Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  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!’ Z
oë 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?’

  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.