CHAPTER XIII
When Zeno slipped from his borrowed charger and ran for his lifetowards that part of the square that looked darkest, he had no time tochoose the direction he would afterwards take, nor to think ofanything but covering the ground at the greatest possible speedwithout stumbling over an unseen obstacle. On those singular occasionswhen a perfectly brave man has no choice but to run, there is not muchtime to spare.
The young Venetian strained his strength and his wind to get as far ashe could from his pursuers in the shortest possible time, and he wasso successful that he was out of their reach almost before they wereaware that he had fled.
At first he had run straight across the wide open space beforeBlachernae; he had then found the entrance to a street which he hadfollowed for about fifty yards, and he had turned a corner to his leftwithout meeting any one; he had rushed on without pausing till hejudged it time to double again and had then turned to the right. A fewsteps farther on, he stopped short and listened, believing himselfalone and not at all sure where he was.
Suddenly a light flashed in his face, very near him.
'Is it time?' asked a low voice in Greek, and the lantern was closedagain, leaving him dazzled.
Accident, or his fate, had taken him into the very midst of the men hehad enlisted in the cause of the revolution, to storm the palacebefore daybreak. They had waited two hours and were impatient, andeven before Zeno answered the question they saw that matters had goneill with him.
'There is an alarm,' he said hurriedly. 'I barely got away. Dispersequickly, and get to your quarters, all of you! I will let you knowwhen we can do it.'
A murmur of discontent came from the invisible crowd of soldiers. Zenoknew them to be a desperate crew, who would hold him responsible forfailure, and would not thank him for success.
'We must separate at once,' he said calmly. 'I thank you for havingbeen ready. If possible, we will meet a week from to-night.'
He did not choose to let them know that Johannes himself had refusedto quit the tower, and he was about to leave them, meaning to find hisway home alone, when the sound of feet moving behind him, and of menwhispering together told him that he was surrounded on all sides bythe soldiers. Then some one spoke in a tone of authority.
'You must stay with us,' the voice said. 'You have our lives in yourhand, and we cannot let you go. It might suit your interests to giveus up to the Emperor any day.'
Seeing his liberty threatened, Zeno laid his hand to the knife at theback of his belt and was about to try and break his way through. Inthe dark, a man with a drawn weapon in his hand easily inspiresterror in a crowd. But it was clear that the soldiers had determinedbeforehand what to do, for they closed in upon him instantly, and hisarm was caught by a dozen hands when he was in the very act of drawinghis knife. He was held by twenty men, as it seemed to him, who alltook hold of him and lifted him from the ground, not very roughly, butirresistibly. He had no chance against so many; Gorlias Pietroglianthimself could have done nothing, and he was far stronger than Zeno,stronger perhaps than any man in Constantinople.
Zeno knew that it would be worse than useless to shout for help; athis first cry he would most likely be strangled by men whose own liveswere more or less at stake. They carried him quickly along the streetand through unfamiliar and narrow ways which he could hardly haverecognised even in broad daylight, much less at night. They turnedsharp corners to the right, to the left, to the right again, and hethought he could distinguish the broken outlines of a ruined wallagainst the faint greyness of the ink-and-water sky.
Then all was dark for an instant, and he felt that his bearers werepausing at some obstacle or difficulty. The lantern flashed again, andhe saw a rough vault above him; there was a big cobweb just above hishead, and a loathsome fat spider jumped out of a crevice and ran alongthe threads till it disappeared as if by magic in the very middle ofthe web. He saw it in an instant in the sudden light as some one heldup the lantern to show the way. Such things take hold of the memoryand stick to it afterwards, as little burs fasten themselves uponone's clothes in autumn fields. Besides, though Zeno was one of thebravest men of any age, he detested fat spiders, and was very nearlyafraid of them.
He felt himself carried down an inclined plane at a swinging rate; theair smelt of dry earth, and presently it grew much warmer, though itwas not at all close. It seemed a long time until the men stopped, sethim on his feet, and left their hold on him. The man who had acted asthe leader now pushed the others aside, and stood before him, abroad-shouldered Tartar with a huge tawny beard, dressed in leatherand wearing a breastplate embossed with the Roman eagle. Zeno knew himwell; he was a Mohammedan, like many soldiers of fortune in the Greekarmy at that time, his name was Tocktamish, and he had been with Zenoin Patras. He spoke a barbarous dialect, compounded of Greek andItalian.
