The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence

by E. F. Benson

Zuleika, for it was she who had spoken, stopped crying for amazement.

"She has gone," she said. "Oh, that I had gone with her. She would not stop within, but went down-stairs and out, I suppose. And in a few days, perhaps sooner, will her baby be born. Oh, what are you going to do with us?"

And she caught hold of him by the arm.

Nicholas disengaged her fingers, but gently.

"You are sure she has gone?" he said. Then to the soldiers who were with him: "Will you allow me to search the other rooms; it is only she whom I want?"

"And what should you want with her?" said one of them, gruffly. "All that is in the house is ours."

"Oh, man, do not be a fool," said Nicholas. "The woman is a free Greek, and free she shall be. She was carried off by this Turk years ago. Come, let me go into the other rooms to be sure she is not here, for if she is not I must seek her outside. It is a promise, and a promise to little Mitsos."

The other consented, still reluctantly, and Nicholas looked through the house from roof to cellar, but found her not. And "Ah, poor lad," he thought, "but this will be bitter news, for if she has gone into the streets, God save her!"

It was now one hour past noon, and in the hot, breathless air already the thick sour smell of blood hung about the street. The square was a shambles, neither more nor less, and the dead lay about in heaps. With the peasants from the country had come in hungry, half-wild dogs, and as Nicholas passed the square again, now deserted by the besiegers for the great mass of the town which lay higher up the slope towards the citadel, two or three of these slunk away with red dripping mouths from their horrible banqueting; but one, hungrier or bolder than the others, stood there over the body of a child snarling at him. The sight sickened him, and he shot the animal through the head. Black patches of flies swarmed in hundreds over the congealed pools of blood, and rose with an unclean whir and buzz as he approached. The heat was stifling, and from the tower where he had planted it but four hours ago the flag hung in folds round its staff. The deadly taint of death was in the air, with the foul odors of flesh already putrefying. Nicholas felt suddenly faint and weary, but seeing a stream of water running down one of the gutters in the square all red and turbid, he followed it up and found where it sprang from—a leaden pipe out of a lion's mouth in one of the side streets. He drank deeply of it, and bathed his face and hands there, and feeling refreshed followed on towards where he knew the Mainats would be. Mixed with the dead were not a few Greeks, and as he passed up the street he saw with a sudden pang of horror three or four bodies, apparently lifeless, stir, and from below there came out the hand of a living man, striving to get hold of something by which he could pull himself up. Nicholas turned the bodies off and found a Greek soldier below, whom he carried into the shade, and fetched him water. The man was but slightly wounded in the arm, the gash was already beginning to clot over, and Nicholas, having bound up the place with a strip of his fustanella, left him, for there was much work to be done.

Right and left from the houses in the street came cries and screams, and now and then a woman, with her clothes perhaps half torn off her, would steal out like a cat, and seeing Nicholas, either steal back again or run from him. After each of these, he shouted some sentence in Greek, but got no response. Once a child ran up to him, howling with tears and pain, and showed him a horrible gash in its arm, wantonly inflicted by one of his countrymen, babbling to him in Turkish that it could not find its mother. Then Nicholas, despite his fierce vows to have no pity on man, woman, or child for the wrong that had been done to him and his by that pitiless race, waited ten minutes to bind up the wound, and—for what else could he do—bade the child get out of the town, for its mother was outside. On his way he passed several Greek soldiers, one dragging a woman after him, another with his hands full of a pile of gold and silver, the smaller pieces of which dropped through his fingers as he walked. Nicholas inquired where the Mainats were, and was told he would find a number of them at a big square house on the slope up to the citadel gate, which they had just entered. Fighting seemed to be going on in an upper story, and even as he approached a group of men, Turks and Greeks mixed, appeared on the house-top. Next moment two who were struggling together toppled and fell against the thin railing which lined the roof; it broke under their weight, and both men, still clutching at each other's throats, fell toppling over into the street with a horrid crash and sound of breaking. The Turk was living and moved feebly, but the head of the Mainat was smashed like an egg.