A month had passed, and yet, to all outward appearance, Zeno's manner
of living had undergone no change. He rose early and bathed in the
Golden Horn on fine days. He attended to his business in the morning,
and dined with Sebastian Polo twice a week, but generally at home on
the remaining days; and he rode out in the afternoon with a single
running footman, or stayed indoors if it rained. Even his own servants
and slaves hardly noticed any change in his habits, and only observed
that he often looked preoccupied, and sometimes sat on his balcony for
an hour without moving, his eyes fixed on the towers of the Blachernæ
palace.
They did not know how much time he spent with his beautiful Greek
slave; and they found that the two little maids, Yulia and Lucilla,
were not inclined to gossip when they came downstairs on an errand.
Omobono probably knew a good deal, but he kept it to himself, and
stored the fruits of his lively curiosity to enjoy alone the delicious
sensation of the miser gloating over his useless gold. On the whole,
therefore, life in the Venetian merchant's house had gone on much as
usual for a whole month after Zoë had fired a train which was destined
to produce momentous results when it reached the mine at last.
Zeno saw her every day now, and often twice, and she had become a part
of his life, and necessary to him; though he did not believe that he
was in love with her, any more than she would have admitted that she
loved him.
For each was possessed by one dominant thought; and it chanced, as it
rarely chances in real life, that one deed, if it could be performed,
would satisfy the hopes of both. Zeno, born patriot and leader, saw
that the whole influence of his country in the East was at stake in
the matter of Tenedos; Zoë thirsted to revenge the death of Michael
Rhangabé, her adopted father and the idol of her childhood.
If the imprisoned Emperor Johannes could be delivered from the Amena
tower, both would certainly obtain what they most desired. Johannes
would give Tenedos to Venice, in gratitude for his liberty, and the
people of Constantinople would probably tear Andronicus to ribands in
the Hippodrome, on the very spot where Rhangabé had suffered.
They would rally round their lawful sovereign if he could only be got
out of the precincts of the palace, where the usurper was strongly
guarded by his foreign mercenaries, mostly Circassians, Mingrelians,
Avars, and Slavonians. The people would not rise of themselves to
storm Blachernæ, nor would the Greek troops revolt of their own
accord; but as they all feared the soldiers of the foreign legion,
they hated them and their master Andronicus, and the presence of
Johannes amongst them would restore their courage and make the issue
certain.
Such a leader as Carlo Zeno might indeed have successfully besieged
Andronicus in his palace; but he knew, and every man and woman in
Constantinople knew well enough, that Andronicus would make an end of
his father and of his two younger brothers in prison, at the first
sign of a revolution, so that there might be no lawful heir to the
throne left alive but he himself.
Therefore it was the first and the chief object of the patriots to
bring Johannes secretly from his place of confinement to the heart of
the city, or to one of the islands, beyond the reach of danger, till
the revolution should be over and his son a prisoner in his stead;
though it was much more probable that the latter would be summarily
put to death as a traitor.
All this Zeno had understood before Zoë had spoken to him about it;
but he had not known that the Genoese had demanded Tenedos of
Andronicus as the price of their protection against the Turks; for the
negotiations had been kept very secret, and at first Carlo had not
believed the girl, and had deemed that the tale might be a pure
invention.
He had come again to see her on the following day, and again he had
vainly tried to find out who she was, and in what great Fanariote
house she had been brought up. It was impossible to get a word from
her on this subject; and she warned him that what she had told him
must not be repeated in the hearing of any Genoese, nor of any one
connected with the Court. The Genoese meant that no one should know of
the treaty till it was carried out, and until Tenedos was theirs; for
the place was very strong, as they afterwards found by experience,
and Andronicus needed their help too much to risk losing their favour
by an indiscretion.
These injunctions of silence made Carlo still more doubtful as to the
veracity of Zoë's story, and he frankly told her so and demanded
proof; but she only answered as she had at first.
'If it is not true,' she said, 'brand me in the forehead, as they
brand thieves, and sell me in the open market.'
And again he was angry, and swore that he would do so by her indeed if
the story was a lie; but she smiled confidently, and nodded her
assent.
'If you do not save the Emperor,' she said, 'you Venetians will be
driven out of Constantinople before many months; and if Genoa once
holds Tenedos how shall you ever again sail up the Dardanelles?'
Many a time she had heard Michael Rhangabé say as much to his friends,
and she knew that it was wisdom. So did Zeno, and he wondered at the
knowledge of his bought slave. So he came and went, turning over the
great question in his brain; and she awaited his coming gladly,
because she saw that he was roused, and because the longing for just
revenge was uppermost in her thoughts. Thus were the two drawn
together more and more, fate helping. Yet he told her nothing of the
steps he took so quickly after he had once made up his mind to act.
She no longer asked him what he meant to do with her; she did not
again send for the secretary to complain that her existence was dull;
she no longer was impatient with her maids; she seemed perfectly
satisfied with her existence.
