When it was quite dark the old woman came back with something hidden
under her tattered shawl, and Zoë drew the rotten shutters that barely
hung by the hinges and fastened them inside with bits of rain-bleached
cord that were knotted through holes in the wood. She also shut the
door and put up a wooden bar across it. While she was doing this she
could hear Anastasia, the crazy paralytic who lived farther down the
lane, singing a sort of mad litany of hunger to herself in the dark.
It was the thin nasal voice of a starving lunatic, rising sharply and
then dying away in a tuneless wail:--
Holy Mother, send us a little food, for we are hungry!
Kyrie eleeison! Eleeison!
Blessed Michael Archangel, gives us meat, for we starve!
Eleeison!
O blessed Charalambos, for the love of Heaven, a kid roasted on
the coals and good bread with it! Eleeison, eleeison! We are
hungry!
Holy Sergius and Bacchus, Martyrs, have mercy upon us and send
us a savoury meal of pottage! Eleeison! Pottage with oil and
pepper! Eleeison, eleeison!
Holy Peter and Paul and Zacharius, send your angels with fish,
and with meat, and with sweet cooked herbs! Eleeison, let us
eat and be filled, and sleep! Eleeison! Spread us your heavenly
tables, and let us drink of the good water from the heavenly
spring!
Oh, we are hungry! We are starving! Eleeison! Eleeison!
Eleeison!
The miserable, crazy voice rose to a piercing scream, that made Zoë
shudder; and then there came a little low, faint wailing, as the mad
woman collapsed in her chair, dreaming perhaps that her prayer was
about to be answered.
Zoë had shut the door, and there was now a little light in the ruined
room; for Nectaria, the old beggar woman, had been crouching in a
corner over an earthen pan in which a few live coals were buried under
ashes, and she had blown upon them till they glowed and had kindled a
splinter of dry wood to a flame, and with this she had lit the small
wick of an earthen lamp which held mingled oil and sheep's fat. But
she placed the light on the stone floor so shaded that not a single
ray could fall towards the door or the cracked shutters, lest some
late returning beggar should see a glimmer from outside and guess that
there was something to get by breaking in and stealing; for they were
only three women, one dying, one very old, and the third Zoë herself,
and two young children, and some of the beggars were strong men who
had only lost one eye, or perhaps one hand, which had been chopped off
for stealing.
When the light was burning Zoë could see that the sick woman was
awake, and she poured out some milk from a small jug which Nectaria
had brought, and warmed it over the coals in a cracked cup, and held
it to the tired lips, propping up the pillow with her other hand. And
the sick one drank, and tried to smile.
Meanwhile Nectaria spread out the rest of the supplies she had
brought on a clean board; there was a small black loaf and three
little fishes fried in oil, such as could be bought where food is
cooked at the corners of the streets for the very poor. The two
children gazed at this delicious meal with hungry eyes. They were
boys, not more than seven and eight years old, and their rags were
tied to them, to cover them, with all sorts of bits of string and
strips of torn linen. But they were quite quiet, and did not try to
take their share till Zoë came to the board and broke the black loaf
into four equal portions with her white fingers. There was a piece for
each of the boys, and a piece for Nectaria, and the girl kept a piece
for herself; but she would not take a fish, as there were only three.
'This is all I could buy for the money,' said Nectaria. 'The milk is
very dear now.'
'Why do you give it to me?' asked the sick woman, in a sweet and faint
voice. 'You are only feeding the dead, and the living need the food.'
'Mother!' cried Zoë reproachfully, 'if you love us, do not talk of
leaving us! The Bokharian has promised to bring a physician to see
you, and to give us money for what you need. He will come in the
morning, early in the morning, and you shall be cured, and live! Is it
not as I say, Nectaria?'
The old woman nodded her head in answer as she munched her black
bread, but would say nothing, and would not look up. There was silence
for a while.
'And what have you promised the Bokharian?' asked the mother at last,
fixing her sad eyes on Zoë's face. 'Did ever one of his people give
one of us anything without return?'
