Arethusa Part 11

'I thought I ate all the sweetmeats,' answered Zoe, turning and smiling a little at the recollection of the girls' terror.

The hours pa.s.sed 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 Blachernae 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. Zoe 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 Zoe. 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 pa.s.sed across its sight.

Zoe 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 Zoe was terrified, he did not know what to do or say, and he stupidly repeated his question,

'Are you afraid of me?'

Zoe 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 Rhangabe'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 Kyria Agatha to give up the money.

Zoe 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 Blachernae.

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 minae, 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, Zoe 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 Kyria 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 Zoe 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.

Zoe 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 att.i.tude.

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 Zoe. 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 Zoe 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 gla.s.s, a delicate white goblet from Murano, with faint blue lines round the stem. But she neither ate nor drank.