She went out when she pleased to go, in the beautiful skiff, in charge
of Omobono, and always with one of the girls; and she sat in the deep
cushioned seat as the great ladies did when they were rowed to the
Sweet Waters, and as she had sat many times in old days, beside Kyría
Agatha. The secretary sat on a little movable seat in the waist of the
boat, which was built almost exactly like a modern Venetian gondola
without the hood, and the slave-girl sat in the bottom at her
mistress's feet. Zoë, the adopted daughter of the Protosparthos, had
gone abroad with uncovered face, but Arethusa, the slave, was closely
veiled, though that was not the general custom. And often, as she
glided along in the spring afternoons, she passed people she had known
only a year ago, or a little more, who wondered why she hid her
features; or told each other, as was more or less true, that she was
some handsome white slave, whose jealous master would not suffer her
beauty to be seen. For it was clear that Omobono was only a
respectable elderly person placed in charge of her.
The two generally conversed in Latin, and the secretary told her of
his search for Kyría Agatha, the children, and old Nectaria. She had
never shown him her face since she had been a slave, and she believed
that he did not connect her with the ragged girl he had seen bending
over the sick woman's bed in the beggars' quarter. She had enjoined
upon him the greatest discretion in case he found the little family,
and with Omobono such an injunction was quite unnecessary, for outward
discretion is the characteristic quality of curiosity, which is
inwardly the least discreet of failings. People who look through
keyholes, listen behind curtains, and read other people's letters are
generally the last to talk of what they learn in that way.
As yet, the secretary's search had been fruitless, but he had long ago
made up his mind that Zoë was Kyría Agatha's daughter. The
bandy-legged sacristan of Saint Bacchus had helped him to this
conclusion by informing him that Rustan Karaboghazji had not come to
perform his devotions in the church for some time; never, in fact,
since that Friday afternoon on which Omobono had inquired after him.
The secretary had searched the beggars' quarter in vain. He remembered
the ruined house very well, and the crazy shutters with bits of
rain-bleached string tied to them for fastenings. There were people
living in it, but they were not the same beggars; it was now inhabited
by the chief physician of the beggars himself, whose business it was
to prepare misery for the public eye, at fixed rates. For among those
who were really starving there lived a small tribe of professional
paupers, who displayed the horrors of their loathsome diseases at the
doors of the churches all over Constantinople. The physician was
skilful in his way, and though he preferred a real cripple, or a real
sore for his art to improve upon, he could produce the semblance of
either on sound limbs and a whole skin, though the process was
expensive. Yet that increased cost was balanced by the ability of his
healthy patients to go alone to a great distance, and thus to vary the
scene of their industry. They thus picked up the charity which should
have reached the real poor, most of whom could hardly crawl as far as
the great thoroughfares more than once or twice a week, at the risk of
their lives. The sham beggar always has a marvellous power of covering
the ground, but you must generally seek the real one in the lair where
he is dying. Omobono had learnt much about beggars which he had not
known before then, and he had found no trace whatever of the people
whom he was seeking.
They seemed very far away when Zoë thought of them. She wondered
whether any of them missed her, except Nectaria, now that they had
warm clothes and plenty to eat. The sacrifice had been very terrible
at first,--it did not seem so now; and she knew that on that very
afternoon when she went home after being out in the boat, she would
listen for Zeno's footstep in the vestibule, and think the time long
till he came.
But Omobono had gathered a good deal of information about her from his
acquaintance, the sacristan, whom he strongly suspected of being in
league with Rustan to inform him when there was anything worth buying
in the beggars' quarter; for the Bokharian was a busy man, and had no
time to spend in searching for unusual merchandise, nor, when there
was any to be had, would it have been to his advantage to be seen
often in its neighborhood. So he paid the sacristan to quarter the
ground continually for him, while he was engaged elsewhere. It is to
the credit of Rustan's splendid business intelligence that the system
he employed has not been improved on in five hundred years; for when
the modern slave-dealers make their annual journeys to the centres of
supply they find everything ready for them, like any other commercial
traveller.
Having understood Rustan's mode of procedure, Omobono had extracted
from the sacristan such information as the latter possessed about Zoë
and Kyría Agatha, but that was not very much after all. They had lived
three or four weeks in the ruined house, or perhaps six; he could not
remember exactly. At first they all came to the church, but they had
sold their miserable clothes and their wretched belongings. The last
time the girl had come, she had been alone, and she had worn a blanket
over her shoulders to keep her warm. That had been at dusk. Then
Rustan had bought her, and soon afterwards they must have gone away,
since the beggars' physician was now installed in the house. Why
should the sacristan take any interest in them? They were gone, and
Constantinople was a vast city. No, the woman had not died, for he
would have known it. When people died they were buried, even if they
had starved to death in the beggars' quarter.
Zoë thanked Omobono for the information, and begged him to continue
her search. He wondered why she did not burst into tears, and
concluded that she was either quite heartless, or was in love with
Zeno, or both. He inclined to the latter theory. Love, he told himself
with all the conviction of middle-aged inexperience, was a selfish
passion. Zoë loved Zeno, and did not care what had become of her
mother.
Besides, he knew that she was jealous. She had heard of Giustina, and
was determined to see her. She insisted that the boat should keep to
the left, going up the Golden Horn, and she made the secretary point
out Sebastian Polo's dwelling. It was a small palace, a hundred yards
below the gardens of Blachernæ, and it had marble steps, like those at
Zeno's house. A girl with dyed hair sat in the shade in an upper
balcony; her hair was red auburn, like that of the Venetian women, and
her face was white, but that was all Zoë could see. She wished she had
a hawk's eyes. Omobono said it might be Giustina, but as the latter
had many friends, it might also be one of them, for most Venetian
women had hair of that colour.