'I have promised nothing,' Zoë answered, meeting her mother's gaze
quietly. Yet there was a shade of effort in her tone.
'Nothing yet,' said the sick woman. 'I understand. But it will
come--it will come too soon!'
She turned away her face on the pillow and the last words were hardly
audible. The little boys did not hear them, and would not have
understood; but old Nectaria heard and made signs to Zoë. The signs
meant that by and by, when the sick woman should be dozing, Nectaria
had something to tell; and Zoë nodded.
There was silence again till all had finished eating and had drunk in
turn from the earthen jar of water. Then they sat still and silent for
a little while, and though the windows and the door were shut they
could hear the mad woman singing again:--
Eleeison! Spread heavenly tables! Eleeison! We are starving!
Eleeison! Eleeison! Eleeison!
The sick woman breathed softly and regularly. The little boys grew
sleepy and nodded, and huddled against each other as they sat. Then
old Nectaria took the light and led them, half asleep, to a sort of
bunk of boards and dry straw, in a small inner room, and put them to
bed, covering them as well as she could; and they were soon asleep.
She came back, shading the light carefully with her hand; and
presently, when the sick woman seemed to be sleeping also, Nectaria
and Zoë crept softly to the other end of the room and talked in
whispers.
'She is better to-night,' said the girl.
Nectaria shook her head doubtfully.
'How can any one get well here, without medicine, without food,
without fire?' she asked. 'Yes--she is better--a little. It will only
take her longer to die.'
'She shall not die,' said Zoë. 'The Bokharian has promised money and
help.'
'For nothing? he will give nothing,' Nectaria answered sadly. 'He
talked long with me this afternoon, out in the street. I implored him
to give us a little help now, till the danger is passed, because if
you leave her she will die.'
'Did you try to make him believe that if he would help us now you
would betray me to him in a few days?'
'Yes, but he laughed at me--softly and wisely as Bokharians laugh. He
asked me if one should feed wolves with flesh before baiting the
pit-fall that is to catch them. He says plainly that until you can
make up your mind, we shall have only the three pennies he gives us
every day, and if your mother dies, so much the worse; and if the
children die, so much the worse; and if I die, so much the worse; for
he says you are the strongest of us and will outlive us all.'
'It is true!' Zoë clasped her hands against the wall and pressed her
forehead against them, closing her eyes. 'It is true,' she repeated,
in the same whisper, 'I am so strong!'
Old Nectaria stood beside her and laid one wrinkled cheek to the cold
wall, so that her face was near Zoë's, and they could still talk.
'If I refuse,' said the girl, quivering a little in her distress, 'I
shall see you all die before my eyes, one by one!'
'Yet, if you leave your mother now----' the old woman began.
'She has lived through much more than losing me,' answered Zoë. 'My
father's long imprisonment, his awful death!' she shuddered now, from
head to foot.
Nectaria laid a withered hand sympathetically on her trembling
shoulder, but Zoë mastered herself after a moment's silence and turned
her face to her companion.
'You must make her think that I shall come back,' she whispered.
'There is no other way--unless I give my soul, too. That would kill
her indeed--she could not live through that!'
'And to think that my old bones are worth nothing!' sighed the poor
old woman; she took the rags of Zoë's tattered sleeve and pressed them
to her lips.
But Zoë bent down, for she was the taller by a head, and she tenderly
kissed the wrinkled face.
'Hush!' she whispered softly. 'You will wake her if you cry. I must do
it, Ria, to save you all from death, since I can. If I wait longer, I
shall grow thinner, and though I am so strong I may fall ill. Then I
shall be worth nothing to the Bokharian.'
'But it is slavery, child! Do you not understand that it is slavery?
That he will take you and sell you in the market, as he would sell an
Arab mare, to the highest bidder?'
[Illustration: She tenderly kissed the wrinkled face.]
