The Lion of Janina Part 19

"'Tis a slave," said Tepelenti, regarding the head more closely. "Dost thou not see? His ears have been cropped, so that he may not wear ear-rings in them, which only great lords may do."

"Then Zaid has gone free!"

"Zaid will be among the captives," said Tepelenti. "I would recognize him amongst a thousand. He was my favorite grandson. His image even now is engraved in my heart."

Then they went down amongst the captives. Ali had scarce cast a glance at them when he pointed with his finger.

"There he is! Dost thou not perceive how much paler his face is than the faces of the others?"

Kleon wrathfully drew his sword and would have rushed upon the person indicated, but Ali held his hand.

"What doest thou? Wouldst thou slay my grandson before my very eyes?"

"Thou didst ask for his head, and it shall be thine."

"But now I ask for his life, Kleon. Zaid is my favorite grandson. I brought him up. I loved him better than his dear mother--better than all my children. Look now, I share with thee all the booty, and all I ask of thee is mine own--flesh of my flesh."

The unhappy youth, hearing these words, fell at Ali's feet and embraced his knees, wept, covered his hands with kisses, and implored him to release him--he would be a good and dutiful son to him ever afterwards.

"Thou seest, too, how much he loves me," said Ali, looking with tearful eyes at Zaid and covering the cowering fugitive with his long gray beard. "Well, Zaid," said he, "so thou dost now fly for refuge beneath the shadow of that same gray beard, by grasping which thou wert minded to take Ali's head to thy mother, eh?"

Kleon looked at Ali Pasha with a contemptuous smile. Then Ali was tender, Ali had a heart, Ali's heart ached at the slaying of his kinsfolk! The Greek felt a cruel satisfaction in tormenting the pasha.

"If thou dost not wish to see Zaid die," said he, "depart from hence.

Alive thou shalt not have him!"

"What!" cried Ali, and, standing erect, he drew his sword. "Because my beard is long dost thou think thou canst trample upon me? I will defend my blood with my blood, and will perish myself rather than let him be slain. Let us see, mad youth, wouldst thou lop off thine own right hand?"

Kleon was so surprised that he did not know what to do. It was in his power to slay Ali; but then that would be a greater triumph for Stambul than all the victories of the campaign.

At that moment a herald arrived from Odysseus with a command for Kleon to send all the Turkish officers captured at the battle of Pulo to Prevesa, that they might be exchanged against the youths of the sacred army who had been captured in Moldavia.

Kleon's pride was wounded by this direct command. He considered himself just as good a general as Odysseus or Yprilanti, and did not recognize orders sent from them.

Turning from the herald to Tepelenti, he thus replied:

"Tell Odysseus that I and my soldiers are in the habit of killing the enemy's officers on the battle-field. Only one of them, and he in disguise, remains. He, however, is Tepelenti's grandson, who has recognized him and ransomed him from me for a hundred thousand piastres, which he has engaged to pay me within an hour. Is it not so, Tepelenti?"

"It is so," said Ali; "within an hour the hundred thousand piastres shall be in thy hands."

Zaid, with a shriek of joy, kissed the hem of his grandfather's robe, and Kleon gave his hand upon the bargain. An hour later the money arrived in little hogsheads, and he had it weighed in the presence of his captains. Ali, however, binding his grandson by the left arm, and giving him his own caftan, had him conducted into the fortress of Janina.

Kleon looked contemptuously after him. So the old man had become soft-hearted! How he had wept and supplicated and paid for this youth, who was his favorite grandson!

An hour later the roll of drums was heard on the bastions of Janina, and when the Greeks looked in that direction they saw the stake of execution erected there. Four black executioners were carrying Zaid, who had his hands tied behind his back, and was wearing the self-same caftan which Ali had given him. Ali himself, mounted on a black horse, rode right up to the stake. At a signal from him the executioners hoisted Zaid into the air, and a moment later Tepelenti's favorite grandson, whom he had dandled so often on his knee, was done to death by the most excruciating torments!

Ali watched his death-agony with the utmost _sang-froid_, and, when all was over, he shouted down from the bastions with a strong, firm voice, "So perish all those of Tepelenti's kinsfolk who draw the sword against him! For them there is no mercy!"

Kleon felt his heart's blood grow cold. Ah! he had much, very much to learn from the agonized cries of the dying before he could overtake Ali, that old man who weeps, prays, and pays, in order to rescue his favorite grandson for the sole purpose of killing him himself with refined tortures!

Of all Ali's large family only two sons now remained, Sulaiman and Mukhtar. They were the first who had betrayed their father, and it was their treachery that had wounded him most. For a whole year Ali carried that wound about in his heart. During that time n.o.body was allowed to mention the names of his sons in his presence. Everything, absolutely everything, which reminded him of them was removed from the fortress. If any one was weary of life, he had only to mention the name of Mukhtar before Ali, and death was a certainty.

