When Zeno slipped from his borrowed charger and ran for his life
towards that part of the square that looked darkest, he had no time to
choose the direction he would afterwards take, nor to think of
anything but covering the ground at the greatest possible speed
without stumbling over an unseen obstacle. On those singular occasions
when a perfectly brave man has no choice but to run, there is not much
time to spare.
The young Venetian strained his strength and his wind to get as far as
he could from his pursuers in the shortest possible time, and he was
so successful that he was out of their reach almost before they were
aware that he had fled.
At first he had run straight across the wide open space before
Blachernæ; he had then found the entrance to a street which he had
followed for about fifty yards, and he had turned a corner to his left
without meeting any one; he had rushed on without pausing till he
judged it time to double again and had then turned to the right. A few
steps farther on, he stopped short and listened, believing himself
alone and not at all sure where he was.
Suddenly a light flashed in his face, very near him.
'Is it time?' asked a low voice in Greek, and the lantern was closed
again, leaving him dazzled.
Accident, or his fate, had taken him into the very midst of the men he
had enlisted in the cause of the revolution, to storm the palace
before daybreak. They had waited two hours and were impatient, and
even before Zeno answered the question they saw that matters had gone
ill with him.
'There is an alarm,' he said hurriedly. 'I barely got away. Disperse
quickly, and get to your quarters, all of you! I will let you know
when we can do it.'
A murmur of discontent came from the invisible crowd of soldiers. Zeno
knew them to be a desperate crew, who would hold him responsible for
failure, and would not thank him for success.
'We must separate at once,' he said calmly. 'I thank you for having
been ready. If possible, we will meet a week from to-night.'
He did not choose to let them know that Johannes himself had refused
to quit the tower, and he was about to leave them, meaning to find his
way home alone, when the sound of feet moving behind him, and of men
whispering together told him that he was surrounded on all sides by
the soldiers. Then some one spoke in a tone of authority.
'You must stay with us,' the voice said. 'You have our lives in your
hand, and we cannot let you go. It might suit your interests to give
us up to the Emperor any day.'
Seeing his liberty threatened, Zeno laid his hand to the knife at the
back of his belt and was about to try and break his way through. In
the dark, a man with a drawn weapon in his hand easily inspires
terror in a crowd. But it was clear that the soldiers had determined
beforehand what to do, for they closed in upon him instantly, and his
arm was caught by a dozen hands when he was in the very act of drawing
his knife. He was held by twenty men, as it seemed to him, who all
took hold of him and lifted him from the ground, not very roughly, but
irresistibly. He had no chance against so many; Gorlias Pietrogliant
himself could have done nothing, and he was far stronger than Zeno,
stronger perhaps than any man in Constantinople.
Zeno knew that it would be worse than useless to shout for help; at
his first cry he would most likely be strangled by men whose own lives
were more or less at stake. They carried him quickly along the street
and through unfamiliar and narrow ways which he could hardly have
recognised even in broad daylight, much less at night. They turned
sharp corners to the right, to the left, to the right again, and he
thought he could distinguish the broken outlines of a ruined wall
against the faint greyness of the ink-and-water sky.
Then all was dark for an instant, and he felt that his bearers were
pausing at some obstacle or difficulty. The lantern flashed again, and
he saw a rough vault above him; there was a big cobweb just above his
head, and a loathsome fat spider jumped out of a crevice and ran along
the threads till it disappeared as if by magic in the very middle of
the web. He saw it in an instant in the sudden light as some one held
up the lantern to show the way. Such things take hold of the memory
and stick to it afterwards, as little burs fasten themselves upon
one's clothes in autumn fields. Besides, though Zeno was one of the
bravest men of any age, he detested fat spiders, and was very nearly
afraid of them.
He felt himself carried down an inclined plane at a swinging rate; the
air smelt of dry earth, and presently it grew much warmer, though it
was not at all close. It seemed a long time until the men stopped, set
him on his feet, and left their hold on him. The man who had acted as
the leader now pushed the others aside, and stood before him, a
broad-shouldered Tartar with a huge tawny beard, dressed in leather
and wearing a breastplate embossed with the Roman eagle. Zeno knew him
well; he was a Mohammedan, like many soldiers of fortune in the Greek
army at that time, his name was Tocktamish, and he had been with Zeno
in Patras. He spoke a barbarous dialect, compounded of Greek and
Italian.