Zoë leaned sideways against the wall, and the faint light that shone
upwards from the earthen lamp on the floor, fell upon her lovely
upturned face, and on the outlines of her graceful body, ill-concealed
by her thin rags.
'Is it true that I am still beautiful?' she asked after a pause.
'Yes,' answered the old woman, looking at her, 'it is true. You were
not a pretty child, you were sallow, and your nose----'
Zoë interrupted her.
'Do you think that many girls as beautiful as I are offered in the
slave market?'
'Not in my time,' answered the old woman. 'When I was in the market I
never saw one that could compare with you.'
She had been sold herself, when she was thirteen.
'Of course,' she added, 'the handsome ones were kept apart from us and
were better fed before they were sold, but we waited on them--we whom
no one would buy except to make us work--and so we saw them every
day.'
'He says he will give a hundred Venetian ducats for me, does he not?'
'Yes; and you are worth three hundred anywhere,' answered the old
slave, and the tears came to her eyes, though she tried to squeeze
them back with her crooked fingers.
The sick woman called to the two in a weak voice. Zoë was at her side
instantly, and Nectaria shuffled as fast as she could to the pan of
coals and crouched down to blow upon the embers in order to warm some
milk.
'I am cold,' complained the sufferer, 'so cold!'
Zoë found one of her hands and began to chafe it gently between her
own.
'It is like ice,' she said.
The girl was ill-clothed enough, as it was, and the early spring night
was chilly; but she slipped off her ragged outer garment, the
long-skirted coat of the Greeks, and spread it over the other wretched
coverings of the bed, tucking it in round her mother's neck.
'But you, child?' protested the sick woman feebly.
'I am too hot, mother,' answered Zoë, whose teeth were chattering.
Nectaria brought the warm milk, and Zoë lifted the pillow as she had
done before, and held the cup to the eager lips till the liquid was
all gone.
'It is of no use,' sighed her mother. 'I shall die. I shall not live
till morning.'
She had been a very great lady of Constantinople, the Kyría Agatha,
wife of the Protosparthos Michael Rhangabé, whom the Emperor
Andronicus had put to death with frightful tortures more than a year
ago, because he had been faithful to the Emperor Johannes. Until her
husband had been imprisoned, she had spent her life in a marble palace
by the Golden Horn, or in a beautiful villa on the Bosphorus. She had
lived delicately and had loved her existence, and even after all her
husband's goods had been confiscated as well as all her own, she had
lived in plenty for many months with her children, borrowing here and
there of her friends and relatives. But they had forsaken her at last;
not but that some of them were generous and would have supported her
for years, if it had been only a matter of money, but it had become a
question of life and death after Rhangabé had been executed, and none
of them would risk being blinded, or maimed, or perhaps strangled for
the sake of helping her. Then she had fallen into abject poverty; her
slaves had all been taken from her with the rest of the property and
sold again in the market, but old Nectaria had hidden herself and so
had escaped; and she, who knew the city, had brought Kyría Agatha and
her three children to the beggars' quarter as a last refuge, when no
one would take them in. The old slave had toiled for them, and begged
for them, and would have stolen for them if she had not been
profoundly convinced that stealing was not only a crime punishable at
the very least by the loss of the right hand, but that it was also a
much greater sin because it proved that the thief did not believe in
the goodness of Providence. For Providence, said Nectaria, was always
right, and so long as men did right, men and Providence must
necessarily agree; in other words, all would end well, either on earth
or in heaven. But to steal, or kill by treachery, or otherwise to
injure one's neighbour for one's own advantage, was to interfere with
the ways of Providence, and people who did such things would in the
end find themselves in a place diametrically opposite to that heaven
in which Providence resided. Of its kind, Nectaria's reasoning was
sound, and whether truly philosophical or not, it was undeniably
moral.
