by Howard Pyle
“HE LAY AWHILE CONSCIOUS OF GREAT COMFORT”
His mind raced swiftly back to the preceding evening — to the scene in the fisherman’s hut, to his dash through the window in an attempt to join his fighting-men, and — there he stopped. He had a confused recollection of falling in the dark, falling a long way, but he was not fully awake yet, and the effort to remember tired him. He turned upon his side — he had been lying on his back, with his head pillowed upon something soft and comfortable — and, childlike, put up an open hand under his cheek. But when his hand touched that upon which his head had been resting he cried out suddenly and struggled forthright to his feet.
The woman who had saved his life half knelt, half sat behind him, and upon her knees his head had lain. At this moment she was leaning back a little, with her head and shoulders against a small tree which stood there, and her eyes were closed as if she were asleep.
Young Zuan saw that she was very white, and that her closed eyelids were blue and had blue circles under them. The lids stirred after a moment and she opened her eyes — blank and wondering at first, a child’s eyes, then swiftly intelligent.
“Lord!” she said, in a whisper, looking up to him— “lord, I must have — slept! I did not know. I am sorry — lord.” She sat forward again and made as though she would rise to her feet, but with the first effort a spasm of agony went over her white face, and she gave a little scream and fell forward, prone, and so fainted quite away.
For a moment young Zuan did not understand. Then, as comprehension came to him, he dropped upon his knees beside the woman with an exclamation of pity.
“The child has come near to killing herself that I might sleep!” he cried. Then, before she should wake to further pain, he set skilfully to work. He straightened the bent and cramped knees and, with his strong hands, rubbed and chafed the stiffened muscles. They were cold as stone, he found, save where his head had lain; all feeling must long since have gone out of them. Then at last, just as he had the blood once more flowing redly under the skin, the woman stirred, moving her hands on the turf beside her, and presently came to her senses.
Her eyes opened — they were not black, as he had thought the night before, but curiously dark blue, almost purple — and she looked up into young Zuan’s face as he knelt above her.
“I would not — have you think me, lord — a weakling,” she said, whispering. “It was a — moment’s pain. My knees were a little cramped. Will you forgive me, lord?”
“Forgive you?” said he. “You have saved my life. Whether that was worth the saving or not I do not know, but you have saved it, and you have borne great suffering that I might sleep in comfort. Forgive you?”
She lay quite still on the turf, looking up at him, and the old, paralyzing weakness began to creep upon Zuan’s limbs, the old, strange shaking came to his heart.
“I would do it, lord,” said she, “many, many times over for your sake.” A warm flush spread up into her throat and over her cheeks.
“I do not understand,” said Zuan, stammering, and dully he thought how beautiful she was, lying there still before him, how young and slender and exquisite, this woman of abomination. “We are enemies,” said he, “the bitterest of enemies. I came here to cleanse Arbe of you, to set your head on a spear before the count’s castle for men to revile and spit upon.”
“Yes, lord,” said the woman of abomination, whispering, and that rosy flush died away from cheeks and neck, leaving her pale again.
“Last night,” said he, “you had me in your power. Your men could have taken me alive or slain me very easily. Yet you would not let me face them. Even when I threatened to kill you you would not stand out of my way.”
“You had had me in your power first, lord,” said she. “But you were kind to me. You saved me from great shame, and covered me with your cloak.”
“That was nothing,” said young Zuan. “I did not know that you were the princess Yaga. But you knew that I was leader of the force which had come to recover Arbe from you. Why did you save me, princess? Why are you here with me now in hiding? Why are you not in the castle where you should be?”
The flush came again, and for the first time her eyes fell away from his with a sort of timidity.
“I could not — leave you, lord,” she said, whispering again. “I could not see you hurt or slain or a prisoner. And then when, through accident, you lay hurt, after all, I could not leave you so.”
“But why? Why?” he persisted, staring down upon her with troubled eyes. “Arbe was in the hollow of your hand! You are the head of those barbarians who hold the city. Yet you desert them to succor me. Why?”
“If you cannot see, lord,” she said, hiding her face with her hands, “then I cannot tell you.”
Young Zuan gave a sudden cry.
“O God of Miracles!” said he, under his breath. His heart was racing very madly and the veins at his temples throbbed until he thought that they must burst.
He put out faltering hands and took the woman’s hands from her face.
“What is it,” he said, “that — has come to me to rob me of strength and thought when I am near you? What is it that came to me last night when you first crept into the fisherman’s hut and I saw your eyes?”
“Lord,” she said, very low, “I think it is love.”
Her hands slipped from between his lax palms, and young Zuan got to his feet blindly and moved a few paces away. He put his arms up against the trunk of a tree and laid his face upon them. Through the whirl of things which beset him he had a dull consciousness that his cherished world — all his sane, ordered life, his duty, his ambitions, his pride of race — was slipping from him, receding into a misty background, leaving him face to face with something that was immeasurably, unthinkably great — something for which he had been begotten and born — something which drew him towards itself with a might that no puny strength of his could combat.
He turned, still blindly, and the woman of abomination, slim, girlish, virginal, with burning eyes, stood before him, her hands at her breast.
