Arethusa

"Then it must be done, come what may. Thank G.o.d, I have a life to risk for him!"

"You have two," said Gorlias quietly. "You have mine also."

"You are very loyal to Johannes, even to risking death. Is that what you mean?"

"More than that."

"For Messer Carlo, then?" Zoe asked. "You owe him some great debt of grat.i.tude?"

"I never saw him until quite lately," Gorlias answered. "You need not know why I am ready to die in this attempt, Kokona Arethusa."

Some one knocked at the outer door; Zoe clapped her hands for her maids, and one of them went to the entrance. The voice of Zeno"s man spoke from outside.

"The Tartar is fast asleep already," he said, "and I can hear the secretary moaning as if he were in great pain; but I cannot see him through the window. He must be somewhere in the room, for it is his voice."

Zoe made a movement to go towards the door, but Gorlias raised his hand.

"I will see to it," he said, "I will have the fellow taken back to his quarters."

Zoe bit her lip for she knew that it would be cruel and cowardly to hurt even such a ruffian as Tocktamish, while he was helpless under the drug Gorlias had given him. But the words he had spoken rankled deep, and it was not likely that she should forget them.

"Do as you will," she said.

Half an hour later poor little Omobono was in his bed, and Zeno"s man was giving him a warm infusion of marsh-mallows and camomile for his shaken nerves. The money-bags and the papers had been restored to the strong box in the counting-house, and Tocktamish the Tartar, sunk in a beatific slumber, was being carried to his quarters in a hired palanquin by four stalwart bearers.

That was the end of the memorable feast in Carlo Zeno"s house.

But Zoe sat by the open window, and her heart beat sometimes very fast and sometimes very slow; for she understood that the plight of the man she loved was desperate indeed.

CHAPTER XVII

The position of Zeno was quite clear to Zoe now, and a great wave of happiness lifted her and bore her on with it as she realised that she might save his life just when his chances looked most hopeless, and that whether she succeeded or failed her own must certainly be staked for his. Heroism is nearer the surface in women than in most men, and often goes quite as deep.

Zoe had understood very suddenly how matters stood, and that Tocktamish and his men meant to let Zeno perish, simply because he might ruin them all if he regained his liberty; or, if it were found out that he was taken, they intended to hand him over to Andronicus.

It was not at all likely that they would set him free even if they got the great ransom they demanded.

But if by any means Johannes could be brought suddenly from his prison, all Constantinople would rise in revolution to set him on the throne, and it would be as dangerous to keep his friend Zeno in confinement as it now seemed rash to his captors to let him out. The first thing to be done was to reach Johannes himself and warn him, and this could only be accomplished by a woman. Gorlias knew the soldiers, and had as much influence with them as any one, perhaps, and whatever could be done from without he would do; yet it was quite certain that the men could not be got together again unless Johannes were actually free.

The difficulty lay there. To reach him was one thing, and was within the bounds of possibility; to bring him out would be quite another.

But Zoe had confidence in the devotion of the captain"s wife, of whom Gorlias had told her, and believed that in such a case two women could do more than ten men.

Yet she saw that it might be fatal to let the imprisoned Emperor know that Zeno was himself a prisoner. To prevent this she conceived the plan of writing a letter in the Venetian"s name, accepting on behalf of the Republic the gift of Tenedos, and promising instant help and liberty. Zeno had given his word that he would renew the attempt for the sake of Tenedos, though for nothing else; this condition being accepted, she knew that nothing could hinder him from keeping his word if he were free. She would therefore only be writing for him what he himself would write if he could; and besides, if she needed a more valid excuse, it would be done to save his life.

Her learning stood her in good stead now as she carefully penned the answer on stout Paduan paper. She made Zeno thank the Emperor on behalf of the Serene Republic for his generous gift, and say that he was ready, that not a moment should be lost, and that in an hour the sovereign should be restored to his people, or Carlo Zeno would die in the attempt.

This last phrase, as it ran from her pen, seemed to her a little too theatrical to be Zeno"s own, but she determined to let it stand for the sake of the impression it should make on Johannes. Zeno would no more have mentioned such a trifle as the risk of life and limb in anything he meant to do than seamen would stop to talk of danger when ordered to shorten sail in a dangerous gale. Such things are a part of the game. No sailor will spin a yarn about a storm unless he has seen the Flying Dutchman or the Sea Serpent or the Man in the Top; he is in danger half his life. But the average modern soldier, who may be under fire three or four times in his career, repeats the story of his battles to any one who will listen. Zoe did not know whether Johannes had ever seen Zeno"s handwriting or not, but that mattered little in those days, when many fine gentlemen could not write their own letters. She folded the sheet neatly in a small square, and placed it in her shoe by way of experiment, to see whether it would stay there while she walked.

She did all this while Gorlias was gone, and before he came back the afternoon was half over, though the spring days were growing long. He told her that the Tartar was safe in his quarters, where he would probably sleep till midnight at the very least, to the infinite rage and disgust of his men. They had expected him to return laden with gold or with the secure promise of it, and he had come back not only empty-handed, but hopelessly drunk; and as they knew him well, but did not know that he had swallowed a dose of opium that would have sent a tiger to sleep, they meditated in gloomy thirst on the quant.i.ty of strong wine he must have absorbed during an absence which had only lasted two hours. What he had told Zoe of their coming to fetch him if he stayed too long had been a pure invention to frighten her; they did not even know where he had been, for he had merely announced his intention of going out to collect Zeno"s ransom from the Venetian merchants, and his reputation for strength and ferocity was such that they had not dreamed of his needing help.