Zoë was not Kyría Agatha's own daughter. No children had been born to
the Protosparthos and his wife for several years after their marriage,
and at last, in despair, they had adopted a little baby girl, the
child of a young Venetian couple who had both died of the cholera that
periodically visited Constantinople. Kyría Agatha and Rhangabé brought
her up as their own daughter, and again years passed by; then, at
last, two boys were born to them within eighteen months. Michael
Rhangabé's affection for the adopted girl never suffered the slightest
change. Kyría Agatha loved her own children better, as any mother
would, and as any children would have a right to expect when they were
old enough to reason. She had not been unkind to Zoë, still less had
she conceived a dislike for her; but she had grown indifferent to her
and had looked forward with pleasure to the time when the girl should
marry and leave the house. Then the great catastrophe had come, and
loss of fortune, and at last beggary and actual starvation; and though
Zoë's devotion had grown deeper and more unselfish with every trial,
the elder woman's anxiety now, in her last dire extremity, was for her
boys first, then for herself, and for Zoë last of all.
The girl knew the truth about her birth, for Rhangabé himself had not
thought it right that she should be deceived, but she had not the
least recollection of her own parents; the Protosparthos and his wife
had been her real father and mother and had been kind, and it was her
nature to be grateful and devoted. She saw that the Kyría loved the
boys best, but she was already too womanly not to feel that human
nature must have its way where the ties of flesh and blood are
concerned; and besides, if her adoptive mother had been cruel and
cold, instead of only indifferent where she had once been loving, the
girl would still have given her life for her, for dead Rhangabé's
sake. While he had lived, she had almost worshipped him; in his last
agonies he had sent a message to his wife and children, and to her,
which by some happy miracle had been delivered; and now that he was
dead she was ready to die for those who had been his; more than that,
she was willing to be sold into slavery for them.
She stood by the bedside only half covered, and she tried to think of
something more that she might do, while she gazed on the pale face
that was turned up to hers.
'Are you warmer, now?' she asked tenderly.
'Yes--a little. Thank you, child.'
Kyría Agatha closed her eyes again, but Zoë still watched her. The
conviction grew in the girl that the real danger was over, and that
the delicately nurtured woman only needed care and warmth and food.
That was all, but that was the unattainable, since there was nothing
left that could be sold; nothing but Zoë's rare and lovely self. A
hundred golden ducats were a fortune. In old Nectaria's hands such a
sum would buy real comfort for more than a year, and in that time no
one could tell what might happen. A turn of fortune might bring the
Emperor John back to the throne. He had been a weak ruler, but neither
cruel nor ungrateful, and surely he would provide for the widow of
the Commander of his Guards who had perished in torment for being
faithful to him. Then Zoë's freedom might be bought again, and she
would go into a convent and live a good life to the end, in expiation
of such evil as might be thrust upon her as a bought slave.
This she could do, and this she must do, for there was no other way to
save Agatha's life, and the lives of the little boys.
'A little more milk,' said the sick woman, opening her eyes again.
Nectaria crouched over the embers, and warmed what was left of the
milk. Zoë, watching her movements, saw that it was the last; but Kyría
Agatha was surely better, and would ask for more during the night, and
there would be none to give her; none, perhaps, until nearly noon
to-morrow.
Nectaria took the pan of coals away to replenish it, going out to the
back of the ruined house in order to light the charcoal in the open
air. The sick woman closed her eyes again, being momentarily satisfied
and warm.
Zoë sank upon her knees beside the bed, forgetting that she was cold
and half-starved, as the tide of her thoughts rose in a wave of
despair.
The fitful night breeze wafted the words of the mad woman's crooning
along the lane, 'Eleeison! Eleeison!'
And Zoë unconsciously answered, as she would have answered in church,
'Kyrie eleeison!'
'Blessed Michael, Archangel, give us meat, we starve!' came the wild
song, now high and distinct.
'Kyrie eleeison!' answered Zoë on her knees.
Then she sprang to her feet like a startled animal. Some one had
knocked at the door. With one hand she gathered her thin rags across
her bosom, the other unconsciously went to the sick woman's shoulder,
as if at once to reassure her and to bid her be silent.
