand towards the south.
“There she sits,” said he, “polluting the castle where Jacopo Corner has sat for so many years, where my grandfather sat before him, and his father before him. There she sits gloating; but, by God and St. Mark’s lion! before this week is over I shall tear her head from her body and throw it to the dogs. Nay! better than that! I shall send it, in the name of Venice, to the ban who sent her here to shame us.”
“Lord!” said the maid, very low— “lord! Oh, you do not know! You — speak wildly. You do not know what you say.”
“I know,” said Zuan Gradenigo, “that all I say is true. That woman’s name is infamous throughout Europe. It is a name of scorn. It means all that is vile — as you must know. Will Arbe ever be clean from her — even when we have washed its stones with her blood? But you!” he cried, in a new voice. “Oh, child, that you should have to serve her — be near to her! I cannot think of it with calmness.”
The maid turned a little away from him and moved over to the wooden bench where Zuan’s mantle had lain. And she seated herself at one end of the bench, looking across the room at him very soberly.
“And why not I, lord,” she asked, “as well as another? What do you know of me? I am — a serving-maid, and such must serve whomever they may.” He came nearer and stared into her face, and his own was oddly troubled, frowning.
“I cannot think of you — so,” he said. “A serving-maid? There’s something strange here. Oh, child, you have something about you — I cannot say what it is, for I have no words. I fight, I am not a poet, but were I such, I think — your eyes — their trick of looking — their — I cannot say what I mean. A serving-maid? Oh, child, you are fitter for velvets and jewels! I do not understand. Something breathes from you,” he said, with that trouble upon his frowning face, an odd trouble in his eyes — bewildered, uncomprehending — like a child’s eyes before some mystery. “Something breathes from you. I do not know what it is.”
The maid looked at him in the yellow, flickering lantern-light, and she made as though she would speak, but in the end shook her head and turned it a little aside, and sat once more silent. And for a time the man also was silent, watching her averted face and thinking how amazingly beautiful it was; not white with the pallor which the Venetian women so prized, but sumptuously rich of color, sun-kissed, free, unashamed of the wholesome blood which flowed under its golden skin and stained it with red on either cheek. He found himself possessed of a mad desire to touch that cheek which was nearest him with his finger, and the sheer folly, the childishness of the thought would in any other mood have shaken a laugh of scorn from him. He was not a woman’s man, as he had said, but a fighter.
One of the maid’s hands stirred in her lap and dropped beside her on the wooden bench. The lantern-light fell upon it — long, slender, tapering.
“Your hand, child!” said young Zuan. “It is not the hand of a serving-maid. It has never done rough tasks.”
“My princess is kind to me, lord,” she said. “My tasks are easy.”
He put out an uncertain hand and touched the hand that lay in the lantern-light. The maid drew a little, quick, gasping breath, and her eyes turned to him, great and dark. Then, like two silly, half-grown children caught holding hands, they both flushed red and their eyes turned aside once more.
Zuan raised a hand to his temples, where the blood throbbed.
“I — do not know what has come over me,” he said, and turned a few steps away across the room. In a moment he was back again, on one knee before her.
“You lay a spell upon me!” he cried, whispering into her bent face. “I am unmanned. Strange things stir my heart, child — mount to my head like wine. You lay a spell upon me.”
“No, lord,” she said, very low. “I am but a maid. I cannot work spells or sorcery. It is only that I am alone and beset and miserable. It is pity that you feel, lord. Ah, you are kind and merciful. Lord, I — wish that I might do you a service for the service you have done me.”
“Pity?” said young Zuan.
“Pity, lord,” she said again, and to his awkward, unskilful tongue and to his unaccustomed hands no occupation seemed to come, so that he knelt silent and troubled before her in the lantern-light.
If it seem that enchantment came overswiftly upon him, overprecipitately, it must be borne in mind that he was a soldier, wholly unused to a woman’s company, and that this girl, young, beautiful, and in sore straits, was brought before him in the manner most certain to waken his chivalry — ay, to stir his ready heart. The maid spoke shrewdly. It was pity he felt. But other emotions wait hard upon pity’s threshold. Further, in young Zuan’s day, love came swiftly or not at all. It was not the day of courtship. Love was born of a look — a smile — a hand-touch. And such love has wrecked empires. It is a sober truth that no great passion was ever of slow maturing.
There came from without the door eager voices and quick steps, and the lieutenant whom Zuan had sent to fetch the maid’s outer garments — krozet, saruk, and girdle — burst into the room. His eyes were round, starting out of his head, and his face was flushed with excitement.
