[Marianne 4] - Marianne and the Rebels

by Juliette Benzoni

  She seemed in some strange way to have become two people, for she could see herself stretched out in her transparent black draperies which lay like a dark veil over her nakedness. She was lying on a low table made of stone, like an altar, beyond which rose a brazen serpent with a golden crown.

  The place itself was a grim, windowless cavern, with moisture dripping from the low, vaulted roof and slimy, pitted walls lit by great black wax candles which gave off a greenish light and an acrid smoke. Below the altar sat two of the black women in their sombre draperies, holding small round drums between their knees, on which they were beating rhythmically. Only their hands moved: everything else remaining perfectly still, even their lips which yet emitted a kind of musical humming, a strange, wordless melody. To this weird music, Ishtar was dancing.

  She was quite naked, except for a slim, golden snake which was coiled about her loins, and the candlelight shone blue-black on her gleaming skin. Eyes closed, head flung back and arms upraised, stressing the curve of her heavy, pointed breasts, she was turning in circles on the spot, whirling faster and faster, like a top…

  Abruptly, Marianne's wandering spirit which had been floating in a kind of limbo of detachment above this extraordinary scene, re-entered her prostrate body. And with the return came fear and dread, but when she tried to move, spring up and run away, she found that she could not stir. Nothing bound her to the stone table, no bonds that could be seen or felt, yet her head and limbs refused to obey her, as though she were in a trance.

  The sensation was so terrifying that she tried to cry out but no sound came. Beside her, Ishtar was now whirling madly. Sweat ran in shining trickles down her black skin and her overheated body gave off an almost unbearable wild beast odour.

  Marianne was unable even to turn away her face.

  Then she saw Matteo Damiani loom up out of a dark corner of the cavern and she wished that she could die. He came towards her slowly, his eyes wide open and staring blankly, bearing in both hands a silver cup containing some bubbling liquid. He was dressed in a long, black gown, not unlike the one Marianne had seen him wearing on the dreadful night at the Villa Sant'Anna when she had snatched Agathe from his devilish rites, but this one was patterned with long snakes in green and silver thread and was open down the front to reveal a fat, grey, hairy chest, breasted almost like a woman's.

  At his approach, Ishtar ceased her frantic dance abruptly. She dropped, panting, to the ground, pressing her lips to the man's bare feet. Matteo continued to advance as though he had felt nothing, pushing the woman aside with the toe of his black sandal.

  Reaching Marianne, he stretched out a hand to grasp the muslin tunic, and ripped it off in a single movement. Then, taking a small tray from the floor, he placed it on her stomach and set the silver cup upon it. After this, he dropped on to his knees and began chanting strange verses in some foreign tongue.

  From the depths of her paralysing trance, Marianne realized with sick horror that he was going to perform on her the same satanic rites which she had witnessed in the ruins of the little temple, only this time she was at the very centre of the black magic. It was her own body which was to be made the altar for this sacrilege.

  Ishtar had risen and was kneeling beside Matteo, playing the role of acolyte in the infernal ceremony, chanting the responses in the same unknown language.

  As her master seized the cup and drained it to the last drop, she uttered a wild shriek blending into an incantation, as if she were invoking for him the protection of some dark and terrible deity, probably the gold-crowned serpent whose emerald eyes seemed to glitter with ominous life.

  Matteo had begun to shake. He seemed to be possessed by some kind of religious mania. His eyes were dilated and rolled in their sockets and there was foam on his lips. He was making a low rumbling sound in his chest, like a volcano about to erupt. At this point, Ishtar handed him a black cockerel and he severed its neck at a stroke with a great knife. The blood flowed, splashing over the girl's naked body.

  At that, the horror that welled up in Marianne broke through the paralysing power of the drug that held her in thrall. She found her voice in the utterance of one fearful, inhuman shriek which seemed to tear itself from her rigid throat. It was as if her vocal cords had come to life of themselves and in this feeble effort had used up all her strength, for scarcely had the echoes of that dreadful cry died away in the cavern than Marianne mercifully lost consciousness.

  She did not see Matteo, at the height of his madness, cast off his robe and lean over her with outstretched hands. She did not feel him throw himself with all his weight upon her bloodstained body, possessing her with all a madman's fury. She was far away in a world without colour or sound where nothing could reach her.

  There was no way of knowing how long she remained unconscious like this, but when she surfaced at last in the real world again she was lying in the great pillared bed and she felt deathly ill.

  Possibly, in order to subdue her resistance, they had given her a dose of the drug too strong for her constitution, or perhaps the mosquitoes which, as soon as night fell and the candles were lighted, filled Venice with their whining hum had already injected their stagnant fever into her veins, but she was tormented by agonies of thirst and stabs of pain drilled through her temples.

  She felt too ill to be very much aware of what was going on around her. What little thought remained was concentrated on the single, fixed and obstinate idea of flight. She had to get away… as far away as possible, out of the reach of these devils!

  In fact, her brain had cleared sufficiently for her to realize that her long dream, which had foundered at the end so catastrophically in the worst practices of black magic, had not been entirely a dream but, in its last stages at least, a horrible reality. With the help of his black sorceress, Damiani had succeeded in violating her without the least resistance.

  The thought was at the same time revolting and destructive for Marianne knew now, beyond all doubt, that short of starving herself to death there was nothing she could do to escape from the degradation forced upon her by Damiani. There was nothing and no one to prevent her captors, whenever they chose, from employing the mysterious drug which rendered her powerless to resist the steward's lust.

  Marianne's thoughts chased one another round and round, increasing her fever and with it her thirst. She had never known such thirst. It was as though her tongue had grown to twice its normal size, filling her mouth with its swelling.