Again the knocking came, discreet still, but a little louder than
before. Nectaria was still away and busy with the pan of coals, and
the sick woman heard nothing, for she was sound asleep at last. Zoë
saw this, and drew her bare feet out of her patched slippers before
she ran lightly to the door.
'Who knocks?' she asked in a very low tone, clasping her tattered
garment to her body.
The Bokharian's smooth voice answered her in oily accents.
'I am Rustan,' he said. 'I am suddenly obliged to go on a journey, and
I start at dawn.'
Zoë held her breath, for she felt that the last chance of saving her
mother was slipping away.
'Do you hear me?' asked Rustan, outside.
'Yes.'
'Will you make up your mind? I will give half as much again as I
promised.'
The girl's face had been pale; it turned white now, for the great
moment had come very suddenly. She made an effort to swallow, in order
to speak distinctly, and she glanced towards the bed. Kyría Agatha was
in a deep sleep.
'Have your brought the money with you?' Zoë asked, almost panting.
'Yes.'
The hand that grasped the rags to keep them together pressed
desperately against her heart. While Rustan could have counted ten,
there was silence. Twice again she looked towards the bed and then,
with infinite precaution, she slipped out the wooden bar that kept the
door closed. Once more she drew her rags over her, for they had fallen
back when she used both her hands. She opened the door a little, and
saw Rustan muffled in a cloak, his eager face and black beard thrust
forward in anticipation of entering. But she stopped him, and held out
one hand.
'My mother has fallen into a deep sleep,' she said. 'Give me the money
and I will go with you.'
Without hesitation Rustan placed in her outstretched hand a small bag
made of coarse sail-cloth, and closely tied with hemp twine.
'How much is it?' she whispered.
'One hundred and fifty gold ducats,' answered the Bokharian under his
breath, for he knew that if he did not wake the sleeping woman there
would be less trouble.
At that moment Nectaria came back from within, with the pan of coals.
Zoë caught her eye and held out the heavy little bag. The woman
stared, looked at Kyría Agatha's sleeping face, set down the pan upon
the floor, and came forward.
'He has brought the money, a hundred and fifty ducats,' Zoë whispered,
forcing the bag into Nectaria's trembling hands. 'It is the only way.
Good-bye--quick--shut the door before she wakes--tell her I am asleep
in the straw--God bless you----'
'Eleeison! Eleeison!' came the wail of the mad woman on the wind.
Before Nectaria could answer Zoë had pulled the door till it shut
behind her, and was outside, barefooted on the hardening mud, and
scarcely covered. She said nothing now, and Rustan was silent too, but
he had taken one of her wrists and held it firmly without hurting it.
The fleet young creature might make a dash for freedom yet, foolish as
that would be, since he could easily force his way into the ruined
house and take back his money if she escaped him. But he had nearly
lost a young slave once before, and he would risk nothing, so he kept
his strong hand tightly clasped round the slender wrist, though Zoë
walked beside him quietly in the deep gloom, thinking only of covering
herself from his gaze, though indeed he could scarcely see the outline
of her figure.
They went on quickly. For the last time, as Rustan led her round a
sharp turn, she heard the wild cry of the poor mad creature she had
listened to so often by day and in the dead of night. Then she was in
another street and could hear it no more.
She was not allowed time to think of her condition yet. A few steps
farther and Rustan stopped short, still holding her fast by the wrist,
and she saw that they had come upon a group of men who were waiting
for them. One suddenly held up a lantern which had been covered, and
now shed a yellow light through thin leaves of horn, and Zoë saw that
he was a big Ethiopian, as black as ebony. She drew her tatters still
more closely over her with her free hand and turned away from the
light, as well as Rustan's unrelaxing hold would allow.
A moment later some one she could not see threw a wide warm cloak over
her shoulders from behind her, and she caught it gladly and drew the
folds to her breast.
'Get into the litter,' said Rustan, sharply but not loudly.
