Arethusa
by F. Marion Crawford · English · Gutenberg #41929 · 569,227 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Arethusa
Author: F. Marion Crawford
Illustrator: Gertrude Demain Hammond
Release date: January 27, 2013 [eBook #41929]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARETHUSA ***
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Inconsistent punctuation in the ads section has been
left as printed. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
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ARETHUSA
[Illustration: ARETHUSA]
ARETHUSA
BY
F. MARION CRAWFORD
AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "A LADY OF ROME,"
ETC., ETC.
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
GERTRUDE DEMAIN HAMMOND_
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1907
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1906, 1907,
BY THE PHILLIPS PUBLISHING CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1907,
BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.
Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1907.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
THE STORY-TELLER OF THE BAZAAR
DEDICATES
THIS TALE OF CONSTANTINOPLE
TO HIS DEAR DAUGHTER
ELEANOR
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Arethusa _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
He was talking with an old beggar woman 30
She tenderly kissed the wrinkled face 44
'Yes,' replied the negress. 'Rustan is very affectionate. He
says that I am his Zoë, his "life," because he would surely
die of starvation without me!' 66
'Tell me your story,' he said in a lower tone. 'Do not be afraid!
no one shall hurt you.' 88
'Forty ducats!' cried Omobono, casting up his eyes, and preparing
to bargain for at least half an hour 94
All sorts of confused thoughts crowded her brain, as Zeno sat
down on a seat beside the divan 108
There was something so oddly fixed in his look and so dull in his
voice that Omobono began to fear that he might be a lunatic 128
'I know them,' Zoë answered. 'If I am not telling you the
truth, sell me in the market to-morrow.' 164
'I did not mean to love you!' 194
The captain's wife obeyed, less frightened than she had been at
first 218
Saw her sink down there exhausted, and draw a heavy silk shawl
across her body 240
'Tell me what you see,' she said to the maids 262
'Yes!' roared the Tartar. 'Ten thousand ducats! And if I do
not find the money in the house, you two must find it in
yours! Do you understand?' 274
Then, all at once, he felt that she had received one of those
inspirations of the practical sense which visit women who
are driven to extremities 310
'Am I not your bought slave?' she asked. 'I must obey.' 352
CHAPTER I
Carlo Zeno, gentleman of Venice, ex-clerk, ex-gambler, ex-soldier of
fortune, ex-lay prebendary of Patras, ex-duellist, and ex-Greek
general, being about twenty-nine years of age, and having in his tough
body the scars of half-a-dozen wounds that would have killed an
ordinary man, had resolved to turn over a new leaf, had become a
merchant, and was established in Constantinople in the year 1376.
He had bought a house in the city itself because the merchants of
Genoa all dwelt in the town of Pera, on the other side of the Golden
Horn. A Venetian could not have lived in the same place with Genoese,
for the air would have poisoned him, to a certainty; and besides, the
sight of a Genoese face, the sound of the Genoese dialect, the smell
of Genoese cookery, were all equally sickening to any one brought up
in the lagoons. Genoa was not fit to be mentioned within hearing of
polite Venetian ears, its very name was unspeakable by decent Venetian
lips; and even to pronounce the syllables for purposes of business was
horribly unlucky.
Therefore Carlo Zeno and his friends had taken up their abode in the
old city, amongst the Greeks and the Bokharians, the Jews and the
Circassians, and they left the Genoese to themselves in Pera,
pretending that they did not even exist. It was not always easy to
keep up the pretence, it is true, for Zeno had extremely good eyes and
could not help seeing those abominations of mankind on the other side
of the Golden Horn when he sat in his balcony on spring evenings; and
his only consolation was to dream of destroying them wholesale, of
hewing them in pieces by the hundred and the thousand, and of piling
up pyramids of their ugly grinning heads. Why were they Genoese? Carlo
Zeno would rather have taken a box on the ear from Sultan Amurad, the
Turk, over there in Asia Minor, than a civil word from the least
objectionable of those utterly unspeakable monsters of Genoese.
'Behold,' said Tertullian one day in scorn, 'how these Christians love
one another.' Matters had not improved in eleven hundred years, since
that learned Doctor of the Church had departed this life, presumably
for a more charitable world; but Carlo Zeno would have answered that
the Genoese were no more Christians than mules, and much less so than
the pigs, which are all under the special protection of the blessed
Saint Anthony.
At the very time, too, when my story begins, those obnoxious villains
of Genoa were on the successful side of a revolution; for they had
helped Emperor Andronicus to imprison his father, Emperor John, in the
tall Amena tower on the north side of the city, by the Golden Horn,
and to lock up his two younger brothers in a separate dungeon. It was
true that Emperor John had ordered Andronicus and his little son of
five to be blinded with boiling vinegar, but Genoese money had
miraculously converted the vinegar into bland white wine, and had
reduced the temperature from the boiling point to that of a healthful
lotion, so that neither the boy nor the man were any the worse after
the application than before; but Andronicus had resented the mere
intention on the part of his father, and had avenged himself by taking
the Empire, such as it was, for the present, while reserving the
delight of murdering his parent and his brothers at a convenient
season in the future.
All this was very well, no doubt, and Andronicus was undisputed
Emperor for the time being, because the Genoese and Sultan Amurad were
willing that he should be; but Amurad had not always been his friend,
and the Genoese had not always had the upper hand of the Venetians;
the wind might change in a moment and a tempest might whirl him away
from the throne even more quickly than the fair breeze had wafted him
towards it.
Zeno thought so too, and wondered whether it would please fate to make
him the spirit of the storm. He cared very little about Handsome John,
as Paleologus was nicknamed, but he cared a great deal for a possible
chance of driving the Genoese out of Pera and of getting the island of
Tenedos for the Venetian Republic.
And now he had transacted the business of the day, and had dined on a
roasted palamit, for it was a Friday and the palamit is the best fish
that swims, from the Dardanelles to the Black Sea; and Zeno would no
more have eaten meat on a day of abstinence than he would have sat
down to table with a Genoese. He had been brought up to be a
churchman, and though the attempt to make a priest of him had failed
for obvious reasons, he was constant in observing those little rules
and regulations which he had been taught to believe conducive to
salvation, seeing that he was of a rash temper, prone to seek danger,
and never sure of coming home alive when it pleased him to walk
abroad. He was not a quarrelsome man on his own account, but he had a
most wonderful facility for taking up the quarrels of other people who
seemed to be in the right. The more hopeless the just case, or cause,
the more certain it was that Carlo Zeno would take it up and fight for
it as if it were his own.
But now, if ever, he was peacefully inclined; for the palamit had been
done to a turn by the Dalmatian cook; the salad which had followed it
had been composed to his liking, with shredded red peppers, pickled
olives, anchovies, and cardamom seeds, all mixed among the crisp
lettuce; and the draught of wine that had finished the meal had
gleamed in the Murano glass like spirit of gold, and the flavour of
it, as he had thoughtfully sipped it, had made him think of the scent
that still sunshine draws from fruit hanging on vine and tree. He sat
in a deep chair on his covered balcony, and was conscious that for the
moment peace and privacy were almost as delightful as the best fight
in the world. It would have been impossible to say more than that.
The sun was low, for the spring days were not yet long, and the shadow
of the city already fell across the deep blue water of the Golden
Horn. Zeno gazed down at the moving scene; his keen brown eyes
watched the boats gliding by and softened, for what he saw made him
think of Venice, the lagoons, and his home. Of all people, the most
incorrigible wanderer is generally the most hopelessly sentimental
about his native place.
Zeno had brown eyes that could soften like a woman's, but they were
much more often keen and quick, turning suddenly to take in at a
glance all that could be seen at all, until they fixed themselves with
a piercing gaze on whatever interested their owner most for the time
being,--his friend, or his adversary, his quarry if he were hunting, a
woman's face or figure. He was not a big man, but he was thoroughly
well made and well put together, elastic, tough, and active. His small
brown hands, compact and firm, seemed ready to seize or strike at
instant notice--the ideal hands of a fighting man. There was the same
ready and fearless look in his clean-shaven face and small, energetic
head, and when he moved his least motion betrayed the same gifts.
Women did not think him handsome in those days, when the idea of
beauty in man or woman alike was associated with fair or auburn hair
and milk-white skin and cherry lips. In fact, Carlo Zeno hardly showed
his lips at all, his thick hair was almost black, and his complexion
was already as tanned and weather-stained as an old sailor's. But like
many men of action he was careful of his dress, and extremely
fastidious in his ways. In the ranks, the greatest dandies are often
the best soldiers, explain the fact as you will. Some officers say
that such men are far too vain to run away. Many a French noble who
perished on the scaffold in the revolution bestowed more of his last
moments on his toilet than he devoted to his prayers, and died like a
hero and a gentleman. There are defects, like vanity, which may
sometimes pass for virtues. Carlo Zeno was one of those men whose
outward appearance is little affected by what they do, on whom the
dust and heat of travel seem to leave no trace; who are invariably
clean, neat, and fresh, the envy and despair of ordinary people. His
dark-red velvet cap was always set on his thick hair at the same
angle, and its sheen was as speckless as if dust did not exist. The
narrow miniver border of his wine-coloured cloth coat was never ragged
or worn at the edges; the fine linen, gathered at his throat and
wrists, never betrayed the least suspicion of dinginess; the mud of
Constantinople never clung to the soft Bulgarian leather of his
well-made shoes.
Just now, the latter were stuck out in front of him as he leaned back
in his deep chair and stretched his legs, asking himself vaguely
whether he could be contented for any long time with the quiet life he
was leading.
As if in answer to the question, his clerk and secretary, an important
little grey-bearded personage, appeared on the balcony at that very
moment with a letter in his hand.
'From Venice, sir,' said Omobono--that was his name--'and by the
handwriting and the seal I judge it is written by Messer Marco
Pesaro.'
Zeno frowned and then smiled, as he generally did at the
manifestations of Omobono's incorrigible curiosity. It was the only
defect of a most excellent person who was indispensable to Zeno's
daily life, and invaluable in his business. Omobono had the sad and
gentle face of an honest man who has failed on his own account, but
whose excellent qualities are immensely serviceable to stronger men.
Zeno took the letter and glanced towards the harbour, far to the right
of his house. Omobono made a short step backwards, but kept his eyes
fixed on the paper.
'No foreign vessel has anchored to-day,' said the merchant; 'who
brought this?'
'The captain of a Venetian ship, sir, which is anchored outside,
before the Port of Theodosius.'
Zeno nodded carelessly as he cut the string. The letter was written on
strong cotton paper from Padua, folded six times and secured by
twisted hemp threads, of which the final knot had been squeezed into
red wax and flattened under a heavy seal. Omobono watched his employer
quietly, hoping to learn that he had rightly guessed the
correspondent's name. Zeno, intent on reading, paid no attention to
the secretary, who gradually edged nearer until he could almost make
out the words.
This was what Zeno read, in very long sentences and in the Venetian
dialect:--
MOST BELOVED AND HONOURED FRIEND--I despatch this writing by
the opportunity of Sebastian Cornèr's good ship, sailing
to-morrow, with the help of God, for Constantinople with a
cargo of Florence cloth, Dalmatian linen, crossbows, Venetian
lace, straw hats, and blind nightingales. May the Lord preserve
the vessel, the crew, and the cargo from those unmentionable
dogs of Genoese, and bring all safely to the end of the voyage
within two months. The cloth, lace, and straw hats are mine,
the rest of the cargo belongs to Sebastian Cornèr, except the
nightingales, which are a gift from the Most Serene Republic to
his majesty the Emperor, together with the man who takes care
of the birds. What I say of my share in the cargo, most noble
friend, is not as in the way of boasting myself a wealthy
merchant, for indeed I am by no means rich, though by my
constant industry, my sleepless watchfulness, and my honest
dealing I have saved a crust of bread. Nay, I say it rather
because I come with a request to you, and in order that you may
know that there will be money due to me in Constantinople for
the sale of this cargo, through the house of Marin Cornèr, the
brother of Sebastian, who will pay you on your demand, most
beloved and honoured friend, the sum of three hundred gold
ducats. For I feel sure that you will undertake the business I
ask, for love of me and a commission of a lira of piccoli for
each ducat. I desire, in fact, that you will buy for me the
most handsome slave that can be had for the money I offer, or
even, if the girl were surpassingly beautiful, for three
hundred and fifty ducats. The truth is, most noble friend, that
my wife, who is, as you know, ten years older than I, and
impeded by rheumatisms, is in need of a youthful and
accomplished companion to help her to pass the time, and as I
have always made it my duty and my business to fulfil and even,
as in the present case, to anticipate her wishes, I am willing
to spend this large sum of money for the sole purpose of
pleasing her. Moreover I turn to you, most dear sir and friend,
well knowing that your kindness is only matched by your fine
taste. My wife would, I am sure, prefer as a companion a girl
with fine natural hair, either quite black or very fair, the
red auburn colour being so common here as to make one almost
wish that women would not dye their hair at all. My dear and
honoured friend, the teeth are a very important matter; pray
give your most particular attention to their whiteness and
regularity, for my wife is very fastidious. And also, I entreat
you, choose a slave with small ankles, not larger than you can
span with your thumb and middle finger. My wife will care less
about a very small waist, though if it be naturally slender it
is certainly a point of beauty. In all this, dearest sir,
employ for love of me those gifts of discernment with which
heaven has so richly endowed you, and I trust you will consider
the commission a fair one. Sebastian Cornèr, who is an old man,
will take charge of the slave and bring her to Venice, if you
will only see that she is properly protected and fed until he
is ready to sail, and this at the usual rate. I have also
agreed with him that she is not to be lodged in the common
cabin with the other female slaves whom he will bring from the
Black Sea on his own account, but separately and with better
food, lest she should grow unpleasingly thin. Yet it is
understood that his regular slave-master is to be responsible
for her protection, and will watch over her behaviour during
the voyage. This, my most worthy, dear and honourable sir and
friend, is the commission which I beg you to undertake; and in
this and all your other affairs I pray that the hand of
Providence, the intercession of the saints, and the wisdom of
the one hundred and eighteen Nicene fathers may be always with
you. From Venice. Marco Pesaro to the most noble patrician,
Carlo Zeno, his friend. The fourteenth day of March in the year
1376.
Zeno smiled repeatedly as he read the letter, but he did not look up
till he had finished it. His eyes met those of his secretary, who was
now much nearer than before.
'Omobono,' said Zeno gravely, 'curiosity is unbecoming in a man of
your years. With your grey beard and solemn air you are as prying and
curious as a girl.'
Omobono looked contritely at his folded hands and moved the left one
slowly within the right.
'Alas, sir,' he answered, 'I know it. I would that these hands held
but a thousandth part of what my eyes have seen.'
'They would be rich if they did,' observed Zeno bluntly. 'It is
fortunate that with your uncommon taste for other men's affairs you
can at least keep something to yourself. Since you have no doubt
mastered the contents of this letter as well as I----'
The good man protested.
'Indeed, sir, how could I have read a single word at this distance?
Try for yourself, sir, for your eyes are far younger and better than
mine.'
'Younger,' answered Zeno, 'but hardly better. And now send for
Barlaam, the Syrian merchant, and bid him come quickly, for he may do
business with me before the sun sets.'
'He will not do business to-day,' answered Omobono. 'This is Friday,
which the Muslemin keep holy.'
'So much the worse for Barlaam. He will miss a good bargain. Send for
Abraham of Smyrna, the Jewish caravan-broker.'
'He will not do business either,' said Omobono, 'for to-morrow is
Sabbath, and Shabbes begins on Friday evening.'
'In the name of the blessed Mark our Evangelist, then send me some
Christian, for Sunday cannot begin on Friday, even in Constantinople.'
'There is Rustan Karaboghazji, the Bokharian,' suggested Omobono.
Zeno looked sharply at the secretary.
'The slave-dealer?' he enquired.
Omobono nodded, but he reddened a little, poor man, and looked down at
his hands again, for he had betrayed himself, after protesting that he
knew nothing of the contents of the letter. Zeno laughed gaily.
'You are a good man, Omobono,' he said. 'You could not deceive a
child. Do you happen to have heard that Rustan has what Messer Marco
wants?'
But Omobono shook his head and grew still redder.
'Indeed, sir,--I--I do not know what your friend wants--I only
guessed----'
'A very good guess, Omobono. If I could guess the future as you can
the present, I should be a rich man. Yes, send for Rustan. I believe
he will do better for me than the Jew or the Mohammedan.'
'They say here that it takes ten Jews to cheat a Greek, and ten Greeks
to cheat a Bokharian, sir,' said Omobono.
'To say nothing of those Genoese swine who cheat the whole Eastern
Empire! What chance have we poor Venetians in such a place?'
'May heaven send the Genoese the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the
halter of Judas Iscariot!' prayed Omobono very devoutly.
'By all means,' returned Zeno, 'I hope so. Now send for the
Bokharian.'
Omobono bowed and left the balcony, and his employer leaned back in
his chair again, still holding the folded paper in his hand. His
expressive face wore a look of amusement for a while, but presently it
turned into something more like good-natured contempt, as his thoughts
went back from his secretary's last speech, to Marco Pesaro and his
letter.
