NEITHER his personal sorrow nor his sleepless night could be allowed to relieve Wylie from the pressure of his daily duties, and after less than an hour’s rest he was presiding at an inquiry into the conduct of one of his military police, who had quitted his post without leave on the preceding evening. This was Logofet, who had awakened from deep dreams of peace to find himself in durance, and could not imagine how he had got there. The report of the man who had escorted Princess Theophanis to the hospital made it clear that he and his mistress had entered at the small door of the Konak by merely turning the handle, and had found no one on guard within, and this rendered it probable that Logofet’s remissness had permitted the entrance of the kidnapper to whom the night’s misery was due. Nothing was said of this, however, though as many of his comrades as could find any excuse to be present crowded the room where the prisoner, alternately defiant and lachrymose, confronted his Colonel.
“Drunk, lord! I have not been drunk for ten years,” he blustered, happily unconscious that he had been found fast asleep, with the empty bottle by his side.
“The witnesses will prove that you were drunk last night. Where did you get the spirit from?”
Into Logofet’s bemuddled brain darted an idea and an impulse of revenge. Witnesses? Then the girl Kalliopé had betrayed him. Very well, then he would betray her.
“Do you really wish to know where the raki came from, lord?” he whined.
“Certainly.” Wylie expected to hear as usual the name of one of the wretched Jewish spirit-sellers, duly licensed by the Therma authorities, who were a thorn in the side of the rulers at Klaustra, and seemed to have a special predilection for corrupting the police.
“Then don’t ask me, lord; ask little Kalliopé. Ask her who gave me a bottle of raki two evenings running, so that I should turn my back while she slipped out at the little door.”
Ignorant as he was of the night’s excitement, Logofet was astonished at the sensation produced by his words. Wylie pushed his chair back abruptly, his face perfectly white, and the spectators exchanged glances and whispers and exclamations of surprise. After his first stunned silence, Wylie rose.
“I cannot inquire into this case; it must go before the Prince,” he said. He was too much shaken to give the necessary orders, but an eager messenger ran to bear the news to Maurice, and the scene of the inquiry was quickly changed to the broad verandah before the Prince’s house. Eirene sat beside her husband, with a curious watchful look on her face, and Zoe, whom they had wished not to disturb, seemed to divine in her restless sleep that there was news, and woke and came as well. With an instinctive sense of drama, messengers and servants alike had combined to prevent the news from reaching Danaë, and when she was sent for she came unsuspiciously, expecting, indeed, further cross-examination, but nothing worse. It was not the lowering countenance of Logofet that first warned her of the crisis, but the look on Armitage’s face as he leaned against the side of the doorway. One glance he gave her—a quick inquiring glance, as though to assure himself that she was unjustly accused—then he deliberately turned his eyes away.
“I have sent for you, Kalliopé, because what Logofet has to tell concerns you,” said Prince Theophanis. “Sit down beside your mistress, and when he has spoken we will see what you have to say.”
Danaë sat down on the doorstep, conscious as she did so that Zoe, as if mechanically, moved her chair a little farther away, and Maurice signed to Logofet to speak. The prisoner had managed to learn the state of affairs by this time from the conversation going on around him, and was correspondingly elated. He spoke with a certain soldierly bluffness, which left entirely out of sight the fact that he himself was anything more than a witness.
“I am a plain man, lord, and cannot tell a long story. Two days ago I met Kalliopé’s uncle in the town——”
“Wait; how did you know he was her uncle?” asked Maurice.
“Why, lord, he said so; besides, I saw him outside Therma the day that this ill-omened girl first thrust herself into your house. He said he wanted to speak to his niece, and asked me to let her pass out and come in again. He had some good raki with him, and I consented. That evening she went in and out quite properly, though rather in a hurry, so I thought little of it when he asked me to do the same for him again the next night. She was an obstinate piece of goods, he said, and wouldn’t do what she was told, but I was to tell her to bring the brat this time, or it would be the worse for her——”
“You said ‘your brat.’ You know you did!” burst from Danaë.
“To bring the brat, or it would be the worse for her,” corrected Logofet, with the air of an honest man unjustly aspersed; “and thinking that she was about to relieve you, lord, and the gracious lady your sister, from the maintenance of herself and that foundling she brought with her, I thought it an excellent deed. So he gave me another glass of spirits—which I swear to you, lord, must have been drugged, for after giving the message to the girl I fell down insensible, and knew no more.”
“Now, Kalliopé, what have you to say?” asked Maurice. “You told the Lord Glafko last night that you had not seen your uncle at all, except at a distance, that the message you received merely told you he was here, and that you went down into the great courtyard to look for him, but could not find him.”
“And it is all true, lord,” cried Danaë desperately. “This man is lying, having hated me since the day your kindness brought me to this house. I have spoken no word to the man Petros, who calls himself my uncle, and I went nowhere last night to look for him, save into the great courtyard.”