There was nothing soft or oily in his tone now. He had bought her and
she was a part of his property. Four men had lifted a covered
palanquin and held it up with the small open door just in front of
her. She turned, sat upon the edge, and bent her head to slip into the
conveyance backwards, as Eastern women learn to do very easily. Rustan
held her wrist till she was ready to draw in her feet, and as he let
her go at last she disappeared within. He instantly closed the sliding
panel and fastened it with a bronze pin. There were half-a-dozen round
holes in each door to let in air, not quite big enough to allow the
passage of an ordinary woman's hand.
Zoë sank back in the close darkness and found herself leaning against
yielding pillows covered with soft leather. The palanquin began to
move steadily forwards, hardly swaying from side to side, and not
rising or falling at all, as the porters walked on with a smooth,
shuffling gait, each timing his step a fraction of a second later than
that of the man next before him; lest, by all keeping step together,
they should set their burden swinging, which is intolerable to the
person carried.
Four men carried the litter, a fifth, armed with an iron-shod staff,
went before with the lantern, and Rustan followed after. There was
nothing in the appearance of the party to excite surprise or curiosity
in a city where every well-to-do person who went out in the evening
was carried in a palanquin, and accompanied by at least two trusty
servants. For that matter, too, Rustan's business was perfectly
legitimate, and it concerned no one that he should have a newly bought
beauty carried in a closed litter from a distant quarter of the city
to his home.
It was true that he had no receipt for his money, acknowledging that
it was the stipulated price paid for a full-grown white maid between
eighteen and nineteen years old, with brown eyes, brown hair,
twenty-eight teeth, all sound, and a pale complexion; who weighed
about two Attic talents and five minæ, and measured just six palms,
standing on her bare feet. In strict law, he should have had such a
document, signed by the father or mother or owner of the slave, but he
knew that he was quite safe without it. Like all Bokharians, he was a
profound judge of human nature, and he was quite sure that having once
submitted to her fate Zoë would not cheat him by claiming the freedom
she had sacrificed; moreover, he knew that the adopted daughter of
Michael Rhangabé who had died on the stake in the Hippodrome as an
enemy of the reigning Emperor, would have but a small chance of
obtaining justice, even if she attempted to prove that she had been
carried off by force. Rustan Karaboghazji felt that his position was
unassailable as he followed the litter that carried his latest
bargain through the winding streets of Constantinople towards the
narrow lane, one side of which was formed by that mysterious wall
which had but one door in it.
He was well pleased with his day's business, for he was quite sure
that he had netted a handsome profit. Under his cloak he held a string
of beads in one hand, and as he walked he made the calculation of his
probable gains, pushing the beads along the string with his thumb. He
had paid one hundred and fifty gold ducats for Zoë; but fifty of them
were at least a quarter of their value under weight, so that the
actual value of the gold was one hundred and thirty-seven and a half
ducats. He was quite sure that Zeno would approve the purchase on a
careful inspection, and that he would be willing to give three hundred
and fifty sequins, though the girl was a little over age, as slaves'
ages were counted. She should have been between sixteen and seventeen,
yet she was exceptionally pretty, and spoke three languages--Greek,
Latin, and Italian. If Zeno paid the price, the clear profit would be
two hundred and twelve and a half ducats. The beads worked quickly in
Rustan's fingers, and his hard grey eyes gleamed in the dark. Two
hundred and twelve and a half on one hundred and thirty-seven and a
half, by the new Venetian method of so much in the hundred, which was
a very convenient way of reckoning profits, meant one hundred and
fifty-four and a half per centum. The beads worked furiously, as the
merchant's imagination carried him off into a mercantile paradise
where he could make a hundred and fifty per cent on his capital every
day of the year except Sundays and high feast days. This calculation
was complicated, even for a Bokharian brain, but it was a delightful
one to follow out, and Rustan's blood coursed pleasantly through his
veins as he walked behind his purchase.