Farther up, they neared Blachernæ, and came first to the great Amena
tower, of which the foundations stood on an escarped pier in the
water. Zoë looked up, trying to guess the height of the upper windows
from the water, but she had no experience, and they were very
high--perhaps a hundred palms, perhaps fifty--Zeno would know. Could
he get up there by a rope? She wondered, and she thought of what she
should feel if she herself were hanging there in mid-air by a single
rope against the smooth wall. Then in her imagination she saw Zeno
half-way up, and some one cut the line above, for he was discovered,
and he fell. A painful thrill ran down the back of her neck and her
spine and through her limbs, and she shrank in her seat.
It was up there, in the highest story, that Johannes had been a
prisoner nearly two years. The windows needed no gratings, for it
would be death to leap out, and no one could climb up to get in. The
pier below the tower sloped to the stream, and its base ran out so far
that no man could have jumped clear of it from above--even if he dared
the desperate risk of striking the water. Bertrandon de la Broquière
saw it, years afterwards, when Zeno was an old man, and you may look
at a good picture of it in his illuminated book.
A solitary fisherman was perched on the edge of the sloping pier,
apparently hindered from slipping off by the very slight projection of
the lowest course of stones, which was perpendicular. His brown legs
were bare far above the knee, he wore a brown fisherman's coat of a
woollen stuff, not woven but fulled like felt; a wide hat of sennet,
sewn round and round a small crown of tarred sailcloth, flapped over
his ears. He angled in the slow stream with a long reed and a short
line.
Zoë looked at him attentively as the boat passed near him, and she saw
that he was watching her, too, from under the limp brim of his queer
hat.
Her left hand hung over the gunwale of the skiff, and when she was
opposite the fisherman she wetted her fingers and carelessly raised
them to her lips as if she were tasting the drops. The man instantly
replied by waving his rod over the water thrice, and he cast his short
line each time. She had seen his mouth and chin and scanty beard below
the hanging brim of his hat, and she had fancied that she recognised
him; she had no doubt of it now. The solitary fisherman was Gorlias
Pietrogliant, the astrologer.
Omobono had scarcely noticed him, for his own natural curiosity made
him look steadily up at the high windows, on the chance that the
imperial prisoner might look out just then. He had seen him once or
twice before the revolution, and wondered whether he was much changed
by his long confinement. But instead of the handsome bearded face the
secretary remembered, a woman appeared and looked towards Pera for a
moment, and drew back hastily as she caught sight of the skiff; she
was rather a stout woman with red cheeks, and she wore the Greek
head-dress of the upper classes. So much Omobono saw at a glance,
though the window was fully ninety feet above him, and she had only
remained in sight a few seconds. He had always had good eyes.
But without seeing her at all Zoë had understood that communication
between the prisoner and the outer world was carried on through
Gorlias, and that by him a message could be sent directly to the
Emperor. She did not speak till the boat had passed the whole length
of the palace and was turning in the direction of the Sweet Waters.
'That astrologer,' she said, 'do you remember him? Why has he never
come again?'
Omobono promised to send for him the very next day. After that there
was silence for a while, and the skiff slipped along upstream, till
the secretary spoke again, to correct what he had last said.
'He had better not come to-morrow. I will tell him to come the next
morning.'
'Why?' Zoë asked, in some surprise.
'To-morrow,' said Omobono, 'Messer Sebastian Polo comes to dine with
the master. There will be confusion in the house.'
'Confusion, because one guest comes to dinner?' Zoë spoke
incredulously.
'I believe,' said Omobono rather timidly, 'that he will not be the
only guest.'
'He brings his daughter with him, then?' Zoë felt that she changed
colour under her veil.
'I do not know,' the secretary said smoothly; 'but there will be
several guests.'
Zoë turned towards him impatiently.
'You will have orders to keep me out of the way while they are in the
house,' she said. 'I shall receive through you the master's commands
not to show myself at my window!'
'How can you think such a thing?' cried Omobono, protesting. 'Rather
than put you to such inconvenience I am sure the master will beg his
guests to enter by the other side of the house.
If it was his object to exasperate her, he had succeeded, but if he
expected her to break out in anger he was mistaken. She was too proud,
and she already regretted the few hasty words she had spoken.
Moreover, her anger told her something that surprised her, and wounded
her self-respect. She understood for the first time how jealous she
was, and that she could feel no such jealousy if she were not in love.
She was not a child, and but for misfortune she would have been
married at least two years by this time. This was not the dreamy and
slowly stealing dawn of girlhood's day; her sun had risen in a flash
amidst angry clouds, as he does in India in mid-June, when the
south-west monsoon is just going to break and the rain is very near.
When Omobono had spoken she leaned back in her seat and drew the folds
of her mantle more closely round her, as if to separate herself from
him more completely, and she did not speak again for a long time. On
his side, the secretary understood, and instead of feeling rebuked by
her silence, he was pleased with himself because his curiosity had
made another step forward in the land of discovery.
It occurred to him that it would be very interesting to bring Zoë and
Giustina within sight of each other, if no nearer. Zeno had not said
that his guests were to come by land instead of by water; the
secretary had only argued that he would request them to do so, to
avoid their seeing Zoë if she happened to be at her window. Omobono
had power to do whatever he thought necessary for keeping the house
and the approach to it in repair without consulting any one. That was
a part of his duty.