“Lord, I think it is — love,” she said again.
“And you,” said Zuan— “you what — you are!” But it was not really he who said that. It was a last faint protest from the man he once had been.
“Does that matter?” she pleaded, in an agony, her hands going out to him.
Young Zuan took a great breath. “God knows it should matter!” he groaned, “but I cannot make it weigh with me. Your spell is over my heart and soul, and I am sick for helpless love of you. When you touch me I tremble. When I see your eyes the world drops from me and I ride upon the stars breathless in some strange ecstasy. I have drunk madness before you and I am mad. No! It does not matter to me that you are what you are — the woman of abomination. I love you. You and I are bound together with chains. We cannot live apart.”
Then for a time an odd little awkward silence fell upon them. Once Zuan put out his arms towards the woman as if he would take her into them, but as if moved by a sudden panic at what she had roused she shrank back, crying something under her breath that sounded like, “No, no!” And presently he moved past her a few steps down the slope of turf on which they stood, and straightway found himself at the brink of the westward cliff which rose from the water’s edge. He knew where they were — some three or four miles north of the city and on the opposite side of the narrow island to where the fight of the night before had taken place.
“Will you tell me,” he said at last, turning — it was a certain relief to break the strain they had been under— “will you tell me how we came here? We are a long way from the fisherman’s hut and the cove where my galley lay.”
“A lad helped me with you, lord,” she said— “a vine-grower’s lad whom I befriended two days ago. When you had fallen into the little ravine I found you there at its bottom, and at first I — thought you were dead. You lay so still! Then I felt your heart beat and knew you were only stunned. I tore a strip from my shift and
bound your head with it, for your head was bleeding.” Young Zuan raised a hand and for the first time discovered that a bandage was wrapped about his brows. “Then I waited there with you. I waited for a long time, climbing the bank once or twice to see how the fight above was waging. Not many of your men were killed, I think — ten or twelve perhaps — those who fought as rear-guard while the others were swimming and rowing in skiffs out to the ship—”
“Then they got away?” cried young Zuan, eagerly. “The galley got safe away?”
“Yes, lord,” she said, “the galley sailed away, and after a time the Huns — my Huns — went away too towards the city. When I came out of the ravine at last there was only one man left there — the vine-grower’s lad, who had crept from the wood to see the fighting. I called to him, and between us we raised you and brought you here. You fell asleep without waking from your swoon.”
“They got away!” said young Zuan, staring with wide, bright eyes across the strait to where the Velebic cliffs rose gray and fierce. “They got away! They’ll meet Il Lupo and the other galleys! They—” A little restless movement from the woman made him turn his head quickly, and the light faded from his eyes.
“That — doesn’t matter,” he said, in a different tone. “Nothing matters — now.” He watched her for a long time under his brows, bitterly at first, but she was such as no man could look coldly upon, and she had saved his life and gone from triumph into hiding with him. As he looked at her, Il Lupo and the galleys dimmed from his mind.
“What,” said he at last, very gently, “is to become of you and me?”
“I do not know, lord,” she said. “Oh, lord, a woman, when she loves, does not think of such things or care for them. She does not look ahead. A woman, lord, when she loves, has space in her mind and soul for nothing but love. You — do not know women.”
“No,” said young Zuan, shaking his head, “I do not know them. That is true. They — have never come into my way.”
“I am glad,” she said.
“Princess,” said he, after a little silence, “it is true, what men say of you?”
“Does it matter?” she asked again. “No, lord, it is not true — at least much of it is not. But you have said it did not matter — you have said so!”
He turned his eyes from the pitifulness of her face.
“It matters,” he said, “only in what is to become of us. If it is true, we can never go back to Venice. I must be an outcast from my city and from my people.”
She crept nearer to him, where they sat on the cliff’s edge, nearer, on her knees, looking eagerly into his face.
“And, lord,” she said, watching him, “if it is true — sufficiently true — would you suffer that for my sake? Would you give up all that to go with me?”
“How could I do otherwise?” said young Zuan, simply, and at that the woman broke into a little sobbing laugh of joy and triumph and tenderness.
“Oh, lord!” she cried, “that were love indeed! Oh, lord, I did not know that there were men so faithful and so good.
“And yet,” she said, presently, as if in argument with herself— “yet noble lords of Venice and of Genoa and of Naples and of many Italian cities have married queens and princesses no better than the Princess Yaga.”
“It is not that only,” said young Zuan. “There are many evil women in high places — fawned before, bowed down to — in Italy; but you have done one very terrible and shameful thing, princess, which alone must make you hated in Venice forever, and must make marriage between you and me impossible there.”
“I — do not understand,” she said, wondering.
“You or your brigands,” he said, “carried off from Ragusa Natalia Volutich. I was to have married her.”
The woman screamed, dragging herself backward over the turf away from him.
“You — you,” she cried, in a breathless whisper, her hands at her mouth,— “you are — Zuan — Gradenigo?”
“Why — yes!” said he. “I thought you knew.”
She stumbled to her feet, staring and sobbing.
