Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Tocktamish felt that the havoc round him must be explained.

  ‘I have been killing the rats,’ he said. ‘It is extraordinary how many rats and mice get into counting-houses!’

  ‘Where is Messer Carlo?’ Zoë asked a third time.

  ‘Sweet woolly ewe-lamb of heaven,’ said Tocktamish, leaning on the window-sill and bringing his face close to the bars, ‘if you will only give me one little kiss, I will tell you where Carlo is!’

  Zoë stepped to one side along the stone seat on which she stood, for she saw that he was going to slip one of his hands through the grating to catch her; and even with the bars between them he looked as if he could twist one of her arms off if she resisted him. Indeed, she was hardly out of his reach in time. He laughed rather vacantly as he grasped the air. The grating projected several inches beyond the window, like the end of a cage, as the gratings generally do in old Italian houses; and though Zoë was on one side, Tocktamish could still look at her.

  ‘If you will come inside, I will tell you what you wish to know, my little dove,’ he said with an engaging leer, for he did not really believe that any woman could resist him.

  ‘Thank you,’ Zoë answered. ‘I will not come in, but I will warn you. If you will not tell me where Messer Carlo is, I shall have you shot with the master’s crossbow, like a mad dog.’

  ‘Shall I get the bow?’ asked the voice of Carlo’s man, the Venetian gondolier, who was an excellent shot, and had won a prize at the Lido.

  But Tocktamish laughed scornfully.

  ‘Your crossbow cannot shoot through the shutters,’ he said, for they were very heavy ones, at least three inches thick. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘I can sit on the floor under the window, and you will not even see me.’

  ‘If we cannot shoot you, we can starve you,’ retorted Zoë.

  ‘Little ewe-lamb,’ said the Tartar, ‘the heart of Tocktamish is fluttering for you like a moth in a lamp. For one kiss you shall have anything you ask!’

  ‘Do you understand that I mean to starve you?’ Zoë asked sternly.

  ‘Oh no, my beautiful pink-and-white rabbit! You will not be so hard-hearted! And besides, if you will not let me out and give me a kiss, my men will come presently and burn Carlo’s house down, and I shall carry you away! Ha ha! You had not thought of it! But Tocktamish is not caught in the trap like a cub. He is an old wolf, and knows the forest. My men know I am here, and if I do not go back to them within this hour they will come to get me. That was agreed, and I can wait as long as that. Then sixty of them will come, and before night we shall take Carlo to the Emperor and give him up, and tell all we know; and to-morrow morning he will be on a stake in the middle of the Hippodrome, and it will be the third day before he is quite dead! Ha ha! I remember how we watched that old scoundrel Michael Rhangabé! I and my men were on duty at that execution!’

  Zoë’s cheeks turned ghastly white, and her eyes gleamed dangerously. If there had been a weapon in her hand at that moment she could have aimed well through the grating, and Tocktamish’s days would have ended abruptly. But on the other side of the bars the drunken Tartar was laughing at his own skill in frightening her, for he thought she turned pale from fear.

  ‘Can no one silence this brute?’ she cried in a tone that trembled with anger.

  ‘It is easily done,’ said a voice she knew.

  She turned and looked down from the little elevation of the stone seat, and she saw the impassive face of Gorlias Pietrogliant looking up to her.

  ‘Come into the house, Kokóna,’ he said, holding up a hand to help her down. ‘We will send him a pitcher of Messer Carlo’s oldest wine to help him pass an hour before his men come to burn the house down!’

  Zoë understood the wisdom of the advice; Tocktamish would drink himself into a stupor in a short time.

  ‘The astrologer is right,’ she said to the servants. ‘Come in with me, all of you.’ She led the way, but Gorlias lingered a moment, stepped upon the stone seat, and spoke to the prisoner in a low voice.

  ‘They will be here in half an hour,’ he said. ‘Meanwhile I will send you wine to drink. Are you hungry?’

  ‘Hungry?’ Tocktamish laughed at the recollection of the peacock. ‘I never dined better! But send me some wine, and when we divide, I will have that white-faced girl for my share. The men may have the money here. Tell them so.’

  He slapped the well-filled leathern sack at his girdle as he spoke.

  ‘As you please,’ Gorlias answered indifferently.

  He stepped to the ground again and reached the door in time to enter with the last of the train that followed Zoë. In the dining-hall things had been left as they were when Tocktamish and Omobono went out. The table was in confusion, and flooded with wine that had run down to the floor, and two or three chairs were upset. Gorlias filled a silver pitcher with Chian; but when he turned towards the window Zoë was the only one who saw him empty into the wine the contents of a small vial which he seemed to have had ready in the palm of his hand. He called Carlo’s man.

  ‘Take it to him,’ he said. ‘You can easily pass it through the bars.’