'Messer Zeno,' he said, 'we are not going to hurt you, but we think itbetter for your own safety to keep you here for a while, tilleverything is quiet again. Do you understand?'
'Perfectly,' Zeno answered, with a laugh. 'Nothing could be clearer!You naturally suppose that if I found myself in danger I would turnevidence against you to save myself, and you propose to make thatimpossible.'
Tocktamish pretended to be hurt.
'How can you think that I could take my old leader for a traitor,sir?' he asked.
'The idea would occur naturally to a man of your intelligence,' Zenoanswered, laughing again. 'Listen to me, man. I am a soldier, and I donot take you for a flight of angels or heavenly doves settling roundme for my consolation. You are an infernal deal more like a pack ofwolves! So let us be plain, as wolves generally are when they arehungry. You joined me because you hoped to be plundering the palace bythis time. As that has failed, you want something instead. You knowvery well that I am not the man to betray a comrade, and that if I amfree I shall probably get Johannes out of his prison in the end. Butyou expect something now. How much do you want?'
The Tartar looked down sheepishly and passed his thumb round the loweredge of his corselet, backwards and forwards, as if he were slowlypolishing the steel.
'Come,' continued Zeno, 'what is the use of hanging back? As I couldnot succeed in turning you all into patriots to-night and regeneratorsof your country, you have, of course, turned yourselves into bandits;you have got me a prisoner, and you want a ransom. How much is it tobe?'
Tocktamish still hesitated, feeling very much ashamed of himselfbefore his old captain.
'Well, sir, you see--there are eight hundred of us--and----'
'And if any one gets less than the rest he will sell all your skins toAndronicus for the balance,' laughed Zeno. 'Quite right, too! I lovejustice above all things.'
'Then give us ten ducats each,' cried the clear voice of a Greek fromthe background.
'Ten ducats apiece will make eight thousand,' said Zeno. 'I am sorry,but I have not so much money at my disposal.'
'You can borrow,' answered the Greek.
'I am afraid not, my friend.' He turned to the Tartar leader again.'You are a fool, Tocktamish,' he said calmly. 'As long as you keep mehere I cannot get money at all. Do you suppose that we merchants putaway thousands of ducats in strong boxes under our beds? If we didthat, you would have broken into our houses long ago, to helpyourselves!'
'What promise will you make, sir?' inquired the Tartar, beginning towaver.
But half-a-dozen voices protested.
'No promises!' they cried. 'Let him send you for the money!'
'You hear them?' said Tocktamish.
'Yes,' answered Zeno, 'I hear them. Their nonsense will not changefacts. If you had the souls of mice in your miserable bodies,' hecontinued, turning to the men with a contemptuous little laugh, 'youwould come with me now and seize the palace. The gates are open, andthe guards are all beastly drunk. There will be more than eightthousand ducats to divide there!'
The men were silent; many shook their heads.
'The moment is passed,' answered the Tartar, speaking for
them. 'Thewhole city is roused by this time.'
'We shall have so many more good men to help us, then,' Zeno said.'Not that we need any one. A handful could do the work.'
'Send for the money!' cried the voice of the Greek again.
'I have told you that I have not got it,' Zeno answered. 'If you havenothing more sensible to say, go to your quarters and let me sleep.'
'Pleasant dreams!' jeered the Greek; and several men laughed.
'I hope my dreams will be pleasant, for I am extremely sleepy,' Zenoanswered carelessly. 'If you cut my throat before I wake you will getnothing at all, not even my funeral expenses! Now good-night, and beoff!'
'We had better leave him,' Tocktamish said, pushing the nearest menaway. 'You will get nothing at present, and it is impossible tofrighten him. But he cannot get out, as you know. It is for our ownsafety, sir,' he added, changing his tone as he addressed Zeno. 'Wecannot let you out till the city is quiet again, but you shall lacknothing. There are two cloaks for you to sleep on and for coveringyourself, and I will bring you food and drink, and anything you want,in the morning.'