“Oh, what have I done? What have I done?” she cried, over and over again, and she moved still farther away, staring at him as if he were a ghost risen against her.
“What have I done?” she whispered. Then all at once she began a sobbing, hysterical laugh — a laugh that shook all her slim body, like weeping, and it seemed that she would never have done with it. She covered her face with her hands, leaning against a tree which grew near by, and the fit of endless laughter swept her like a storm. Young Zuan watched her under his brows with a sort of gloomy resentment. Women, he had been told by those of experience, were creatures of strange and incomprehensible moods, ruled, like a horse, by divers vagaries and not at all by reason. This mad fit of hysteria was, he took it, therefore to be endured as patiently as might be, but he had small store of patience.
“Oh, lord,” said the woman, presently, gasping between her fits of laughter, tears in her eyes— “lord, there is a thing which I must tell you — an amazing thing. I do not know whether you will be glad or angry of it. In any case I must tell you at once—”
“Wait!” said Zuan, and held up a hand. “I must know first about this maid, Natalia Volutich, whom you stole away. What have you done with her, princess?” His tone was very grave and stern.
“The maid Natalia,” said she, “has been well treated, lord. She has come to no harm. If this war had not arisen she would have been sent back safely to her father before now.”
“Unharmed?” said Zuan Gradenigo, watching the woman’s eyes.
“Unharmed, lord,” she said. “A maid, as she came. Indeed” — there seemed to be a glimmer of a smile at the woman’s lips— “indeed, I think she has not been unhappy, this Natalia of Ragusa. I think she has learned to feel a certain fondness for her mistress. I think she would serve her in any way she could.” The smile was a wry smile now. “Even so vile a thing as I, lord,” said the woman of abomination, “can be tender and — faithful. Even so vile a thing as I is sometimes loved. An evil woman, Messer Zuan, is not all evil. There is something of good in the very lowest.”
“Princess! Princess!” cried the man.
“And now,” she said, “I must tell you what must be told; but, lord, before I tell it will you say to me once more what you have said — that for my sake, to be with me alone, you stand willing — nay, glad — to give up your city and your rank and your friends? Will you say to me that I, woman of infamy though men call me, am dearer to you than everything else in the world?” She came close to him, putting out her two hands upon his breast, and her great eyes burned up into his, and her face seemed for the instant to sharpen, to pale, and her lips trembled.
“Will you tell me once again?” she said, pleading.
“I could not — live without you — child,” he said, and she cried out with joy at the name. He had called her “child” on the night before when he did not know who she was.
She stood away from him at arm’s-length.
“Now then, at last,” she said, “I will tell you what you must know. Lord, I—” Her voice failed suddenly as if she had been stricken ill, and all the rosy color which had risen to her cheeks began to die slowly away. She seemed to be staring over young Zuan’s shoulder towards the north. She raised her hand a little way, but it dropped again weakly by her side. “The — ships!” she said, in a strained whisper. “The — ships!” Zuan turned to look.
Round a little wooded point of the island, scarcely more than a mile to the north of where they stood, came, before the wind, three great Venetian galleys, looming high and stately in that narrow strait.
Zuan gave a great shout. “My ships!” he cried. “My galleys!” His voice ran up into an odd falsetto note which was almost a scream. “Trapani has found Il Lupo, and they are going to attack the city by sea!” He sprang for his cloak, which lay near, as if he would wave it to attract the attention of those on the galleys, but the woman caught him by the arm
, white-faced and breathless.
“No, no!” she cried, swiftly. “No! You — must not go. They must not attack — now. The city could be taken in an hour. Those men — fools! fools! — of ours have destroyed the — engines of defence. They did not know how to use them. And they have — sunk the ships in the harbor. Lord, you must not let your ships attack. We must not lose the city. Oh, it would be cruel, cruel!” She clung to his arms, sobbing, panic-stricken, stumbling desperately over her words.
“Lord, they must not take Arbe!” she wailed. “All we have done — all I have done — gone for nothing — nothing! It is not to be borne. Stop them, lord! You would not be so cruel as to allow this. You do not know — Oh, stop them! Stop them!” She was quite beside herself with terror, but Zuan put her out away from him at arm’s-length and held her there.
“Listen!” he said, sharply. “Listen to me!”
And her wild incoherence checked itself — dropped into breathless sobbing.
“I cannot stop those galleys,” he said. “They have come here to retake Arbe, which you seized from us, and if what you say is true they will take it easily. Remember, nothing I can do will save the city for you. The city is lost to you already. You must let me signal to the galleys and go on board. You must let me lead this force in the attack, as I was to have done when I left Venice.”
The woman cried out upon him again in a panic, but he quieted her sharply as before, speaking in quick, emphatic words as one speaks to a terrified child.
“You must let me go!” he said. “Surely you see that my honor is in this. Whether I go or stay here in hiding, the result will be the same for the city, but if I do not go I am dishonored for life. You would be hurt by that as much as I, so let me go. If I retake the city, the council in Venice will perhaps allow me to marry you without banishment. At any rate, there is the bare chance of it. Let me go!”
