The stones were mouldy, the pa.s.sage dark, the progress slow. He had literally to feel every inch in front of him, using his hands as a caterpillar uses its antennae; but he did not complain--the difficulties were the inducements which led him to choose the hiding-place in the first instance. At length he went down a broken step, and, rising to his knees, slipped his left hand along the face of the wall until his fingers dropped into a crack between rocks. It was the spot he sought; he knew it, and breathed easily. In murky lamplight, with mallet and chisel--ah, how long ago!--he had worked a shelf there, finishing it with an oblong pocket in the bottom. To mask the hole was simple. Three or four easy-fitting blocks were removed, and thrusting a hand in, he drew forth the sheepskin mantle of the elder Nilo.
In spite of the darkness, he could not refrain from unrolling the mildewed cover. The sword was safe! He drew the blade and shot it sharply back into the scabbard, then kissed the ruby handle, thinking again of the purchasing power there was in the relic which was yet more than a relic. The leather of the water-gurglet, stiff as wood, responded to a touch. The jewels were also safe, the great emerald with the rest.
He touched the bags, counting from one to nine inclusively. Then remembering the ten times he had crawled into the pa.s.sage to put the treasures away, he began their removal, and kept at it until every article was safely deposited in the boat.
On the way back to the galley he made new packages, using his mantle as a wrap for the sword, and the new gurglet for the bags of jewels.
"I have had enough," he exclaimed to the captain, dropping wearily on the deck about noon. "Take me to the city." After a moment of reflection, he added: "Land me after nightfall."
"We will reach the harbor before sundown."
"Oh, well! There is the Bosphorus--go to Buyukdere, and come back."
"But, my Lord, the captain of the gate may decline to allow you to pa.s.s."
The Prince smiled, and rejoined, with a thought of the bags in the gurglet thrown carelessly down by him: "Up with the anchor."
The sailor"s surmise was groundless. Disembarking about midnight, he whispered his name to the captain at the gate of Blacherne, and, leaving a soldan in the official palm, was admitted without examination. On the street there was nothing curious in an old man carrying a mantle under his arm, followed by a porter with a half-filled gurglet on his shoulder. Finally, the adventure safely accomplished, the Prince of India was home again, and in excellent humor.
One doubt a.s.sailed him--one only. He had just seen the height of Candilli, an aerial wonder in a burst of moonlight, and straightway his fancy had crowned it with a structure Indian in style, and of material to shine afar delicate as snow against the black bosomed mountain behind it. He was not a Greek to fear the Turks. Nay, in Turkish protection there was for him a guaranty of peaceable ownership which he could not see under Constantine. And as he was bringing now the wherewith to realize his latest dream, he gave his imagination a loosened rein.
He built the house; he heard the tinkling of fountains in its courts, and the echoes in the pillared recession of its halls; free of care, happy once more, with Lael he walked in gardens where roses of Persia exchanged perfumes with roses of Araby, and the daylong singing of birds extended into noon of night; yet, after all, to the worn, weary, droughted heart nothing was so soothing as the fancy which had been his chief attendant from the gate of Blacherne--that he heard strangers speaking to each other: "Have you seen the Palace of Lael?" "No, where is it?" "On the crest of Candilli." The Palace of Lael! The name confirmed itself sweeter and sweeter by repet.i.tion. And the doubt grew.
Should he build in the city or amidst the grove of Judas trees on the crest of Candilli?
Just as he arrived before his door, he glanced casually across the street, and was surprised by observing light in Uel"s house. It was very unusual. He would put the treasure away, and go over and inquire into the matter. Hardly was he past his own lintel when Syama met him. The face of the faithful servant showed unwonted excitement, and, casting himself at his master"s feet, he embraced his knees, uttering the hoa.r.s.e unintelligible cries with which the dumb are wont to make their suffering known. The Master felt a chill of fear--something had happened--something terrible--but to whom? He pushed the poor man"s head back until he caught the eyes.
"What is it?" he asked.
Syama arose, took the Prince"s hand, and led him out of the door, across the street, and into Uel"s house. The merchant, at sight of them, rushed forward and hid his face in the master"s breast, crying:
"She is gone--lost!--The G.o.d of our fathers be with her!"