He had lost no time after he had left the beggars' quarter late in the
afternoon, by no means sure that Zoë meant to surrender at all, and
very doubtful as to her doing so within the next three days. Yet he
had boldly promised that Carlo Zeno should see her on approval on the
following morning. After all, he risked nothing but a first failure,
for if he did not succeed in buying Zoë in time he could nevertheless
show the Venetian merchant some very pretty wares. Zeno was not a man
to waste words with such a creature as a slave-dealer, and the
interview had not lasted ten minutes. It had taken longer than that to
weigh the ducats in order to be sure that a certain number of them
were under weight. The only thing Rustan now wished was that he had
put many more light ones into the bag, since it had not even been
opened; for he had naturally expected to be obliged to count them out
before old Nectaria, who had a born slave's intelligence about money.
Inside the litter the girl lay on her cushions in the dark, wondering
with a sort of horror at what she had done. She had thought of it
indeed, through many days and sleepless nights, and she did not regret
it; she would not have gone back, now that she had left plenty and
comfort where there had been nothing but ruin and hunger; but she
thought of what was before her and prayed that she might close her
eyes and die before the morning came, or better still, before the
litter stopped and Rustan drew back the sliding door.
In an age and a land of slavery, the slave's fate was familiar to her.
She knew that there were public markets and private markets, and that
her beauty, which meant her value, would save her from the former; but
to the daughter of freeborn parents the difference between the one and
the other was not so great as to be a consolation. She would be well
lodged, well covered, and well fed, it was true, and she need not fear
cruel treatment; but customers would come, perhaps to-morrow, and she
was to be shown to them like a valuable horse; they would judge her
points and discuss her and the sum that Rustan would ask; and if they
thought the price too high they would go away and others would come,
and others, till a bargain was struck at last. After that, she could
only think of death as the end. She knew that many handsome girls were
secretly sold to Sultan Amurad and the Turkish chiefs over in Asia
Minor or in Adrianople, and it was more than likely that she herself
would fare no better, for the conquerors were lavish with their gold,
whereas the Greeks were either half-ruined nobles or sordid merchants
who counted every penny.
The men carried the litter smoothly and steadily, never slackening and
never hastening their pace. The time seemed endless. Now and then she
heard voices and many steps, with the clatter of horses' hoofs, which
told her that she was in one of the more frequented streets, but most
of the time she heard scarcely anything but the shuffling walk of the
men in their heavy sandals and the firmer tread of Rustan's well-shod
feet where the road was hard. She guessed that he was avoiding the
great thoroughfares, probably because the people who thronged them
even at that hour would have hindered the progress of the palanquin.
Zoë knew as well as the dealer that there was nothing as yet in the
transaction which need be hidden; possibly, if she were afterwards
sold to the Turks, she would be taken across the Bosphorus secretly,
for though there was no law against selling Christian girls to
unbelievers the people of the city looked upon the traffic with
something like horror, and an angry crowd might rescue the merchandise
from the dealer's hands. Zoë did not expect that rare good fortune,
for Rustan was not a man to run any risks in his business.
As she lay among her cushions, dreading the end of the journey, but
gradually wearying of the future, her thoughts went back to the first
cause of all her misfortunes, of Michael Rhangabé's awful death, of
all the suffering that had followed them. One man alone had wrought
that evil and much more, one man, the reigning Emperor Andronicus. Zoë
was not revengeful, not cruel, very far from bloodthirsty; but when
she thought of him she felt that she would kill him if she could, and
that it would only be justice. Suddenly a ray of something like hope
flashed through her darkness. Nectaria had told her how beautiful she
was; perhaps, being so much more valuable than most of the slaves that
went to the market, she might be destined for the Emperor himself. It
was just possible. She set her teeth and clenched her little hands in
the dark. If that should be her fate, the usurper's days were
numbered. She would free her country from its tyrant and be revenged
for Rhangabé's murder and for all the rest at one quick stroke, though
she might be condemned to die within the hour. That was indeed
something to hope for.
The litter stopped and she heard keys thrust into locks, and felt that
the porters turned short to the left to enter a door. Her journey
through the city was at an end.