Arethusa Part 40

'She will speak before you can count ten score,' he said.

CHAPTER XIX

Zoe had closed her eyes to bear the pain better, and a tiny drop of blood slowly trickled from the lip she had bitten in the first moment of the torture. It made a thin, dark line from her mouth downward, a little on the left side, over her white chin. Her breath came in deep and quivering sobs, drawn through her clenched teeth, but no other sound escaped her in those awful seconds. She was praying that death might come soon, but she did not ask for strength to be silent; that she had, for Carlo Zeno's sake, and for the sake of the just vengeance that would overtake Andronicus when she was dead, if only he were not warned of what was perhaps so near. She thought she might die of the pain only; she was sure that she must faint away if it lasted many moments longer.

The Emperor bent down in his saddle to see her agonised white face more clearly in the gathering gloom, and to catch the least syllable she might speak; and his loose lip moved, for he was counting to himself, counting the ten score, after which she would be able to bear no more and would tell him where the danger was. For the corpse-faced man knew his business, and his experience had been wide and long, and the Emperor knew that he never made a mistake. Moreover, the Greek minister smiled with sheer pleasure at the sight, and hoped that his master would command them to put the girl to death by very slow torments.

The guards, too, crowded upon each other to see, but they were not all silent now; for there were brave men amongst them, savage adventurers from the wild mountains beyond the Black Sea, who feared neither G.o.d, nor Emperor, nor man; and they did not like the sight they saw, and they said words one to another in strange tongues which the Greeks could not understand.

Andronicus counted slowly to twenty, and then still more slowly to forty, and the tortured girl's sharp breathing irritated him.

'Speak!' he cried, in a tone that was low and angry. 'Tell me where the danger is, or the thing shall eat out your heart!'

Then the answer came, but not in Zoe's voice, nor by one voice, but by many, loud and deep; and though the words were confused, some could be heard well enough; and they told the loose-lipped cowardly youth where the danger was, for it was upon him.

'Johannes! Johannes reigns! G.o.d and the Emperor! Emperor Johannes!'

That was what the voices shouted from the gate, as the mult.i.tude swept in, driving the sentinels and guards before them as the gale drives dry leaves. With but one breathing-s.p.a.ce for thought and resolve, the guards in their scarlet tunics closed round Andronicus like waves of blood in the deep dusk, and he went down under them, and heard them answer the coming people--

'Johannes reigns! Emperor Johannes!'

Zoe heard the cry through her torment and forgot the pain for one moment, and the next, the dumb Ethiopian who had held her, slit the torturer's bandage and plucked the walnut sh.e.l.l from under her arm, with its living contents, and threw them away; for he had seen Andronicus go down, and knew that there was a new master. Then some of the men, who remembered it afterwards, saw the corpse-faced man grovelling on the ground and searching for his treasure, which could make the toughest victim speak before one could count ten score; for he served the Emperor, whoever he might be, as he and his father before him had served many. No one ever killed the torturer. So he went amongst the trampling feet on his hands and knees, feeling nothing, if so be that he might find his pet and get it back safely into its cage in his bosom. And when he found it still in the walnut sh.e.l.l, by the strange chance that protects all evil, he laughed like a maniac and slipped between the guards' legs on all fours, like a hideous white-faced ape, and ran away into the palace.

Zoe had opened her eyes, and the pain was gone, leaving only a throb behind, and she gathered her torn tunic to her neck with one hand as best she could and slipped out of the turmoil; and only she, of all those that heard the first shout, knew how it was that the people were cheering for the delivered Emperor, while Johannes was still shut up in the tower and guarded by the deaf-and-dumb Africans; and in the glorious triumph of her plan she forgot everything else but the man she loved, and he was safe now, beyond all doubt. Was he not the friend of the restored Johannes? The soldiers would not dare, on their lives, to keep him a prisoner now, not for one hour, not for one moment.

And there he rode, surely enough, in the front rank of the mult.i.tude, on the right hand of Emperor John. She knew him, though the last grey light was fading from the sky. She would have known him in the dark, it seemed to her that if she had been blind she would have known that he was near; and her joy rose in her throat, after the torture she had endured, and almost choked her, so that she reeled unsteadily and gasped for breath.

He was on the right hand of the Emperor John, 'Handsome John,' whom the people had once loved and whom they were now ready to love again, having tasted of the scorpions with which Andronicus had regaled them.