It was usual to repair the road in the spring. Omobono chose to have
the work done now, sent for a gang of labourers, and gave a few simple
orders. Before Zeno knew what was going on the way to the main
entrance was quite impassable, though a narrow passage had been left
to the door of the kitchen for the servants and slaves. The secretary
had suddenly discovered that the road was in such a deplorable
condition as to make it necessary to dig it out to the depth of a
yard here and there, where the soil was soft, thus making a series of
pits, over which no horse could pass.
'What in the world possessed you to do this now?' asked Zeno, with
annoyance, 'I told you that Messer Sebastian and his daughter were
coming to dine with me to-morrow, as well as other friends.'
'They will see nothing, sir,' answered the secretary imperturbably.
'The guests always come by water, they dine on that side of the house,
and they go away by water. How could they see the road, sir? It is
beyond the court!'
Zeno did not choose to explain that he had especially begged Polo and
the others to come by land, and he now concealed his displeasure, or
believed that he did. But when Omobono had gone to his own room Zeno
sent for the running footmen and bade them go to each of the invited
guests early the next morning to say that the road was torn up and
that they must be good enough to come in their boats.
Then he went upstairs, for he had not seen Zoë all day, and it pleased
him to sup with her. As soon as he entered the room and saw her he
felt that something was wrong, but he made as if he noticed nothing,
and sat down in his usual place.
'We will have supper together,' he said in a cheerful tone, settling
himself in his big chair, and rubbing his hands, like a man who has
finished his day's work and looks forward to something pleasant.
As a matter of fact he had done nothing in particular, and had set
himself a rather disagreeable task; for he did not wish Messer
Sebastian to know that Zoë or any other woman was in the house, and he
was reduced to the necessity of telling the girl not to show herself.
She was legally his chattel, and if he chose he might lock her up in a
room on the other side of the house for a few hours, or in the cellar.
He told himself this; and for the hundredth time he recalled her own
story of her birth and bringing up, which was logical and clear, and
explained both her gentle breeding and the careful education she had
evidently received. But logic is often least convincing when it is
most unanswerable, and Zeno remained in the belief that the most
important part of Zoë's story was still a secret.
She said nothing now in answer to his announcement, but she beckoned
to Yulia to bring supper, and the maid disappeared. Being out of
temper with him at that moment, she was asking herself how she could
possibly be jealous of Giustina Polo; she mentally added that she
would no more think of sitting at the window to see her go by, than of
looking at her through a keyhole. Also, she wished Zeno would sit
where he was for an hour or two, and not utter a word, so that she
might show him how utterly indifferent she was to his presence, and
that she could be just as silent as he; and women much older than Zoë
have felt just as she did then.
But Zeno, who was uncomfortable, was also resolved to be cheerful and
at his ease.
'It has been a beautiful day,' he observed. 'I hope you had a pleasant
morning on the water.'
'Thanks,' Zoë answered, and said no more.
This was not encouraging, but Zeno was not easily put off.
After a few moments he tried again.
'I fear you do not find my secretary very amusing,' he said.
Zoë was on the point of asking him whether he himself considered
Omobono a diverting person, but she checked herself with a little
snort of indignation which might have passed for a laugh without a
smile. Zeno glanced at her profile, raised his eyebrows, and said
nothing more till the slave-girls came with the supper. While they
brought the small table and set it between the two, he leaned back in
his carved chair, crossed one shapely leg over the other, and drummed
a noiseless tattoo with the end of his fingers on his knee, the
picture of unconcern. Zoë half sat and half lay on her divan,
apparently scrutinising the nail of one little finger, pushing it and
rubbing it gently with the thumb of the same hand, and then looking at
it again as if she expected to observe a change in its appearance
after being touched.
The maids placed the dishes on the table and poured out wine, and Zoë
began to eat in silence, without paying any attention to Zeno. That is
one way of showing indifference, and both men and women use it, yet it
still remains surprisingly effective.
'What is the matter with you?' Zeno asked, suddenly.
Zoë pretended to be surprised and then smiled coldly.
'Oh! you mean, because I am hungry, I suppose. I have been in the open
air. It must be that.'
She at once took another mouthful, and went on eating.
'No,' answered Zeno, watching her. 'I did not mean that.'
She raised her beautiful eyebrows, just as he had raised his a few
minutes earlier, but she said nothing and seemed very busy with the
fish. Carlo took another piece, swallowed some of it deliberately, and
drank a little before he leaned back in his chair and spoke again.
'Something has happened,' he said at last with great conviction.
'Really?' Zoë pretended surprised interest. 'What?' she asked with
affected eagerness.
'You understand me perfectly,' he replied with a shade of sternness,
for he was growing tired of her mood.
She glanced at him sideways, as a woman does when she hears a man's
tone change suddenly, and she is not sure what he may do or say next.
'You do not make it easy to understand you, my lord,' she said after
an instant's hesitation.
'The matter is simple enough. I find you in a bad humour----'
'Oh no! I assure you!' Zoë broke in, with a woman's diabolical
facility in interrupting a man just at the right moment for her own
advantage. 'I was never in a better temper in my life!'
To prove this, she took a bird and some salad, and smiled sweetly at
her plate, leaving him to prove his assertion, but he did not fall
into the trap.
'Then you are not easy to live with,' he observed bluntly. 'I am glad
it is over.'