This Pesaro was a fat little man of forty, who had married a rich
widow ten years older than himself. Carlo Zeno had known him well
before he had been married, a boon companion, a jolly good-for-nothing
who loved the society of younger men, and did them no good by example
or precept. His father and mother had both perished in the great
plague that raged in the year when Zeno was born, and Marco had been
brought up by two old aunts who doted on him. The result usual in such
cases had followed in due time; he had spent his own fortune and what
he inherited from his aunts, who died conveniently, and when near
forty he had found himself penniless, a poor relation of a great
family, none the worse in health for nearly a quarter of a century of
gaiety and feasting, and in temper much inclined to lead the same life
for at least another twenty years. The heart was young yet, the round,
pink face was absurdly youthful still, but the purse was in a state of
permanent collapse, without any prospect of recovery. Then Marco sold
everything he had, down to the sword which he had never drawn, and the
jewelled dagger which had never done any worse damage than to cut the
string of a love-letter; he sold his last silver spoons, his silver
drinking-cup and the gold chain and ball from his cloak, and with the
proceeds he gave a dozen of his friends one last farewell feast. Then,
on the following day, his spirit broken and resigned to his fate, he
offered himself to the very rich, elderly, and devout widow who had
been making eyes at him for six months, and he was promptly accepted.
With some of her money he engaged in the Eastern trade, renounced the
follies of his youth, and became a respectable merchant.
It was affluence, it was luxury, but it was slavery and he knew it,
and accepted the fact at first with much philosophy. Surely, he said
to himself, a good cook and a good cellar, with a fine house at San
Cassian, and a virtuous, if elderly, wife ought to satisfy any man of
forty. The rest was but vanity. Could anything be more absurd, at his
age, than to go on for ever playing the butterfly--such an elderly
butterfly!--from one pair of bright eyes to another?
But he had counted without the fact that the butterfly is the final
development of its genus and cannot turn into anything else. It must
be a butterfly to the end. Poor Marco soon found that his heart was as
susceptible as ever, and could beat like a boy's on very slight
provocation, but that unfortunately it was never his rich wife who
provoked it to such unseemly and lively action. Yet her facial angle
inspired him with a terror even greater than the attraction of a
pretty face and a well-turned figure. She had a way of setting her
thin lips over her prominent teeth which at the same time stretched
the skin upon the bridge of her hooked nose while she looked at him
from under her half-closed lids, that made his blood run cold, robbed
the richest sauce of its delicious flavour, and turned the wine of
Samos to vinegar in his glass. Daily, she grew older, sharper, more
irritable; and daily, too, the heart of Marco Pesaro seemed to grow
younger and the more to crave the companionship of a mate much younger
still, or at least the near presence of those outward, visible, and
tangible gifts of the gods, such as a deep warm eye, and a soft white
hand, with which man has always associated the heart of woman.
Zeno guessed all this and the rest too; the letter he had received
needed no further explanation, and for old acquaintance's sake he had
no objection to executing the commission Marco had thrust upon him.
And now, all you who stop and gather round the story-teller in this
world's great bazaar, to listen, if his tale please you, and to find
fault with him if it does not, you cry out that if Carlo Zeno was
really the hero history describes him to have been, he would have been
very, very grieved at being asked to do anything so inhuman as to buy
a pretty slave abroad to be sent home to a friend, even though the
latter protested that the girl was to be trained as a companion for
his wife. He would have been grieved and angry, he would have torn the
letter to shreds, and would either not have answered it at all, or
would have written to tell Pesaro that he was a brute, that men and
women are all free and equal, and that to buy and sell them is high
treason against the majesty of the rights of men.
But to those protests and outcries the story-teller has many answers
ready. In the first place, no one had even dreamt of the rights of men
in 1376; and secondly, the trade in white slaves was almost as
profitable to Venice then as it is in 1906 to certain great states the
story-teller could name, with the advantage that there was no
hypocritical secret about it, and that it was provided for in
international treaties, in spite of the Pope, who said it was wrong;
and thirdly, heroes are heroes for ever in respect of their heroic
deeds, but in their daily lives they are very much like the other men
of their class and time, as you will soon learn if you read the life
of Bayard, 'without fear or reproach,' written by his Faithful
Servitor; for the faithful one set down some doings of the virtuous
knight which a modern biographer would have altogether left out, but
which were no more a 'reproach' to a man in the year 1500, than
getting drunk was a 'reproach' in 1700, or than stealing anything over
a million is a 'reproach' to-day; fourthly and lastly, if Zeno had
virtuously refused to buy a slave for Marco Pesaro, there would have
been no story to tell, and this seems an excellent argument to the
story-teller himself.
Zeno's thoughts soon wandered from Pesaro and the letter, and followed
the old thread of life in Venice, till it led his soul through the
labyrinth of daily existence far out into the dreamland beyond; and
the place of his dreams was a calm and resplendent water, where
stately palaces rose through vapours of purple and gold against an
evening sky. Over the lagoon came music of old chimes from San
Giorgio, and the deeper bells of Venice answered back again; at the
instant the sunset breeze floated off the land and breathed into the
dyed sails of the Istrians without a sound, so that the boats began to
move by magic, gliding out one by one with a soft, low rush, heard
only for a moment, as of a woman's hand drawn across silk.
The mere thought of Venice called up the vision of her before the
inward eye of his heart; for he loved his native city better than he
had ever loved any woman yet, and much better than his own life. When
he could think of Venice, until the broad expanse of the lagoon seemed
to spread itself over the deeper and darker waters of the Golden Horn,
and when he could fancy himself at home, he was supremely and calmly
happy, and would not have changed his dream for any reality except its
own.
CHAPTER II
Omobono had drawn on a pair of well-greased raw-hide boots that came
half-way up his thin legs, and had wrapped himself in his big brown
cloak before going out. On his smooth grey head he wore a soft felt
hat, the brim turned up round the crown at the back but pulled out to
a long point in front, and he carried a tough cornel stick in his
right hand. He had been careful to leave in the strong box the purse
that contained money belonging to his employer, and had but a few
small coins of his own in his wallet to pay a ferryman if he should
need one, or to give to a hungry beggar. Like most men who have failed
to make money Omobono was very sorry for poor people, and did not
believe that all beggars could be rich if they would work. But he was
poor himself, and his charity was of the humble kind.
There was a fairly broad street behind Carlo Zeno's house, and here
the early spring sun had dried the mud to something like a solid
surface; but Omobono followed this thoroughfare only for a little
distance, and then turned into a narrow and filthy lane that led to
other lanes, and to others still beyond, all crowded with humanity,
all dark and muddy, all foul with garbage, all reeking with the
overpowering smell of Eastern cooking made up of garlic, frying
onions, sour cream, oil of sesame, and roasting mutton where there
were Jews or Mohammedans, or fried fish where Christians lived, since
it was Friday.
The small wooden houses, black with smoke and the dampness of the past
winter, overhung the way so that the opposite balconies of the second
stories almost touched each other. Had the buildings been higher,
scarcely any light at all would have reached the lower windows; as it
was, a man with good eyes might just see to read at noon if he were
not too far within.
Omobono evidently knew his way well enough, for he did not pause as he
threaded the labyrinth, and only now and then glanced up at certain
dingy signs that hung from the crazy wooden balconies, or from wooden
arms that stuck out here and there like gallows from the walls. As he
walked, he was chiefly occupied in not running against the people he
met, and in not stepping upon the half-naked children that squirmed
and squalled in the mud before every doorstep. For there were children
everywhere, children and dirt, dirt and children, all of much the same
colour in those dusky lanes. Near almost every open door the
slatternly mother stirred a dark mess of some sort over a little
earthen pan of coals, or toasted gobbets of fat mutton on a black iron
fork, or fried some wretched fish in boiling oil. The Christian women
were by far the dirtiest, and their children were the least healthy
and the most neglected, for many of the little creatures had not a
stitch of clothing on them. Most decent were the Mohammedans; they had
already the bearing and the self-respect of the conquering race, and
they treated their Greek and Bokharian neighbours with silent
contempt. Did not Sultan Amurad, over there on the Asian shore, make
and unmake these miserable little Greek emperors as he pleased? If he
chose could he not take Constantinople and turn a stream of Christian
blood into the Golden Horn that would redden the Sea of Marmora as far
as Antigone and Prinkipo?
Omobono went on and on, picking his way as he might, and little
noticed by the people. He was not by any means in the poorest quarter
of the city, and no one begged of him as he went by. If he thought of
anything except of not setting his booted foot down on some child's
sprawling leg or arm, he thanked heaven and the saints that he had
been born a Venetian, and had been washed and sent to school like a
Christian boy when he was little instead of having first seen the
light, or what passed for light, in a back street of Constantinople.
He turned another corner, entered a lane even narrower than those he
had yet traversed, but almost deserted, and much less dark because one
side of it was occupied by a wall not more than ten feet high, in
which only one small door was to be seen. Along the top of the masonry
all sorts of sharp bits of rusty iron and a quantity of broken
crockery were set in mortar with the evident intention of discouraging
any attempt to climb over, either from within or from without. The
door itself was in good repair, and had been recently coated with tar
and sharp sand by way of preserving it against the damp. A well-worn
horizontal slit an inch long, and an upright one a foot higher up,
showed that it had two separate Persian locks into which keys were
often thrust.
Omobono rapped on the tarred wood with the iron-shod end of his stick
and listened. He could hear a number of girls' voices chattering, and
one was singing softly in a language he did not understand. He knocked
again, a moment later the voices were suddenly silent, and he heard
the clacking of heavy slippers on wet flags as some one came to open.
'Who knocks?' asked a deep and harsh female voice from within, in the
Greek tongue but with a thick accent.
'A Venetian who has business with the worthy Karaboghazji,' answered
Omobono in a conciliatory tone.
'Which Karaboghazji?' enquired the voice suspiciously.
'Rustan,' explained Omobono mildly.
From his voice, the woman probably judged that if he had come with any
nefarious purpose she was more than a match for him. The door opened
after some rattling and creaking of locks, and Omobono started in
spite of himself. She was indeed a match for him, or for any other man
who was likely to knock at the door. It was no wonder that the
Venetian secretary drew back and hesitated before he spoke again.
The woman was a huge red-haired negress in yellow, fully six feet tall
in her heelless slippers, and her black arms, bare above the elbow,
were as sinewy and muscular as any fisherman's or porter's. Her thick
lips were parted in a sort of savage grin that showed two rows of
teeth as sharp and white as a shark's; her hair must have been just
dyed that day, for it was as red as flame to the very roots, and it
stood out almost straight from her shiny black forehead and temples;
as she rather contemptuously scrutinised Omobono from head to foot the
whites of her coal-black eyes gleamed in a way that was positively
terrifying. She wore wide Greek trousers of blue cotton, gathered at
the ankle, and a wadded coat of yellow, that hung down below her knees
in loose folds, like a sort of skirt, but fitted tightly over her
tremendous shoulders. This garment was closely girded round her ample
waist by a red sash, in which she carried her armoury, consisting of a
serviceable Arab knife with a bone hilt and brass sheath, and a small
whip made of a broad flat thong of hippopotamus hide with a short oak
stock.
This terrific apparition stood in the little vestibule holding the
door open and grinning at Omobono. She had closed another door behind
her before opening the outer one, for the slave-dealer's establishment
was evidently managed with a view to the safety of his merchandise.
'And what do you want of Rustan Karaboghazji at this time of the
afternoon?' enquired the negress. 'Who are you?'
'I am only a clerk,' answered Omobono in a deprecating tone, and
shrinking a little under his cloak, as the awful virago thrust her
head forward. 'I am the clerk of Messer Carlo Zeno, a rich Venetian
merchant, who sends a message by me to your master----'
'My master!' interrupted the black woman, with a scornful laugh. 'My
master, indeed!'
'I--I supposed----' faltered Omobono apologetically.
The negress moved a little and rested one huge hand on her hip, while
she slipped the other slowly up the door-post till it was above her
head. In this attitude she looked gigantic.
'You mean my husband,' she said, showing all her teeth. 'Rustan
Karaboghazji is my husband. Do you understand?'
'Yes, Kokóna--I--I mean Kyría--yes, certainly! I should have known at
once that you were the mistress of the house if you had not
condescended to open the door yourself, Kyría.'
'And what would become of the cattle,' enquired the negress with a
backward toss of her head towards the yard behind her, 'if the stable
door were in charge of a slave? If your master--' she dwelt on the two
words contemptuously--'wishes to buy of us, he will have to come here
and choose for himself.'
'No, no!' answered Omobono hastily. 'It is another matter. I think it
is a commission for a friend. It is something very especial. That is
why I beg to be allowed to speak with the Kyrios, your husband.'
The black woman had listened attentively.
'At this hour,' she said after a moment's thought, 'Rustan is at his
devotions.'
'I would not interrupt them for the world,' protested Omobono. 'I can
wait----'
'No. You will probably find him at the church of Saint Sergius and
Saint Bacchus. If he is not there, ask the sacristan where he is. My
husband is a very devout man; the sacristan knows him well.'
'I hope,' said Omobono, whose curiosity scented a mystery, 'that the
sacristan will not take me for an importunate stranger and send me on
a fool's errand. If the Kyría would give me some sign by which the
sacristan may know that I came from her----'
Omobono paused on this suggestion, hoping for a favourable answer.
Again the big woman waited a moment before speaking.
'Ask the sacristan to direct you to find Rustan Karaboghazji, by four
toes and by five toes,' she said at last. 'He will certainly tell you
the truth if you ask him in that way.'
'By four toes and by five toes,' repeated Omobono. 'I cannot forget
that. I thank you, Kyría Karaboghazji, and I wish you a good day.'
The negress nodded and showed her teeth but said nothing more, drew
back and shut the door without waiting any longer. Omobono stood still
a moment, listened to the slapping of the heavy slippers on the wet
flags within, and then went away down the almost deserted lane,
wondering much at the taste of the Bokharian merchant in marrying an
African giantess. But soon his natural curiosity began to occupy
itself more actively with the hidden meaning of the password given him
by Rustan's wife; and, meditating on this problem, he made his way
through the heart of the city, traversing many narrow and tortuous
streets, till he suddenly emerged into a broad highway where marble
buildings gleamed in the late afternoon sunshine, and richly dressed
Greeks lounged in the wide exedræ and stately porticoes, discussing
the affairs of the Empire in general and their neighbours' most
particularly.
Omobono trudged along, past the corner of the wide Forum of
Theodosius, once the centre of the city's teeming life, but now given
over to the tanners and leather-dressers, for one end of it was used
as a slaughterhouse and the hides had not to be dragged far to be
cured; he walked on quickly, keeping to the left, and was soon in
narrow streets again, where afterwards the Grand Bazaar was built, and
where even in those days the Persian merchants and the jewellers, the
dealers in fine carpets and Eastern merchandise, the perfumers, the
Egyptian goldsmiths and the Bokharian money-changers had their homes
and the headquarters of their business. Here Omobono exchanged
greetings now and then with men of all nationalities except Genoese,
and very few of these last were to be seen, for they kept to their own
quarter beyond the Golden Horn, in Pera. But Omobono would not stop to
talk, and the streets were clean here, and well kept, and the children
were not to be seen, so that he could walk quickly, without picking
his way.
On still, and farther on; through the almost classic Forum of
Constantine, past the hill on which the bronze-bound porphyry column
still stands, and down on the other side, keeping the Hippodrome on
his left and diving into the Bokharian quarter, as different from the
last through which he had come, as that had been from those he had
passed before. For then, as now, Constantinople was a patchwork of
divers nations and languages and customs, and their quarters were like
distinct towns,--some filthy, noisy and unhealthy, some rich and
stately, some quiet and poor, some asleep all day and riotous all
night, others silent as sleep itself from nightfall till dawn, and
noisy all day with the hum of business or the ceaseless hammering
clang and clatter of workmen's tools.
Before Omobono emerged upon the little square which then surrounded
the churches of Saints Sergius and Bacchus and of Saints Peter and
Paul--the latter is now destroyed--he heartily wished that he had
hired a horse and man at one of the street corners; but he forgot his
weariness when his destination was reached, and he saw a little
bandy-legged sacristan in an absurdly short cassock of shabby black
and purple cloth, leaning against one of the columns of the portico.
Omobono ascended the broad steps that led up from the level of the
street, as though he were going in, but just as he was close to the
sacristan he stopped, as if without any premeditation, and made a
gesture of salutation, smiling in a friendly way.
'Praised be our Lord,' he said, in the Greek manner.
'Our Lord be praised. Amen,' answered the sacristan indifferently, for
it was the custom to do so.
'Could you inform me,' proceeded the Venetian clerk, 'whether that
good man Kyrios Rustan Karaboghazji is now in the church at his
devotions?'
The sacristan had a perfectly round head with a pair of very small
round eyes; moreover, his snub nose was quite round at the end. He
now pursed out his lips and made his mouth round, too, as if he were
going to whistle. Intentionally or unintentionally, he made himself
look like an idiot, and slowly wagged his bullet head as if he did not
understand.
'The church is open,' he said, at last. 'You may see,'
Omobono now applauded himself for having asked and obtained a
password, but he meant to be cautious in using it.
'Thank you,' he said politely, and he went on, into the church.
