The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence

"I make no conditions," he said, "except this one: I will order no general massacre; at the same time, it would be safer for all of you not to assume insolent and overbearing airs."

Ali raised his eyebrows, and before speaking again sat down and beckoned to the page who carried his pipe.

"You will not give us a safe conduct to Tripoli, for instance?"

"No."

"You will not allow us to retain our arms?"

Petrobey laughed.

"Such is not my intention. All I will do" – and his anger suddenly flared up at the perfectly unassumed insolence of the man – "all I will do is to forbid my men to shoot you down in cold blood. You will be wise to consider that, for we may not care to grant such terms, no, nor yet be able to enforce obedience to them if we did, on the day when Tripoli is crushed like a beetle below our heel."

Ali shrugged his shoulders and took his chibouk from the hands of the page who carried it.

"Oblige me with a piece of charcoal," he said to one of the Greeks who stood by, and he lit his pipe slowly and deliberately before replying.

"Your terms are preposterous," he said; "I do not, however, say that I will not accept them, but I wish for five hours more for consideration."

"Five hours more for relief from Tripoli, in my poor judgment," remarked Petrobey. "I am afraid that will not be convenient to me. I require 'yes' or 'no'; neither more nor less."

Ali inhaled two long breaths of smoke.

"If I will give neither 'yes' nor 'no,' what then?"

"This. You shall go back in safety, and then when you are starved out, or when we take the place, I will not grant any terms. And we have a long score against you. Your rule has not been popular among my countrymen; those who have lived here under you are full of very pretty tales."

"I suppose the dogs are. I accept your terms."

Petrobey rose.

"Consider yourself my prisoner," he said, not even looking at him. "Take charge of him, Christos, and Yorgi, and order all three corps out, Yanni."

"Another piece of charcoal, one of you," said Ali. "This tobacco is a little damp."

In half an hour's time all the Turkish soldiers and civilians were defiled out of the citadel unarmed between the lines of the Greeks. They were instantly divided up among the different corps, and from that moment became the property of the soldiers as much as the Greek slaves in the last years had been the property of their Turkish masters. Many who had friends were ransomed, many became domestic slaves, and many, in the Greek phrase, "the moon devoured." The flag of Greece was hoisted on the towers, and the work which Mitsos had cried aloud in fire from Taygetus to Bassae had begun.

And on that day which saw the dawning of the freedom of Greece it seemed to these enthusiastic hearts, who for years had cherished and fed the smouldering spark which now ran bursting into flame, that earth and sea and sky joined in the glory and triumph. From its throne in the infinite blue the sun shone to their eyes with a magnificence greater than natural; to the south the sea sparkled and laughed innumerably, and the meadows round the fallen town that day were suddenly smitten scarlet with the blowing of the wind-flowers. And when the work of distributing the prisoners was over, all the army went down to the edge of the torrent-bed, and gave thanks, with singing mouths and hearts that sang, to the Giver of Victory. There, half a mile above the citadel, in a church of which the sun was the light, and the soft, cool north wind the incense that wafted thanksgiving to heaven, stood the first Greek army of free men that had known the unspeakable thrill of victory since the Roman yoke had bound them a score of hundred years ago. Some were old men, withered and gray, and ground down in long slavery to a cruel and bestial master, and destined not to see the full moon of their freedom; in some, like the seed on stony ground, a steadfast heart had no deep root, and in the times of war and desolation, which were still to come, they were to fall away, tiring of the glorious quest; some were still young boys, to whom the event was no more than a mere toy; but for the time, at any rate, all were one heart, beating full in the morning of a long-delayed resurrection. Standing on a mound in the centre were four-and-twenty priests, in the front of whom was Father Andréa, tall, and eyed like a mountain hawk, with a heart full of glory and red vengeance. And, when lifting up the mightiest voice in Greece, he gave out the first words of that hymn which has risen a thousand times to the clash of victorious arms, the voice of a great multitude answered him, and the sound was as the sound of many waters. All the ardor and hot blood of the Greeks leaped like a blush to the surface, and on all sides, mixed with the noise of the singing, rose one great sob of a thankful people born again. Petrobey, with Nicholas on one side and Mitsos and Yanni on the other, hardly knew that the tears were streaming down his tanned and weather-beaten cheeks, and to the others, as to him, memory and expectation were merged and sunk in the present ineffable moment. There was no before or after; they were there, men of a free people, and conscious only of the one thing – that the first blow had been struck, and struck home and true, that they thanked God for the power He had given them to use.