"Who is gone? Who lost?"
"Lael, Lael--our child--our Gul Bahar."
The blood of the elder Jew flew to his heart, leaving him pale as a dead man; yet such was his acquired control of himself, he asked steadily: "Gone!--Where?"
"We do not know. She has been s.n.a.t.c.hed from us--that is all we know."
"Tell me of it--and quickly."
The tone was imperious, and he pushed Uel from him.
"Oh! my friend--and my father"s friend--I will tell you all. You are powerful, and love her, and may help where I am helpless." Then by piecemeal he dealt out the explanation. "This afternoon she took her chair and went to the wall in front of the Bucoleon--sunset, and she was not back. I saw Syama--she was not in your house. He and I set out in search of her. She was seen on the wall--later she was seen to descend the steps as if starting home--she was seen in the garden going about on the terrace--she was seen coming out of the front gate of the old palace. We traced her down the street--then she returned to the garden, through the Hippodrome, and there she was last seen. I called my friends in the market to my aid--hundreds are now looking for her."
"She went out in her chair, did you say?"
The steady voice of the Prince was in singular contrast with his bloodless face.
"Yes."
"Who carried it?"
"The men we have long had."
"Where are they?"
"We sought for them--they cannot be found."
The Prince kept his eyes on Uel"s face. They were intensely, fiercely bright. He was not in a rage, but thinking, if a man can be said to think when his mind projects itself in a shower. Lael"s disappearance was not voluntary; she was in detention somewhere in the city. If the purpose of the abduction were money, she would be held in scrupulous safety, and a day or two would bring the demand; but if--he did not finish the idea--it overpowered him. Pure steel in utmost flexion breaks into pieces without warning; so with this man now. He threw both hands up, and cried hoa.r.s.ely: "Lend me, O G.o.d, of thy vengeance!" and staggering blindly, he would have fallen but for Syama.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FESTIVAL OF FLOWERS
The Academy of Epicurus was by no means a trifle spun for vainglory in the fertile fancy of Demedes; but a fact just as the Brotherhoods of the City were facts, and much more notorious than many of them.
Wiseacres are generally pessimistic. Academy of Epicurus indeed! For once there was a great deal in a name. The cla.s.s mentioned repeated it sneeringly; it spoke to them, and loudly, of some philosophical wickedness.
Stories of the miraculous growth of the society were at first amusing; then the announcement of its housing excited loud laughter; but when its votaries attached the high sounding term _Temple_ to their place of meeting, the clergy and all the devoutly inclined looked sober. In their view the word savored of outright paganism. Temple of the Academy of Epicurus! Church had been better--Church was at least Christian.
At length, in ease of the increasing interest, notice was authoritatively issued of a Festival of Flowers by the Academicians, their first public appearance, and great were the antic.i.p.ations aroused by the further advertis.e.m.e.nt that they would march from their Temple to the Hippodrome.
The festival took place the afternoon of the third day of the Prince of India"s voyage to Plati. More particularly, while that distinguished foreigner on the deck of the galley was quietly sleeping off the fatigue and wear of body and spirit consequent on the visit to the desolate island, the philosophers were on parade with an immense quota of Byzantines of both s.e.xes in observation. About three thousand were in the procession, and from head to foot it was a ma.s.s of flowers.
The extravaganza deserved the applause it drew. Some of its features nevertheless were doubtfully regarded. Between the sections into which the column was divided there marched small groups, apparently officers, clad in gowns and vestments, carrying insignia and smoking tripods well known to have belonged to various priesthoods of mythologic fame. When the cortege reached the Hippodrome every one in the galleries was reminded of the glory the first Constantine gained from his merciless forays upon those identical properties.
In the next place, the motto of the society--Patience, Courage, Judgment --was too frequently and ostentatiously exhibited not to attract attention. The words, it was observed, were not merely on banners lettered in gold, but ill.u.s.trated by portable tableaux of exquisite appositeness and beauty. They troubled the wiseacres; for while they might mean a world of good, they might also stand for several worlds of bad. Withal, however, the youthfulness of the Academicians wrought the profoundest sensation upon the mult.i.tude of spectators. The march was three times round the interior, affording excellent opportunity to study the appearances; and the sober thinking, whom the rarity and tastefulness of the display did not hoodwink, when they discovered that much the greater number partic.i.p.ating were beardless lads, shook their heads while saying to each other, At the rate these are going what is to become of the Empire? As if the decadence were not already in progress, and they, the croakers, responsible for it!