'Do take some of this salad!' suggested Zoë. 'It is really delicious!'
'To-morrow,' Zeno said, without paying any attention to her
recommendation, 'I shall have a few guests at dinner.'
'I should advise you to give them a salad exactly like this,' answered
Zoë. 'It could not be better!'
'I am glad you like it. I leave the fare to Omobono. It is about
another matter that I have to speak.'
'You need not!' Zoë laughed carelessly. 'I know what you are going to
say. Shall I save you the trouble?'
'I do not see how you can guess what it is----'
'Oh, easily! You do not wish your friends to see me and you are going
to order me not to look out of the window when they come. Is that it?'
'Yes--more or less----' Zeno was surprised.
'Yes, that is it,' laughed Zoë. 'But it is quite useless, sir. I shall
most certainly look out of the window, unless you lock me up in
another room; and as for your doing that, I will yield only to force!'
She laughed again, much amused at the dilemma in which she was placing
him. And indeed, he did not at first know how to answer her
declaration of independence.
'I cannot imagine why you should be so anxious to show yourself to
people you do not know,' he said. 'Or perhaps you fancy they may be
friends--you think that if they recognise you--but that is absurd. I
have told you that if you have friends in the world you may go to
them, and you say you have none.'
Zoë's tone changed again and became girlishly petulant.
'It is nothing but curiosity, of course!' she answered. 'I want to see
the people you like. Is that so unnatural? In a whole month I have
never seen one of your friends--'
'I have not many. But such as I have, I value, and I do not care to
let them get a mistaken impression of me, or of the way I live.'
'Especially not the women amongst them,' Zoë added, half
interrogatively.
'There are none,' said Zeno, as if to cut short the suggestion.
'I see. You do not want your men friends to know that there are women
living in your house, do you? They are doubtless all grave and elderly
persons, who would be much shocked and grieved to learn that you have
bought a pretty Greek slave. After all, you came near being a priest,
did you not? They naturally associate you in their minds with the
clergy, and for some reason or other you think it just as well for
you, or your affairs, that they should! I have always heard that the
Venetians are good men of business!'
'You are probably the only person alive who would risk saying that to
me,' said Zeno, looking at her.
'What do I risk, my lord?' asked Zoë, with a sort of submissive
gravity.
'My anger,' Zeno answered curtly.
'Yes sir, I understand. Your anger--but pray, my lord, how will it
show itself? Shall I be beaten, or put in chains and starved, or
turned out of your house and sold at auction? Those are the usual
punishments for disobedient slaves, are they not?'
'I am not a Greek,' said Zeno, annoyed.
'If you were,' answered Zoë, turning her face from him to hide her
smile, 'you would probably wish to tear out my tongue!'
'Perhaps.'
'It might be a wise precaution!' she laughed.
Zeno looked at her sharply now, for the words sounded like a threat
that was only half-playful. She knew enough to compass his destruction
at the hands of Andronicus if she betrayed him, but he did not believe
she would do that, and he wondered what she was driving at, for his
experience of women's ways was small.
'Listen,' he said, dropping his voice a little. 'I shall not beat you,
I shall not starve you, and I shall not sell you. But if you try to
betray me, I will kill you.'
She raised her head proudly and met his eyes without fear.
'I would spare you the trouble--if I ever betrayed you or any one.'
'It is one thing to talk of death, it is another to die!' Zeno laughed
rather incredulously, as he quoted the old Italian proverb.
'I have seen death,' Zoë answered, in a different tone. 'I know what
it is.'
He wondered what she meant, but he knew it was useless to question
her, and for a few moments there was silence. The lamps burned
steadily in the quiet air, for the evenings were still and cool, and
the windows were shut and curtained; through the curtains and the
shutters the song of a passing waterman was heard in the stillness, a
long-drawn, plaintive melody in the Lydian Mode, familiar to Zoë's
ears since she had been a child.
But Zeno saw how intensely she listened to the words. She clasped her
hands tightly over her knee, and bent forwards to catch each note and
syllable.
The waters are blue as the eyes of the Emperor's daughter,
In the crystal pools of her eyes there are salt tears.
The water is both salt and fresh.
Over the water to my love, this night, over the water--
The voice died away, and Zoë no longer heard the words distinctly;
presently she could not hear the voice at all, yet she strained her
ears for a few seconds longer. The boat must have passed, on its way
down to the Bosphorus.
For a whole month she had sat in the same room at that hour, and many
times already she had heard men singing in their boats, sometimes to
that same ancient Lydian Mode, but never once had they pronounced
those meaning words. Often and often again she had passed within sight
of the Amena tower, but not until to-day had she seen a solitary
fisherman sitting at the pier's edge below it, and he had waved his
rod thrice over the water when she passed by. And now in a flash of
intuition she guessed that the singer was the fisherman and none
other, and that the song was for her, and for no one else; and it was
a signal which she could understand and should answer if she could;
and there was but one way of answering, and that was to show some
light.
'It is hot,' she said, beckoning to Yulia. 'Open the large window wide
for a few minutes and let in the fresh air.'
Yulia obeyed quickly. The night was very dark.
'Besides,' Zoë continued carelessly, as Zeno looked at her, 'that
fellow has a fine voice, and we shall still hear him.'
And indeed, as the window was opened, the song was heard again, at
some distance--
Over the water to my love, she is awake to-night, I see her eyes
amongst the stars.