Meanwhile the two apostate sons were living in great misery at Adrianople; for the Sultan, though he paid them for their treachery, would have nothing more to do with them. The first instalment of the money which they were to receive as the price of their father's blood melted away very rapidly in merry banquets, pretty female slaves, fine steeds, and precious gems; and when it was all gone the second instalment never made its appearance. Far different and far more important personages had still stronger claims upon the Sultan's purse. Tepelenti's vigorous resistance, the innumerable losses suffered by the Sultan's armies, buried in forgetfulness the services of the good sons whose betrayal of their father had profited the Sultan nothing. They were already beginning to bitterly repent their overhasty step when the rumor of Ali's victories reached them; and as the days of necessity began to weigh heavily upon them, as money and wine began to fail them, as they found themselves obliged to sell, one by one, their horses, their jewels, and, at last, even their beautiful slave-girls, it became quite plain to them that no help could be looked for from any quarter, unless perhaps it was from wonder-working fairies, or from the genii of the _Thousand and One Nights_.

But let none say that, in the regions of the merry Orient, fairies and wonders do not still make their home among men.

Just when the beys had consumed the price of the last slave they had to sell, such wealth poured in upon them, in heaps, in floods, as we only hear of in old fairy tales; and fairy tales, as we all know very well, have no truth in them at all.

One day, as Ali Pasha was walking to and fro on the bastions of Janina, he perceived among the garden-beds in the court-yard below a gardener engaged in planting tulips.

Tepelenti knew all the servants in the fortress thoroughly, down to the very lowest. He not only knew them by name, but he knew what they had to do and how they did it.

The name of this gardening slave was Dirham, and he was so named because, many years before Mukhtar had purchased him when a child from a slave-dealer for a dirham, and although his master often plagued him, he nevertheless cared for him well, and brought him up and provided him with all manner of good things. Thus Dirham, whenever his master's name was mentioned, bethought him how little he was worth when Mukhtar Bey bought him, and how many more dirhams he was worth now, and for all this he could not thank Mukhtar enough.

Ali Pasha for a long time watched from the bastions this man planting his tulips. Some of them he pressed down into the ground very carefully, strewing them with loose powdery earth, preparing a proper place for the bulbs beforehand, and moistening them gently with watery spray; others he plumped down into the earth anyhow, covering them up very perfunctorily, and never looking to see whether he watered them too much or too little.

Ali carefully noted those bulbs which Dirham had bestowed the greatest pains upon, and then went down and entered into conversation with him.

"What are the names of these tulips?"

Dirham ticked them all off: King George, Trafalgar, Admiral Gruithuysen, Belle Alliance, etc., etc. But at the same time he skipped over one or two here and there, and these were the very ones which he had covered up with the greatest care.

"Then thou dost not know the names of those others?" inquired Ali.

"I have lost my memoranda, my lord, and I cannot remember all the names among so many."

"Look, now, I know the names of these flowers. This is Sulaiman, that over there is Mukhtar Bey."

Dirham cast himself on his face before the pasha. Ali had guessed well. Dirham remembered the two gentlemen just as a good dog remembers his master--they were ever in his mind.

The wretched man fully expected that Ali would immediately tear these bulbs out of the ground and plant his own head there in their place.

Instead of that Ali graciously raised him from the ground and said to him in a tender, sympathetic voice, "Fear not, Dirham! Thou hast no need to be ashamed of such n.o.ble sentiments. Thou art thinking of my sons. And dost thou suppose that I never think of them? I have forbidden every one in the fortress to even mention their names; but what does that avail me if I cannot prevent myself from thinking of them? What avails it to never hear their names if I see their faces constantly before me? The world says they have betrayed me; but I do not believe, I cannot believe it. What says Dirham? Is it possible that children can betray their own father?"

Dirham took his courage in both hands and ventured to reply:

"Strike off my head if you will, my lord, but this I say--they were not traitors, but were themselves betrayed; for even if it were possible for sons to betray their father, Tepelenti's children would not betray Tepelenti."

Ali Pasha gave Dirham a purse of gold for these words, commanding him, at the same time, to appear before him in the palace that evening, and to bring with him, carefully transplanted into pots, those tulips which bore the names of Sulaiman and Mukhtar.

Dirham could scarcely wait for the evening to come, and the moment he appeared in Ali's halls he was admitted into the pasha's presence.

Then Ali bade every one withdraw from the room, that they twain might remain together, and began to talk with him confidentially.

"I hear that my sons are living in great poverty at Adrianople. As to their poverty, I say nothing; but, worse still, they are living in great humiliation also. n.o.body will have anything to do with them. The wretched Spahis, who once on a time mentioned their names with chattering teeth, now mock at them when they meet them in the street, and when they go on foot to the bazaar to buy their bread, the women cry with a loud voice, 'Are these, then, the heroes at whom Stambul used to tremble?' Verily it is shameful, and Ali Pasha blushes thereat. I know that if once I ever place in their hands those good swords which I bound upon their thighs they would not surrender them so readily to the enemies of Ali Pasha. What says Dirham?"

Dirham was only able to express his approval of Ali's words by a very audible sigh.