The sun was low and cast a rich light through the open door, full upon
the grating and closed gate of the sanctuary, and the gilt and
burnished bars reflected and diffused the warm rays, like a glory
before the unseen high altar. Omobono glanced quickly to the right and
left as he passed between the pillars, but he saw no one. Farther on,
before him and under the wide dome, two women in brown were at their
prayers, the one kneeling, the other prostrate, in Eastern fashion,
her forehead resting on the marble pavement. There was no man in
sight.
Omobono chose a clean spot, hitched up his cloak in front and knelt
upon one knee. He crossed himself and said a little prayer.
'O Lord,' he prayed, 'grant wealth and honour to the Most Serene
Republic and give Venice the victory over the Genoese. Bless Messer
Carlo Zeno, O Lord, and preserve him from sudden death. Send bread to
the poor. Give Omobono strength to resist curiosity. For ever and
ever. Amen.'
It was not a very eloquent little prayer and it lacked the set forms
of invocation and doxology which devout persons use; but Omobono had
made it up for himself long ago, and said it every day at least once,
for it precisely expressed what he sincerely wished and intended to
ask with due humility; and he was a good man, in spite of his
besetting fault, and believed that what he asked would be granted. As
yet, Venice had not triumphed over those unspeakable dogs of Genoese,
though the day of glory was much nearer than even the Venetians dared
to hope. But so far Carlo Zeno had been preserved from sudden death in
spite of his manifest tendency to break his neck for any whim; for the
rest, Omobono had more than once been the means of saving poor people
from starvation, though at some risk of it to himself, poor man; and
as for his curiosity, he had at least kept it so far in bounds as
never to read his master's letters until his master had opened them
himself, which was something for Omobono to be grateful for. On the
whole, he judged that his small prayer was not unacceptable, and he
used it every day.
He knelt a moment after he had finished it, partly because he was a
little ashamed of its being very short though he never could think of
anything to add to it, and he did not wish people to think that he was
irreverent and gabbled over a prayer merely as a form; for he was very
sensitive about such things, being a shy man. And partly he remained
on his knees a little longer because the gilded grating was very
handsome in the light of the setting sun, and reminded him of the
grating in Saint Mark's, and that naturally made him think of heaven.
But presently he rose and went out.
The sacristan was still standing by the same pillar.
'Kyrios Rustan is not in the church,' said Omobono, stopping again.
Once more the sacristan seemed to be about to purse his lips into a
circle, and to put on an air of blank stupidity, and the clerk saw
that the time had come to use the password.
'I must see him,' he said, dropping his voice, but speaking very
distinctly. 'I beg you to direct me by four toes and five toes, so
that I may find him.'
The sacristan's face and manner changed at once. His small eyes were
suddenly full of intelligence, his mouth expanded in a friendly smile,
and his snub nose seemed to draw itself to a point like the muzzle of
a hound on a scent.
'Why did you not say that at once?' he asked. 'Rustan left the church
a quarter of an hour before you came, but he is not far away. Do you
see the entrance to the lane down there?'
He pointed towards the place.
'Yes,' said Omobono, 'by the corner.'
'Yes. Go into that lane. Take the first turn to the left, and then the
second to the right again. Before you have gone far you will find
Rustan walking up and down.'
'Walking up and down?' repeated Omobono, surprised that the Bokharian
should select for his afternoon stroll such a place as one might
expect to find in the direction indicated.
'Yes.' The sacristan grinned and winked at the Venetian clerk in a
knowing way. 'He is a devout man. When he has said his prayers he
walks up and down in that little lane.'
The man laughed audibly, but immediately looked behind him to see
whether any one coming from within the church had heard him, for he
considered himself a clerical character. Omobono thanked him politely.
'It is nothing,' answered the sacristan. 'A mere direction--what is
it? If I had asked you for your purse and cloak by four toes and five
toes, I am quite sure that you would have given me both.'
'Of course,' replied Omobono nervously, seeing that the reply was
evidently expected of him. 'Of course I would. And so, good-day, my
friend.'
'And good-day to you, friend,' returned the sacristan.
The clerk went away, devoutly hoping that no unknown person would
suddenly accost him and demand of him his cloak in the name of four
toes and five toes, and he wondered what in the world he should do if
such a thing happened to him. He was quite sure that he should be
unable to hide the fact that he knew the magic formula, for he had
never been very good at deception; and if the words could procure such
instant obedience from such a disagreeable person as the sacristan had
at first seemed to be, some dreadful penalty was probably the portion
of those who disobeyed the mandate.
Thus reflecting, and by no means easy in his mind, the clerk crossed
the square and entered the lane. He had supposed that it led to a
continuation of the Bokharian quarter, but he at once saw his mistake.
Even now a man may live for years in Constantinople and yet be far
from knowing every corner of it, and Omobono found himself in a part
of the city which he had never seen. It was in ruins, and yet it was
inhabited. Few of the houses had doors, hardly any window had a
shutter, and as he passed, he saw that in many lower rooms the light
fell from above, through a fallen floor and a broken roof above it.
Yet in every ruined dwelling, and almost at every door, there was some
one, and all were frightful to see; all were in rags that hardly clung
together, and some could scarcely cover themselves modestly; one was
blind, another had no arms or no legs, another was devoured by hideous
disease--many were mere bundles of bones in scanty rags, and stretched
out filthy skeleton hands for alms as the decently dressed clerk came
near. Omobono stood still for a moment when he realised that he was in
the beggars' quarter, where more than half the dying paupers of the
great city took refuge amidst houses ruined and burnt long ago when
the Crusaders had sacked Constantinople, and never more than half
repaired since then.
The clerk stood still, for the sight of so much misery hurt him, and
it hurt him still more to think that he had but very few small coins
in his wallet. The poor creatures should have them all, one by one,
but there would be few indeed for so many.
[Illustration: He was talking with an old beggar woman.]
And then, as he took out a little piece of bronze money, he heard
sounds like nothing he had heard before; like many hundred sighs of
suffering all breathed out together; and again, like many dying
persons praying in low, exhausted voices; and again, like a gentle,
hopeless wail; and through it all there was a pitiful tremor of
weakness and pain that went to the clerk's heart. He could do very
little, and he was obliged to go on, for his errand was pressing, and
the people were as wretched at one door as they would be at the next,
so that it was better not to give all his coins at once. He dropped
one here, one there, into the wasted hands, and went on quickly,
scarcely daring to glance at the faces that appeared at the low doors
and ruined windows. Yet here and there he looked in, almost against
his will, and he saw sights that sent a cold chill down his back,
sights I have seen, too, but need not tell of. And so he went on,
turning as the sacristan had instructed him, till he saw a tall, thin
man in a brown cloth gown edged with cheap fox's fur, and having a
tight fur cap on his head. He was talking with an old beggar woman,
and his back was turned so that Omobono could only see that he had a
long black beard, but he recognised Rustan, the Bokharian dealer. The
house before which the two were standing seemed a trifle better than
the rest in the street; there were crazy shutters to the large lower
windows, which were open, however; there was a door which was ajar,
and an attempt had been made to scrape the mud from the threshold. For
the street was damp and muddy after the spring rains, but not
otherwise very dirty. There was no garbage, not so much as a
cabbage-stalk or a bleaching bone; for bones can be ground to dust
between stones and eaten with water, and a cabbage-stalk is half a
dinner to a starving man.
In spite of the prayer he had recently offered up against his
besetting fault of curiosity, Omobono could not help treading very
lightly as he came up behind the Bokharian, and as the mud was in a
pasty state, neither hard nor slimy, his heavy boots made hardly any
more noise in treading on it than a beggar's bare feet. In this way he
advanced till he could see through an open window of the house, and he
stood still and looked in, but he made as if he were politely waiting
for Rustan to turn round. Either the old beggar woman was blind, or
she thought fit not to call the Bokharian's attention to the fact that
a well-dressed stranger was standing within a few feet of him. The two
talked volubly in low tones and in the Bokharian language, which
Omobono did not understand at all, and when he was quite sure that he
could not follow the conversation he occupied his curiosity in
watching what was going on inside the house. The window was low,
having apparently once served as a shop in which the shopkeeper had
sat, in Eastern fashion, half inside and half out, to wait upon his
customers. During half a minute, which elapsed before Rustan turned
round, the clerk saw a good deal.
In the first place his eyes fell on the upturned face of a woman who
was certainly in the extremity of dangerous illness, and was probably
dying. She had been beautiful once and she had beauty still, that was
not only the soft shadow of coming death. The wasted body was covered
with nameless rags, but the pillow was white and clean; the refined
face was the colour of pure wax, and the dark hair, grey at the
temples, had been carefully combed out and smoothed back from the
forehead. The woman's eyes were closed, and deeply shadowed by
suffering, but her delicate nostrils quivered now and then as she drew
breath, and her pale lips moved a little as though trying to speak.
There were young children round the wretched bed, silent, thin, and
wondering, as children are when the great mystery is very near them
and they feel it. In their miserable tatters one could hardly have
told whether the younger ones were boys or girls, but one was much
older than the rest, and Omobono's eyes fixed themselves upon her, and
he held his breath, lest the Bokharian should hear him and turn, and
hide the vision and break the spell.
The girl was standing on the other side of the sick woman, bending
down a very little, and watching her features with a look of infinite
care and sorrow. One exquisite white hand touched the poor coverings
of the bed, rather than rested on them, as if it longed to be of some
use, and to relieve the woman's suffering ever so little. But the
clerk did not look at the delicate fingers, for his eyes were riveted
on the young girl's face. It was thin and white, but its lines were
beautiful beyond comparison with all that he had ever seen, even in
Venice, the city of beautiful women.
I think that true beauty is beyond description; you may describe the
changeless, faultless outlines of a statue to a man who has seen good
statues and can recall them; you can perhaps find words to describe
the glow, and warmth, and deep texture of a famous picture, and what
you write will mean something to those who know the master's work; you
may even conjure up an image before untutored eyes. But neither minute
description nor well-turned phrase, neither sensuous adjective nor
spiritual simile can tell half the truth of a beautiful living thing.
And the fairest living woman is twice beautiful when gladness or love
or anger or sorrow rises in her eyes, for then her soul is in her
face. As Omobono looked through the window and watched the beggar girl
leaning over her dying mother, he hardly saw the perfect line of the
cheek, the dark and sweeping lashes or the deep brown eyes--the firm
and rounded chin, the very tender mouth, the high-bred nostrils or the
rich brown hair. He could not clearly recall any of those things a few
minutes later; he only knew that he had seen for once something he had
heard of all his life. It was not till he dreamt of her face that
night--dreaming, poor man, that she was his guardian angel come to
reprove him for his curiosity--that the details all came back, and
most of all that brave and tender little mouth of hers, so delicately
womanly and yet so strong, and that unspeakable turn of the cheek
between the eye and the ear, and that poise of the small head on the
slender neck--the details came back then. But in the first moment he
only saw the whole and felt that it was perfect; then, for an instant,
the eyes looked at him across the dying woman; and in a moment more
the Bokharian turned, caught sight of him and came quickly forward,
and the spell was broken.
Rustan Karaboghazji held out both hands to Omobono, as if he were
greeting his dearest friend, and he spoke in fluent Italian. He was a
young man still, not much past thirty, with dark, straight features,
stony grey eyes, and a magnificent black beard.
'What happy chance brings you here?' he cried, immediately drawing the
Venetian in the direction whence the latter had come. 'Fortunate
indeed is Friday, the day of Venus, since it brings me into the path
of my honoured Ser Omobono!'
'Indeed, it is no accident, Kyrios Rustan----' began Omobono.
'A double fortune, then, since a friend needs me,' continued the
Bokharian, without the slightest hesitation. 'But do not call me
Kyrios, Ser Omobono! First, I am not Greek, and then, my honoured
friend, I am no Kyrios, but only a poor exile from my country,
struggling to keep body and soul together among strangers.'
While he talked he had drawn Omobono's arm through his own and was
leading him away from the house with considerable haste. The Venetian
looked back, and saw that the old woman had disappeared.
'I have a message from my master,' he said, 'but before we go on, I
should like to----' he hesitated, and stopped in spite of Rustan.
'What should you like to do?' asked the latter, with sudden
sharpness.
Omobono's hand felt for the last of the small coins in his wallet.
'I wish to give a trifle to the poor people in that house,' he said,
summoning his courage. 'I saw a sick woman--she seemed to be
dying----'
But Rustan grasped his wrist and held it firmly, as if to make him put
the money back, but he smiled gently at the same time.
'No, no, my friend,' he answered. 'I would not have spoken of it, but
you force me to tell you that I have been before you there! I take
some interest in those poor people, and I have just given enough to
keep them for a week, when I shall come again. It is not wise to give
too much. The other beggars would rob them if they guessed that there
was anything to take. Come, come! The sun is setting, and it is not
well to be in this quarter so late.'
Omobono remembered how the sacristan had winked and laughed, when he
had spoken of Rustan's walks in the dismal lane, and the Venetian now
proceeded to draw from what he had seen and heard a multitude of very
logical inferences. That Rustan was an utter scoundrel he had never
doubted since he had known him, and that his domestic life was perhaps
not to his taste, Omobono guessed since he had seen the red-haired
negress who was his wife. Nothing could be more natural than that the
Bokharian, having discovered the beautiful, half-starved creature whom
Omobono had first seen through the window, should plot to get her into
his power for his own ends.
Having reached this conclusion, the mild little clerk suddenly felt
the blood of a hero beating in his veins and longed to take
Karaboghazji by the throat and shake him till he was senseless, never
doubting but that the cause of justice would miraculously give him the
strength needed for the enterprise. He submitted to be hurried away,
indeed, because the moment was evidently not propitious for a feat of
knight-errantry; but as he walked he struck his cornel stick viciously
into the pasty mud and shut his mouth tight under his well-trimmed
grey beard.
'And now,' said Rustan, drawing something like a breath of relief as
they emerged into the open space before the church, 'pray tell me what
urgent business brings you so far to find me, and tell me, too, how
you came to know where I was.'
Here Omobono suddenly realised that in his deductions he had made some
great mistake; for if Rustan had been in the beggars' quarter for such
a purpose as the Venetian suspected, how was it possible that he
should have left any sort of directions with his wife and the
sacristan for finding him, in case he should be wanted on some urgent
business? Omobono, always charitable, at once concluded that he had
been led away into judging the man unjustly.
'Messer Carlo Zeno, the Venetian merchant, is very anxious to see you
this very evening,' he said. 'From his manner, I suspect that the
business will not bear any delay and that it may be profitable to
you.'
Rustan smiled, bent his head and walked quickly, but said nothing for
several moments.
'Does Messer Zeno need money?' he asked presently. 'If so, let us stop
at my house and I will see what little sum I can dispose of.'
Mild as Omobono was, an angry, contemptuous answer rose to his lips,
but he checked it in time.
'My master never borrows,' he answered, with immense dignity. 'I can
only tell you that so far as I know he wishes to see you in regard to
some commission with which a friend in Venice has charged him.'
Rustan smiled more pleasantly than ever, and walked still faster.
'We will go directly to Messer Zeno's house, then,' he said. 'This is
a most fortunate day for buying and selling, and perhaps I have
precisely what he wants. We shall see, we shall see!'
Omobono's thin little legs had hard work to keep up with the
Bokharian's untiring stride, and though Rustan made a remark now and
then, the clerk could hardly answer him for lack of breath. The sun
had set and it was almost dark when they reached Zeno's house, and the
secretary knocked at the door of his master's private room.
CHAPTER III
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.
CHAPTER IV
Rustan stayed behind to shut the outer door, and Zoë felt that she was
carried as much as twenty paces forward and upwards before the bearers
stood still at last. Then the sliding panel opened, letting in light,
and a strange voice told her to get out. She turned inside the
palanquin and thrust out her naked feet. As she put them down,
expecting to touch bare earth or a stone pavement, they rested on a
rough carpet; at the same instant she sat on the edge of the litter
bending her head to get out of it and looking round curiously.
Rustan was not there, and in his place she saw a huge young negress
with flaming red hair and rolling eyes, who roughly ordered the
porters to take away the palanquin and at the same time caught Zoë's
wrist, whether to help her to stand upright or to secure her person it
was hard to say. The girl was much more fearless than Omobono, the
Venetian secretary, and she was not frightened by the gigantic woman's
appearance, as he had been. In getting out she had managed to gather
the cloak round her, so that the men should not see her in her rags;
for there was light in the large room where she found herself, and now
that she could look about her she saw a dozen or more girls and young
women standing in small groups a few paces behind the negress. They
surveyed the new arrival curiously, but with different expressions.
Some seemed to pity her, others smiled as if to welcome her; one
good-looking girl had noticed that she had no shoes, and her lip
curled contemptuously at such a proof of abject poverty, for she
herself was the daughter of a prosperous Caucasian horse-thief who had
brought her up in plenty and ease in order that she might fetch a high
price. The bearers had now left the room and there were no men
present. Zoë vaguely wished that they would come back, even the black
bearers of the litter, for she felt a very womanly woman's distrust of
her own sex, where so many who were strangers, and possibly not
well-disposed to her, were gathered together to look at her.
