"They have been driven northward," he said. "They'll have to run between Cherso and the main-land and beat south again by Veglia." The sailing-master shook his head gloomily.
"It is a bad night, lord," said he. "That sea will be hell in another hour." And he moved off forward to give orders to his men.
There seemed nothing for it but to go on, and, in the sheltered cove at the north of Arbe, where the disembarkment was to take pace, await the other ships. Young Zuan felt no great anxiety over them; he was sure that they had merely been driven northward, and would have to round Cherso, and then make their way down again through the sheltered "canal" between that island and Veglia. His only fear was that they might not reach Arbe before morning, in which case the relief of the city – granting always that the ban's expedition had already occupied it – would have to be delayed until another night.
He put about again, and, running before the strong sirocco (the wind, of course, reaches these sheltered waters, somewhat abated, though there is no sea), made out the lights of Arbe within two hours. In another hour, leaving the galley well to the west of the island and hidden in the gloom, he was in a skiff, rowed by two strong sailor-men, creeping round the walls of the city.
Now it has been said that the city occupies a southward-jutting claw of rock. The villas and streets, indeed, crowd to the very edge of the narrow ridge. On the western side the sea-wall, a hundred feet high, rises sheer from the water, and is continued upward by the walls of the buildings. Eastward, however, round the point, the land slopes lower, and here is a sheltered cove in the crook of the rocky claw, with a mole and landing-place of hewn stone. Upon the landing-place opens a public square.
Young Zuan in his skiff crept round the point, and, always under the shelter of the sea-wall, into the still harbor where was the landing-place. Fifty yards from the point where the sea-wall dropped to the water's level and the open square began, he halted. From the wall near by lion heads of carved stone projected, and in each beast's mouth hung a great bronze ring for mooring ships. One of the two sailor-men laid hold of a ring and held the skiff steady, and Zuan rose to his feet to look.
Far over his head the wind – driving a thin rain before it once more – shrieked and whistled past the roofs of Arbe, and flapped the gay awnings which hung over the marble balconies. Once, above the wind's noise, a woman's shriek rose and held and then died suddenly. Beyond, in the open square, a great fire blazed on the flags, and hurrying men in strange dress threw armfuls of fuel upon it. Others held hands and danced about the fire in a ring, like devils, singing a weird and wild chant. It was a fine chant and stirring, and these Huns sang it well, but to young Zuan Gradenigo's ears it was the baying of unclean dogs.
He dropped back upon the thwart of his skiff with a sobbing curse. The ban's Magyar strumpet was set where the ban had sworn to set her.
"Row to the galley!" he said, and as the two sailor-men bent to their work, standing at their oars gondolier fashion, and the skiff leaped forward through the wet gloom, he laid his face in his hands and it twisted and worked bitterly. He was by no means a coward, and he was not a particularly imaginative man, but the picture of that leaping fire and the leaping, chanting devils about it persisted before his eyes, and he looked forward to the struggle which was to come, and an odd premonition of disaster took possession of him and would not be driven away.
In the tiny sheltered cove of rendezvous, two miles above the city, they anchored the galley and disembarked. There is a rocky headland beside the cove, high at its outer end, and here certain trusty officers took their station, with lanterns muffled in their cloaks, to watch for the approach of the other two ships. Young Zuan went within a deserted fisherman's hut which stood where wood and beach met, and there held council with his sailing-master and his chief lieutenant. He was still strong in the belief that Il Lupo's ship and the other were safe and would arrive in a few hours – it was by now somewhat after midnight – but the old sailing-master again shook a gloomy head. He had served Venice for forty years on land and sea, and he was a pessimist.
There arose cries and shoutings without, and a petty officer burst into the hut, puffed with importance and pride.
"Prisoners, lord!" he reported. "Three spies caught skulking and peeping in the wood."
"Bring them in!" said young Zuan. "And keep those men quiet outside. Do you wish the whole island to know we are here?"
The prisoners were thrust into the room – great, squat, hairy fellows in the barbaric dress of Huns, surly and villanous. They would not speak. It was evident that they understood neither Italian nor Greek, and they affected not to comprehend the sailing-master's halting efforts at their own tongue. They only stared under their shaggy brows, silent and stolid, and tugged at the hands which were bound behind them.
"Are these men?" cried out young Zuan, in fine Venetian scorn. "Take the cattle away! Bind their feet and set a guard over them. Hark! What is that?"
That was a woman's scream from without, low and very angry.
"But a woman, lord," explained the officer who had brought in the prisoners – "a young wench who was prowling with these fellows and was taken with them. Asking your lordship's pardon, I thought it idle to bring her to you – a common wench."
"Take these men away," said young Gradenigo, "and bring in the woman. It may be that she speaks a Christian tongue."
She crept into the hut, pressing against the side of the doorway, and stood against the farther wall – a girl, a mere slip of a girl, with her long brown hair down over her eyes. And there against the wall she stood, shaking, her hands twisting together over her breast, and her eyes, like the eyes of a hunted, cornered animal, went swiftly from one face to another of the men across the room, and finally settled upon the face of Zuan Gradenigo, and did not stir for a long time.
She stood in her thin white shift, and on her bared arms were marks as if rough hands and none too clean had been there.
When young Zuan spoke his voice was gentle and kindly, the maid was so sore beset, so full of fear, so alone.