Love, I am here in the dark, but to-morrow I shall see the day
in your face,
I shall see the noon in your eyes, I shall look upon the sun
in your hair.
Over the water, the blue water, the water both salt and fresh----
Once more the voice died away and the faint plash of oars told Zoë
that the message was all delivered, and that Gorlias was gone, on his
way downstream.
Zeno, whose maternal tongue was not Greek, could not be supposed to
understand much of the song, for unfamiliar words sung to such ancient
melodies can only be caught by native-born ears, and sharp ones at
that. At a signal from Zoë, the maid shut the window again, and drew
the curtains.
'Could you understand the fellow?' Zeno asked, glad in reality that
the conversation had been interrupted.
'Yes,' Zoë answered lightly, 'as you would understand an Italian
fisherman, I suppose. The man gave you a message, my lord. Shall I
interpret what he said?'
'Can you?' He laughed a little.
'He tells you that if you will not try to force Arethusa to keep away
from the window to-morrow, she will probably do as you wish--probably!'
'Your friend must have good ears!' Zeno smiled. 'But then he only said
"probably." That is not a promise.'
'Why should you trust the promise of a poor slave, sir? You would not
believe a lady of Constantinople in the same case if she took oath on
the four Gospels! Imagine any woman missing a chance of looking at
another about whom she is curious!'
'Who is the other?' asked Zeno, not much pleased.
'She is young, and as fresh as spring. Her hair is like that of all
the Venetian ladies----'
'Since you have seen her, why are you so anxious to see her again?'
'Ah! You see! It is she! I knew it! She is coming to-morrow with her
father.'
'Well? If she is, what of it?' asked Zeno, impatiently.
'Nothing. Since you admit that it is she, I do not care to see her at
all. I will be good and you need not lock me up.'
Thereupon she bent towards the table and began to eat again, daintily,
but as if she were still hungry. Zeno watched her in silence for some
time, conscious that of all women he had ever seen none had so easily
touched him, none had played upon his moods as she did, making him
impatient, uneasy, angry, and forgiving by turns, within a quarter of
an hour. A few minutes ago he had been so exasperated that he had
rudely longed to box her little ears; and now he felt much more
inclined to kiss her, and did not care to think how very easy and
wholly lawful it was for him to do so. That was one of his many
dilemmas; if he spoke to her as his equal she told him she was a
slave, but when he treated her ever so little as if she were one, her
proud little head went up, and she looked like an empress.
She had never been so much like one as to-night, he thought, though
there was nothing very imperial in the action of eating a very sticky
strawberry, drawn up out of thick syrup with a forked silver pin. She
did it with grace, no doubt, twisting the pin dexterously, so that the
big drop of syrup spread all round the berry just at the right moment,
and it never dripped. Zeno had often seen the wife of the Emperor
Charles eating stewed prunes with her fingers, which was not neat or
pleasant to see, though it might be imperial, since she was a genuine
empress. But it was neither Zoë's grace nor her delicate ways that
pleased him and puzzled him most; the mystery lay rather in the
fearless tone of her voice and the proud carriage of her head when she
was offended, in the flashing answer of her brave eyes and the noble
curve of her tender mouth; for these are things given, not learnt, and
if they could be taught at all, thought Zeno, they would not be taught
to a slave.
He let his head rest against the back of his chair and wished many
things, rather incoherently. For once in his life he felt inclined for
anything rather than action or danger, or any sudden change; and in
the detestable natural contradiction of duty and inclination it
chanced that on that night, of all nights, he could not stay where he
was to idle away two or three hours in careless talk, till it should
be time to go downstairs and sleep. The habit of spending his evenings
in that way had grown upon him during the past month more than he
realised; but to-night he knew that he must break through it, and
perhaps to-morrow, too, and for long afterwards, if not for ever. That
was one reason why it had annoyed him to find Zoë out of temper.
He rose with an effort, and with something like a sigh.
'I must be going,' he said, standing beside the divan. 'Good-night.'
Zoë had looked up in surprise when he left his seat, and now her face
fell.
'Already? Must you go already?' she asked.
'Yes. I have to keep an appointment. Good-night.'
'Good-night, Messer Carlo,' answered Zoë softly and a little sadly.
She had never before addressed him in that way, as an equal and a
Venetian would have done, and the expression, with the tone in which
it was uttered, arrested his attention and stopped him when he was in
the act of turning away. He said nothing, but there was a question in
his look.
'I am sorry that I made you angry,' she said, and she turned her face
up to him with one of those half-pathetic, hesitating little smiles
that ask forgiveness of a man and invariably get it, unless he is a
brute.
'I am sorry that I let you see I was annoyed,' he answered simply.
'If I had not been so foolish, you would not go away so early!'
Her tone was contrite and regretfully thoughtful, as if the
explanation were irrefutable but humiliating. Eve was, on the whole, a
good woman, and is believed to be in Paradise; yet with the slight
previous training of a few minutes' conversation with the serpent she
was an accomplished temptress, and her rustic taste for apples has
sent untold millions down into unquenchable fire. It was a mere
coincidence that Eve should have been always called Zoë in the early
Greek translations of Genesis, and that Zoë Rhangabé should have
inherited a dangerous resemblance to the first beautiful--and
enterprising--mother of men.
'I would stay if I could,' Zeno said. 'But indeed I have an
appointment, and I must go.'
