'Johannes! Johannes reigns! God and the Emperor! Emperor Johannes!'
That was what the voices shouted from the gate, as the multitude swept in, driving the sentinels and guards before them as the gale drives dry leaves. With but one breathing-space for thought and resolve, the guards in their scarlet tunics closed round Andronicus like waves of blood in the deep dusk, and he went down under them, and heard them answer the coming people--
Zoë heard the cry through her torment and forgot the pain for one moment, and the next, the dumb Ethiopian who had held her, slit the torturer's bandage and plucked the walnut shell from under her arm, with its living contents, and threw them away; for he had seen Andronicus go down, and knew that there was a new master. Then some of the men, who remembered it afterwards, saw the corpse-faced man grovelling on the ground and searching for his treasure, which could make the toughest victim speak before one could count ten score; for he served the Emperor, whoever he might be, as he and his father before him had served many. No one ever killed the torturer. So he went amongst the trampling feet on his hands and knees, feeling nothing, if so be that he might find his pet and get it back safely into its cage in his bosom. And when he found it still in the walnut shell, by the strange chance that protects all evil, he laughed like a maniac and slipped between the guards' legs on all fours, like a hideous white-faced ape, and ran away into the palace.
Zoë had opened her eyes, and the pain was gone, leaving only a throb behind, and she gathered her torn tunic to her neck with one hand as best she could and slipped out of the turmoil; and only she, of all those that heard the first shout, knew how it was that the people were cheering for the delivered Emperor, while Johannes was still shut up in the tower and guarded by the deaf-and-dumb Africans; and in the glorious triumph of her plan she forgot everything else but the man she loved, and he was safe now, beyond all doubt. Was he not the friend of the restored Johannes? The soldiers would not dare, on their lives, to keep him a prisoner now, not for one hour, not for one moment.
And there he rode, surely enough, in the front rank of the multitude, on the right hand of Emperor John. She knew him, though the last grey light was fading from the sky. She would have known him in the dark, it seemed to her that if she had been blind she would have known that he was near; and her joy rose in her throat, after the torture she had endured, and almost choked her, so that she reeled unsteadily and gasped for breath.