“Lord,” said a voice from among the police on the steps, “I admitted this girl Kalliopé by the small door last evening from the street.” Maurice looked at Danaë.
“Lord, he also is lying,” she cried. “These Slavs of yours all hate me, who am a Greek.”
Princess Theophanis leaned forward in her chair, and spoke slowly and distinctly. “I saw Kalliopé hiding on the stairs near the small door when I came in from the hospital,” she said. “She had a great bundle in her arms, which might have been a child. I remember thinking at the time that it looked like one.”
“Oh, Eirene, why didn’t you say this before?” cried Zoe, in agony. Her brother raised his hand for silence.
“Kalliopé, you will do better to tell the truth. Two witnesses have proved your story to be false. You were in the back courtyard, you went out and in at the small door, you took out with you a bundle resembling a child. Had she the bundle in her arms when she returned?” he asked suddenly of the guard who had spoken.
“I could not see, lord; there was no light. She was very much wrapped up, and she may have been carrying something.”
Before anything more could be said, Zoe tore her hand from her husband’s, and flung herself on her knees before Danaë.
“Oh, Kalliopé,” she sobbed, “give him back to me! He was so sweet, and he never did you any harm. I have tried to be kind to you—if I was ever unkind, I ask you now for forgiveness. Only tell us what you have done with him. You shall not be punished in any way—you shall have anything you can ask, if you will only give him back.”
“Lady mine, I have done nothing with him,” sobbed the girl. “I call the All-Holy Mother of God to witness that I had no hand in stealing the Lord Harold. If I could tell you where he is at this moment, I would do it gladly.”
Wylie raised his wife gently. “My dear Zoe, the girl is hardened. It is no use appealing to her. Wouldn’t it be as well to continue this inquiry in private?” he asked of Maurice, who replied by remanding Logofet to the cells, and dismissing the police spectators. The hunted look was in Danaë’s eyes again as she faced her judges, but Maurice spoke with studious gentleness.
“Kalliopé, you have been in this house for some months. Don’t you understand yet that your mistress has always meant kindly towards you, and done everything in her power for your good? She can’t believe, and I can’t believe, that you could repay her kindness in such a way. Tell us the truth now, and I will pledge myself that as soon as the child is recovered you shall be sent safely back to your own home, and no punishment inflicted on you.”
“You will not believe me, lord, if I do tell you the exact truth,” cried Danaë defiantly.
“If it is indeed the truth, we will,” he replied.
“Then hear the truth, lord. I did go out and speak to the man Petros two nights ago, and I did pass through the back courtyard to speak to him again last night, carrying a child in my arms. But he was not at the place he had appointed, and the child was my own little lord, and not the Lord Harold. When I did not find Petros, I carried my little lord back into the house. I knew you would not believe me!” she cried angrily, looking round at the faces of the rest.
“How can we believe you, Kalliopé?” asked Maurice. “You would have us believe that you took little Janni out and brought him back again, and that this had nothing to do with the Lord Harold’s disappearance. Now, be honest. Did you hand over the Lord Harold to Petros by mistake for Janni?”
He realised the futility of the question even before the dark cloud gathered on Danaë’s brow. “I mistake another for my little lord!” she cried, in supreme disdain.
“Then did you try to deceive Petros by giving him the wrong child, hoping to keep Janni here?”
“No. I was going with him myself. But of course you will not believe me. Do you believe me, lady?” she demanded suddenly of Zoe. For the moment the impulse to tell the truth from the very beginning was upon her.
“Oh, Kalliopé, how can I? You have told us so many falsehoods!” moaned Zoe. Danaë cast upon the rest a look of mingled scorn and reproach, and turned to go in at the door. But as she did so, Armitage stepped forward and took her hand.
“Lady Kalliopé, I believe what you have told us to be true. Now be brave, and you shall prove your truth to all. The Lady Zoe will joyfully acknowledge that she was wrong when she receives her child back. There must be more that you can tell us which would throw light upon his loss and help us to find him. Don’t let your pride make our grief deeper.”
Again Danaë wavered, with confession on her tongue, but a scandalised whisper from Eirene, “Lady Kalliopé, indeed!” turned aside her intention. She drew her hand away from Armitage. “I have told the truth, lord, and it is not believed. Now therefore I will take my little lord and depart from this place.”
“You will do nothing of the kind,” said Wylie sharply. “You have shown pretty plainly that you are not fit to have the charge of a child, and Janni will remain in your mistress’s care. Remember that you are under the very gravest suspicion. Go back to the nursery and try to redeem your character.”