The negress surveyed her critically by the light of the large bronze
lamp that stood on a stand beside her, and showed her sharp teeth in
an approving smile that made her thick upper lip roll upwards on
itself. She took the cloak from Zoë's shoulders and scrutinised her
half-clad figure, till she blushed red. Then the daughter of the
Caucasian horse-thief laughed rudely, and some of the others tittered
while the negress gently pinched Zoë's bare arms and neck to judge of
their firmness and of her general condition. Apparently the
examination was tolerably satisfactory, for the woman nodded and
grinned again. As yet not a word had been spoken since she had
dismissed the bearers, but now she turned towards the other girls and
called two of them.
'Lucilla and Yulia, you shall wait on her,' she said in Greek. 'The
rest of you, to bed! It is already three hours of the night.'
Two dark-skinned girls in coarse blue linen clothes came forward with
alacrity, evidently much pleased at being chosen for the office. They
were ordinary slave-girls of fourteen or fifteen years, who would be
sold for house-work, and had no pretensions to good looks. Their
tightly plaited black hair was compressed into the smallest possible
space at the backs of their heads, and they wore small red caps,
coarsely embroidered, but neat and fresh. Their faces were much alike
though they were not sisters. Zoë saw instantly that they were
children of slaves of nondescript breed with a small admixture of
African blood, of the race that swarmed in Constantinople.
'Go to bed, I say!' cried the negress to the others, seeing that some
of them were inclined to linger. 'Be off!'
They saw her hand move towards the whip in her girdle and they ran for
the door, crowding on each other like sheep at the gate when the dogs
drive them into the fold. Having produced this desired result, the
negress turned to Zoë again, and her manner suddenly became caressing
and almost fawning.
'You are mistress here, Kokóna,' she said. 'These two girls shall wait
on you while our humble roof is honoured by your presence. If you have
the slightest cause of discontent with their service, only tell me,
and they shall be taught their duty.'
Again her hand went significantly to her girdle, and she rolled her
terrible eyes. The two maids shrank visibly at a threat of which they
had already felt the meaning.
Zoë was not so dull as to misunderstand the negress's manner. The
favourite slave of some high and mighty personage, of the Emperor
himself, perhaps, would have power, if only for a time, and the wife
of Karaboghazji lost no time in making a bid for such patronage.
'I am a slave, as these girls are,' Zoë answered, laying a kindly hand
on the shoulder of the one nearest to her.
Both maids gazed up into her face with a sort of wondering gratitude.
'I am here to be sold, just as you are,' Zoë added, returning their
look. The negress laughed loudly, for she was evidently in a good
humour.
'Also the noble peacock and the sparrow are both birds, though the
feathers are different!' she cried. 'But the Kokóna is hungry and
cold,' she continued, in a tone of servile anxiety for Zoë's comfort.
'Will she not perhaps take a bath and change her clothes before
supper? Everything is ready.'
'I have supped,' answered Zoë, who had eaten a piece of black bread,
'but as for clothes, I should like to put on the cloak again, for I
feel cold.'
She had hardly spoken before the two maids had wrapped her in the warm
mantle.
'Thank you,' she said to them, and she turned to the negress. 'You
seem to be mistress here. May I go to bed now?'
'Yes, I am the mistress,' answered the African woman, all her teeth
gleaming in the lamplight. 'I am Rustan Karaboghazji's wife, Kokóna.'
Zoë could not repress a movement of surprise. The negress laughed.
'Rustan is a wise man,' she said with a tremendous grin. 'It is
cheaper to marry one woman with a strong hand than to keep a couple of
smooth-faced thieves for gaolers, as most of the people in our
business do. If the Kokóna will please to follow me I will show her
the room I have prepared.'
Zoë bent her head and followed, for the negress was already leading
the way. They entered a room of fair dimensions which had evidently
been got ready with considerable care, for it contained everything
that a woman accustomed to comfort could require. A good Persian
carpet covered the floor; a narrow, but handsomely chiselled bronze
bedstead was furnished with two mattresses, spotless linen, and a warm
coverlet of silk and wool; on a marble table stood a little mirror of
polished metal, before which lay two ivory combs and a number of ivory
and silver hairpins and other little things needful for a woman's
toilet; there stood also a gilt lamp with three beaks, which shed a
pleasant light upon everything; a low curtained door at the end of the
room gave access to the small bathroom, where another little lamp was
burning. The negress drew the curtain back and showed the place to
Zoë, who had certainly not expected to spend her first night of
slavery in such luxurious quarters. Rustan's wife opened a large
wardrobe, too, and showed her a plentiful supply of fine linen and
clothes, neatly folded and lying on shelves. In the middle of the room
a round table was prepared with three dishes, one containing some
small cold birds, another a salad, and a third mixed sweetmeats, and
there was also wine and water in small silver flagons, and one silver
drinking-cup. It was long indeed since Zoë had seen anything like
this, and her eyes smarted suddenly when she realised that the
slave-dealer's prison reminded her faintly of her old home. For it was
a prison after all; she guessed that beyond the shutters of the closed
window there were stout iron bars, and as she had entered she had seen
a big key in the lock on the outside of the door.
'It is late,' said the negress, when she had shown everything. 'The
girls will sleep on the floor, for the carpet is good and there are
two blankets for them, there in the corner. Good-night, Kokóna. By
what name shall I call the Kokóna? The Kokóna will excuse her
servant's ignorance!'
Zoë hesitated a moment. She had not thought of changing her name, but
now she felt all at once that as a slave she must cut off all
connection with her former life. What if the personage who was to buy
her should turn out to have known her mother, and even herself, and
should recognise her by her name? A resemblance of face could be
explained away, but her face and her name together would certainly
betray her. It was not so much that she feared the open shame of being
recognised as Michael Rhangabé's adopted daughter; she had grown used
to the meaning of the word slavery during those last desperate days.
But people would not fail to say that Kyría Agatha had sold her
adopted daughter into slavery in order to save herself and her own
children from misery. Zoë could prevent that, and she only
hesitated long enough to choose the name by which she was to be known.
'Call me Arethusa,' she said.
Her thoughts had flown back to the deed of justice she meant to do if
she should ever be near the Emperor Andronicus; and if Areté had come
later to mean virtue, it had meant courage first, manly, unflinching
courage; and as Zoë was only a Greek girl and not a German professor,
she naturally supposed that Areté was the very word from which
Arethusa was derived.
'It is a fine name,' observed her gaoler obsequiously.
'And what shall I call you?' asked Zoë.
'I am Kyría Karaboghazji.' The negress tossed her flaming head and
smiled with satisfied vanity. 'My husband calls me Zoë,' she added,
with an amazing smirk, and some affectation of shyness.
'Zoë!' The high-born girl repeated her own name in genuine
astonishment.
[Illustration: 'Yes,' replied the negress. 'Rustan is very
affectionate. He says that I am his Zoë, his "life," because he
would surely die of starvation without me!']
'Yes,' replied the negress. 'Rustan is very affectionate. He says that
I am his Zoë, his "life," because he would surely die of starvation
without me!'
'I see,' said the Greek girl.
She would not have believed that before lying down in her prison that
night she would be forced to make an effort to suppress a laugh.
'And now it is growing late,' said the negress again, 'and Rustan is
wondering why I do not come to comb his beard and smooth his pillow,
and prepare his drink for the night. Good-night, Kokóna Arethusa! May
Holy Charalambos send you dreams of delight!'
'And to you also, Kyría Karaboghazji,' Zoë answered, though the form
of the woman's salutation was new to her.
The negress went out, still much pleased with herself, and swaying her
massive hips as she walked. She shut the door, and Zoë heard the big
key move in the lock.
The two slave-girls had stood at a respectful distance throughout the
conversation, their hands crossed submissively and their eyes bent on
the floor, for Rustan's wife had already taught them manners in order
to improve their price. But she was no sooner gone than they looked at
each other, and their lips began to twitch nervously; in another
moment they were both seized with a convulsion of silent laughter.
They shook from head to foot, they held their sides, they bent and
swayed, and twisted their hands together, but not a sound escaped
their lips. Beyond this, they could not control their mirth, and while
they laughed they looked anxiously at Zoë.
She herself could not help smiling when she thought of the negress's
enormous self-satisfaction, but presently she shook her head at the
girls and laid her finger on her lips. Their amusement subsided
quickly, for though she seemed kind, they knew what they had to expect
if one word from her should expose them to the negress's displeasure.
Zoë was very tired, now that the great sacrifice was made, and she let
the slave-girls help her as much as they would. They even made her eat
something and drink a little water. Now and then, when they looked up
at her, she patted them on the shoulder and smiled faintly, but her
thoughts were far away in the ruined house in the beggars' quarter.
When the girls had helped her in the bath and had dried her feet that
had been stained with mud and blue with the cold, they chafed them
with their hands and kissed them.
'They are like two little white mice!' said Yulia, laughing softly.
'No, they are like young doves!' said Lucilla.
And they each slipped one of her feet into a slipper of deerskin; and
then they clothed her for the night, in fine dry linen and a small
green silk jacket. They were skilful with their hands though they were
still so young, and she let them do what they thought she needed, and
lay down at last, to be covered and tucked in as warmly and
comfortably as when Kyría Agatha used to put her to bed, before the
boys had been born and had taken her place.
In a few minutes the little maids had put out the lamp, leaving only
the small light in the bath; then they noiselessly devoured all the
sweetmeats left on the table, after which they curled themselves upon
the carpet under their blankets and were asleep in a moment, like
young animals.
For a few moments Zoë still tried to think; tired though she was, she
hated herself for being able to rest in such comfort while Kyría
Agatha was perhaps awake under her pile of rags, and Nectaria was
hugging the straw to keep a little warmth in her old body. But then
she thought of the morrow, and of all that Nectaria would do with the
gold for the sick woman and the little boys, and in this soothing
reflexion she was borne softly away out of this world of slavery,
through the ivory gates to the infinite gardens of dreamland.
She was waked by the sunshine streaming into the room through the
window, and as she opened her eyes she saw the iron bars, and
remembered where she was. She sighed, for she had been happy in her
sleep. The girls were sitting cross-legged on the carpet, side by
side, at a little distance, silently awaiting her pleasure. She turned
her head on the pillow and lay on one side, looking at their small
dark faces; but she did not speak to them yet. They were very much
alike, she thought, commonplace girls, differing so little from
thousands of other young slaves in the great city, that it would be
hard for her to recognise them, if she should not see them for a few
days. They would be disposed of soon, of course, for there was always
a demand for healthy young house slaves who had been properly taught.
She envied them their homely features, their coarse black hair, their
angular figures, their sallow cheeks, and their cunning little black
eyes. They could only be sold as workers. All her life Zoë had heard
the price of house-slaves discussed, even more freely than the price
of clothes or jewels, and she knew that neither of the girls was worth
more than five-and-twenty ducats. She wondered what Rustan meant to
ask for herself; he would certainly not demand less than double the
sum he had paid.
While she was reflecting on these questions, and wishing all the time
that she might have news of Kyría Agatha during the day, the big key
moved in the Persian lock. The two girls sprang to their feet and
stood in a respectful attitude, Zoë turned her eyes as she heard the
sound, the door opened, and the negress's flaming head appeared in the
sunlight. She saw that Zoë was awake, and she entered the room,
shutting the door behind her. She greeted her valuable prisoner in the
half-familiar, half-obsequious tone she had adopted from the first,
asking her how she had slept, and whether the little maids had done
their duty. The latter question was accompanied by a fierce look at
the two girls. Zoë answered that they were most skilful and well
behaved. The negress looked at the remains of the supper on the table.
'So the Kokóna Arethusa is fond of sweetmeats,' she observed. 'She
eats only a mouthful from one bird and all the sugar-plums!'
Zoë was on the point of uttering an exclamation of surprised denial,
when she met the terrified eyes of the two slave-girls and checked
herself with a smile.
'I am very fond of sweets,' she answered carelessly.
The black woman seemed satisfied and turned from the table. She opened
the wardrobe next, and selected what she considered the handsomest of
the dresses that lay folded on the shelves within. Zoë watched her
curiously. She unfolded garments of apple-green silk, and one of
peach-coloured Persian velvet embroidered with silver, with a sash of
plaited green silk and gold threads. The two girls took the things
from her and laid them out.
'Surely,' Zoë said, 'you do not wish me to wear those clothes!'
'They are very good clothes,' observed the negress coaxingly. 'Look at
this velvet coat! There are even seed-pearls in the embroidery, and it
is quite new and fresh. My husband bought it from the Blachernæ
palace, when Handsome John was imprisoned. It belonged to one of the
favourite ladies. The slaves who ran away stole all the things and
sold them.'
'I would rather wear something plainer,' said Zoë; but at the mention
of the captive Emperor her brown eyes had grown very dark and hard,
and her voice almost trembled.
'Kokóna Arethusa must look her best this morning,' objected Rustan's
wife. 'She will receive a visit.'
Zoë started a little, and instinctively drew the bed-clothes up to her
chin.
'Already!' she exclaimed in a low tone.
The negress grinned from ear to ear.
'The Kokóna will perhaps not spend another night under our humble
roof,' she said. 'I do not know anything certainly as yet, because the
customer has not seen you,' she continued more familiarly, 'but Rustan
has consulted the astrologer, who says that these are fortunate days
for our buying and our selling. So I do not doubt but that the
customer will be pleased with your looks, Kokóna, for indeed, though I
do not wish to flatter you, we have not entertained such a beauty in
our modest home for a long time!'
All this was, of course, intended to put Zoë in a good humour, in
order that she might produce an agreeable impression on the expected
purchaser. Rustan had once missed a very good bargain because the
merchandise had burst into tears at the wrong moment.
'What sort of person is the customer?' asked the girl. 'Do you know
who he is?'
She asked the question quietly, but she held her breath as she waited
for the reply.
'I forget his name,' answered the negress after a moment's thought.
'He is a foreigner, a rich young merchant who lives in a fine house by
the Golden Horn.'
'A Christian, then?' Zoë asked, controlling her voice.
The other pretended to be shocked.
'Does the Kokóna Arethusa believe that Rustan would be so wicked as to
sell a Christian maid to the Turks? Rustan is a very devout man,
Kokóna! He would not do such an irreligious thing!'
Zoë remembered the allowance of three copper pennies daily, and how he
had driven her to sell herself for Kyría Agatha's sake; but she did
not care to impugn Rustan's piety.
'So the astrologer says that I shall be sold to-day,' she observed
with an affectation of carelessness, though her heart was sinking, and
she felt a little sick. 'Is he a great astrologer?'
'He is Rustan's friend, Gorlias Pietrogliant,' answered the negress,
who was now turning over certain fine linen in the wardrobe. 'Yes, he
is a good star-gazer, especially for merchants. He is very poor, but
many have grown rich through consulting him.'
She found what she wanted, and held up a beautifully embroidered
garment of linen as fine as a web.
'And if you are so fortunate as to go to the rich merchant's house,'
she added, 'you may win favour of him by telling him to consult
Gorlias about his affairs whenever he is in doubt.'
'Gorlias.' Zoë repeated the name, for she had never heard it.
'Gorlias Pietrogliant, who lives near the church of Saint Sergius and
Saint Bacchus. Every one in that quarter knows him.'
'I shall remember,' Zoë said.
She understood at last why Rustan had been in the habit of going often
to that church, where she had been kneeling in a dark corner when he
had first seen her. Thence he had followed her to the ruined house.
But she did not know that it was part of his regular business to
frequent the churches of the poorest quarters, because it was there
that starving girls were most often to be seen, praying to heaven for
the bread that so rarely came from that direction. Many a good bargain
had Rustan made by following a poor little ragged figure with a pretty
face to a den of misery, and he was a perfect expert in doling out
alms until his victim yielded or was forced to yield by her parents,
for a handful of gold; nor has his method of conducting the business
greatly changed, even in our own day, excepting that the slave-dealers
themselves are mostly women now.
Having selected all the garments necessary for Zoë's costume, the
negress bade one of the slave-girls take away the remains of the
supper and bring what was already prepared for the morning. The maid
obeyed, and was not gone two minutes. She brought in a bowl of
cherries, with white bread and butter and fresh water, all on a
polished tray of chiselled brass.
'Fruit is better for the health than sweetmeats at this time of day,'
observed the mistress of the house. 'By and by, at dinner, the Kokóna
shall have all she wishes.'
The little slaves looked at Zoë furtively and she smiled.
'Yes,' she said, 'fruit is much better in the morning.'
Rustan's wife came and stood beside the bed and scrutinised Zoë's
face.
'I think,' she said critically, 'that as the customer is a foreigner,
it will be better not to paint your eyes. The natural shadows under
them are not bad.'
'I never painted my face in my life!' cried the girl, rather
indignantly.
'And the Kokóna is quite right!' answered the negress, anxious to keep
her in a good humour. 'Besides,' she continued, fawning again, 'I am
here only to do your bidding and to wait on you to-day. Will it please
you to bathe now? I shall wait on you myself.'
'The little maids are very quick and clever,' objected Zoë, who
hardly looked upon the strapping African as a woman.
'No doubt, Kokóna, but this is a part of our business, and I do it
better than they.'
'I would rather let them help me, if I must be helped,' said Zoë.
'But, indeed, I am quite used to dressing myself.'
'And pray,' argued the negress, grinning and growing familiar again,
'how could Rustan give his customers a written guarantee, unless I
assured him, that there is no cause for complaint, no blemish, no
scar, no hidden deformity, no ugly birthmark?'
Zoë turned her face away on the pillow.
'I had not thought of that,' she answered.