'Handsome John,' with his splendid brown beard--the light of torches flashed upon it now--and his cloth-of-gold cloak drawn closely round him like a bishop's cope, so that it hid his hands and half his bridle on each side, and covered the back of his head, too, and a great part of his cheeks; he wore the tall imperial head-dress also, and it shaded his eyes. The people had recognised him more by his fine beard and his cloth of gold than by his face, but the beard was unmistakable; and besides, there were men with him who scattered coins to the mult.i.tude, and those coins were good. But the followers who were nearest to him and Zeno, and who pressed round them both to defend them, if need be, were almost all sailors, Venetian shipwrights and workmen from the docks, though Tocktamish's Tartars were close behind, making a tremendous shouting, and striking their long ta.s.selled spears against each other after their manner, with a clatter of wood like a monstrous rattle; and other soldiers had joined them by hundreds, and after them pressed the artisans of Constantinople, the Bulgarian blacksmiths, the Italian stone-cutters and masons, the Moorish armourers and the Syrian sword-smiths from Damascus, the Sicilian rope-makers, the Persian silk-weavers, and the Smyrniote carpet-weavers, and the linen-weavers from Alexandria with many others; and every man who was not a soldier had something in his hand for a weapon--a hammer, a mallet, or a carpet-maker's staff, or only a stout cudgel. And they ran, and pushed, and forced their way through the gate, spreading out again within the court, cheering and yelling for Johannes in a dozen languages at once.

The Emperor John sat quite still on his horse, wrapped in his cloak, but Zeno rode forward, till he was almost upon the knot of the guards who had pulled down Andronicus, and he threw up his hand, crying out to the men not to kill, in a voice that dominated the terrific din; and he was but just in time, for he was only obeyed because he offered a reward.

'Ten pounds of gold for Andronicus alive!' he shouted.

For that was the price Andronicus had set on his head that morning, and what was enough for Zeno was enough for an Emperor. So half a dozen of the guards dragged the man alive into the palace, and bound him securely with his hands behind him, and stripped off his jewels and his gold, and kicked him into a small secret room behind the porter's lodge, and shut the door. There the corpse-faced man was squatting in a dark corner, blowing some coals to a glow in an earthen pan, because he might soon be called to do more work, and unless the vinegar was really boiling hot the fumes of it would not put out the eyesight. As Andronicus lay on the floor he could see the man.

But outside, the confusion grew and the noise increased as the people poured into the vast courtyard and pressed behind upon those who had entered before them.

Then the door of the tower in the corner was opened from within, and the African mutes came out and joined the other soldiers, and from an upper window the captain and his wife looked down, and by the help of what she told him he understood that it was time to set his prisoner free, if he did not mean to risk being torn to shreds by the people, though he could not at all understand who it was whom he saw on horseback in the torchlight, dressed in cloth of gold, with the imperial head-dress on his head, for he knew well enough that so long as the key of the upper prison hung at his own belt, Johannes could not get out. Yet there was no mistaking the cry of the people, and his wife urged him not to lose time.

The crowd was surging towards the tower now, led by Zeno and the Emperor, and they and their sailors and dockmen kept in front of the crowd to be the first to dismount and enter the tower, and then the sailors kept the throng back, telling them that Johannes had gone in to free his youngest son, and the two men who had the deep bags of money threw lavish handfuls to the people, to amuse them while they waited.

But when Zeno and the Emperor came out again, Johannes' face was all uncovered, and the cloth-of-gold cope hung loosely on his shoulders; and by the glare of many torches every one knew that it was Johannes himself, and none other, and men cheered and yelled till they were hoa.r.s.e.

After the Emperor and Zeno came a man whom no one had seen go in with them, and he had a very scanty dark beard and was dressed in quiet brown, though he wore a horseman's boots, and he was Gorlias Pietrogliant, who had acted so well the part which Zoe had imagined for him.

But Zeno knew nothing of Arethusa, yesterday his slave, and since last night the woman of his heart, for in the haste and stress of that tremendous half-hour, Gorlias could tell him nothing, except that he was Gorlias and not the Emperor, and that the deed giving Tenedos over to Venice was signed and in his bosom; and Zeno supposed that he had devised all the wonderful scheme, which looked so simple as soon as it began to be carried out. Arethusa, he thought, was safe at home; sleepless, worn out with waiting, trembling with anxiety, perhaps, but safe. Now that the deed was done, now that Andronicus was bound, and Johannes, his father, was restored to the throne, Carlo Zeno thought only of leaving Constantinople without delay, before the Emperor could take back his word, and revoke the cession of Tenedos. For Zeno did not put his trust in Oriental princes, and feared the Greeks even when they offered gifts. With a swift Venetian vessel and a fair wind, the coveted island could be reached in two days, or even less; its governor had always at heart been faithful to Johannes, and would obey the deed which Gorlias had thrust into Zeno's hand in the tower, and if once the standard of St. Mark were raised on the fort there was small chance that any enemy would be able to tear it down.