'Messer Zeno,' he said, 'we are not going to hurt you, but we think it
better for your own safety to keep you here for a while, till
everything is quiet again. Do you understand?'
'Perfectly,' Zeno answered, with a laugh. 'Nothing could be clearer!
You naturally suppose that if I found myself in danger I would turn
evidence against you to save myself, and you propose to make that
impossible.'
Tocktamish pretended to be hurt.
'How can you think that I could take my old leader for a traitor,
sir?' he asked.
'The idea would occur naturally to a man of your intelligence,' Zeno
answered, laughing again. 'Listen to me, man. I am a soldier, and I do
not take you for a flight of angels or heavenly doves settling round
me for my consolation. You are an infernal deal more like a pack of
wolves! So let us be plain, as wolves generally are when they are
hungry. You joined me because you hoped to be plundering the palace by
this time. As that has failed, you want something instead. You know
very well that I am not the man to betray a comrade, and that if I am
free I shall probably get Johannes out of his prison in the end. But
you expect something now. How much do you want?'
The Tartar looked down sheepishly and passed his thumb round the lower
edge of his corselet, backwards and forwards, as if he were slowly
polishing the steel.
'Come,' continued Zeno, 'what is the use of hanging back? As I could
not succeed in turning you all into patriots to-night and regenerators
of your country, you have, of course, turned yourselves into bandits;
you have got me a prisoner, and you want a ransom. How much is it to
be?'
Tocktamish still hesitated, feeling very much ashamed of himself
before his old captain.
'Well, sir, you see--there are eight hundred of us--and----'
'And if any one gets less than the rest he will sell all your skins to
Andronicus for the balance,' laughed Zeno. 'Quite right, too! I love
justice above all things.'
'Then give us ten ducats each,' cried the clear voice of a Greek from
the background.
'Ten ducats apiece will make eight thousand,' said Zeno. 'I am sorry,
but I have not so much money at my disposal.'
'You can borrow,' answered the Greek.
'I am afraid not, my friend.' He turned to the Tartar leader again.
'You are a fool, Tocktamish,' he said calmly. 'As long as you keep me
here I cannot get money at all. Do you suppose that we merchants put
away thousands of ducats in strong boxes under our beds? If we did
that, you would have broken into our houses long ago, to help
yourselves!'
'What promise will you make, sir?' inquired the Tartar, beginning to
waver.
But half-a-dozen voices protested.
'No promises!' they cried. 'Let him send you for the money!'
'You hear them?' said Tocktamish.
'Yes,' answered Zeno, 'I hear them. Their nonsense will not change
facts. If you had the souls of mice in your miserable bodies,' he
continued, turning to the men with a contemptuous little laugh, 'you
would come with me now and seize the palace. The gates are open, and
the guards are all beastly drunk. There will be more than eight
thousand ducats to divide there!'
The men were silent; many shook their heads.
'The moment is passed,' answered the Tartar, speaking for them. 'The
whole city is roused by this time.'
'We shall have so many more good men to help us, then,' Zeno said.
'Not that we need any one. A handful could do the work.'
'Send for the money!' cried the voice of the Greek again.
'I have told you that I have not got it,' Zeno answered. 'If you have
nothing more sensible to say, go to your quarters and let me sleep.'
'Pleasant dreams!' jeered the Greek; and several men laughed.
'I hope my dreams will be pleasant, for I am extremely sleepy,' Zeno
answered carelessly. 'If you cut my throat before I wake you will get
nothing at all, not even my funeral expenses! Now good-night, and be
off!'
'We had better leave him,' Tocktamish said, pushing the nearest men
away. 'You will get nothing at present, and it is impossible to
frighten him. But he cannot get out, as you know. It is for our own
safety, sir,' he added, changing his tone as he addressed Zeno. 'We
cannot let you out till the city is quiet again, but you shall lack
nothing. There are two cloaks for you to sleep on and for covering
yourself, and I will bring you food and drink, and anything you want,
in the morning.'