Zeno had found time to look about him during the conversation, as faras the light of the lanterns and the men who crowded upon him allowedhim to see. He had understood very soon that he was not in the cellarof a ruined house, as he had at first supposed, but in one of thosegreat disused cisterns, of which there are several in Constantinople,and of which two may still be seen. Centuries had passed since therehad been water in this one, and the dust lay thick on the pavedfloor. Two or three score columns of grey marble supported the highvaulted roof, in which Zeno guessed that there was no longer anyvisible opening to the outer air. Yet air there was, in abundance, forit entered by the narrow entrance through which Zeno had been carriedin, and probably found its way out through the disused aqueduct whichhad once supplied the water, and which still communicated with somedistant exit. Zeno could only guess at this from his experience offortresses, which always contained some similar cistern; every one hehad seen was provided with openings, almost always both at the top; afew had staircases in order that men might more conveniently go downto clean them when they were empty.
His captors left him reluctantly at the bidding of their chief. Theyset one lantern against a pillar and filed out, carrying away theother. Zeno listened to their departing footsteps for a moment, whenthe last man had gone out, and then he went quickly to the entranceand listened again. In two or three minutes he heard what he expected;a heavy door creaked and was shut with a loud noise that boomed downthe inclined passage. Then came another sound, which was not that ofbolt or bar, and was worse to hear. The men were rolling big loosestones against the door to keep it shut--two, three, more, a dozen atleast, a weight no one man could push outward. Then there was no morenoise, and Zeno was alone.
His situation was serious, and his face was very thoughtful as hewent back to the lantern and picked up one of the two cloaksTocktamish had left him. He put it on and drew it closely round him,for he was beginning to feel cold in spite of the heavy guardsman'stunic he wore over his own clothes.
He thought of Arethusa, as he called Zoe; she had been in his mindconstantly, and most of all in each of the moments of danger throughwhich he had passed since he had left her. He thought of her lyingawake on her divan in the soft light of the small lamps, waiting tohear his footsteps on the landing below her window, then fallinggently asleep out of sheer weariness, to dream of him; starting in herrest, perhaps, as she dreamt that he was in peril, but smiling again,without opening her eyes, when the vision changed, and he held her inhis arms once more. He little guessed what that yielding somethingbeneath the canvas had been, on which he had pressed his foot soheavily when he had stepped ashore. She was happily ignorant, hefancied, of the succession of hairbreadth escapes through which he hadpassed unhurt so far. What weighed most on his mind, after all, wasthe thought that when he met her he should have to tell her that hehad failed.
But he was not thinking of her only as he sat there, for his ownsituation stared him in the face, and he could not think of Arethusawithout wondering whether he was ever to see her again. He had heardthose big stones rolled to the door, and something told him thatneither Tocktamish nor his men would bring the promised bread andwater in the morning. They did not believe that he was unable to paythe ransom they demanded, and they meant to starve him into yielding.But he had spoken the truth; he had not such a sum of money at hiscommand. The question was, what the end would be. For the present theyhad not left him so much as a jug of water, and he suddenly realisedthat he was thirsty after his many exertions. He could not helplaughing to himself at the idea that he might die of thirst in acistern.
But it was not in him to waste time in idly reflecting on thedetestable irony of his fate, when there was any possibility that hisown action might help him. He rose again and took up the lantern tomake a systematic examination of his prison. After all, Tocktamish andhis soldiers must have acted on the spur of the moment, and thoughthey evidently knew the entrance to the cistern, and had probably beenaware that it had a door which could be shut, it was not impossiblethat there might be another way out which they had overlooked in theirhaste.
But Zeno could find none, and the place was not so large as he had atfirst supposed. He counted eight columns in each direction, which gavesixty-four for the whole number, and he guessed the cistern to beabout one hundred feet square. The walls were covered with smoothcement, to which the dust hardly adhered, and which extended upwardsto the spring of the vault, at the same level as the capitals of thecolumns. There was no opening to be found except the one entrance.Zeno followed the steep inclined passage upwards till he reached theclosed door which, as he well understood, must be at a considerabledistance from the cistern. It was made of oak, and though it mighthave been in its place a couple of hundred years it was stillperfectly sound. The lock had been wrenched off long ago, probably tobe used for some neighbouring house, but Zeno had heard the stonesrolled up outside the door, and even before he tried it, he knew thathe could not make it move.
He wondered whether Tocktamish had set a watch, and he called out andlistened for an answer, but none came; he shouted, with the sameresult. Then he took up his lantern and went down again, for it wasclear that the soldiers thought him so safely confined that it wouldnot be necessary to guard the entrance. Since that was their opinion,there was nothing to be done but to agree with them. Zeno lay down inthe dust, rolled himself in the spare cloak, placing a doubled fold ofit between his head and the base of a column, and he was soon fastasleep.