'Is it very important, very--very?'
Zeno smiled at her now, but did not answer at once. Instead, he walked
to the window, opened the shutters again, and looked out. The night
was very dark. Here and there little lights twinkled in the houses of
Pera, and those that were near the water's edge made tiny paths over
the black stream. After his eyes had grown used to the gloom Zeno
could make out that there was a boat near the marble steps, and a very
soft sound of oars moving in the water told him that the boatman was
paddling gently to keep his position against the slow current. Zeno
shut the window again and turned back to Zoë.
'Yes,' he said, answering her last speech after the interval, 'it is
very important. If it were not, I would not go out to-night.'
He was going out of the house, then. She knew that he rarely did so
after dark, and she could not help connecting his going with the
invitation he had given to Polo and his daughter for the next day.
Zoë's imagination instantly spun a thread across the chasms of
improbability, and ran along the fairy bridge to the regions of the
impossible beyond. He was to be betrothed to Giustina to-morrow, he
was going now to settle some urgent matter of business connected with
the marriage-contract; or he was betrothed already; yes, and he was to
be married in the morning and would bring his bride home; Zoë, in her
lonely room upstairs, would hear the noisy feasting of the
wedding-guests below----
When the thread broke, leaving her in the unreality, her lip quivered,
and she was a little pale. Zeno was standing beside her, holding her
hand.
'Good-night, Arethusa,' he said in a tone that frightened her.
The words sounded like 'good-bye,' for that was what they might mean;
he knew it, and she guessed it.
'You are going away!' she cried, springing to her feet and slipping
her hand from his to catch his wrist.
'Not if I can help it,' he answered. 'But you may not see me
to-morrow.'
'Not in the evening?' she asked in great anxiety. 'Not even after they
are gone?'
'I cannot tell,' he replied gravely. 'Perhaps not.'
She dropped his wrist and turned from him.
'You are going to be married,' she said in a low voice. 'I was sure of
it.'
'No!' he answered with emphasis. 'Not that!'
She turned to him again; it did not occur to her to doubt his word,
and her eyes asked him the next question with eager anxiety, but he
would not answer. He only repeated the three words, very tenderly and
softly--
'Good-night--Arethusa!'
She knew it was good-bye, though he would not say it; she was not
guessing his meaning now. But she was proud. He should not see how
hurt she was.
'Good-night,' she answered. 'If you are going away--then, good-bye.'
Her voice almost broke, but she pressed her lips tight together when
the last word had passed them, and though the tears seemed to be
burning her brain she would not shed them while his eyes were on her.
'God keep you,' he said, as one says who goes on a long journey.
Again he was turning from her, not meaning to look back; but it was
more than she could bear. In an inward tempest of fear and pain she
had been taught suddenly that she truly loved him more than her soul,
and in the same instant he was leaving her for a long time, perhaps
for ever. She could not bear it, and her pride broke down. She caught
his hand as he turned to go and held it fast.
'Take me with you!' she cried. 'Oh, do not go away and leave me
behind!'
A silence of three seconds.
'I will come back,' he said. 'If I am alive, I will come back.'
'You are going into danger!' Her hand tightened on his, and she grew
paler still.
He would not answer, but he patted her wrist kindly, trying to soothe
her anxiety. He seemed quiet enough at that moment, but he felt the
slow, full beat of his own heart and the rush of the swelling pulse in
his throat. He had not guessed before to-night that she loved him; he
was too simple, and far too sure that he himself could not love a
slave. Even now he did not like to own it, but he knew that the hand
she held was not passive; it pressed hers tighter in return, and drew
it to him instead of pushing it away, till at last it was close to his
breast.
'Oh, let me go with you, take me with you!' she repeated, beseeching
with all her heart.
He was not thinking of danger now, he had forgotten it so far that he
scarcely paid attention to her words or to her passionate entreaty.
Words had lost sense and value, as they do in battle, and the fire ran
along his arm to her hand. It had been cold; it was hot now, and
throbbed strangely.
Then he dropped it and took her suddenly by her small throat, almost
violently, and turned her face up to his; but she was not frightened,
and she smiled in his grasp.
'I did not mean to love you!'
He still held her as he spoke; she put up her hands together and took
his wrists, but not to free herself; instead, she pressed his hold
closer upon her throat, as if to make him choke her.
'I wish you would kill me now!' she cried, in a trembling, happy
little voice.
He laughed low, and shook her the least bit, as a strong man shakes a
child in play, but her eyes drew him to her more and more.
'It would be so easy now,' she almost whispered, 'and I should be so
happy!'
Then they kissed; and as their lips touched they closed their eyes,
for they were too near to see each other any longer. Her head sank
back from his upon his arm, for she was almost fainting, and he laid
his palm gently on her forehead and pushed away her hair, and looked
at her long.
'I had not meant to love you,' he said again.
Her lips were still parted, tender as rose-leaves at dewfall, and her
eyes glistened as she opened them at the sound of his voice.
'Are you sorry?' she asked faintly.
[Illustration: 'I did not mean to love you!']
He kissed the question from her lips, and her right hand went up to
his brown throat and round it, and drew him, to press the kiss closer;
and then it held him down while she moved her head till she could
whisper in his ear:--
'It was only because you were angry,' she said. 'You are not really
going out to-night! Tell me you are not!'
