Arethusa Part 7

She asked the question quietly, but she held her breath as she waited for the reply.

'I forget his name,' answered the negress after a moment's thought.

'He is a foreigner, a rich young merchant who lives in a fine house by the Golden Horn.'

'A Christian, then?' Zoe asked, controlling her voice.

The other pretended to be shocked.

'Does the Kokona Arethusa believe that Rustan would be so wicked as to sell a Christian maid to the Turks? Rustan is a very devout man, Kokona! He would not do such an irreligious thing!'

Zoe remembered the allowance of three copper pennies daily, and how he had driven her to sell herself for Kyria Agatha's sake; but she did not care to impugn Rustan's piety.

'So the astrologer says that I shall be sold to-day,' she observed with an affectation of carelessness, though her heart was sinking, and she felt a little sick. 'Is he a great astrologer?'

'He is Rustan's friend, Gorlias Pietrogliant,' answered the negress, who was now turning over certain fine linen in the wardrobe. 'Yes, he is a good star-gazer, especially for merchants. He is very poor, but many have grown rich through consulting him.'

She found what she wanted, and held up a beautifully embroidered garment of linen as fine as a web.

'And if you are so fortunate as to go to the rich merchant's house,'

she added, 'you may win favour of him by telling him to consult Gorlias about his affairs whenever he is in doubt.'

'Gorlias.' Zoe repeated the name, for she had never heard it.

'Gorlias Pietrogliant, who lives near the church of Saint Sergius and Saint Bacchus. Every one in that quarter knows him.'

'I shall remember,' Zoe said.

She understood at last why Rustan had been in the habit of going often to that church, where she had been kneeling in a dark corner when he had first seen her. Thence he had followed her to the ruined house.

But she did not know that it was part of his regular business to frequent the churches of the poorest quarters, because it was there that starving girls were most often to be seen, praying to heaven for the bread that so rarely came from that direction. Many a good bargain had Rustan made by following a poor little ragged figure with a pretty face to a den of misery, and he was a perfect expert in doling out alms until his victim yielded or was forced to yield by her parents, for a handful of gold; nor has his method of conducting the business greatly changed, even in our own day, excepting that the slave-dealers themselves are mostly women now.

Having selected all the garments necessary for Zoe's costume, the negress bade one of the slave-girls take away the remains of the supper and bring what was already prepared for the morning. The maid obeyed, and was not gone two minutes. She brought in a bowl of cherries, with white bread and b.u.t.ter and fresh water, all on a polished tray of chiselled bra.s.s.

'Fruit is better for the health than sweetmeats at this time of day,'

observed the mistress of the house. 'By and by, at dinner, the Kokona shall have all she wishes.'

The little slaves looked at Zoe furtively and she smiled.

'Yes,' she said, 'fruit is much better in the morning.'

Rustan's wife came and stood beside the bed and scrutinised Zoe's face.

'I think,' she said critically, 'that as the customer is a foreigner, it will be better not to paint your eyes. The natural shadows under them are not bad.'

'I never painted my face in my life!' cried the girl, rather indignantly.

'And the Kokona is quite right!' answered the negress, anxious to keep her in a good humour. 'Besides,' she continued, fawning again, 'I am here only to do your bidding and to wait on you to-day. Will it please you to bathe now? I shall wait on you myself.'

'The little maids are very quick and clever,' objected Zoe, who hardly looked upon the strapping African as a woman.

'No doubt, Kokona, but this is a part of our business, and I do it better than they.'

'I would rather let them help me, if I must be helped,' said Zoe.

'But, indeed, I am quite used to dressing myself.'

'And pray,' argued the negress, grinning and growing familiar again, 'how could Rustan give his customers a written guarantee, unless I a.s.sured him, that there is no cause for complaint, no blemish, no scar, no hidden deformity, no ugly birthmark?'

Zoe turned her face away on the pillow.

'I had not thought of that,' she answered.

'Heaven forbid that I should myself,' returned the woman, relapsing into her obsequious manner again, 'if it were not to save the young Kokona from any trouble or annoyance with our customer! If it will but please her to call herself my mistress and me her slave, she shall not be disappointed. If I am rough or clumsy she shall box my ears whenever she pleases, and I shall not complain!'

The little maids devoutly wished that Zoe would avail herself of their tyrant's extraordinary offer, but they dared not smile. She still turned her face away and was silent.

'See!' coaxed the African. 'I take off my coat!' She suited the action to the word and divested herself of her outer garment, which was the long coat and skirt in one, worn only by free women. 'I cover my head, in the Kokona's presence!' She quickly flattened her wild red hair under a kerchief which she knotted at the back of her neck. 'I roll up my sleeves! Am I anything but a slave, a bath-woman? Why will the beautiful Kokona not let me wait on her?'

Zoe turned her eyes and saw the change, and suddenly her objection vanished; for Rustan's wife looked precisely like the black slave-women who used to attend the ladies in the Roman bath in Rhangabe's palace. The a.s.sociation of ideas was so strong that the young girl could not help smiling faintly.

'As you please,' she said, raising herself upon one hand and preparing to get up.

CHAPTER V

Carlo Zeno's interview with Rustan had been short and business-like, as has been said. It was indeed not at all likely that a man of the Venetian's temper and tastes would talk with a Bokharian slave-dealer a moment longer than necessary.