Danaë shot a furious glance at him, and swung through the doorway with a swagger that would not have disgraced her father. This unfortunate experiment in telling at any rate part of the truth had left her absolutely convinced that she was an injured victim, and her employers cruel oppressors, but she was not going to allow them to see that their injustice could make her unhappy. When she was gone Wylie turned to his brother-in-law.
“I am sorry to have taken the words out of your mouth,” he said, “but that girl’s effrontery simply sickens me. You don’t think I was too severe?”
“Not if she was really telling lies,” said Maurice, “and if she wasn’t, she has only herself to thank for our not believing her. And most certainly she must not be allowed to take the other child away. In fact, I don’t know that it wouldn’t be wise to restrict her movements a little—forbid her to leave the upper floor of your house, for instance.”
“No, that wouldn’t do. Don’t you see, if there was any truth in the story that Petros really wanted Janni, he will come back and try to get him? He can’t very well do it without communicating with her, and if she is regularly watched while she imagines herself to be going about freely, we shall catch them both. Zoe, you had better come back and lie down.”
Zoe obeyed submissively, and Armitage went with them, trying to imbue Wylie with his own belief that Kalliopé had really told the truth at last, and they had missed a great opportunity by not recognising the fact and encouraging her to go further. When their voices had died away, Maurice turned to his wife, who was gazing straight before her.
“Eirene, I cannot imagine why you said nothing last night of seeing Kalliopé on the stairs. You can’t really mean that you thought at the time she had a child in her arms.”
“Why not? I thought, as the man Logofet did, that she was going to relieve us of her presence and that child’s, and I was not sorry.”
“But when you heard Harold was lost, it must have struck you——”
“Oh, my dear Maurice, don’t cross-examine me as you did that wretched girl! It did strike me, of course.”
“Then why didn’t you tell us? I can’t understand why you should have kept back a fact like that.”
“No, I suppose you could not understand. The reason is not one that would enter a man’s mind, very likely. Oh, Maurice, does it really want explaining? Zoe has her child, and I have lost mine; isn’t that enough?”
“But she has not got hers—that’s just the trouble.”
“No, but she has had him, and I—I thought, ‘Why should she not know for a little what I have to bear always?’”
“But, Eirene—Zoe has never done you any harm, has always been the kindest of sisters to you.”
“I told you you would not understand. You can go and play with Harold, and talk of adopting Janni. I can’t forget my own child.”
“Forget him—do you imagine I ever forget him? Eirene, why will you always behave as if the loss was yours alone? God knows it was bad enough for you, and I have tried never to make it worse by any word of mine. But you can’t think anything will ever make up to me for Con.”
“It is different with you. You only think of him as the child you played with, but to me he was the hope of the future, the heir of the Empire, before whom that upstart Romanos would fall headlong. I should have been content for your life and mine to be uneventful, even unsuccessful, if it had meant that he would one day wear the diadem in Hagion Pneuma. But now—what do you think it means to me to go through this farce of empire-building in a country town, visiting hospitals and schools and being gracious to a set of schismatics, with the knowledge that even when Romanos is expelled, no child of yours and mine will take his place? But you don’t see it. I tell you, that girl Kalliopé would understand what I feel better than you do!”
“Ah, poor wretched girl!” said Maurice thoughtfully. “We must see that the letter we were discussing last night is sent to Romanos, to say that his son is probably here.”
Eirene sprang up from her chair, her eyes blazing. “That is you all over, Maurice! You can think of the usurper even when you are blaming your wife for not showing sufficient consideration for your sister. You may be a saint, as Zoe thinks, but you are not the man for Emathia. Do you imagine that if Romanos had been in your place, Kalliopé would have left his presence without being made to tell what she knows?”
“If I am not the man for Emathia, at least it was not my own choice that took me there,” said Maurice. “But if you are right, Kalliopé at any rate has reason to be thankful I am here.”
It was without any realisation of her good fortune in this respect that Danaë repaired to the nursery on her dismissal from the inquiry. She entered the room with a certain hesitation, which was immediately justified, for Linton rose in defence of Janni like a ruffled hen.
“You dare to come back here, you wicked girl?” she cried. “Not a step do you set in my nursery, or my name isn’t Sophia Linton. And as for letting you lay a finger on the blessed lamb that’s left—why, I would sooner trust one of the girls out of the kitchen! You be off, and don’t show your face again this side of the door, or I’ll teach you something!”
Danaë might have pleaded Wylie’s order as a reason for remaining, but her fiery spirit was roused. She went straight to her own room, and took up the bundle she had prepared the night before. She would go and search for Harold herself, and when she brought him back, they would be forced to acknowledge how unjustly they had judged her. She went down the stairs, crossed the great courtyard, and would have passed out at the gate, but the man on guard there barred her way with his rifle.
“Not this way just yet, my dear,” he said with a grin. “The back-door is more your style, isn’t it?”
“Let me pass!” said Danaë. He laughed in her face.
