[CHAPTER XII]
LAW AND ORDER
At last the whirligig seemed to have taken a turn in my favour, the revolutions of the wheel at last to have brought my fortune uppermost. For the sight of Francesca in Panayiota’s arms came pat in confirmation of the story wrung from Demetri by the power of his oath, and his ‘Behold!’ was not needed to ensure acceptance for his testimony. From women rose compassionate murmurs, from men angry growlings which expressed, while they strove to hide, the shamefaced emotions that the helpless woman’s narrow escape created. Her salvation must bring mine with it; for it was the ruin of her husband and my enemy.
Kortes and another dragged Constantine Stefanopoulos forward till he stood within two or three yards of his wife. None interposed on his behalf or resented the rough pressure of Kortes’s compelling hand. And even as he was set there, opposite the women, they, roused by the subdued stir of the excited throng, awoke. First into one another’s eyes, then round upon us, came their startled glances; then Francesca leapt with a cry to her feet, ran to me, and threw herself on her knees before me, crying, ‘You’ll save me, my lord, you’ll save me?’ Demetri hung his head in sullen half-contrition mingled with an unmistakable satisfaction in his religious piety; Constantine bit and licked his thin lips, his fists tight clenched, his eyes darting furtively about in search of friends or in terror of avengers. And Phroso said in her soft clear tones:
‘There is no more need of fear, for the truth is known.’
Her eyes, though they would not meet mine, rested long in tender sympathy on the woman who still knelt at my feet. Here indeed she remained till Phroso came forward and raised her, while the old priest lifted his voice in brief thanks to heaven for the revelation wrought under the sanction of the Holy Saint. For myself, I gave a long sigh of relief; the strain had been on me now for many hours, and it tires a man to be knocking all day long at the door of death. Yet almost in the instant that the concern for my own life left me (that is a thing terribly apt to fill a man’s mind) my thoughts turned to other troubles: to my friends, who were—I knew not where; to Phroso, who had said—I scarcely knew what.
Suddenly, striking firm and loud across the murmurs and the threats that echoed round the ring in half-hushed voices, came Kortes’s tones.
‘And this man? What of him?’ he asked, his hand on Constantine’s shaking shoulder. ‘For he has done all that the stranger declared of him: he has deceived our Lady Euphrosyne, he has sought to kill this lady here, we have it from his own mouth that he slew the old lord, though he knew well that the old lord had yielded.’
Constantine’s wife turned swiftly to the speaker.
‘Did he kill the old lord?’ she asked. ‘He told me that it was Spiro who struck him in the heat of the brawl.’