'Heaven forbid that I should myself,' returned the woman, relapsing
into her obsequious manner again, 'if it were not to save the young
Kokóna from any trouble or annoyance with our customer! If it will but
please her to call herself my mistress and me her slave, she shall not
be disappointed. If I am rough or clumsy she shall box my ears
whenever she pleases, and I shall not complain!'
The little maids devoutly wished that Zoë would avail herself of their
tyrant's extraordinary offer, but they dared not smile. She still
turned her face away and was silent.
'See!' coaxed the African. 'I take off my coat!' She suited the action
to the word and divested herself of her outer garment, which was the
long coat and skirt in one, worn only by free women. 'I cover my head,
in the Kokóna's presence!' She quickly flattened her wild red hair
under a kerchief which she knotted at the back of her neck. 'I roll up
my sleeves! Am I anything but a slave, a bath-woman? Why will the
beautiful Kokóna not let me wait on her?'
Zoë turned her eyes and saw the change, and suddenly her objection
vanished; for Rustan's wife looked precisely like the black
slave-women who used to attend the ladies in the Roman bath in
Rhangabé's palace. The association of ideas was so strong that the
young girl could not help smiling faintly.
'As you please,' she said, raising herself upon one hand and preparing
to get up.
CHAPTER V
Carlo Zeno's interview with Rustan had been short and business-like,
as has been said. It was indeed not at all likely that a man of the
Venetian's temper and tastes would talk with a Bokharian slave-dealer
a moment longer than necessary.
Rustan, on hearing what was wanted, declared that he had the very
thing; in fact, by a wonderful coincidence, it was the very thing in
the acme of perfection, a dream, a vision, fully worth four hundred
ducats, and certainly not to be sold for three hundred; it had fine
natural hair that had never been dyed; its teeth were twenty-eight in
number, the wisdom teeth not having yet appeared, and Rustan would
wager that Messer Carlo could not find a single pearl in all
Constantinople to match one of those eight-and-twenty; its ankles were
so finely turned that a woman could span them with her thumb and
forefinger. Rustan felt safe in saying this, for his black wife's huge
hand could have spanned Zoë's throat; also it had a most beautiful and
slender waist, which, as Messer Carlo remarked, was certainly a point
of beauty. Moreover, Rustan would deliver a signed and sealed
certificate with it.
For Zeno was conscientious, and held Marco Pesaro's letter in his hand
while he questioned the Bokharian in regard to the various points in
succession, lest he should forget any one of them. He did not in the
least believe a word that Rustan said, of course. The East was never
the land of simple, trusting faith between man and man. He would even
have wagered that Rustan had nothing in his prison of the sort Pesaro
wanted, and at the moment of the interview he would have been quite
right. But he was tolerably sure that if he insisted on having the
best, the best to be had would be forthcoming in a week at the utmost.
Satisfied with this prospect, he dismissed Rustan and thought no more
about the matter, except to wish that Marco Pesaro had not troubled
him with such an absurd commission.
A fine young gentleman of later times would probably have thought few
quests more amusing than this, and would have dreamt that night of the
beauties he intended to see before at last deciding upon the purchase.
Doubtless, there were young Venetians even then in Constantinople who
would have envied Zeno the amusing task of criticising pretty faces,
hands, and ankles.
But he was not of the same temper or disposition as those gay youths.
He could not remember that any woman had ever made a very profound
impression on him, even in his boyish days. When he was in Greece, it
had been suggested to him that he might as well marry, like other
young men, and he had allowed himself to be betrothed to a sleepy
Greek heiress who had conceived an indolent but tenacious admiration
for his fighting qualities; but it had pleased the fates that she
should die before the wedding-day of a complication of the spleen
superinduced by a surfeit of rose-leaf jam and honey-cakes. He was
rather ashamed to own to himself that her translation to a better
world had been a distinct relief to his feelings, for he had soon
discovered that he did not love her, though he had been too kind to
tell her so, and too honourable to think of breaking his promise of
marriage.
He did not despise women either; indeed, his conduct in the affair of
his betrothal had proved that. Now and then he had paused in his
restless career to think of a more peaceful life, and in the pictures
that rose before his imagination there was generally a woman.
Unhappily, he had never seen any one like her in real life, and when
he was tired of dreaming he shrugged his shoulders at such
impossibilities and went back to his adventurous existence without a
sigh. Yet it might be thought that although he did not fall in love he
might now and then spend careless hours with the free and frail, for
he made no profession or show of austerity, and whatever he really
might be, he did not aspire to be called a saint. He had been a wild
student in Padua once, and had drunk deep and played high, until he
had suddenly grown tired of stupid dissipation and had left the dice
to play the more exciting game of life and death as a soldier of
fortune under a condottiere, during five long wandering years. But at
the core of his nature there was something ascetic which his comrades
could never understand, and at which they laughed when he was not
within hearing; for he was an evil man to quarrel with, as they had
found out. He never killed his man in a duel if he could help it, but
he had a way of leaving his mark for life on his adversary's face
which few cared to risk.
And now it was long indeed since his lips had touched a woman's, for
his character had taken its final manly shape, and the only folly to
which he still yielded now and then was that of risking his life
recklessly whenever he fancied that a cause was worth it; but this he
did not look upon as madness, still less as weakness, and there was no
one to argue the question with him. His honest brown eyes softened
sometimes, almost like a woman's, but only for pity or kindness, never
for word or look of love.
He rose in the bright spring morning just before the sun was up, and
went down the steps at the water's edge below his house and swam far
out in clear water that was still icy cold. Then he dressed himself
completely as strong and healthy men do, who hate to feel that they
are not ready to face anything from the beginning of the day. But
while he was dressing he was not thinking of the errand that was to
take him to Rustan's house an hour before noon. Indeed, he had quite
forgotten it, till he saw Omobono folding Pesaro's letter in his neat
way in order to file it for reference. As the secretary knew what it
contained, and had been actively employed in the matter to which it
referred, he had thought there could be no great sin of curiosity in
reading it carefully while his master was at his toilet. It would have
been wrong, he thought, to find out what was in it before Zeno
himself had broken the seal, but since it was open, it was evidently
better that the secretary should understand precisely what was wanted
of his employer, for such knowledge could only increase his own
usefulness. For the rest, he vaguely hoped that Zeno would take him
into close confidence and ask his opinion of any merchandise he
thought of buying; for Omobono had a high opinion of his own taste in
beauty, and had wished to pass for a lively spark in his young days.
But Zeno evidently considered himself qualified to decide the matter
without help, for when it lacked an hour of noon he set his secretary
at work on a fair copy of a letter he had been preparing, ordered his
horse and running footman, and went upon his errand without any other
attendant or companion. Omobono looked out of the window and watched
him as he mounted, innocently envying him his youth and strength. The
greatest fighting man of his century moved as such men generally do,
without haste and without effort, never wasting a movement and never
making an awkward one, never taking a fine attitude for the sake of
effect, as the young men of Raphael's pictures so often seem to be
doing, but always and everywhere unconsciously graceful,
self-possessed, and ready for anything.
He rode a half-bred brown Arab mare, for he was not a heavy man, and
he preferred a serviceable mount at all times to the showy and
ill-tempered white Barbary, or the rather delicate thoroughbred of the
desert, which were favourites with the rich Greeks of Constantinople.
He was quietly dressed, too; and his bare-legged runner, who cleared
the way for him when the streets were crowded, wore a plain brown
tunic and cap, and did not yell at the poorer people and slaves or
strike them in passing as the footmen of great personages always did.
Zeno had picked him out of at least a hundred for his endurance and
his long wind.
So they went quietly and quickly along, the man and his master,
following very nearly the way which Omobono had taken on the previous
afternoon, till they came to the long wall crested with sharp bits of
rusty iron and broken crockery, and stopped before the only door that
broke its blank length. Zeno looked at the defence critically, and
wondered just how great an inducement would make him take the trouble
of getting over it, at the risk of cutting his hands and tearing his
clothes. Before any one answered his footman's knock, he had decided
that it would be an easy matter to bring his well-broken horse close
to the wall, to stand on the saddle, draw himself up and throw a heavy
cloak over the spiky iron and the sharp-edged shards with one hand
while hanging by the other. The rest would be easy enough. It was
always his instinct to make such calculations when he entered or
passed by any place that was meant to be defended.
This time the door was opened by Rustan Karaboghazji in person, and he
bowed to the ground as Zeno got off his horse and stood beside him.
Still bending low he made way and with a wide gesture invited his
visitor to enter. But Zeno had no intention of wasting time by going
in till he was assured that there was something ready for his
inspection in the way of merchandise.
In answer to his question Rustan turned up his face sideways and
smiled cunningly as he gradually straightened himself.
'Your Magnificence shall see!' he answered. 'Where is the letter?
Every point is perfect, as I promised.'
'Were you really speaking the truth?' laughed Zeno. 'I expected to
come at least three times before seeing anything!'
Rustan assumed an expression of gentle reproach.
'If your Splendour had dealt with Barlaam, the Syrian merchant, or
with Abraham of Smyrna, the Jewish caravan-broker,' he said, 'it would
have been as your Greatness deigns to suggest. Moreover, your Highness
would not have been satisfied after all, and would have come at last
to the house of your servant Rustan Karaboghazji, surnamed the
Truth-speaker and the Just, and also the Keeper of Promises, by those
who know him. It must have been so, since there is but one treasure in
all the Empire such as your Mightiness asks for, and it is in this
house.'
Zeno laughed carelessly, and entered.
'Your Unspeakableness is amused,' said Rustan, fastening the outer
door carefully with both keys. 'But if it is not as I say, I entreat
your High Mightiness to kick his humble servant from this door to the
Seven Towers and back again, passing by the Chora, Blachernæ, and the
Church of the Blessed Pantokrator on the way.'
'That would take a long time,' observed Zeno. 'Open the door and let
me see the girl.'
'Your Grandeur shall see, indeed!' answered Rustan, smiling
confidently as he led the way. 'Rustan the Truth-speaker,' he
continued, as if to himself while walking, 'Karaboghazji the faithful
Keeper of Promises!'
He gently caressed his beautiful black beard as he went on. He took
Zeno through the small part of the house which he reserved for his own
use, far from the larger rooms where he kept his stock of slaves. In
an inner apartment they met the negress, resplendent in scarlet velvet
and a heavy gold chain, her red hair combed straight out from her
head. When Zeno appeared, she at once assumed what she considered a
modest but engaging attitude, crossing her great hands upon her
splendid coat, and looking down with a marvellous attempt at a simper.
Rustan stood still and for a moment Zeno thought that the dealer had
ventured to jest with him, by showing him the terrific negress in her
finery as the incomparable treasure of which he had spoken. But
Rustan's words explained everything.
'My Life,' he said, speaking to his wife in a caressing tone, 'is the
girl ready to be seen?'
'As my lord commanded me,' replied the negress, keeping her hands
folded and bending a little.
'This lady,' said Rustan to Zeno, 'is my wife, and my right hand.' He
turned to her. 'Sweet Dove,' he said, 'pray lead his Magnificence to
the slave's room. I will wait here.'
Zeno seemed surprised at this arrangement.
'My wife' explained Rustan, 'understands the creatures better than I.
My business is buying and selling; it is her part to keep the
merchandise in good condition, and to show it to the customers who
honour us.'
He smiled pleasantly as he said this, and remained standing while Zeno
followed the negress out of the room. As he walked behind her he could
not help noting her strong square shoulders, and the swing of her
powerful hips, and her firm tread, and he conceived the idea that she
would be a match for any ordinary man in a tussle. He was certainly
not thinking of the slave-girl he was about to inspect.
Another door opened, and he was in a room flooded with sunshine and
sweet with spring flowers; he stopped, and unconsciously drew one
sharp breath of surprise. Zoë had been sitting in a big chair in the
sun, and had half risen as the door opened, her hand resting on one of
the arms of the seat. Her eyes met Zeno's, and for a moment no one
moved. If Rustan had been present he would have raised the price of
the merchandise to five hundred ducats at least; the black woman only
grinned, well pleased with the appearance of the girl whom she had
herself dressed to receive the customer's visit of inspection.
Zoë's hand tightened a little on the arm of the chair and she sank
quietly into her seat again as she turned her eyes from Zeno's face,
forgetting that she had promised herself to stand erect and cold as a
slave should when she is being exhibited.
If the Venetian still doubted that by some mysterious chance of fate
the girl he had come to buy at the slave-dealer's was as well born as
himself, her movement as she sat down dispelled his lingering
uncertainty. He had entered the room carelessly, still wearing his
cap. As Zoë resumed her seat, he took it from his head, bowing
instinctively, as he would have done on meeting a woman of his own
class. A faint colour rose in the girl's cheeks, as she looked at him
again.
Rustan's wife laughed silently, standing a little behind him. Zoë
spoke first.
'Pray, sir,' she said, 'be covered.'
'His High Mightiness uncovers his head for coolness,' said the
negress.
Zeno gave her a sharp glance and then turned to Zoë.
'It is not possible that you are a slave,' he said, coming a little
nearer and looking down into her face.
But she would not meet his eyes.
'It is the truth, sir,' she said. 'I am a slave and any one may buy me
and take me away.'
'Then you have been carried off by force,' Zeno answered with
conviction, 'in war, perhaps, or in some raid of enemies on enemies.
Tell me who you are and how it happened, and by the body of blessed
Saint Mark, I will give you back free to your own people!'
Zoë looked at him in silent surprise. The negress answered him at
once, for she did not like the turn affairs were taking, and though
she had never heard of Carlo Zeno, she judged from his looks that he
was able to make good his promise.
'Your Splendour does not really believe that my husband would risk the
punishment of a robber for carrying off a free woman!' she cried.
'I am a slave,' Zoë said quietly. 'Only a slave and nothing else.
There is no more than that to tell.'
She drew one hand across her brow and eyes as if to shut out something
or to drive it away. Zeno came nearer and stood alone beside her.
'Tell me your story,' he said in a lower tone. 'Do not be afraid! no
one shall hurt you.'
'There is no more to tell,' she repeated, shaking her head. 'But you
are kind, and I thank you very much.'
She raised her clear brown eyes gratefully to his for a moment. There
was sadness in them, but he saw that she had not been weeping; and
like a man, he argued that if she were very unhappy she would, of
course, shed copious tears the live-long day, like the captive maidens
in the tales of chivalry. He looked at the beautiful young hand, now
lying on the arm of the chair, and for the first time in his life he
felt embarrassed.
The negress, who was not at all used to such methods in the buying and
selling of humanity, now came forward and began to call attention to
the fine quality of her goods.
'Very fine natural hair,' she observed. 'Your Gorgeousness will see at
once that it has never been dyed.'
She took one of Zoë's plaits in her hand, and the girl shrank a little
at the touch.
'Let her alone!' Zeno said sharply. 'I am not blind.'
'It is her business to show me,' Zoë answered for her, in a tone of
submission.
[Illustration: 'Tell me your story,' he said in a lower tone. 'Do not
be afraid! no one shall hurt you.']
'It shall not be her business much longer,' replied Zeno, almost to
himself.
He suddenly turned away from her, went to the open window, and looked
out, laying one hand on the iron bars. It was not often that he
hesitated, but he found himself faced by a very unexpected difficulty.
He was executing a commission for a friend, and if he bought a slave
with his friend's money, he should feel bound in honour to send her to
her new master at the first opportunity. On the other hand, though it
was perfectly clear from the girl's behaviour that she expected no
better fate, he was intimately convinced that in some way a great
wrong was being done, and he had never yet passed a wrong by without
trying to right it with his purse or his sword. Clearly, he was still
at liberty to buy Zoë for himself, and take her to his home; yet he
shrank from such a solution of the problem, as if it were the hardest
of all. What should he do with a young and lovely girl in his house,
where there were no women, where no woman ever set foot? She would
need female attendants, and of course he could buy them for her, or
hire them; but he thought with strong distaste of such an
establishment as all this would force upon him. Besides, he could not
keep the girl for ever, merely because he suspected that she was born
a lady and was the victim of some great injustice. She denied that she
was. What if she should persist in her denial after he had bought her
to set her free? What if she really had no family, no home, no one to
whom she could go, or wished to go? He would not turn her out, then;
he would not sell her again, and he should not want her. Moreover, he
knew well enough that it was not his nature to go on leading the
peaceful life of a merchant much longer, even if the threatening times
would permit it. He had always been as free as air. As he was now
living, if it should please him to leave Constantinople, he could do
so in twenty-four hours, leaving his business, though at a loss, to
another merchant--for he had prospered. But it would be otherwise if
this girl were in the house, under his protection, and it never
occurred to him, after he had looked into her eyes, that she could
live under his roof except in order that he might protect her--protect
her from imaginary enemies, right imaginary wrongs she had never
suffered, and altogether make of her what she protested that she was
not.
It was absurd to think of such a thing, and having come to this
conclusion in a shorter time than it has taken me to describe his
thoughts, he turned abruptly with the intention of buying her for
Marco Pesaro's account.
Unfortunately, when he saw her face he could not do it.
'I will send a palanquin for you in an hour,' he said hurriedly, and
he made for the door in evident anxiety to get away without exchanging
another word with Zoë.
The negress followed him quickly into the next room, very much
surprised at his way of doing business.