“Got another baby in that bundle, Lady Stealer-of-Children?”
“Will you let me pass?” she cried, furious.
He became serious. “No, my girl, I won’t. You’re not to be allowed to leave the Konak. We are too fond of you to let you slip away like this,” with a return to jocularity. “When we can exchange you for our little lord, then you may go, and welcome. Back with you!”
She looked at him for a moment as though gauging the possibilities of a struggle, and he bore the scrutiny with a display of white teeth and a pleasing consciousness of the armoury of weapons in his belt. Then she turned without a word, and marched in her stateliest manner across the courtyard. Once back in her own room, she took off the good clothes which she had bought out of her wages during her sojourn at Klaustra and her coin-decorated cap, and put on the worn and dirty garments in which she had come from Therma. Unfastening her hair, she deliberately rearranged it in one long thick plait and one ridiculously short one, and twisted a handkerchief round her head. Then she walked down the stairs again and into the kitchen, and presented herself before the astonished eyes of Artemisia and her underlings.
“I am come to work here,” she said.
Amazement checked Artemisia’s utterance for a moment, but she made a gallant attempt to rise to the occasion. “Well, this is an honour, and an unexpected one!” she remarked slowly. “The gracious Lady Zoe did not tell me she was going to give me more help, or I should have asked her to send anyone rather than a child-stealer from the islands. Oh, don’t eat me, please, Lady Kalliopé! I am not a baby, you know.” A snigger from the underlings. “I suppose the Lady Zoe thought there were no children to steal down here. And you have come to work, have you? How sweetly kind of you, lady mine! But they don’t do any work in the islands, do they—except robbing guests and murdering them?”
“Let the islands alone,” said Danaë gruffly. “If you were a guest there, you would be safe even after saying that.”
“Until I had crossed the threshold, I suppose? Once I was outside I might expect a knife in my back. What are you girls laughing at?” with a change of subject disconcerting to the group of gigglers. “Don’t you see that the Lady Kalliopé has come to show us all how to work? Give her that bowl of onions, Sonya, and let us see how they peel them in the islands.”
After that, Danaë would have suffered tortures rather than resign the bowl of onions to anyone else. The tears ran down her cheeks, but she persisted in the task, and when it was over received an ironical compliment from Artemisia, and was set to clean saucepans. While this was being done, Linton appeared at the kitchen door, with rather a scared face.
“So that’s where you’ve got to, you naughty girl, giving me such a turn, thinking you’d made away with yourself, as you well might!” she cried, catching sight of Danaë. “What’s taken you down here I don’t know, but you come straight away upstairs again. My Lady says you can sit in your own room and have your meals there, and I’m to find you some needlework.”
Danaë raised her black eyes, sombre enough now, and looked straight at her. “I stay here,” she said.
“Oh, very well!” cried Linton, with suspicious readiness, “I’m sure I’ve got no objection. If Kalliopé prefers your company to mine, Artemisia, I hope you’re more flattered than I should be. You keep an eye on her, that’s all. Don’t let her give you the slip.”
“Not I, my most beloved Sofia,” responded Artemisia. “She’ll get a crack on the head with a rolling-pin if she tries it.”
“Ah, if only we had sent her straight down here when she first came, what a lot of trouble it would have saved!” lamented Linton. “You know how to manage her, you do.”
And she retired from the kitchen in a frame of mind that was almost cheerful, to assure her mistress that that bad girl Kalliopé was now where she belonged, and that it would do her a lot of good to be put back in her place after having so much notice taken of her. Zoe, discovering that the change was a voluntary one on Danaë’s part, was puzzled. Was it a kind of penance the girl was imposing on herself for her share in Harold’s disappearance, or was it more in the nature of an act of moral suicide? Danaë herself afforded her no help in deciding, for when they came across one another she met Zoe’s eager, entreating look with one of blank stolidity. From whatever motive she had chosen her present position, she was making full acquaintance with its disadvantages, for all the heaviest and most unpleasant tasks were by unanimous consent awarded to her. They were many, for the kitchen arrangements at the Konak were patriarchal, dinner being provided every day for the guards as well as for their superiors, and Artemisia had a sarcastic tongue and a heavy hand if everything was not done to her satisfaction. Danaë made no complaint, spoke to no one unless she was asked a question, and went through her work with a silent contempt for her surroundings which her associates found extremely galling. But in her own room at night she was preparing a suit of boy’s clothes, clad in which she might elude the vigilance of the guards and fulfil her purpose of escape. For the shirt, loose jacket, and heavy outer coat, her own clothes would do well enough, and the cap and long leggings were easy of manufacture. To make the linen kilt she had recourse to one of the sheets from her bed, cutting the other in two so that Linton’s eagle eye might not see that anything was wrong, and for a night or two she practised wearing the new garments, so as to accustom herself to walking in them.