Helena clasped her hands over her ears.
"Take him away," she screamed to the blacks. "Take him to the Cæsar!"
As his guards hustled him from the room he had his last sight of her, collapsed in a chair. The fire had gone out of her; she was a mediæval woman, trembling before curses that she knew were justified.
The blacks conducted him through a long series of passages, continually descending into the foundations of the palace enclosure, deep down under the terrace upon which it was built. Torches or lamps lighted the way, and the guards encountered at intervals were all Æthiopians, for not even the Varangians were admitted to this secluded part of the palace beneath the Imperial residence. It seemed to Hugh that they walked an interminable distance before they reached a heavy door which swung open to the tap of one of his guards.
The room inside was stone-walled and scantly furnished. In one corner gleamed a brazier heaped with lighted coals in which were thrust long-handled iron contrivances. About the walls were ranged other machines, the use of which Hugh understood at a glance. There were a rack, a wheel, a machine for stretching apart the legs to cause a rupture, an iron boot for crushing the leg-bones, thumb-screws, a chair from the seat of which sharp spikes could be shot upward and divers other fiendish tools. It was probably the most perfectly equipped torture-chamber in the world.
After one swift glance around the room, Hugh's eyes fastened on the table at the farther end. On the opposite side of it sat Comnenus and Mocenigo. The face of the Italian was creased by a tigerish grimace.
"Ha, Messer de Chesby," he said with mock courtesy. "I greet you well. Belike, fair sir, you will recall the farewell I gave you upon the occasion of our last meeting? I have been looking forward to this day these many months past."
Hugh eyed him with contempt and turned upon the Cæsar, who affected to be deeply engrossed in a scroll of parchment.
"A right knightly rôle you play, Lord Cæsar," said Hugh cuttingly. "You set your daughter to trap a man who saved your lives, and then prepare to torture him—to gratify what spite I know not, save it be to satisfy the outcast beside you."
Comnenus ruffled the parchment abstractedly.