'If it please your Glory,' she began, overtaking him with difficulty,
but he would not listen, and hurried on.
'I will settle with Rustan,' he said.
But in the room where he had left her, Zoë was leaning back in her
chair alone, gazing at the sunlit window. At that very moment, so far
as she knew, the gold was being counted out that was the price of her
young life. In an hour she would be taken away in a closed litter, as
she had been brought last night, she would be carried into another
house, the slide would slip back, and she would be told to get down.
The voice would be a man's. Who was he? What was his name? What was
she to be to him? He was a Venetian, she guessed by his dress, and she
felt that his blood was gentle, like her own. But that was all, though
she was already his property. It was dreadful; or, at least, it should
be dreadful to think of! She felt that she ought to long for death
now, a thousand times more earnestly than last night.
But she did not. For she was a most womanly woman already, though not
nineteen, and there are few women of that intensely feminine temper
who cannot judge at a first meeting with a man whether they can gain
power over him or not. Moreover, this strength is greatest with men
who are most profoundly masculine, because it is not the influence of
one character over another, but the deeper, stronger, more mysterious
power of sex over sex.
CHAPTER VI
Little Omobono's thin legs carried him up and down the stairs of
Zeno's house at an astonishing pace during the next hour; for Carlo
gave fifty orders, every one of which he insisted should be executed
at once. It was not a small thing to instal a woman luxuriously in a
house in which no woman had set foot since Carlo had lived there, and
to do this within sixty minutes. It is true that the rich young
merchant had great store of thick carpets and fine stuffs, and all
sorts of silver vessels, and weapons from Damascus, and carved ivory
chessmen from India; but though some of these things quickly furnished
the upper rooms which Zeno set apart for the valuable slave's use
while she remained under his roof, yet scimitars, chessmen, and
heathen idols of jade were poor substitutes for all the things a woman
might be expected to need at a moment's notice, from hairpins and
hand-mirrors to fine linen pillow-cases, sweetmeats, and a lap-dog.
Zeno's ideas of a woman's requirements were a little vague, but he
determined that Zoë should want nothing, and he charged Omobono with
the minute execution of his smallest commands.
He himself lived simply and almost rudely. He slept on a small hard
divan with a little hard cushion under his head, and a cloak to cover
him in cold weather. He hated hot water, scented soap, and all the
soft luxuries of the Roman bath. There was no mirror in his room, no
elaborate toilet service of gold and silver, such as fine young
gentlemen used even then. He liked a good dinner when he was hungry,
good wine when he was thirsty, and a wide easy-chair when he had
worked all day; but it never had cost him a moment's discomfort to
exchange such a home as he now lived in for the camp or the sea.
Women were different beings, however, so he made all allowances for
them, and went to extreme lengths in estimating their necessities, as
Omobono found to his cost. Yet with all his preoccupation for details,
Zeno forgot that Zoë must have a woman to wait on her at once, and
when he realised the omission, almost at the last minute, the future
conqueror of the Genoese, the terror of the Mediterranean, the
victorious general of the Paduan campaign, the hero of thirty pitched
battles and a score of sea-fights, felt his heart sink with something
like fear. What would have happened if he had not remembered just in
time that Marco Pesaro's slave must have a maid? She should have two,
or three, or as many as she needed.
'Omobono,' he said, as the little secretary came up the stairs for the
twentieth time, 'go out quickly and buy two maids. They must be young,
healthy, clean, clever, and silent. Lose no time!'
'Two maids?' The secretary's jaw dropped. 'Two maids?' he repeated
almost stupidly.
'Yes. Is there anything wonderful in that? Did you expect to wait on
the lady yourself?'
'The lady?' Omobono opened his little eyes very wide.
'I mean,' answered Zeno, correcting himself, 'the--the young person
who is going to be lodged here. Lose no time, I say! Go as fast as you
can!'
Omobono turned and went, not having the least idea where to go. Before
he had reached the outer door, Zeno called after him down the stairs.
'Stop!' cried the merchant. 'It is too late. You must go and get the
lady--the young person. Take two palanquins instead of one, and tell
Rustan to let her choose her own slaves. You can put the two into one
litter and bring them all together.'
'But the price, sir?' enquired Omobono, who was a man of business.
'Rustan will ask what he pleases if I take him such a message!'
'Tell him that if he is not reasonable he shall do no more business
with Venetians,' answered Zeno, from the head of the marble stairs.
Omobono nodded obediently and followed his instructions. So it came to
pass that before long he found himself within Rustan's outer wall with
two palanquins and eight bearers, besides a couple of Zeno's trusty
men-servants, well armed, for he carried a large sum of money in gold.
The Bokharian and the secretary went into an inner room to count and
weigh the ducats, but before this began Omobono delivered his message
in full.
[Illustration: 'Forty ducats!' cried Omobono, casting up his eyes,
and preparing to bargain for at least half an hour.]
'I have the very thing,' said Karaboghazji. 'There are two girls who
have waited on her and with whom she is much pleased. As for asking
too high a price, forty ducats for the two is nothing. They are a
gift, at that.'
'Forty ducats!' cried Omobono, casting up his eyes, and preparing to
bargain for at least half an hour.
'If it is dear,' said Rustan, his face becoming like stone, 'may my
tongue never speak the truth again!'
Considering attentively the consequences of such an awful fate Omobono
did not think that the Bokharian risked any great inconvenience if the
imprecation should take effect.
'It is far from me,' said the secretary, 'to suggest that your words
are not literally true, according to your own light. But you must be
aware that the price of maid-servants has fallen much since yesterday,
owing to the arrival of a shipload of them from Tanais.'
Rustan shook his head and maintained his stony expression.
'They are worthless,' he said. 'Do you suppose I should not have
bought the best of them? There has been a plague of smallpox in their
country, and they are all pitted. They are as oranges, blighted by
hail.'
As Omobono had invented the ship and its cargo, he found it hard to
refute Rustan's argument, which was quite as good as his own.
'May my fingers be turned round in their sockets and close on the back
of my hand, if I have asked one ducat too much,' said the Bokharian
with stolid calm.
Omobono hesitated, for a new idea had struck him. Before he could
answer, a door opened and Rustan's wife, who had put off her finery,
ushered in Zoë, closely veiled and wrapped in the cloak she had worn
on the previous night. It was, in fact, necessary that she should be
delivered up in return for the gold, and the negress had supposed that
the counting was almost over.
'My turtle dove,' said Rustan in dulcet tones, 'fetch those two girls
who have waited on Kokóna Arethusa. The Venetian merchant will buy
them for her.'
The negress grinned and went out. By this time Omobono had made up his
mind what to say.
'My dear sir,' he began, in a conciliatory tone, consider that we are
friends, and do not ask an exorbitant price. I beseech you to be
obliging, by four toes and five toes.'
Omobono wondered what would happen after he had pronounced the
mysterious words. Rustan looked keenly at him and was silent for a
moment. Neither of them noticed that Zoë made a quick movement as she
stood by the table between them. The Bokharian rose suddenly and went
to shut the door.
'Where?' he asked as he crossed the small room.
Omobono's face fell at the unexpected and apparently irrelevant
question. Instantly Zoë bent down and whispered three words in his
ear. Before Rustan turned back to hear the clerk's answer, she was
standing erect and motionless again, and he did not suspect that she
had moved.
'Over the water,' answered Omobono, with perfect confidence.
'You may have the two for four-and-twenty ducats,' said Rustan. 'But
you cannot expect me to take anything off the price of the Kokóna,'
he added. 'I bargained with your master, and he agreed.'
'No, no! Certainly! And I thank you, sir.'
'I suppose,' said Rustan, 'that you would do as much for me.'
'Of course, of course,' answered Omobono. 'Shall we count the ducats?'
When the operation was almost finished, the negress returned with the
two slave-girls, whose commonplace features were wreathed in smiles,
and they began to kiss the hem of Zoë's cloak. Omobono inspected them
critically.
'Are you pleased with them, Kokóna?' he enquired of Zoë. 'My master is
very anxious that you should be satisfied.'
'Indeed I am,' Zoë answered readily. 'They are very clever little
maids.'
The two were almost crying with delight, and only a meaning movement
of the negress's hand to her girdle checked them. They were not out of
her power yet. Omobono eyed them, and really thought them cheap at
twelve ducats each, as indeed they were. He was paying four hundred
for Zoë, but Rustan did not mean her to see the gold, and had covered
it with one of his loose sleeves as she entered. He now begged his
wife take the three slaves to the palanquins while he finished
counting and weighing, and wrote out his receipt for the money. He
called the negress his pet mouse, his little bird, and the
down-quilted waistcoat of his heart, and but for her terrific
appearance, and the weapon she carried in her girdle, Omobono would
have laughed outright.
Rustan wrote on a strip of parchment, in bad Greek:--
In the name of the Holy Trinity, Constantinople, the Saturday
before Passion Sunday, the second year of Andronicus Augustus
Cæsar, and the fourteenth of the Indiction, I have received
from the Most Magnificent Carlo Zeno, a Venetian, the sum of
four hundred and forty gold ducats of Venice, for the following
merchandise:--
For one Greek maid slave, slave-born,
between seventeen and eighteen years
old, answering to the name of Arethusa,
without blemish, scar, or birthmark,
having natural brown hair,
brown eyes, twenty-eight teeth all
sound, weighing two Attic talents and
five minæ more or less, and speaking
Greek, Latin, and Italian Ducats 400
For two maid slaves, from Tanais, slave-born,
of fourteen and fifteen, answering
to the names of Lucilla and Yulia,
sound, healthy, never having been
tortured or branded, each having black
hair, black eyes, and twenty-eight
teeth, trained to wait on a lady, and
speaking intelligible Greek, besides a
barbarous dialect of their own, warranted
docile, and not given to stealing;
at 20 ducats each Ducats 40
----------
In all Ducats 440
==========
RUSTAN KARABOGHAZJI, the son of Daddirján, _Merchant_.
(_Witness_)--SEBASTIAN OMOBONO, of Venice, _Clerk_.
Omobono observed that the receipt acknowledged forty ducats as the
price of the two girls, instead of twenty-four.
'Rustan Karaboghazji, surnamed the Truth-speaker, does not sell slaves
at twelve ducats,' answered the Bokharian with dignity. 'Moreover,
your employer will see that he has paid forty, and you can justly keep
the sixteen ducats for yourself.'
'That would not be honest,' protested Omobono, shaking his neat grey
beard.
Rustan smiled, in a pitying way.
'You Venetians do not really understand business,' he said, tightening
the strings of the canvas bag into which he had swept the gold, and
knotting them as he rose.
A few minutes later Omobono was trudging along after the two
palanquins, wondering much at certain things that had happened to him
during the last twenty-four hours and less. For he was curious, as you
know, and it irritated him to feel that something was going on in the
world, all about him and near him, of which he could not even guess
the nature, manifesting itself in such nonsensical phrases as 'four
toes and five toes,' and 'over the water,' which nevertheless produced
such truly astonishing results. Since the previous afternoon he had
met four persons who knew those absurd words,--the negress, her
Bokharian husband, the sacristan to Saints Sergius and Bacchus, and a
Greek slave-girl, whom he was far from recognising as the beautiful
creature he had seen yesterday in the ruined house in the beggars'
quarter. She was so closely veiled to-day that he could not in the
least guess what her face was like.
Since she not only knew the first password, but had whispered the
second to him, he wondered why she had not used her knowledge to get
her freedom. It was incredible that the people who knew the words
should not be banded together in some secret brotherhood; but if they
were brethren, how could they sell one another into slavery? Omobono
was so much interested in these problems that he did not see where he
was till the leading palanquin entered Zeno's gate.
Zeno himself was not to be seen. The servant at the door gave Omobono
a slip of cotton paper on which the merchant had written an order. The
secretary was to take his charges to what was now the women's
apartment and leave them there. Zoë obeyed Omobono's directions in
silence, still veiled, and the two maids tripped up the marble stairs
after her, as happy as birds on a May morning, and taking in all they
saw with wondering eyes; for they had never been in a fine house
before.
'This is the Kokóna's apartment,' Omobono said, standing aside to let
Zoë pass. 'If the Kokóna desires anything, she will please to send one
of her maids to me. I am the master's secretary.'
He had been surprised when Zeno spoke of her as a 'lady,' but somehow,
since she had whispered in his ear at the slave-dealer's house, and
since he had seen her movement and carriage when she walked upstairs,
he instinctively treated her and spoke to her as if she were his
superior. She nodded her thanks now, but said nothing, and he went
away. She looked after him and listened, but no key was turned after
the door was closed, and she heard only his retreating steps on the
marble stairs. Then she turned to the window, which was open, and she
threw aside her veil and looked out upon the Golden Horn.
The two little maids at once began a minute examination of the rooms,
which occupied more than half the upper story of the house, and were,
if anything, too crowded with rich furniture, with divans, carved
tables, hanging lamps, cushioned seats, and pillows of every size,
shape, and colour. There were handsome wardrobes, too, full of the
fine clothes Zoë was to wear. The girls touched everything and talked
by signs, lest they should disturb Zoë's meditations. They told each
other that the master of the house must be highly pleased with his
slave, since he surrounded her with beautiful things; that these
things were all new, which was a sign that there was no other woman in
the house; and that they were very fortunate and happy to have been
sold, after only a month of apprenticeship under the negress's
merciless training. They also explained to each other that they were
hungry, for it was past noon. The idea of running away had probably
never occurred to either of them, even in Rustan's house. Where should
they go? And besides, the fate of runaway slaves was before their
eyes.
Meanwhile Zeno sat in his balconied room alone. Omobono had delivered
the receipt and had simply told him that sixteen ducats had been saved
on the bargain, though Rustan did not wish it known. Thereupon Zeno
gave the secretary a couple of ducats for himself, which Omobono saw
no reason for not taking.
Zeno was preoccupied and chose to be alone, so he dismissed his
secretary with injunctions to rest after the labour of installing the
new arrival, which had not been light, and he walked up and down his
room in deep thought. He had acted on an impulse altogether against
his own judgment, and now he was faced by the unpleasant necessity of
justifying his conduct in his own eyes.
One thing was quite clear; so long as he did not draw from the house
of Cornèr the money which Marco Pesaro had sent to the banker for the
commission, the merchandise was his property, since he had paid for
it. But he must make up his mind whether he meant to call it his own,
or not. If he decided to keep Arethusa, he must at once set about
finding another slave for Marco Pesaro, or else write to say that he
declined to execute the commission.
In that case, Arethusa remained his. The reason why he had so suddenly
determined to buy her was that he fancied she was a girl of good
family whom some great misfortune had brought into her present
distress. But she had calmly declared that she was a slave, and
expected nothing better than to be sold.
If this were true he had paid four hundred ducats for a foolish fancy.
She was perhaps the child of some beautiful slave, and had been
carefully educated by her mother's owner; and the latter, needing
money perhaps, had sent her to the market; or perhaps he had died and
his heirs were selling his property.
All this was very unsatisfactory. If she was slave-born, Zeno's best
course was to send Arethusa to Pesaro, as soon as the Venetian ship
sailed, for he had not the least intention of wasting money in a
futile attempt to free slaves whom the law regarded as born to their
condition. Their position was a misfortune, no doubt, but they were
used to it, and no one had then dreamed of man's inherent right of
freedom, excepting one or two popes and fanatics who had been
considered visionaries. To Zeno, who was a man of his own times, it
seemed quite as absurd that every one should be born free, as it would
seem to you that everybody should be born an English duke, a Tammany
boss, a great opera tenor, or Crown Prince of the Empire. Moreover, in
the case of a beauty, especially of one sold to live in Venice, there
were palliations, as Zeno knew. Arethusa would live in luxury; she
would also soon be the real dominant in Marco Pesaro's household, as
favourite slaves very generally were in the palaces of those who owned
them. They had not yet all the vast influence in Venice which they
gained in the following century, but their power was already waxing
balefully.
Zeno did not hesitate long; he never did, and when he had made up his
mind he sent for one of Arethusa's maids.
'What is your name, child?' he asked, scrutinising the girl's
commonplace features and intelligent eyes.
'Yulia, Magnificence,' she answered. 'If it please you,' she added
diffidently, as if half-expecting that he would choose to call her
something else.
'Yulia,' repeated Zeno, fixing the name in his memory, 'and what do
you call your mistress?' he asked abruptly.
The girl was puzzled by the question.
'Her name is Arethusa,' she answered, after a moment's reflection.
'I know that. But when you speak to her, what do you call her? When
she gives you an order, how do you answer her? You do not merely say,
"Yes, Arethusa," or "No, Arethusa," do you? She would not be pleased.'
Yulia smiled and shook her head.
'We call her Kokóna,' she answered. 'Is not that the Greek word for
young lady, your Magnificence?'
'Yes,' said Zeno, 'that is the Greek word for young lady. But Arethusa
is only a slave as you are. Why do you give her a title? What makes
you think she is a lady?'
'She is a different kind of slave. She cost much gold. Besides, if we
did not call her Kokóna she would perhaps pull our hair or scratch our
faces. Who knows? We are only ignorant little maids, but so much the
big negress at the slave-prison taught us.'
'She taught you manners, did she?' Zeno smiled at the idea.
'She made us cry very often, but it was the better for us,' answered
the maid, with philosophy beyond her years. 'We have fetched a good
price, and we have a good master, and we are together, all because we
waited cleverly on the Kokóna one night and one morning.'