Therefore, just when the soldiers were lifting Johannes from his horse to carry him to the throne-room with wild triumph and rejoicing, Zeno slipped from the saddle to escape notice, elbowed his way to the outskirts of the crowd, and was on the point of making for the gate when Gorlias found him again.

'Arethusa asks you to come to her,' Gorlias said.

'I am going----'

'No. She is here. It was all her plan; she risked her life for it, we were a few moments late, and she has been tortured. Come quickly!'

Zeno's face changed. Gorlias saw that, even in the dim light of the now distant torches. It was the change that comes into a master swordman's face when he makes up his mind to kill, after only defending himself because his adversary has tried some dastardly murderous trick of fence. But Zeno said nothing as he strode swiftly by his companion's side.

Gorlias had found her and had brought her into the lower chamber of the tower, now deserted by the guards. The captain's wife had been standing at the door, not daring to go out amongst the half-frantic soldiers. She might have fared ill at their hands if she had been recognised just then as the wife of the Emperor's gaoler. So she had stood under the archway, watching and listening, and Gorlias had given Zoe half-fainting into her care while he went to find Zeno.

She had taken the girl on her knees like a child, while she herself sat on the narrow stone bench that ran round the wall, for there was no furniture of any sort there. Zoe's head lay upon the shoulder of the big woman who gently smoothed and patted the soft brown hair, and rocked the light figure on her knees with a side motion as nurses do.

She did not know what was the matter, but she recognised the girl who had brought the message and who had been caught outside the door.

Then Zeno came, and in a moment he was close beside Zoe; resting one knee on the stone bench, bending down, and very tenderly lifting the lovely head into his own arm.

She knew his touch, she turned her face up with a great effort, for she had hardly any strength left, and her lids that were but half-closed like a dying person's, quivered and opened, and for one instant her eyes were full of light. Her voice came to him from far off, almost from the other world.

'Safe! Ah, thank G.o.d! It was worth the pain!'

Then she fainted quite away in his arms, but he knew that she was not dying, for he had seen many pa.s.s from life, and the signs were familiar to him.

He gathered her to him and carried her lightly through the open door, where Gorlias was ready; and Gorlias knew where Vito was waiting with the skiff at the old landing not far below the tower, and he helped the boatman to row them home.

Thus ended that long day, which had so nearly been Zoe's last and Zeno's too; and when she opened her eyes again and found herself lying on her own divan under the soft light of the lamps, and looked into his anxious, loving face, all the weariness sank away from her own, and for an instant she felt as strong as if she had freshly waked from rest; then she put up her arms together, though it hurt her very much to lift the left one, and she clasped her hands round his handsome brown neck and drew him down to her without a word.

It was only for a moment. Her strength failed her again, and he felt her little hands relax; so he knelt down by the divan and laid his cheek upon the edge of her pillow, so that he could look into her face, and they both smiled; and his smile was anxious, but hers was satisfied. He did not know what they had done to her, but he was sure that she needed care.

'You are suffering,' he said. 'What shall I do? Shall I send for a physician?'

'No. Stay with me. Let me look at you. That is all I need.'

Her speech came in short, soft phrases, like kisses from lips half-asleep, when there is a little dream between each sentence and the next. But even when she was asleep he still knelt beside her, and now and then her body quivered, and she drew a sharp breath suddenly as if the pain she had borne ran through her again, though more in memory than in real suffering now.

CHAPTER XX

Zeno left her when she was breathing quietly, after ordering the two little maids to watch her by turns, or at least to go to sleep very near her, in case she should wake and call. He himself was worn out with fatigue and hunger, for he had not tasted anything since he had supped with Zoe on the previous evening. He went down to his own rooms, where Vito had prepared him food and wine, which he had asked Gorlias to share with him. But the ex-astrologer was gone, and the master ate and drank alone that night, smiling now and then at the recollection of the dark hours in the dry cistern, and giving orders to Vito about the journey which was to be begun on the morrow, if possible. And Vito gave him a detailed account of what had happened in his absence.

Now that Zoe was safe he was supremely happy. In his heart the fighting man had detested the peaceful merchant's life he had chosen to lead for more than two years, and already, in imagination, his hands were on the helm, the salt spray was in his face, and his ship was going free on her course for the wonderful Isles of Adventure.

But by the orders he gave while he ate his supper, Vito understood that he was not going alone. When had Carlo Zeno ever taken rich carpets, soft cushions, silver basins, and delicate provisions to sea with him, except as merchandise, packed in bales and stowed below? A camp-bed ash.o.r.e, a hammock at sea, were enough for his comfort. Vito mentally noted each order, and when the time came he had forgotten nothing; but he asked no questions.