Rustan, on hearing what was wanted, declared that he had the very thing; in fact, by a wonderful coincidence, it was the very thing in the acme of perfection, a dream, a vision, fully worth four hundred ducats, and certainly not to be sold for three hundred; it had fine natural hair that had never been dyed; its teeth were twenty-eight in number, the wisdom teeth not having yet appeared, and Rustan would wager that Messer Carlo could not find a single pearl in all Constantinople to match one of those eight-and-twenty; its ankles were so finely turned that a woman could span them with her thumb and forefinger. Rustan felt safe in saying this, for his black wife's huge hand could have spanned Zoe's throat; also it had a most beautiful and slender waist, which, as Messer Carlo remarked, was certainly a point of beauty. Moreover, Rustan would deliver a signed and sealed certificate with it.

For Zeno was conscientious, and held Marco Pesaro's letter in his hand while he questioned the Bokharian in regard to the various points in succession, lest he should forget any one of them. He did not in the least believe a word that Rustan said, of course. The East was never the land of simple, trusting faith between man and man. He would even have wagered that Rustan had nothing in his prison of the sort Pesaro wanted, and at the moment of the interview he would have been quite right. But he was tolerably sure that if he insisted on having the best, the best to be had would be forthcoming in a week at the utmost.

Satisfied with this prospect, he dismissed Rustan and thought no more about the matter, except to wish that Marco Pesaro had not troubled him with such an absurd commission.

A fine young gentleman of later times would probably have thought few quests more amusing than this, and would have dreamt that night of the beauties he intended to see before at last deciding upon the purchase.

Doubtless, there were young Venetians even then in Constantinople who would have envied Zeno the amusing task of criticising pretty faces, hands, and ankles.

But he was not of the same temper or disposition as those gay youths.

He could not remember that any woman had ever made a very profound impression on him, even in his boyish days. When he was in Greece, it had been suggested to him that he might as well marry, like other young men, and he had allowed himself to be betrothed to a sleepy Greek heiress who had conceived an indolent but tenacious admiration for his fighting qualities; but it had pleased the fates that she should die before the wedding-day of a complication of the spleen superinduced by a surfeit of rose-leaf jam and honey-cakes. He was rather ashamed to own to himself that her translation to a better world had been a distinct relief to his feelings, for he had soon discovered that he did not love her, though he had been too kind to tell her so, and too honourable to think of breaking his promise of marriage.

He did not despise women either; indeed, his conduct in the affair of his betrothal had proved that. Now and then he had paused in his restless career to think of a more peaceful life, and in the pictures that rose before his imagination there was generally a woman.

Unhappily, he had never seen any one like her in real life, and when he was tired of dreaming he shrugged his shoulders at such impossibilities and went back to his adventurous existence without a sigh. Yet it might be thought that although he did not fall in love he might now and then spend careless hours with the free and frail, for he made no profession or show of austerity, and whatever he really might be, he did not aspire to be called a saint. He had been a wild student in Padua once, and had drunk deep and played high, until he had suddenly grown tired of stupid dissipation and had left the dice to play the more exciting game of life and death as a soldier of fortune under a condottiere, during five long wandering years. But at the core of his nature there was something ascetic which his comrades could never understand, and at which they laughed when he was not within hearing; for he was an evil man to quarrel with, as they had found out. He never killed his man in a duel if he could help it, but he had a way of leaving his mark for life on his adversary's face which few cared to risk.

And now it was long indeed since his lips had touched a woman's, for his character had taken its final manly shape, and the only folly to which he still yielded now and then was that of risking his life recklessly whenever he fancied that a cause was worth it; but this he did not look upon as madness, still less as weakness, and there was no one to argue the question with him. His honest brown eyes softened sometimes, almost like a woman's, but only for pity or kindness, never for word or look of love.

He rose in the bright spring morning just before the sun was up, and went down the steps at the water's edge below his house and swam far out in clear water that was still icy cold. Then he dressed himself completely as strong and healthy men do, who hate to feel that they are not ready to face anything from the beginning of the day. But while he was dressing he was not thinking of the errand that was to take him to Rustan's house an hour before noon. Indeed, he had quite forgotten it, till he saw Omobono folding Pesaro's letter in his neat way in order to file it for reference. As the secretary knew what it contained, and had been actively employed in the matter to which it referred, he had thought there could be no great sin of curiosity in reading it carefully while his master was at his toilet. It would have been wrong, he thought, to find out what was in it before Zeno himself had broken the seal, but since it was open, it was evidently better that the secretary should understand precisely what was wanted of his employer, for such knowledge could only increase his own usefulness. For the rest, he vaguely hoped that Zeno would take him into close confidence and ask his opinion of any merchandise he thought of buying; for Omobono had a high opinion of his own taste in beauty, and had wished to pa.s.s for a lively spark in his young days.

But Zeno evidently considered himself qualified to decide the matter without help, for when it lacked an hour of noon he set his secretary at work on a fair copy of a letter he had been preparing, ordered his horse and running footman, and went upon his errand without any other attendant or companion. Omobono looked out of the window and watched him as he mounted, innocently envying him his youth and strength. The greatest fighting man of his century moved as such men generally do, without haste and without effort, never wasting a movement and never making an awkward one, never taking a fine att.i.tude for the sake of effect, as the young men of Raphael's pictures so often seem to be doing, but always and everywhere unconsciously graceful, self-possessed, and ready for anything.