'One night?' asked Zeno, in surprise.
'She was only brought to the slave-prison yesterday evening,
Magnificence.'
'At what time?'
'It was the third hour of darkness, for the black woman sent the
others to bed as soon as she was brought.'
Zeno thought over this information for a moment.
'Tell her,' said he, 'that I shall sup with her this evening. That is
all.'
Yulia, who had kept her hands respectfully before her, made a little
obeisance, turned quickly, and ran away, leaving the master of the
house to his meditations. She found Zoë still sitting by the window,
and the dainty dishes which Lucilla had received on a chiselled bronze
tray and had placed beside her were untasted.
'The master bids me say that he will sup with you to-night, Kokóna,'
said Yulia.
Zoë made a slight movement, but controlled herself, and said nothing,
though the colour rose to her face, and she turned quite away from the
maids lest they should see it. They stood still a long time, waiting
her pleasure.
'Will it not please you to eat something?' asked Yulia timidly, after
a time. 'You have eaten nothing since last night, and even then it was
little.'
'I thought I ate all the sweetmeats,' answered Zoë, turning and
smiling a little at the recollection of the girls' terror.
The hours passed and nothing happened. Some time after dinner she saw
from her upper window that Zeno came out of the house and went down
the marble steps to a beautiful skiff that was waiting there. As he
stepped in, she drew far back from the window lest he should look up
and see that she had been watching him. She heard his voice as he gave
an order to the two watermen; their oars fell with a gentle plash, and
when she looked again they were pulling the boat away upstream,
towards the palace of Blachernæ and the Sweet Waters.
The maids, having eaten of the most delicious food they had ever
tasted till they could eat no more, had curled themselves up together
on a carpet not far from their mistress, and were fast asleep. The
shadow of the house lengthened till it slanted out to the right beyond
the marble steps upon the placid water, and the bright sunlight that
fell on Pera and Galata began to turn golden; so, when gold has been
melted to white heat in the crucible, it begins to cool, grows tawny,
and is shot with streaks of red.
As the day waned in a purple haze and the air grew colder, the two
maids awoke together, rubbed their eyes, and instantly sprung to their
feet. Zoë had not even noticed them, but just then the even plashing
of oars was heard again, and she saw the skiff coming back, but
without Zeno. She looked again to be sure that it was the same boat,
and a ray of hope flashed in her thoughts like summer lightning.
Perhaps he had changed his mind, and would not come--not to-night.
The maids reminded her of his message, and she let them dress her
again for the evening. They arranged her hair, and twined strings of
pearls in it, which they had found in a sandal-wood box on the
dressing-table. They took clothes from the wardrobes, fine linen,
wrought with wonderful needlework, and pale silks, and velvet of
faintest blue embroidered with silver threads; and when they had done
their best they held two burnished metal mirrors before her and behind
her, that she might admire herself. They had lighted many little lamps
that were all prepared, for it was now dark out of doors, and they had
spent two hours in arraying Zoë. And she smiled and patted their
cheeks, and called them clever girls, for she was sure that Zeno had
changed his mind. He would not come to her to-night.
But even as she repeated the words to herself, he came softly through
the warm lamplight and stood before her, and her heart stopped
beating.
For the first time since she had taken the final step, she felt the
whole extent and meaning of what she had done. She was really a slave,
and she was alone with her master.
CHAPTER VII
'Are you afraid of me?'
Zeno asked the question gently, for the colour had left her face; and
she looked up at him with a frightened stare. He had once seen a like
terror in the eyes of a startled doe, as if a clouded opal passed
across its sight.
Zoë did not answer, but she moved instinctively, drawing herself
together, as it were, and turning one shoulder to him. He heard her
breathing hard.
It was a very new thing that he felt; for often, in fight, and often
again, he had seen strong men turn pale before him, just when they
felt that he was a master of the sword and was going to kill, but he
had never seen a woman afraid of him in his life. In his narrow
experience, they had always seemed glad that he should be near them,
and should speak to them. Therefore, when he saw that Zoë was
terrified, he did not know what to do or say, and he stupidly repeated
his question,
'Are you afraid of me?'
Zoë dug her little nails into the palms of her hands, and looked round
the room, as if for help; but the two maids had disappeared as soon as
the master had entered, for so they had been taught to do by their
trainer. She was quite alone with the man who had paid for her.
[Illustration: All sorts of confused thoughts crowded her brain, as
Zeno sat down on a seat beside the divan.]
All sorts of confused thoughts crowded her brain, as Zeno sat down on
a seat beside the divan. She wondered what would happen if she told
him her story in a few words, and appealed to his generosity. She
guessed that he was kind; at least, sometimes. But perhaps he was a
friend of the new Emperor, and it would amuse him to know that he had
bought Michael Rhangabé's daughter. Or he might send for Rustan, and
insist on revoking the bargain, and Rustan might take her back to the
beggars' quarter, and force poor Kyría Agatha to give up the money.
Zoë knew at once little and much of the world of Constantinople, but
of one thing she was certain, there would be neither mercy nor
kindness for any of her name while Andronicus reigned in Blachernæ.
She was terrified by the presence of her master, but she was perfectly
brave in her resolve; the sight of death itself before her eyes should
not make her do anything whereby those for whom she had sold herself
might suffer.
Zeno sat still and looked at her. It seemed to him that she was far
more beautiful than he had at first realised. As she leaned sideways
against the big cushions, turning her face away and her shoulder
towards him, there was something in the line of her cheek and of her
neck where it joined the ear, and in the little downy ringlets at the
roots of her hair that stirred his blood, against his will. Also, the
devil came and whispered to his heart that she was his personal
property, as much as his horse, his house and his stores of
merchandise. The laws about slaves were uncertain enough in Italy,
but there was no doubt of the law in Constantinople. The slave
Arethusa, weighing so many talents and minæ, having so many sound
teeth, and other good points, was the absolute property of Carlo Zeno.
He might kill her, if he liked, in any way he chose, and the law would
not call it murder. There would be one slave less, and he would have
thrown away four hundred gold ducats; but that would be all.
She seemed to him the most beautiful creature in the world, and the
devil was not suggesting that he should kill her; not by any means.
For a long time, the man and his slave were silent, and scarcely
moved, and neither of them afterwards forgot those minutes. In their
thoughts each was struggling with what seemed an impossibility, a
something which could never be done. The high-born girl, for the sake
of a mother who was not her mother, and of brothers who were not of
her blood, was resolved to be to the end what she had made herself to
save their lives, the obedient slave of a merchant who had paid gold
for her. It was worse than death, but if she did not die of it, she
must live through it, lest the good she had done should be undone
again.
The man who had the law's own right of life and death over her, and
whose warm young blood her beauty stirred so profoundly, chose to
resist and play that he was not the master after all. His lean face
was calm enough in the quiet lamplight, as it would have been in
raging battle; but within was that he would not care to feel again,
nor perhaps to let others know that he had felt.
At last, wondering at the stillness, half-believing and quite hoping
that he was no longer in the room, Zoë turned her head. His eyes were
on her, but there was something in them that she could not fear.
'Tell me who you are,' he said quietly.
Of all questions she had least expected this one, which seemed so
natural to him. She waited a moment before she spoke.
'Are you dissatisfied, sir?' she asked in a low voice. 'Has the
Bokharian cheated you?'
'No! What a thought!'
'Then you know what I am, and I can tell you nothing more, my lord.
Can a slave have a pedigree?'
'I do not believe that you were born a slave,' said Zeno, leaning
forward a little and looking into her eyes.
After a moment, her lids drooped under his gaze, but she would not
speak.
'Have you nothing to say?' he asked, disappointed at her silence.
Again the temptation seized her to tell him all, since he spoke so
kindly; but still she thought of what might happen to Kyría Agatha.
'I am your bought slave,' she said, almost directly. 'I have nothing
else to tell.'
'But you had a mother?'
'I never knew her.'
'Your father, then?'
'I never knew him.'
Zeno was not always patient, even with women, and there was no reason
why he should be forbearing with his own property.
'I do not believe you,' he said in a tone of annoyance, and he rose
and began to pace the room.
Now it chanced that Zoë had been able to answer his last two questions
quite truthfully, for she had not the least recollection of her own
father and mother, who had died of the plague when she was three
months old.
'I will swear to you on all holy things that it is true,' she said,
watching him.
He made an impatient gesture.
'A slave cannot take an oath,' he answered roughly.
Zoë lifted her beautiful head at once, and her eyes shone; but he did
not see, for he had turned his back on her in his walk, and a moment
later she resumed her former submissive attitude.
Zeno stopped near the door and clapped his hands; the two maids
appeared.
'Bring supper,' he said.
As they went to obey he came back and sat down again beside the divan.
There was just room to place a small table between him and Zoë. The
girls came back and waited on them, but neither spoke. Zeno prepared a
salad himself with ingredients brought ready for making it, and when
it was dressed he helped Zoë to a little of it. She had watched him,
for the Italian custom was new to her and she had never known how a
salad was composed. Zeno poured Greek wine into her glass, a delicate
white goblet from Murano, with faint blue lines round the stem. But
she neither ate nor drank.
'Go,' said Zeno to the maids. 'I will call you.'
The two slipped away noiselessly. Zeno had forgotten his displeasure,
and he felt her presence again.
'You must eat and drink,' he said gently. 'If there is anything you
like, tell me. You shall have it.'
'You are kind,' she answered, but she did not lift her hand. 'I have
no appetite,' she added, after a little pause.
I do not know why no man believes a woman when she says that she is
not hungry. Zeno was annoyed, and by way of showing his displeasure he
himself began to eat more than he wanted. Zoë looked on in silence
while he finished another bird and all the salad he had made. She
would not have been a woman if she had not seen that he felt a little
shy, all at once, as the most fearless and energetic men may before a
woman they do not understand. Then there was a change for the better
in her own state; she breathed more freely, her heart beat more
steadily, the weight that lay like lead on her chest, just below her
throat, was lightened. When a woman sees that a man is shy with her,
she is sure that sooner or later he will turn at her will; and though
she is sometimes mistaken, the chances are that she is right.
Zeno had never been shy before; but now, when he wished to speak, he
could find nothing to say, and Zoë knew it, and would not help him. It
was strange that as her fear subsided she thought him handsomer than
at first sight, in the morning. When he had finished eating, he drank
some wine, set down the glass, and looked at her with an expression
that was meant to show something like anger; for he already regretted
the time--distant five minutes--when she had been afraid of him, and
he had been master of the situation. He drew his brows together, set
his lips, and glared at her, but to his amazement she did not seem
frightened. He had lost the thread, for the time, and she had found
it. She answered his look with one of gentle surprise.
'Have you finished supper already?' she asked sweetly.
A slight flush rose in his brown cheek, as he felt his shyness
increase, but he kept his eyes steadily on her.
'You do not seem to be afraid of me any longer,' he said, by way of
answer.
'Have I anything to fear from you?' she asked, in a trusting tone.
She risked everything on the question, or thought she did. She won.
His face changed and softened, for by appealing to his generosity she
had put him at ease.
'No,' he answered. 'You never were in danger from me. Besides,' he
added, with something like an effort, 'I have not made up my mind what
to do with you.'
Zoë sat up straight, resting one hand on the edge of the little table.
'The truth is,' he went on, 'I did not buy you for myself.'
Zoë made a quick movement in her seat. Then her tender mouth hardened
in a look of contempt.
'So you are only another slave-dealer!' she cried scornfully. But
Zeno laughed at the mere idea, and was glad to laugh. It was a relief.
'No,' he said, 'I am not a slave-dealer. I am a Venetian merchant, I
believe. I have been a soldier, and I came near being a prebendary!'
'A priest!' Zoë's face showed her disgust.
'No, for I never was in orders,' answered Zeno, growing more sure of
himself as she grew more angry. 'But as for you, a friend of mine, a
rich gentleman of Venice, has asked me as a favour to send him the
most beautiful slave to be had in Constantinople for the large price
he named. As a matter of fact----'
But here he was interrupted, for Zoë turned from him and buried her
face in the leathern cushion. Her body shook a little, and Zeno
thought she was crying. She had grown almost used to him, and had
begun to feel that she might have some power over him; and she was
ashamed to own that he attracted her, though she meant to hate him.
But the idea that he had only bought her like a piece of goods, to
pass her on to an unknown man far away, was more than she could bear
at first. Moreover, though the idea of eating sickened her, she was
really weakened by need of food, and she had undergone within
twenty-four hours as much as her nature could bear without breaking
down in some way.
Zeno was distressed, and bent over her, rather awkwardly, anxious to
soothe her. She turned her face to him suddenly, without warning, and
he saw that her eyes were dry and her cheeks flushed.
'Venice is a beautiful city,' he said coaxingly. 'You will be a great
person in my friend's house--he will give you----'
'When are you going to send me? To-morrow?' The girl had mastered
herself a little.
'I have told you that I have not made up my mind about you,' Zeno
answered. 'The money I gave the Bokharian was my own. I may keep you
here after all.'
Zoë detested him in that moment. She longed to insult him, to strike
him, to drive him away. There was something so condescending in what
he said. He would make up his mind about her! He might keep her after
all! He had paid his own money for her! It was not possible that she
could have thought him handsome, that she could have been even
momentarily attracted by his face, his manner, or his voice.
'I hate you!' she cried, shutting her teeth tightly as she spoke.
He was near her, and she drew back from him as far as she could
against the cushions of the divan. He resumed his seat, for he saw how
angry she was. He had purposely spoken as if she were really the slave
she told him that she was, and against the natural instinct which bade
him treat her as his equal.
'Indeed,' he said coldly, and he took a cracked walnut from the table
and began to peel the kernel, 'it is not easy to know what will please
you. You seem horrified at the idea of going to Venice and furious at
the thought of staying here! Of course, there is a third possibility.
I would not send my friend a slave who would be so discontented as to
poison him and his family, and I shall certainly not keep one in my
house who hates me and may take it into her head to cut my throat in
my sleep. The only thing that remains will be to sell you back to the
Bokharian at a loss. Should you like that?'
Zoë felt again that he was her master.
'You made me think you would be kind to me!' she said, and her voice
quavered.
Zeno laughed, for he had been too much annoyed to yield at once to her
appeal.
'That did not prevent you from saying that you hated me, a while ago,'
he answered. 'You must not expect too much Christian virtue of me, for
I am no saint. I never learned to love those that hate me!'
She liked him better now; as he threw back his head a little, looking
at her from under his half-closed lids, she glanced at his brown
throat and she did not think of cutting it, as he had suggested. But
she was angry with herself for passing through so many phases of like
and dislike in so short a time, and for not feeling relief at the
thought of being sent on a long journey, which certainly would mean
safety while it lasted, and perhaps a chance of freedom. She wondered,
too, why she no longer wished to die outright now that she had saved
Kyría Agatha. Her answer to his last speech was humble.
'You made me say it,' she said. 'I am sorry, sir.'
'At least, I have learnt that you would rather stay here than go back
to Rustan Karaboghazji and that gentle wife of his--his red-haired
dove!'
'Anything rather than that!'
Her tone was earnest, for it was the fate she feared most, both for
herself and because she fancied that the dealer would in some way
claim his money from Kyría Agatha. Zeno was apparently satisfied with
her answer, for he looked more kindly at her and was silent for a
time. Again he allowed his eyes to be delighted with her beauty.
'I will not send you back,' he said at last; and he held out his hand
towards her, as if he were giving a promise to an equal.
She was grateful, but she thought that perhaps he was trying to make
her betray her birth. No slave would take the master's hand familiarly
in her own; she knew the ways of slaves, for there had been many in
her adopted father's house, and she touched the tips of Zeno's fingers
with her own and pressed her lips to the back of her own hand when she
withdrew it. The action disconcerted him a little, for it was
performed perfectly, with all the deference of born servitude.
'You were not long in Rustan's house, were you?' he asked, not seeming
to be much interested in the answer, for he hoped to take her
unawares.
If she told the truth, which he knew, he would show surprise and press
her with another question; if she answered with an untruth he should
gain that much knowledge of her character for future use.
Quick-witted, she did neither.
'It pleased my lord to remind me a while ago that a slave's oath is
never to be believed,' she said. 'It is the law that a slave must be
tortured when giving evidence, is it not?'
'I believe it is,' answered Zeno, with a smile. 'But you are quite
safe! I only ask you how long you were in Rustan's house.'
'One night and part of a day,' Zoë answered after a moment.
Zeno pretended surprise.
'So short a time! Then he only bought you yesterday?'
'Yesterday evening.'
'And of whom? Will you tell me that?'
Zoë reflected a moment and then smiled.
'Yes. I will tell you that. He bought me of a lady of Constantinople,
in whose closest intimacy I was brought up. She is just of my own age
and we are much alike.'
'I see,' said Zeno, completely deceived, and speaking almost to
himself. 'Poor girl! The same father, I suppose--hence the----'
Zoë drooped her eyes and looked at the carpet.
'Yes--since you have guessed it, sir. We had the same father, though
we never knew him. He died of the plague when we were a few months
old.'