At the end of the first round, upon the arrival of the sections in front of the triple-headed bronze serpent, one of the wonders of the Hippodrome then as now, the bearers of the tripods turned out, and set them down, until at length the impious relic was partially veiled in perfumed smoke, as was the wont in its better Delphian days.
Nothing more shocking to the religionists could have been invented; they united in denouncing the defiant indecency. Hundreds of persons, not all of them venerable and frocked, were seen to rise and depart, shaking the dust from their feet. In course of tile third circuit, the tripods were coolly picked up and returned to their several places in the procession.
From a seat directly over the course, Sergius beheld the gay spectacle from its earliest appearance through the portal of the Blues to its exit by the portal of the Greens. [Footnote: The Blues and the Greens--two celebrated factions of Constantinople. See Gibbon, vii. pp. 79-89. Four gates, each flanked with towers, gave entrance to the Hippodrome from the city. The northwestern was called the gate of the Blues; the northeastern of the Greens; the southeastern gate bore the sullen t.i.tle, "Gate of the Dead."--Prof. Edwin A. Grosvenor.] His interest, the reader will bear reminding, was peculiar. He had been honored by a special invitation to become a member of the Academy--in fact, there was a seat in the Temple at the moment reserved for him. He had the great advantage, moreover, of exact knowledge of the objects of the order. G.o.dless itself, it had been organized to promote G.o.dlessness. He had given much thought to it since Demedes unfolded the scheme to him, and found it impossible to believe persons of sound sense could undertake a sin so elaborate. If for any reason the State and Church were unmindful of it, Heaven certainly could not be.
Aside from the desire to satisfy himself of the strength of the Academy, Sergius was drawn to the Hippodrome to learn, if possible, the position Demedes held in it. His sympathy with the venerable Hegumen, with whom mourning for the boy astray was incessant, and sometimes pathetic as the Jewish king"s, gradually became a grief for the prodigal himself, and he revolved plans for his reformation. What happiness could he one day lead the son to the father, and say: "Your prayers and lamentations have been heard; see--G.o.d"s kiss of peace on his forehead!"
And then in what he had seen of Demedes--what courage, dash, and audacity--what efficiency--what store of resources! The last play of his--attending the fete of the Princess Irene as a bear tender--who but Demedes would have thought of such a role? Who else could have made himself the hero of the occasion, with none to divide honors with him except Joqard? And what a bold ready transition from bear tender to captain in the boat race! Demedes writhing in the grip of Nilo over the edge of the wall, death in the swish of waves beneath, had been an object of pity tinged with contempt--Demedes winner of the prize at Therapia was a very different person.
This feeling for the Greek, it is to be said next, was dashed with a lurking dread of him. If he had a design against Lael, what was there to prevent him from attempting it? That he had such a design, Sergius could not deny. How often he repeated the close of the note left on the stool after the Fisherman"s fete. "Thou mayst find the fan of the Princess of India useful; with me it is embalmed in sentiment." He shall write with a pen wondrous fine who makes the difference between love and sentiment clear. Behind the fete, moreover, there was the confession heard on the wall, ill.u.s.trated by the story of the plague of crime. Instead of fading out in the Russian"s mind it had become better understood--a consequence of the brightening process of residence in the city.
Twice the procession rounded the great curriculum. Twice Sergius had opportunity to look for the Greek, but without avail. So were the celebrants literally clothed in flowers that recognition of individuals was almost impossible. The first time, he sought him in the body of each pa.s.sing section; the second time, he scanned the bearers of the standards and symbols; the third time, he was successful.
At the head of the parade, six or eight persons were moving on horseback.
It was singular Sergius had not looked for Demedes amongst them, since the idea of him would have ent.i.tled the Greek to a chief seat in the Temple and a leading place when in the eye of the public. As it was, he could not repress an exclamation on making the discovery.