Thus much Gorlias had found out, and he had also ascertained that the men were in a thoroughly bad temper in consequence of the turn affairs had taken, and much more inclined to murder Zeno than to let him out.

As for his whereabouts, Gorlias only knew that he was in one of the many dry cisterns, which existed under old Constantinople, and which had never been in use since the crusaders had cut the aqueducts and sacked the city more than a hundred and seventy years earlier. The men who had shut up Zeno knew where he was, but it was very likely that they had not told their comrades. In those last days of the Empire the foreign mercenaries were little better than bands of robbers, half-trained at that, who preyed on the peasant part of the population, obeying their officers only when it was worth the trouble, and not even practising thieves" honour in the division of plunder.

Not a day pa.s.sed then without brawl and bloodshed amongst the soldiery; hardly a night went by without some act of violence and depredation for which they were responsible. They had stolen under Johannes, they robbed under Andronicus; under Johannes restored, they would steal again. And they drank perpetually. If Sultan Amurad had been the man that Mohammed the Conqueror turned out to be, the Turks would have been in possession of Constantinople fully eighty years before they actually stormed it, and with a tenth of the loss.

If Zeno had relied on the eight hundred soldiers who had agreed to make a revolution for Johannes, he had done so because he knew they could be trusted to rise if there was a chance of plundering the palace and of cutting the throats of a few hundred of their divers countrymen who had been preferred before them as a body-guard, and were therefore their sworn enemies. But the instant those delightful prospects disappeared they cared no more who was Emperor than a cur cares who throws him a bone; the existing condition of things was good enough for them, and they would risk nothing to change it, unless change meant wine, women, and loot. Many of them were in reality Mohammedans like Tocktamish, and looked upon all Christians, including their employers, as their lawful prey--as dogs, moreover, and no great fighters at that, but mostly cowardly curs. It was agreeable to live amongst them because one could beat them and drink wine without the disapproval of the greybeards; but as for respecting them, a Tartar like Tocktamish would as soon have thought of fearing them.

Zoe knew all this, and so did Gorlias, and they agreed that unless Johannes could be brought visibly before the soldiers there was little chance of success, and none of saving Zeno. The difficulty lay in the fact that Johannes was kept in a place even more inaccessible than Zeno"s cistern. The whole matter was a vicious circle. He could not be set free unless the troops rose for him; but the troops would not rise unless they saw him in their midst; and if there were no rising Zeno would be starved to death in the well. Gorlias Pietrogliant was a man of resources, but the problem completely baffled him.

He stood silent and in thought at Zoe"s window; she sat quite motionless on the great divan, watching him and thinking too. Her knees were drawn up almost to her chin, and her folded hands clasped them while she looked straight at the astrologer"s back with unwinking eyes. Neither he nor she knew how long they kept silence; it might have been five minutes, or it might have been half an hour. Time plays queer tricks when people are in great danger or in great distress.

Then Zoe"s expression began to change very slowly, as an idea dawned upon her. It was as if she saw something between her and Gorlias, something that took shape by degrees, something new and unexpected that presently grew to be a whole picture, and from a picture became a real scene, full of living people, moving and talking; the tender mouth opened a little as if she were going to speak, and the delicate nostril quivered, the colour spread like dawn in her pale cheeks, and a deep warm light came into her eyes.

When the scene was over and the vision disappeared, she nodded slowly, as if satisfied that in her waking dream she had dreamed true.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.]

"I have thought of a way," she said at last.

Gorlias turned, crossed the room, and stood beside her to listen; but he did not think she had any practicable scheme to propose, and at first, while she was speaking, he was much more inclined to follow his own line of thought than hers. 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, and which have been the wonder of men since Jacob"s mother showed him how to steal his father"s blessing. It is quite certain that it was a woman who showed Columbus the trick with the egg, when he himself was trying to balance one on its point. Only a woman could have thought of anything so simple.

And now, after Gorlias had vainly racked his ingenious brain for an idea, it was the girl that suggested the only possible one. He grasped it easily.

"It is a daring plan, and it could not succeed in broad daylight," he said, when she had finished, "but it may at dusk."

"It must," Zoe said emphatically. "If it fails, we shall not see each other again."

"Not unless it occurs to Andronicus to crucify us together," Gorlias answered, rather gravely. "Very much depends on our timing ourselves as exactly as possible."

"Yes. Let it be a little more than half an hour after sunset, just when the dusk is closing in. Have you everything you need?"

"I can get what is lacking. We have three good hours still before us."

"Go, then, and do not be late. You know what will happen to me if you do not come just at the right time."

"You are risking more than I," Gorlias said.

"I have more to lose, and more to win," Zoe answered.

She was thinking of Zeno,--of life with him, of life without him, and of the life she would give for his. But Gorlias wondered at her courage, for it was held nothing in those days to tear a living man or woman to shreds, piecemeal, on the mere suspicion of treason, and that would surely be her fate if he could not carry out precisely and successfully the plan she had thought of. A delay of half an hour might mean death to her, though it would not of necessity affect the result so far as Johannes and Zeno were concerned.

Gorlias left her to make his own preparations. When he was gone Zoe sent Yulia for Zeno"s own man, Vito, the Venetian boatman. He came and stood on the threshold while she spoke to him, out of the maids"

hearing, and in Italian, lest they should creep near and listen.

"Vito," said Zoe, "how is the secretary?"

"Excellency," the Venetian answered, "fear is an ugly sickness, which makes healthy men tremble worse than the fever does."