"Do you – understand Italian?" he asked. The maid did not answer him, but when she spoke she spoke in perfectly fluent Venetian dialect – as good Venetian as Gradenigo's own. And the fear seemed to go from her, giving place to anger.
"My garments, lord!" she said, and laid her bruised arms across her bosom in a little, pitiful gesture of outraged modesty. "Your men have taken them from me. I am ashamed, lord. They – laid their foul hands on my arms." Her face twisted as at the memory of insult, and the lieutenant who stood across the room laughed aloud. Young Zuan turned upon him fiercely.
"Hold your laughter for a fitter excuse!" he said. "Are we Huns, to insult women? Go out to those men and find the maid's garments. Bring them here." The man went, staring, and, at a motion of Gradenigo's head, the sailing-master followed him, leaving the two alone.
"I am sorry, child," said Zuan Gradenigo. "We did not come here to ill-treat women. I shall see that my men are punished for what they have done. Meanwhile – " He took up the mantle which he had put aside over a near-by bench, and, crossing the room, laid it over the girl's shoulders. It covered her almost to the feet. And when he had done this he stood, for what he imagined to be a moment, looking down into the eyes that held his so steadily – brave eyes, unafraid, unclouded, unwavering. One could not be harsh or cruel in the gaze of such – even though they looked from the face of an enemy. An enemy? Nonsense! A girl taken by chance as she wandered through the wood – as she peeped, full of childish curiosity, at the disembarkment of a ship's load of soldiers. Brave eyes, unafraid. That was why they held him so, because they fronted him without fear – even with trust.
Ay, doubtless that was why they held him so, and yet – He stirred restlessly. Such great eyes! With such illimitable depths! How came a wandering child by such eyes? They moved him oddly. The child would seem to be an uncommon child. Those steady, burning eyes of hers had some uncommon power, worked some strange spell, some sorcery, not evil, but unfamiliarly sweet, unknown to his experience.
He gave a little, confused laugh and raised an uncertain hand towards his head, but the girl had, at the same moment, put out one of her own hands to fasten the clasp of Zuan's mantle at her throat, and his fingers touched her arm.
At that, as if it brought back her injuries to mind, she dropped her eyes, and the man was loosed incontinently from his chains.
"Lord!" she cried again, flushing red in the light of the lanterns, "they put their foul hands upon me! They put their hands upon me!" The very present peril in which she might well have believed herself to stand seemed not to occur to her. It seemed that only those rough, befouling hands were in her mind. Her face gave once more its little, shivering twist of anger and repulsion.
"They shall be punished, child!" said Zuan Gradenigo, between tight lips. "Oh, they shall suffer for it, you may be sure. And now" – he took a turn away from her, for her great eyes were upon him again, level and unafraid – "now will you tell me who you are and how you came to be found with those barbarians to-night? Surely you can have no traffic with such. Surely you are a lady. I have seen that." And indeed he had seen, while the girl stood in her thin white shift, how beautifully she was made – deep-bosomed, slim-waisted, with tapering wrists and ankles, and round white throat. No common wench was there. There was good blood under that white skin of hers.
"Surely you are a lady," said young Zuan, but the girl bent her head from him.
"Nay, lord," she said, very low, "I am only – a serving-maid to the Princess Yaga."
The red flamed into Zuan's cheeks.
"That woman!" he cried. "You serve that vile fiend in human flesh, that royal strumpet, that wanton at whose name men spit? You?" The girl stared at him under her brows.
"Oh!" cried Zuan Gradenigo. "Where is God that hell could devise such a wrong? What was God doing that you should stray into such clutches and He not know? That – that monster of vice and uncleanness!" He pointed a shaking hand towards the south.
"There she sits," said he, "polluting the castle where Jacopo Corner has sat for so many years, where my grandfather sat before him, and his father before him. There she sits gloating; but, by God and St. Mark's lion! before this week is over I shall tear her head from her body and throw it to the dogs. Nay! better than that! I shall send it, in the name of Venice, to the ban who sent her here to shame us."
"Lord!" said the maid, very low – "lord! Oh, you do not know! You – speak wildly. You do not know what you say."
"I know," said Zuan Gradenigo, "that all I say is true. That woman's name is infamous throughout Europe. It is a name of scorn. It means all that is vile – as you must know. Will Arbe ever be clean from her – even when we have washed its stones with her blood? But you!" he cried, in a new voice. "Oh, child, that you should have to serve her – be near to her! I cannot think of it with calmness."
The maid turned a little away from him and moved over to the wooden bench where Zuan's mantle had lain. And she seated herself at one end of the bench, looking across the room at him very soberly.
"And why not I, lord," she asked, "as well as another? What do you know of me? I am – a serving-maid, and such must serve whomever they may." He came nearer and stared into her face, and his own was oddly troubled, frowning.
"I cannot think of you – so," he said. "A serving-maid? There's something strange here. Oh, child, you have something about you – I cannot say what it is, for I have no words. I fight, I am not a poet, but were I such, I think – your eyes – their trick of looking – their – I cannot say what I mean. A serving-maid? Oh, child, you are fitter for velvets and jewels! I do not understand. Something breathes from you," he said, with that trouble upon his frowning face, an odd trouble in his eyes – bewildered, uncomprehending – like a child's eyes before some mystery. "Something breathes from you. I do not know what it is."