And when it was over Petrobey turned to Nicholas, and smiling at him through his tears:

"Old friend," he said.

And Nicholas echoed his words, echoed that which was too deep for words, and —

"Old friend," he replied.

CHAPTER II

TWO SILVER CANDLESTICKS

For two days longer the army remained at Kalamata in an ecstasy of success. Petrobey posted several companies of men on the lower hills of Taygetus and at the top of the plain, from which a pass led into Arcadia, in ambush for any relieving force from Tripoli, should such be sent. Flushed with victory as they were, nothing seemed impossible, and the spirit of the men was to march straight on that stronghold of the Turkish power. But Petrobey was wiser; he knew that this affair at Kalamata had been no real test of the army's capacity; they had stood with folded arms, and the prey had dropped at their feet. To attack a strongly fortified place, competently held, was to adventure far more seriously. At present he had neither men nor arms enough, and the only sane course was to wait, embarking, it might be, on enterprises of the smaller sort, till with the news of their exploit the rising became more general. In the mean time he remained at Kalamata in order to get tidings from the north of the Morea as to the sequel of the beacon there, and, if expedient, to unite his troops with the contingent from Patras and Megaspelaion. As commander-in-chief of the first army in the field, he issued a proclamation, declaring that the Greeks were determined to throw off the yoke of the Turk, and asking for the aid of Christians in giving liberty to those who were enslaved to the worshippers of an alien god.

The primates and principal clergy of the Morea, it will be remembered, had been summoned to Tripoli for the meeting at the end of March, and the scheme that the wisdom of Mitsos had hatched, to give them an excuse for their disobedience, had met with entire success. Germanos, who both spoke and wrote Turkish, forged a letter, purporting to come from a friendly Mussulman at Tripoli, warning him to beware, for Mehemet Salik, thinking that a rising of the Greeks was imminent, had determined to put one or two of the principal men to death in order to terrorize the people, and with the same stone to deprive them of their leaders. With this in his pocket, he set out and travelled quietly to Kalavryta, where he found other of the principal clergy assembled at the house of Zaimes, the primate of the place. Germanos arrived there in the evening, and before going to bed gave the forged letter to Lambros, his servant, telling him to start early next morning, ride in the direction of Tripoli, then turn back and meet the party at their mid-day halt. He was then to give the letter to his master, saying that he had received it from a Turk on the road, who hearing that he was Germanos's servant, told him, as he valued his life and the life of his master, not to spare spur till he had given it him, and on no account to hint a word of the matter to any one.

Lambros, who had the southern palate for anything smacking of drama and mystery, obeyed in letter and spirit, and at mid-day, while the primates were halting, he spurred a jaded, foam-streaked horse up the road, flung himself quickly off, and gave the forged communication to his master. Germanos glanced through it with well-feigned dismay and exclamations of astonished horror, and at once read it aloud to the assembled primates, who were struck with consternation. Some suggested one thing and some another, but every one looked to Germanos for an authoritative word.

"This will we do, my brothers," he said, "if it seems good to you: I will send this letter to my admirable friend – or so I still think – Mehemet Salik, and ask for a promise of safety, a matter of form merely. Yet we may not disregard what my other admirable friend has said, for if, as God forbid, it is true, where would our flock be without their shepherds? But if it is false, Mehemet will at once send us a promise of safety. Meantime, we must act as if the truth of this letter were possible, and I suggest that we all disperse, and for our greater safety each surround himself with some small guard. And before the answer comes back, it may be" – he looked round and saw only the faces of patriots – "it may be that there will be other business on hand" – and his face was a beacon.

It is probable that more than one of the primates guessed that the letter was a forgery, but they were only too glad to be supplied with a specious excuse for delaying their journey, and followed Germanos's advice.

