The Capsina: An Historical Novel

by E. F. Benson

"So you have come," and she looked up. "Ah, it is day already," and she quenched an oil-lamp that was burning by her. "I was going to send for you and more men when day broke, for it was no good coming at night. I only stayed because I could not go away. Send for more men from our ship, little Mitsos, and you, Kanaris, from yours, for we must make speed, leaving only a few there and a few on the shore, who will send word if the Turks are seen. And let those on board be in readiness to sail at a moment. Ah!" she went on, with a sudden lifting of her hands indescribably piteous, "we should have come straight through Lepanto and chanced everything. Then, perhaps, we might have saved the place. This," and she clasped her hands together and then threw them apart—"this was the house from which my father took his bride. Ah, ah!"—and she took up her axe and fell to hewing at the beam again, like a thing possessed.

It was no time to waste words, and as soon as the fresh contingents came, some with axes, others with ship's cutlasses and capstan-bars, or anything that would help clear the wreckage, Mitsos and Kanaris went off and began searching the houses for those who might still be alive. They found that the massacre had taken place and been done with thoroughness before the burning began, and the devil's work had been carried out coolly and systematically. At the end of the street leading up out of the village towards the mountain there had evidently been some sort of combined stand made by the villagers, for there the corpses lay thick; and higher up on the path lay others who had run for their lives, only to be shot down by those infernal marksmen as they climbed the steep hill-side. But an hour's search was rewarded by Mitsos finding one man who still breathed, but who died not half an hour after; and farther on, in the front room of a house, he discovered a woman lying dead, while on her breast lay a baby, alive and seemingly unhurt, who pulled at its mother's dress crying for food.

Then he turned and searched the houses opposite on the other side of the street, but found nothing that lived, and so came back to the church, which stood with doors open, and being built of stone throughout, the Turks had not attempted to fire.

To make the search thorough, though not expecting to find any one there, he entered, and then stopped with a quick-drawn gasp.

No pillage had been done there, the place was orderly and quiet; a row of little silver lamps untouched and lighted hung across the church above the low altar-screen; a big brass candlestick stood on the left, filled with the great festa tapers, still burning. Only from the great wooden crucifix which stood above the altar the carved Christ had been removed, and in its place, fastened hand and foot by nails and bound there by a rope, was the figure of a young man, naked.

Mitsos paused only for a moment, crossed himself, and without speech beckoned to the others. The door of the altar-screen was locked, but putting his weight to it, he burst it open. Then, with three others, he mounted onto the altar, and lifting the cross from its place, laid it on the floor. The figure on it lay quite still, but there was no other mark of violence on it than the rents in the hands and feet made by the nails, and even as Mitsos wrapped a piece torn from his shirt round one of them to get a firmer hold, the lad stirred his head and opened his eyes.

"Fetch Kanaris," said Mitsos, to one of the men; "he has skill in these things."

One by one the nails were loosened and the limbs freed, and Mitsos carried the lad down the church out into the fresh air, where he propped him up against the door. The blood had clotted thickly round the wounds, and though the withdrawal of the nails had caused it to break out afresh, Mitsos managed to stay the flow by bandaging the arms and legs tightly where they joined the body, as Nikolas had taught him to do. The lad had fainted again, but one of the sailors, a rough Hydriot fellow down whose cheeks the tears were running, though he knew it not, had spirits with him, and poured a draught down the young man's throat, and in a little while he moved one arm feebly. Another had found his clothes laid by the altar, and Mitsos tenderly, like a woman, wrapped these round him as well as he could without jarring him, and then, lifting him gently off the stones where they had set him down, laid him across his knees, supporting his head on his shoulder.

Before long Kanaris came, washed and bound up the wounds, and, as the life began to run more freely and the hopes of saving him increased, arranged a litter with leaves and branches strewn on an unhinged door, and had him carried down to the ship.

When he was gone Mitsos went back into the church, and putting the carved image back onto the cross, set it again in its place above the altar. Then for that he had committed sacrilege in standing there, he knelt down before he left the church.