Zeno had found time to look about him during the conversation, as far
as the light of the lanterns and the men who crowded upon him allowed
him to see. He had understood very soon that he was not in the cellar
of a ruined house, as he had at first supposed, but in one of those
great disused cisterns, of which there are several in Constantinople,
and of which two may still be seen. Centuries had passed since there
had been water in this one, and the dust lay thick on the paved
floor. Two or three score columns of grey marble supported the high
vaulted roof, in which Zeno guessed that there was no longer any
visible opening to the outer air. Yet air there was, in abundance, for
it entered by the narrow entrance through which Zeno had been carried
in, and probably found its way out through the disused aqueduct which
had once supplied the water, and which still communicated with some
distant exit. Zeno could only guess at this from his experience of
fortresses, which always contained some similar cistern; every one he
had seen was provided with openings, almost always both at the top; a
few had staircases in order that men might more conveniently go down
to clean them when they were empty.
His captors left him reluctantly at the bidding of their chief. They
set one lantern against a pillar and filed out, carrying away the
other. Zeno listened to their departing footsteps for a moment, when
the last man had gone out, and then he went quickly to the entrance
and listened again. In two or three minutes he heard what he expected;
a heavy door creaked and was shut with a loud noise that boomed down
the inclined passage. Then came another sound, which was not that of
bolt or bar, and was worse to hear. The men were rolling big loose
stones against the door to keep it shut--two, three, more, a dozen at
least, a weight no one man could push outward. Then there was no more
noise, and Zeno was alone.
His situation was serious, and his face was very thoughtful as he
went back to the lantern and picked up one of the two cloaks
Tocktamish had left him. He put it on and drew it closely round him,
for he was beginning to feel cold in spite of the heavy guardsman's
tunic he wore over his own clothes.
He thought of Arethusa, as he called Zoë; she had been in his mind
constantly, and most of all in each of the moments of danger through
which he had passed since he had left her. He thought of her lying
awake on her divan in the soft light of the small lamps, waiting to
hear his footsteps on the landing below her window, then falling
gently asleep out of sheer weariness, to dream of him; starting in her
rest, perhaps, as she dreamt that he was in peril, but smiling again,
without opening her eyes, when the vision changed, and he held her in
his arms once more. He little guessed what that yielding something
beneath the canvas had been, on which he had pressed his foot so
heavily when he had stepped ashore. She was happily ignorant, he
fancied, of the succession of hairbreadth escapes through which he had
passed unhurt so far. What weighed most on his mind, after all, was
the thought that when he met her he should have to tell her that he
had failed.
But he was not thinking of her only as he sat there, for his own
situation stared him in the face, and he could not think of Arethusa
without wondering whether he was ever to see her again. He had heard
those big stones rolled to the door, and something told him that
neither Tocktamish nor his men would bring the promised bread and
water in the morning. They did not believe that he was unable to pay
the ransom they demanded, and they meant to starve him into yielding.
But he had spoken the truth; he had not such a sum of money at his
command. The question was, what the end would be. For the present they
had not left him so much as a jug of water, and he suddenly realised
that he was thirsty after his many exertions. He could not help
laughing to himself at the idea that he might die of thirst in a
cistern.
But it was not in him to waste time in idly reflecting on the
detestable irony of his fate, when there was any possibility that his
own action might help him. He rose again and took up the lantern to
make a systematic examination of his prison. After all, Tocktamish and
his soldiers must have acted on the spur of the moment, and though
they evidently knew the entrance to the cistern, and had probably been
aware that it had a door which could be shut, it was not impossible
that there might be another way out which they had overlooked in their
haste.
But Zeno could find none, and the place was not so large as he had at
first supposed. He counted eight columns in each direction, which gave
sixty-four for the whole number, and he guessed the cistern to be
about one hundred feet square. The walls were covered with smooth
cement, to which the dust hardly adhered, and which extended upwards
to the spring of the vault, at the same level as the capitals of the
columns. There was no opening to be found except the one entrance.
Zeno followed the steep inclined passage upwards till he reached the
closed door which, as he well understood, must be at a considerable
distance from the cistern. It was made of oak, and though it might
have been in its place a couple of hundred years it was still
perfectly sound. The lock had been wrenched off long ago, probably to
be used for some neighbouring house, but Zeno had heard the stones
rolled up outside the door, and even before he tried it, he knew that
he could not make it move.
He wondered whether Tocktamish had set a watch, and he called out and
listened for an answer, but none came; he shouted, with the same
result. Then he took up his lantern and went down again, for it was
clear that the soldiers thought him so safely confined that it would
not be necessary to guard the entrance. Since that was their opinion,
there was nothing to be done but to agree with them. Zeno lay down in
the dust, rolled himself in the spare cloak, placing a doubled fold of
it between his head and the base of a column, and he was soon fast
asleep.