Then followed those ten days of feverish inaction, while on Taygetus Petrobey collected the forces which were to be the doom of Kalamata. Evening by evening patient men climbed to the hills where the beacon fuel was stacked, questioning the horizon for the signal, and morning by morning returned to the expectant band of patriots in their villages, saying "Not yet, not yet," until one night the signs of fire shouted from south to north of the land, telling them that the Vintage was ripe for harvest. At Kalavryta, where the first blow in the north was struck, they found the Turks even less ready than at Kalamata, and little expecting the soldiers of God in their companies from the monastery; and on the 3d of April the town surrendered on receiving, as at Kalamata, a promise that there should be no massacre. The place was one of little importance among the Turkish towns, but of the first importance to the revolutionists, lying as it did in the centre of the richest valley in Greece, and in close proximity to Megaspelaion, and it became the centre of operations in the north. Also, it was valuable inasmuch as several very wealthy Turks lived there, and the money that thus fell into the hands of the Greeks was food for the sinews of war.

As soon as this reached Kalamata, Petrobey determined to move. The wholesale success of the patriots in the north showed that they were in no need of immediate help, and to have two different armies in the field, one driving the Turks southward, the other northward into Tripoli, the central fortress of Ottoman supremacy, was ideal to his wishes. But more than ever now soberness and strength were needed; the men hearing of the taking of Kalavryta were wild to unite with the northern army and march straight on Tripoli. But Petrobey, backed by Nicholas, was as firm as Taygetus; such a course could only end in disaster, for they were yet as ignorant as children of the elements of war, and it would be an inconceivable rashness now to venture on that which would be final disaster or the freedom of the Morea. They must learn the alphabet of their new trade; what better school could there be than their camp on the slopes of Taygetus, the lower hill-sides of which were covered with Turkish villages, and where they would not, from the nature of the ground, be exposed to the attacks of cavalry? So, after making great breaches in the walls of the citadel of Kalamata, and filling up the well, so that never again could it be used as a stronghold, they marched back across the blossomed plain and up to the hill camp below the beacon with the glory of success upon them.

Three nights later Yanni and Mitsos were sitting after supper in the open air by a camp-fire. Yanni, still rather soft from his month's fattening at Tripoli – "And, oh, Yanni," said Mitsos, "but it is a stinging affair to have fattened a little pig like you, and never have the eating of it" – was suffering from a blister on his heel, and Mitsos prescribed spirits on the raw or pure indifference.

"If you had been cooped and fattened as I, little Mitsos," said Yanni, in an infernally superior manner, "how much running do you think you could lay leg to? As it is, if you continue to eat as you eat, what a belly-man will Mitsos be at thirty!"

Mitsos pinched Yanni over the ribs.

"Poor Mehemet!" he said, "all that for nothing. I have a fine cousin who is only just twenty, and if you said he was fat, man, you wouldn't give a person any proper notion of him."

"My blister is worse than it was yesterday," said Yanni, pulling off his shoe.

"There was a show at Nauplia last year," continued Mitsos, lying lengthily back and looking at the stars, "and a fat woman in it. When she walked she wobbled like a jelly-fish. Just about as fat as a cousin of mine."

"Oh!"

"She wasn't married, the man said, and was to be had for the asking. I hate fat women almost as much as I hate fat men."

Nicholas had strolled out of his hut, and was standing behind the boys as they talked.

"Now look at Uncle Nicholas, Yanni," said Mitsos, still unconscious of his presence, "he will be some twelve good inches taller than you, and forty years older; but I doubt if you could tie his trousers-strings."

Nicholas laughed.

"I can do it myself, little Mitsos," he said. "Come in, you two; there is work forward."

Yanni sprang up and stepped into his shoe, forgetting the blister.

"A journey," he said, "for Mitsos and me? Oh, Mitsos, it is good."

"Yanni cannot walk," said Mitsos; "he has a blister, and must needs be carried like a scented woman."

"A blister?" asked Nicholas. "Don't think about it."

"So said I," answered Mitsos, "but he has no thought for aught else in God's world."