“She’s still here, lord?” he cried out, almost before he had entered. “The woman is here? You have not let her go?” His gaze searched the hut swiftly.
“She is here,” said Zuan Gradenigo, “but you will speak more respectfully. Give me the garments!” The man’s excitement was too great to heed reproofs. He thrust the things he held into his master’s arms.
“See!” he cried. “See the girdle — the necklace — the charm she wore about her n
eck! See whom we have taken!”
Young Zuan looked at the jewels, and they slipped from his fingers and fell, flashing in the light, and lay about his feet. He turned very slowly towards the girl, who stood against the farther side of the wall, and his eyes were once more like a child’s eyes — bewildered, hurt, uncomprehending. He stretched out a hand towards her, and the hand shook and wavered.
“It is the princess herself!” cried the lieutenant. “It is Yaga!” and fell into a chattering, hysterical laugh.
“It is not — true,” whispered Zuan Gradenigo, across the little room. “Say it is not true!” His voice rose to a sharp, agonized appeal, but there was no conviction in his tone. He knew.
At the name the girl had cried out suddenly, and to smother the cry she caught her two hands up to her mouth. Even then her eyes went from one man to the other, swift and keen.
“Say it is not true!” pleaded Zuan Gradenigo, but the lieutenant babbled on, stammering in his excitement.
“See, Messer Zuan! We have her! We have her fast! Why not set sail at once with her on board — at once, before they in the city know she is taken? Why not? See! they are helpless without her. We can force them to give up Arbe for her. She is worth fifty Arbes to them — all of Dalmatia, perhaps. Why not do that? Messer Lupo’s galley has not come, nor the other. We can do nothing alone. Take her on board, lord, before it is too late, and set sail. Leave Arbe to itself for a little. The Huns will give it up to us. Come, come!”
It is doubtful if young Zuan even heard. His eyes, stricken and hopeless, were upon the girl across the room, and he whispered over and over again:
“Say it is not true! Say it is not true!” But the woman’s eyes were upon the floor, and her hands dropped to her breast, and then to her side with a little forlorn gesture, and she bent her head.
“It is true, lord,” she said. “I am the princess Yaga.”
The lieutenant gave a great shout and dashed out to his fellows. Young Zuan dropped down upon the near-by bench, covering his face.
Then the woman came to him, crossing the room swiftly, and dropped upon her knees on the floor beside him.
“Lord!” she said, touching his arm with her two hands— “lord, it would have been of no avail to deny it. You would have found me out in time. I am that — dreadful woman, lord; perhaps not so dreadful as you have thought; perhaps men have lied about me — made things worse than they truly are. Still — lord—” She crept closer to him on her knees, and her hands pressed eagerly at his arm. “Lord, it was wise, very wise, what your officer begged you to do. You have me fast — the ban’s Yaga. Will you not set sail with me and leave Arbe? Will you not hold me hostage for your island? The ban will give it up to you in exchange for me. Lord, will you not do this?” She pleaded with him in an odd tone of eager anxiety which might have aroused his suspicions had the man been less overwhelmed in his misery. I do not think he heard more than the pleading voice. I do not think he followed her words at all.
“Lord!” she cried again, shaking his arm with her two hands, “will you not do this? It will be best for you. Oh, far best! Listen, lord! You have been kind to me, gentle and pitiful. You saved me from — from great shame at the hands of those men. You saved me when you knew that I must be an enemy — even though you did not know how great an enemy — and now I am trying to save you. You are in great danger, lord, you and your men. Will you not listen to me?”
Young Zuan raised a white face, and his eyes looked bitterly into the woman’s eyes that burned so near.
“Danger?” he said, dully, under his breath. It seemed as if he did not care. “What danger?”
And then, as if his gaze held for her some of the strange sorcery which hers had laid upon him, the woman faltered in her swift speech, and she gave a little sob.
“Oh!” she cried. “Why did I not know? Why did I not know?”
“What danger?” repeated Zuan Gradenigo, as if the words meant nothing to him.
“They know that you are here, lord,” she said. “We knew, in the city, that you were coming. The fishing-boat which passed you this morning at sea brought us news of three galleys from Venice. Now two of your galleys have been blown away by the sirocco. You are but a few men, a handful, and you will be overwhelmed. Oh, lord, we whom your men took to-night were spying upon you, but there were three more who escaped — three more men. They will have reached the city before this time, and you may be attacked at any moment. Lord, why do you sit there silent? Why will you not take me on board your ship and sail away?”
It came dully to Gradenigo’s mind, through the stress and whirl which obscured it, that the maid showed a strange eagerness, out of reason.