Zeno was perfectly satisfied with this logical explanation which
entirely explained Zoë's aristocratic beauty, her nobility of manner,
and the delicate rearing that was so apparent in all her ways, as well
as the fearlessness which had made her turn upon him and tell him that
she hated him. The only point he could not understand, was that Zoë
should have smiled. But he thought, as was quite possible, that there
might have been jealousy and even hatred between the mistress and her
slave-born sister, and he would not enquire too closely yet, since all
was so clear to him. Such unnatural doings were not rare in a city
half-filled with slaves. Zoë's mistress had probably sold her in a fit
of anger, or perhaps deliberately and with a cruel purpose, or even
out of avarice, to buy a string of pearls.
The girl did not offer to say more, but she looked away from her owner
and seemed to be thinking of the past, as indeed she was, though it
was so different from that which his imagination was inventing for
her.
He, on his side, peeled another walnut thoughtfully, and looked at her
from time to time, sure that he knew the truth, and wondering what he
ought to do, and above all what he really wished to do. He had
believed her deeply wronged, and had paid a great sum to redress that
wrong, almost without hesitating, because it was his nature to help
any one in distress, and because he, who counted neither life nor limb
when his cause was good, had never counted such stuff as gold in a
like case.
But now, it was all clear. She was a slave, in spite of all
appearances. She had suffered no injustice; her smile had told him
that the change in her life had not been to greater unhappiness. That
she should fear to be sent back to Rustan was only natural; she, who
had no doubt always lived delicately in the great house where she had
been born, must have felt the sordidness and the degradation of the
slave-prison, in spite of the special care she had received in
consideration of her beauty and value. Very likely, too, she had not
much real feeling, in spite of her behaviour; slave women rarely
have.
What should he do with her? He was passionate rather than material or
pleasure-loving; he was consequently an optimist and an idealist where
women were concerned, and was full of a vague belief in the romantic
side of love. He could no more really love a slave-girl than he could
have loved a hired maid, though she might be beautiful beyond
comparison, for he was incapable of attaching himself to beauty alone.
Only his equal could be his mate, and he never could care long or
truly for any creature that was less. At twenty, the youth in him
would have boiled up and over for a week, or a month; but he was
verging on thirty, his thirty years that had been crammed with the
deeds of many a daring man's whole life-time, and his nature had
hardened in a nobler mould than his early youth had promised. He would
not make a plaything of any woman now; and since he would not, he
wondered what he should do with Zoë, now that she was his.
In this mood of uncertainty he rose to leave her, more or less
resolved not to see her again until he had come to some conclusion as
to her future; for in spite of all he still felt himself attracted to
her, and the line of her cheek and throat when her face was
half-turned away was of exquisite beauty. Standing beside her for a
moment, he knew that if ever again in his life he stooped to take a
woman for a toy, lovelessly, stupidly, contemptibly, the plaything
would be this Arethusa whom he had bought of a scoundrelly Bokharian
dealer.
'Good-night,' he said, looking down into her upturned eyes. 'If you
need anything, if you want anything, send for Omobono, and you shall
have it. Good-night, Arethusa.'
It was the first time he had called her by her name, as he knew it. He
did not even hold out his hand. She looked up steadily.
'What shall you do with me?' she asked, very anxiously, surprised by
his sudden leave-taking.
She was so lovely then that he felt a despicable impulse to take her
into his arms, just for her loveliness, and close her sad eyes with
kisses. Instead, he shook his head and turned away.
'I do not know,' he said, half-aloud. He reached the door. 'I do not
know,' he repeated, as if the problem were very hard to solve; and he
went out, not turning back to look at her.
Thus ended the first hour the slave spent with her master; and when he
was gone she felt suddenly exhausted, as if she had fought with her
hands; and strangely enough she knew all at once that she was weak
from want of food, and that the thought of eating no longer disgusted
her. Half-ashamed of herself, she glanced at the door through which
Zeno had disappeared, as if she thought he might come back, and
listened, as though expecting his footstep. Then, not seeing or
hearing anything, she began to eat quickly, and almost ravenously, as
if she were doing something to be a little ashamed of, and she hoped
that the maids would not come in and see her.
She was soon satisfied, for it had been a nervous craving rather than
anything else, and every woman who reads these lines knows precisely
how Zoë felt, or will know one of these days; for in all that belongs
to the instinctive side of life, women are much more alike than men
are; whereas, because they are not led, pushed, or dragged through one
average course of teaching, as most men are, but are left to think and
above all, to guess at truth for themselves, they are much more unlike
in their way of looking at things. This also is the reason why many
gifted men and a good many really learned ones would rather talk to
women than to men; for among men they hear the same things
everlastingly, but women always have something new to say, which is
flattering, pleasant, amusing, or irritating--perhaps, as they choose.
Women have also a sort of mock-humble, wholly appealing way of asking
the great man how it is possible that he can really care to talk with
a poor, ignorant, little woman, when he might be engaged in a
memorable conversation with the other great man, who is talking to the
other poor, ignorant little woman with lovely eyes, on the other side
of the room. In this way we learn that life is full of contradictions.
Zoë slept ten hours without dreaming, and awoke refreshed and rested,
to wonder presently why her mood had changed so much. But Zeno was
restless in the night, and dissatisfied with himself and with what he
had done; when he lay awake he found fault with his impulsive action,
but when he fell asleep for half-an-hour Zoë haunted his dreams. More
than once he got up and walked barefoot on the marble mosaic pavement
of his room, and he threw open the shutters and looked out. The night
was calm and clear, and the air was almost wintry. To the left of
Pera's towering outline the northern constellations shone bright and
cold. Each time he looked he wondered at the slow motion of the Bear;
the seven stars hung above the Pole, for it was springtime, and they
hardly seemed to have moved a handbreadth to their westward sinking in
a whole hour, when he looked again. When morning came his face was a
little paler than usual, and he felt that he was in a bad humour.
Omobono only guessed it from a certain increase of his natural
reserve, but that was enough for the experienced secretary, who was
wonderfully careful not to speak unless Zeno spoke to him, and, above
all, not to mention the existence of the women's apartment upstairs.
On the other hand, although it was a Sunday, he had expected to be
sent by his master to draw the money from the house of Cornèr,
according to Pesaro's letter, of which he had thoroughly mastered the
contents. But the order was not given, and as Zeno was neither
forgetful of details nor slack in matters of business, Omobono began
to wonder what had happened.
On Monday Zeno's mood had not changed, nor did he send for the money,
and the secretary's curiosity grew mightily; on Tuesday it became
almost unbearable. So far as he knew, and he knew most things that
went on in the house, Zeno had only once gone upstairs, when he had
supped with Zoë on Saturday evening, and had remained barely an hour.
Since then he had not even asked after the slave, and no one had seen
her except the two little maids, who came out upon the landing to
receive the meals at regular hours, but never spoke to the
men-servants. The secretary could have asked to see Zoë, to enquire if
she needed anything, and she would certainly have received him; but he
was afraid to do so without orders, and Zeno gave none, and might come
in at the very moment when Omobono was there. The industrious
secretary had fits of abstraction over his letters and accounts, and
stared out of the window, stroking his neatly-trimmed grey beard very
thoughtfully.
On Wednesday, a little before noon, Zoë was sitting in her window, and
she again saw Zeno go down the steps to the water and get into his
skiff. It was always there now, even at dawn, for since there had been
women in the house Zeno had been rowed to another place for his
morning plunge in the Golden Horn. To-day he was dressed with
particular care, Zoë thought, as she caught sight of him, and she did
not draw back from the window, as she had done the first time, but
stayed where she was, and she wished in her heart that he would look
up and see her. He did not even turn as he stepped into the boat, and
she thought he held his head lower than when she had last seen him,
and looked down, and raised his shoulders a little like a person
determined not to look to the right or the left. Then the two men
pulled the skiff away upstream, and she watched it till she could no
longer distinguish it from many others that moved about on the water
in the direction of the palace. She wondered where he went.
He had not been gone ten minutes when a man came to the gate of the
fore-court on the other side of the house, and asked to see the
secretary. He was simply dressed in a clean brown woollen tunic, that
hung almost to the ground. It had wide sleeves, and they hid his
joined hands as he stood waiting, in the attitude monks often take
before a superior, or when reciting prayers before meals. But the man
was not a monk, for he wore a broad belt of dark red leather, in which
he carried a sheathed knife, a Syrian ink-horn, and a small
cylindrical case of hammered brass, which held his reed pens. On his
head he wore a tall felt cap, such as dervishes now wear.
The slave at the door looked at him attentively before admitting him.
There was something unusual in his expression, though his features
were not very marked, and he had the rather pasty complexion that is
so common in the East. His eyes were perhaps a little longer and more
almond-shaped than those of the average Greek or Bokharian, and he
kept them half-closed. His scanty black beard had a few grey hairs in
it. His nostrils curved sharply, but the nose was neither very large
nor markedly aquiline. A commonplace face enough in Constantinople;
but there was something oddly fixed in its expression, that made the
slave feel uncomfortable and yet submissive. Many persons of all
conditions came to the merchant's house on business during the day,
and it was the rule to send them to Omobono. The slave's business was
to keep out thieves, beggars, and suspicious characters; he stood
aside, admitted the visitor to the court which separated the house
from the street, and shut the gate again.
One of the free house-servants, of whom two or three were always
waiting, came forward--a square-shouldered Venetian named Vito, who
had been a sailor and had followed Zeno for years. He enquired the
stranger's name and business.
'I am Gorlias Pietrogliant,' was the answer. 'My business with the
secretary is private.'
The serving-man disappeared, and returned a moment later to conduct
the visitor to the private room of the counting-house on the ground
floor, where Omobono sat behind a high desk covered with papers and
slips of parchment.
Omobono straightened himself on his stool and eyed the newcomer with a
look of enquiry, at the same time drawing from his right arm the half
sleeve of grey cotton which he always put on when he was going to
write long, lest a spot of ink should stain the soft linen wrist-band
which just showed below the tight cuff of his coat. He was a careful
man. He looked at his visitor keenly, till he suddenly became aware
that his scrutiny was returned with a rather disquieting fixedness.
'I am Gorlias Pietrogliant,' said the stranger.
Omobono bent his head politely, and wondered whether he should be able
to repeat such an outlandish name.
'I am Messer Zeno's secretary,' he answered. 'What is your business,
Master Porlias Dietroplant?'
'Gorlias,' corrected the other, quite unmoved. Gorlias Pietrogliant.'
'Master Gorlias--I beg your pardon.'
'I am an astrologer,' observed the visitor, seating himself on a high
stool at Omobono's elbow, and relapsing into silence.
'You are an astrologer,' said the secretary tentatively, after a long
pause, for he did not know what to say.
'Yes, I told you so,' replied Gorlias; and for a few seconds longer it
did not seem to occur to him that there was anything else to be said.
There was something so oddly fixed in his look and so dull in his
voice that Omobono began to fear that he might be a lunatic, which was
indeed, in the secretary's opinion, much the same as an astrologer,
for the Venetians were never great believers in the influence of the
stars. But the visitor soon made him forget his suspicions by reviving
his curiosity.
'The matter which brings me to you is of a very delicate nature,' said
Gorlias, all at once speaking fluently and in a low voice. 'I have
reason to believe that we are interested in the same business.'
'Are we?' asked the secretary in some surprise.
'I think we are. I think we are, by four toes and by five toes!'
'Over the water,' answered Omobono promptly, and hoping to learn more.
'Both salt and fresh,' returned Gorlias. 'By these tokens I shall
trust to your fidelity and discretion.'
[Illustration: There was something so oddly fixed in his look and so
dull in his voice that Omobono began to fear that he might be a
lunatic.]
'Implicitly,' replied the Venetian, who was sure of being discreet,
but wondered what the matter might be to which his fidelity was
pledged beforehand. He inwardly hoped that his visitor was not going
to ask him for money, for he suspected that some awful fate must be in
store for those who refused a service when appealed to by the
mysterious passwords, of which he had now learnt one more.
'Messer Carlo is gone out,' said Gorlias. 'By this time he is in the
house of Messer Sebastian Polo, who wishes to marry him to his
daughter. He will not come home till after dinner.'
Omobono stared at the speaker.
'You know more than I do,' he observed.
'Of course. I am an astrologer. You are in charge of the house and all
it contains, and the servants and slaves are afraid of you because you
have the master's ear, but they love you because you are kind to them.
Therefore, whatever you do is right in their eyes. Upstairs there are
three female slaves; one is Arethusa, the other two are called Yulia
and Lucilla, and wait on her. You see, I know everything. Now, for the
sake of that business in which we are both interested, you must take
me up to their apartment, for I must speak with the one called
Arethusa.'
Omobono wished that Gorlias had asked him for his coat, or his money,
or anything that was his, rather than for such a favour; and he was
about to risk refusing it, whatever the penalty might be, when a
luminous idea revealed itself to him.
'There is only one condition,' he answered, after a moment's thought.
'I must be present while you talk with her.'
'That need not disturb you,' said Gorlias calmly. 'I have seen the
room where she is by virtue of my knowledge of the stars. It has a
small covered balcony with an outer lattice against the sun, on the
south side. There I will talk with Arethusa, while you stand by the
door and watch us. I will draw figures, and appear to explain them to
her, so that the two girl-slaves may think that I have come to amuse
her by setting up her horoscope. Even Messer Carlo could not object to
that, and Arethusa can veil herself, so that I shall not be able to
see her face.'
Omobono reflected a moment, but could now see no good reason for
refusing the request, whereas he saw a prospect of learning something
more about the mystery that interested him. Zoë herself had prompted
him with the second password of the chain, in Rustan's house, and he
was almost sure that in some way she knew the rest, and the meaning of
them all.
The two went up the marble stairs to the second story, and Omobono
tapped at the entrance to the women's apartment. There came a little
pattering of slippered feet, and Lucilla opened the door just enough
to put her head out, for it was not yet time for the mid-day meal, and
she wondered what was wanted.
'Bid your mistress veil herself, my child,' said Omobono. 'Here is a
famous astrologer come to tell her the future, which will help her to
pass the time.'
Lucilla glanced at Gorlias with curiosity and smiled, showing all her
teeth.
'Indeed it is very dull here,' she observed, and disappeared, shutting
the door behind her.
While the two men waited Gorlias produced from the folds of his wide
tunic a big roll of parchment, which he unrolled a foot or two,
displaying a multitude of incomprehensible signs and figures; he also
took out a large brass compass, a sheet of cotton paper from Padua,
also rolled up, and an Arabic almanack with a silver clasp. Omobono
surveyed these preparations with mingled curiosity and sceptical
amusement, till Lucilla opened the door again and ushered both men
into Zoë's presence. The astrologer made cabalistic signs with his
right hand while he advanced, as if he were drawing imaginary figures
in the air with his extended forefinger. Zoë's face was quite
concealed in the double folds of a white gauze veil, but she seemed to
watch him attentively as he came towards her.
CHAPTER VIII
Zoë and the astrologer sat in the covered balcony in full view of the
secretary, who remained near the door, straining his sharp ears in
vain to catch some words of the whispered conversation. The maids had
been dismissed. From time to time Gorlias spoke aloud, pointing with
his compass to different parts of the figure, but what he said only
made it more impossible to guess at what he whispered. Zoë sat almost
motionless, but she had opened the folds of her veil so as to uncover
her mouth, and after her companion had been speaking some time she
bent down and answered in his ear, pretending, however, to point to
the figures on the paper, as if she were asking questions.
The substance of what Gorlias told her was that he and his friends
were interested in a mighty enterprise, and had often tried to sound
Carlo Zeno with regard to helping them to carry it out, but they had
met with no success, for he either did not understand, or he would
not. Messer Sebastian Polo, whose house he frequented, was a timid
man, and was not to be trusted with such a secret; moreover, he was so
extremely anxious to make Zeno marry his daughter, that he would
certainly never allow him to run any risks.
All this he put very clearly, and Omobono might have been surprised
to learn that he had not used any password. Then Zoë bent down to his
ear.
'What is the name of Sebastian Polo's daughter?' she asked.
'Giustina,' whispered the astrologer. 'The sun near to mid-heaven,' he
continued aloud, 'and in trine aspect to Mars, signifies fine horses
and a retinue of servants.' He dropped his voice again. 'She is
thirty, and has had the smallpox,' he whispered.
'The master has only been here once since I came,' said Zoë, bending
to his ear again. 'I have no influence with him.'
Gorlias turned his face towards her in slow surprise.
'Had he not seen you before he bought you, Kokóna Arethusa?' he
enquired.
'Yes, indeed!'
'Oh! I thought that you also might have had the smallpox,' was the
whispered answer.
Zoë could not help laughing a little. The pretty notes, muffled by the
veil, seemed to come from far away. It was the first time she had
laughed naturally since many weeks. The astrologer bent nearer to her
when she was silent again, and spoke aloud, pointing to his figure.
'Venus is in the Seventh House in benign aspect to the Moon,' he said
aloud. 'You will be fortunate in love.' Then he whispered again, 'I
will give you a philtre that has never failed. The next time he
comes----'
Zoë shook her head decidedly, with something that looked like
indignation.
'It is for a good matter, Kokóna,' Gorlias answered. 'If you will
help us, you shall have pearls and diamonds, and gold and liberty.'
'Liberty? How?'
Gorlias thought that he had tempted her with that, at least.
'If you will promise your help with Messer Carlo, I will tell you.'
'How can I promise what is not mine to
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