‘You know me, you know my family,’ he cried. ‘Yet you hearken to the desperate words of a man who fights for his life with lies! How shall I satisfy you? For I have not the woman in my keeping. But have you not heard me when I swore my love for my cousin before you and the old lord who is dead? Am I a man to be forsworn? Shall I swear to you now?’
The current began to run strongly with him. He had called to his aid patriotism, and the old clan-loyalty which bound the Neopalians to his house, and they did not fail him. The islanders were ready to trust him if he would pledge himself to them.
‘Swear then!’ they cried. ‘Swear to us on the sacred picture that what the stranger says is a lie.’
‘On the sacred picture?’ said he. ‘Is it not too great and holy an oath for such a matter? Is not my word enough for you?’
But the old priest stepped forward.
‘It is a great matter,’ said he, ‘for it touches closely the honour of your house, my lord, and on it hangs a man’s life. Is any oath too great when honour and life lie in the balance? Let your life stand against his, for he who swears thus and falsely has no long life in Neopalia. Here we guard the honour of St Tryphon.’
‘Yes, swear on the picture,’ cried the people. ‘It is enough if you swear on the picture!’
I could see that Constantine was not in love with the suggestion, but he accepted it with tolerable grace, acquiescing in the old priest’s argument with a half-disdainful shrug. The people greeted his consent with obvious pleasure, save only Demetri, who regarded him with a doubtful expression. Demetri knew the truth, and, though he would cut a throat with a light heart, he would shrink from a denial of the deed when sworn on the holy picture. Truly conscience works sometimes in strange ways, making the lesser sin the greater, and dwarfing vile crimes to magnify their venial brethren. No, Demetri would not have sworn on the picture; and when he saw it brought to Constantine he shrank away from his leader, and I saw him privily and furtively cross himself. But Constantine, freed by the scepticism he had learnt in the West to practise the crimes the East had taught him, made little trouble about it. When the ceremonies that had attended the old woman’s oath earlier in the day had been minutely, solemnly, and tediously repeated, he swore before them as bravely as you please and thereby bid fair to write my death-warrant in his lying words. For when the oath was done, the most awful names in heaven standing sanction to his perjury, and he ceased, saying, ‘I have sworn,’ the eyes of the men round him turned on me again and seemed to ask me silently what plea for mercy I could now advance. But I caught at my chance.
‘Let Demetri swear,’ said I coolly, ‘that, so far as his knowledge goes, the truth is no other than what the Lord Constantine has sworn.’
‘A subterfuge!’ cried Constantine impatiently. ‘What should Demetri know of it?’