“Why do you tell me this?” he asked, suddenly. “Why not let your barbarians capture us — put us to death? Why do you wish to defeat your own cause? There’s trickery here.” He rose to his feet, frowning, but the woman was before him.
“If you — cannot see — lord,” she said, and a bit of bright color came into her cheeks, “then I cannot tell you.” Suddenly she put out her two hands upon his breast and fell to sobbing.
“I will not have you killed!” she cried. “Oh, lord, I will not have you taken or slain! For your men I care nothing. They may die where they stand and it will be nothing to me, but you — lord, I cannot bear to have you taken!” There was no trickery in that. It came from the woman’s soul, shaking her sorely.
Zuan looked at her, this slim, pale girl shaken with her sobbing — this monster of vice and sin, at whose name men spat with derision — and again he felt the strange, paralyzing weakness creep over him. He could not hate her. He turned his eyes away and shook himself into attention.
“Come!” he said, “we will go. You cannot be lying to me. We will go.”
But before he could take a step there arose in the night without a babel of cries and screams and the clashing of steel. Above it all the same strange, barbaric chant which those devils leaping about the fire in the landing-place of the city had sung together.
“Too late!” cried the girl. “Oh, too late! They are here already!”
Zuan Gradenigo sprang silently for his sword, which he had laid aside in a far corner of the room, but as he did so the woman threw herself upon the half-open door of the hut and crashed it to, swinging the great bar into place.
“You shall not go!” she said, in a gasping whisper. “You shall not go out there to be slain!”
“Out of my way!” cried Zuan, sword in hand. “Out of my way, or by Heaven I’ll run you through! Would you have me skulk here while my men are fighting? Get out of my way!” He ran at her and caught her by the arm, swinging her aside from the door, but the woman was back again, on hands and knees, before he could recover his balance. She caught him about the knees with her arms, and she was as strong as a young animal and as lithe. He could not move.
He raised the Venetian dagger which he held in his left hand. His eyes were on fire.
“Once more,” said he, “will you stand out of my way and let me go?” Outside, in the night, the cries and clash of arms clamored on, and that barbaric chant, broken sometimes, sometimes swelling loud and triumphant, rang over all.
“You shall not go through this door!” gasped the woman, clinging fast to young Zuan’s knees. “They are four to one out there. They would kill you the moment you stepped beyond the door.”
Strategy came to her, and she shot out a bare arm towards the single window.
“Go by the window!” she cried. “It opens upon a thicket. They will not see you there.” She loosed him and he sprang for the window, swinging away the bar and pushing open the heavy wooden shutters.
The woman was upon his heels as he leaped into the night, but he did not know or care. Through the tangle of shrubbery and vine in which he found himself he could see the battle raging in the clear space of the beach beyond, and towards it he fought his way. A heavy creeper laid hold upon his ankles, and, cursing savagely, he slashed at it with his sword. A lit
tle rise of ground was before him. He mounted it in a single leap, and from its crest leaped again.
Then he fell a long way, crashing first through the mask of thicket which covered a narrow ravine, striking thence upon the earth of the farther side and rolling down that. Once or twice he threw out his hands to catch himself, but as he slipped and fell again his head struck upon something hard — a stone, probably — and that was the last he knew.
II. The Woman of Abomination
WHEN YOUNG ZUAN Gradenigo came once more to his senses after the fall in the dark, it was like a peaceful awakening from sweet sleep. Indeed, literally it was just that, for from the unconsciousness following upon the injury to his head he had drifted easily into slumber, so that when he waked he had, by way of souvenir of his mishap, scarcely even a headache.
That his eyes opened upon blue sky instead of upon painted or carved ceiling roused in him no astonishment. In service against the Turks and against the Genoese he had often slept in the open, waking when the morning light became strong enough to force its way through his eyelids. He lay awhile, conscious of great comfort and bodily well-being, coming slowly and lazily into full possession of his faculties. The air was fresh and warm, with a scent of thyme in it, and from somewhere in the near distance sea-birds mewed plaintively, after their kind. He dropped his eyes from the pale-blue sky and saw that though he lay upon turf — a hill it would seem, or the crest of a cliff — there was a stretch of tranquil sea before him, a narrow stretch, and beyond this a mountain range looming sheer and barren from the water’s edge. The sun must be rising behind it, he said to himself, for the tips of the serrated peaks glowed golden, momentarily brighter, so that it hurt his eyes to watch them. He wondered what mountains these could be, and then, all in a flash, it came upon him where he was — that this was Arbe, and that ridge the Velebic mountains of the main-land.