  ‘It is not much wine,’ observed the man doubtfully. ‘He will drink that at a draught.’

  ‘If he asks for more, fill the pitcher again,’ answered Gorlias. ‘If he falls asleep, let me know.’

  The man went off.

  ‘Clear away all that,’ said Zoë to the men-servants who stood looking on. ‘The master must not find this confusion when he comes home.’

  Her tone and her manner imposed obedience, and besides, they knew that Tocktamish was safe for a while. They began to clear the table at once, and Zoë left the room followed by Gorlias and her two maids, who had been silent witnesses of what had passed.

  Upstairs, they left her alone with the astrologer, and disappeared to discuss in whispers the wonderful things that were happening in the house.

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Zoë, as soon as the maids were gone.

  ‘He is in a dry cistern near the north wall of the city.’

  ‘Hiding?’

  ‘No — a prisoner. In escaping last night he ran among the soldiers who were to have helped us, and they held him for a ransom. The Tartar came to extort the money. You know all.’

  ‘At least, he is safe for the present,’ Zoë said, but very doubtfully, for she did not half believe what she said.

  ‘No,’ Gorlias answered; ‘he is not safe for long, and we must get him out. They demand a ransom, but they know well enough that even if they get it they will not dare to let him go free, since he could hang them all by a word.’

  ‘What will they do?’

  ‘If they can get the money they will let him starve to death in the cistern. If they do not, they will give him up to Andronicus for the reward. The Emperor has proclaimed that he will give ten pounds of gold to any one who will bring him Carlo Zeno, dead or alive. That is not enough.’

  ‘The Emperor knows it was he?’ asked Zoë with increasing anxiety.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I do not know. Some one has betrayed us.’

  ‘Us all?’

  ‘I fear so.’

  ‘But you yourself? Do you dare go about?’

  ‘I have many disguises, and they who know the fisherman do not know the astrologer.’

  ‘But if you should be taken?’

  ‘A man cannot change his destiny. But look here. I have something from Johannes already. He has changed his mind; he regrets not having let us take him out last night, and he sends me this by the captain’s wife.’

  Gorlias produced a parchment document.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The gift of Tenedos to Venice.’

  ‘Ah! If Messer Carlo were only free!’

  ‘Yes — if!’ Gorlias shook his head thoughtfully. ‘It will not be easy to send an answer to this,’ he went on. ‘The woman brought it to me at the risk of her life, and said it would be impossible for her to come again. The
guard is doubled, and a very different watch will be kept in future. I do not believe that we can bring Johannes out, as we might have done in spite of those fellows last night. Yet I am sure that if Messer Carlo were at liberty he would try. He would at least send word, in answer to this. But the days are over when we used to send letters up and down by a thread — the tower is watched from the river now.’

  ‘Can you not get in by a disguise?’

  ‘No. There is not the least chance of gaining admittance at present.’

  ‘I could,’ said Zoë confidently. ‘I am sure I could! If I went in carrying a basket of linen on my head and dressed like a slave-girl in blue cotton with yellow leathern shoes, I am sure they would let me go to the captain’s wife.’

  ‘What if your basket were searched and the letter found?’

  ‘I would put it into my shoe. They would not look for it there.’

  ‘You would run a fearful risk.’

  ‘For him, if it were of any use,’ Zoë answered. ‘But it will not help him at all, and if anything happened to me he would be sorry. Besides, why should we send a message that pretends to come from Messer Carlo when he himself is a prisoner?’

  ‘This is the case,’ Gorlias answered. ‘The soldiers will never let him out till they feel safe themselves; and the only way to make them sure that there is no danger is really and truly to bring Johannes out and set him on the throne again. So long as Andronicus reigns and may take vengeance on them, they will keep Messer Carlo a prisoner to give up at any moment, or to starve him to death for their own safety — unless they murder him outright. But I do not believe that any ten of them would dare to set upon him, for they know him well.’

  Zoë smiled, for she was proud to love a man whom ten men would not dare to kill.

  ‘Then the only way to save him is to free Johannes?’ she said. ‘Yes,’ she went on, not waiting for an answer, ‘I think you are right. Even if we got them their ten thousand ducats they would not let him out as long as Andronicus is at Blachernæ.’

  ‘That is the truth of it,’ Gorlias answered. ‘Neither more nor less. Messer Carlo’s life depends upon it.’

  ‘Then it must be done, come what may. Thank God, 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?’ Zoë asked. ‘You owe him some great debt of gratitude?’

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

  Some one knocked at the outer door; Zoë 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.’

  Zoë 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.’

  Zoë 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 Zoë 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 Zoë 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.

  Zoë 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 Zoë 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. Zoë 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 quantity of strong wine he must have absorbed during an absence which had only lasted two hours. What he had told Zoë 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 passed 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.