He would not answer at first, and he tried to kiss her again, but she
would not let him, and she pushed him away till she could see his
face. He met her eyes frankly, but he shook his head.
'It must be to-night, and no other night,' he said gravely. 'I have
made an appointment, and I have given my word. I cannot break it, but
I shall come back.'
She slipped from his hold, and sat down on the broad divan, against
the cushions.
'You are going into danger,' she said. 'You may not come back. You
told me so.'
He tried to laugh, and answered in a careless tone:--
'I have come back from far more dangerous expeditions. Besides, I have
guests to-morrow--that is a good reason for not being killed!'
He stood beside her, one hand half-thrust into his loose belt. She
took the other, which hung down, and looked up to him, still pleading.
'Please, please do not go to-night!'
Still he shook his head; nothing could move him, and he would go. A
piteous look came into her eyes while they appealed to his in vain,
and suddenly she dropped his hand and buried her face in the soft
leathern pillow.
'You had made me forget that I am only a slave!' she cried.
The cushion muffled her voice, and the sentence was broken by a sob,
though no tears came with it.
'I would go to-night, though my own mother begged me to stay,' Zeno
answered.
Zoë turned her head without lifting it, and looked up at him sideways.
'Then much depends on your going,' she said, with a question in her
tone. 'If it were only for yourself, for your pleasure, or your
fortune, you would not refuse your own mother!'
Zeno turned and began to walk up and down the room, but he said
nothing in reply. A thought began to dawn in her mind.
'But if it were for your country--for Venice----'
He glanced sharply at her as he turned back towards her in his walk,
and he slackened his pace. Zoë waited a moment before she spoke again,
looked down, thoughtfully pinched the folds of silk on her knee, and
looked up suddenly again as if an idea had struck her.
'And though I am only your bought slave,' she said, 'I would not
hinder you then. I mean, I would not even try to keep you from running
into danger--for Venice!'
She held her head up proudly now, and the last words rang out in a
tone that went to the man's heart. He was not far from her when she
spoke them. The last syllable had not died away on the quiet air and
he already held her up in his arms, lifted clear from the floor, and
his kisses were raining on her lips, and on her eyes, and her hair.
She laughed low at the storm she had raised.
'I love you!' he whispered again and again softly, roughly, and
triumphantly by turns.
She loved him too, and quite as passionately just then; every kiss
woke a deep and delicious thrill that made her whole body quiver with
delight, and each oft-repeated syllable of the three whispered words
rang like a silver trumpet-note in her heart. But for all that her
thoughts raced on, already following him in the coming hours.
With every woman, to love a man is to feel that she must positively
know just where he is going as soon as he is out of her sight. If it
were possible, he should never leave the house without a
ticket-of-leave and a policeman, followed by a detective to watch
both; but that a man should assert any corresponding right to watch
the dear object of his affections throws her into a paroxysm of fury;
and it is hard to decide which woman most resents being spied upon,
the angel of light, the siren that walketh in darkness, or the
semi-virginal flirt.
Zoë really loved Zeno more truly at that moment, because the glorious
tempest of kisses her speech had called down upon her willing little
head brought with it the certainty that he was not going to spend the
rest of the evening at the house of Sebastian Polo. This, at least, is
how it strikes the story-teller in the bazaar; but the truth is that
no man ever really understood any woman. It is uncertain whether any
one woman understands any other woman; it is doubtful whether any
woman understands her own nature; but one thing is sure, beyond
question--every woman who loves a man believes, or tells him, that he
helps her to understand herself. This shows us that men are not
altogether useless.
Yet, to do Zoë justice, there was one other element in her joy. She
had waited long to learn that Zeno meant to free Johannes if it could
be done, and he had met all her questions with answers that told her
nothing; she was convinced that he did not even know the passwords of
those who called themselves conspirators, but who had done nothing in
two years beyond inventing a few signs and syllables by which to
recognise each other. Whether he knew them or not, he was ready to act
at last, and the deed on which hung the destinies of Constantinople
was to be attempted that very night. Before dawn Michael Rhangabé's
death might be avenged, and Kyría Agatha's wrongs with Zoë's own.
'I want to help you,' she said, when he let her speak. 'Tell me how
you are going to do it.'
'With a boat and a rope,' he answered.
'Take me! I will sit quite still in the bottom. I will watch; no one
has better eyes or ears than I.'
'More beautiful you mean!'
He shut her eyes with his lips and kissed the lobe of one little ear.
But she moved impatiently in his arms, with a small laugh that meant
many things--that she was happy, and that she loved him, but that a
kiss was no answer to what she had just said, and that he must not
kiss her again till he had replied in words.
'Take me!' she repeated.
'This is man's work,' he answered. 'Besides, it is the work of one man
only, and no more.'
'Some one must watch below,' Zoë suggested.
'There is the man in the boat. But watching is useless. If any one
surprises us in the tower, I can get away; but if I am caught by an
enemy from the water the game is up. That is the only danger.'
'That is the only danger,' Zoë repeated, more to herself than for him.
He saw that she had understood now, and that she would not try to keep
him longer, nor again beg to be taken. She went with him to the door
of the vestibule without calling the maids, and she parted from him
there, very quietly.
'God speed you!' she said, for good-bye.
When he reached the outer entrance and looked back once more, she was
already gone within, and the quiet lamplight fell across the folds of
the heavy curtain.