  With a painful effort, she managed to raise herself on her pillows, trying to measure the distance between herself and the water jug. The movement brought fresh stabs of pain to her head and she uttered an involuntary groan. At once a black hand put a cup to her lips.

  'Drink,' said Ishtar's quiet voice. 'You are burning hot.'

  This was true, but the presence of the black witch produced a shudder of revulsion in Marianne. She raised one hand to push away the cup but Ishtar did not move.

  'Drink!' she commanded. 'It is only a tisane. It will bring down your fever.'

  Slipping one arm underneath the pillows to lift the girl, she brought the vessel once more to the parched lips, which this time took in the tepid fluid instinctively. Marianne had no more strength to resist. Besides, it smelled pleasantly of good, familiar things, of woodland plants, mint and verbena. There was nothing suspicious there and when at last Ishtar laid her back on the pillows, Marianne had drunk it all to the last drop.

  'You will sleep again now,' she was told, 'but it will be a good sleep and you will feel better when you wake.'

  'I don't want to sleep! I don't ever want to sleep again!' Marianne burst out tearfully, seized by a fresh terror of dreams which began beautifully only to end in ugliness.

  'Why ever not? Sleep is the best medicine. And you are too tired to resist it…'

  'What about… him? That – that beast?'

  'The master is asleep also,' Ishtar responded placidly. 'He is glad because he came to you at a propitious hour and he trusts
the gods will accept his sacrifice and give you a fine son.'

  At this tranquil evocation of the ghastly scene in which she had played a principal role, Marianne was overcome by a violent spasm of nausea which left her gasping and sweating on her pillows. She was suddenly aware of the violation of her body and recoiled from it in disgust. A kindly providence had taken away her senses at the crucial moment but the shame and humiliation remained, and with it the loathing of her own flesh possessed by the other.

  How, after this, could she ever look Jason in the face, supposing that God ever allowed her to see him again? The American sea captain was everything that was open, clean-cut and straightforward in mind, in no way given to superstition. Could he accept the evil conspiracy to which Marianne had fallen victim? He was jealous, and in his jealousy violent and unbridled. He had accepted, though not easily, the knowledge that Marianne had been Napoleon's mistress. He would never bear to think of her subject to Damiani. He might even kill her… he would undoubtedly leave her, overcome with revulsion, and never return.

  These thoughts jostled and battered in Marianne's aching head with a frenzy that brought an increase of suffering and despair. Her shattered nerves broke suddenly in a burst of convulsive sobbing to which the big black woman, seated silent and motionless a little way from the bed, listened with a little frown.

  Her knowledge of potions was powerless in the face of such despair and in the end she could only shrug and tiptoe from the room, leaving her prisoner to weep her heart out, with the reflection that she must ultimately cry herself to sleep.

  In this she was right. By the time Marianne had reduced herself to the last stages of nervous exhaustion she ceased to struggle against the beneficent effects of the tisane and fell asleep with her face buried in the tear-soaked red silk of her sheets, and the last dismal thought in her head that she could always kill herself if Jason rejected her.

  Thanks to three more cups administered by Ishtar at regular intervals, the fever had subsided by the morning and Marianne found herself still weak but clear-headed and very much awake, unhappily, to the desperate nature of her situation.

  However, the despair which had overtaken her at the height of her fever had dissipated itself like a breaking wave and Marianne was herself again, with all her old zest for battle in her heart. The greater the power and wickedness of her enemies, the greater was her own determination to triumph at any cost.

  Forcing herself to begin by considering her problem calmly from all angles, Marianne attempted to get up and try her strength. The piece of metal which she had succeeded in detaching from the lock of the antique chest seemed to shine brighter than the rest and drew her like a magnet. But when she sat up in bed she saw that she had a nurse: one of the negresses was seated on the steps of the bed, with her blue tunic spread out over the bearskins.

  She was not doing anything, but simply squatting with her arms about her knees which were drawn up almost to her chin. In her dark draperies she had the air of some strange brooding bird.

  Hearing a movement, she merely turned to look at the girl and, seeing that she was awake, clapped her hands. Her companion, so like her that she might have been her shadow, entered with a tray which she set down on the bed and then seated herself, in exactly the same attitude, in the place of her sister, who bowed and went out.

  For hours the woman sat there, as though rooted to the ground, uttering no word and appearing not to hear any that were addressed to her.

  You cannot be left alone,' Ishtar said later when Marianne complained of the guard mounted at the foot of her bed. 'We cannot have you giving us the slip.'

  'Give you the slip? From here?' Marianne cried, disappointment at finding herself thus closely guarded whipping up her anger.

  'How could I? The walls are thick and there are bars at my windows – and besides, I have no clothes!'

  'There are other ways of escaping from a prison, even when the body is secured.'

  Then Marianne understood the real reason for the watch kept on her. Damiani was afraid that in her humiliation and despair she might take her own life.

  'I shall not kill myself,' she said. 'I am a Christian and Christians believe that suicide is both a coward's way out and a sin.'

  'Perhaps. But I do not think you one to balk at flouting the gods. In any case, we can leave nothing to chance. You are too precious to us now.'

  Ignoring the implications of this, Marianne let the matter drop. Let the future take care of itself! For the present, she was well aware that it was useless to insist on the removal of her watchdog, but it cost her an effort to conceal her chagrin. The woman's presence made things much more difficult. How could she make the smallest attempt to escape under that brooding black eye? Unless she could ensure that she was helpless, by stunning her first.

  The idea worked away quietly in Marianne's brain and she, who a moment before had been proclaiming herself a Christian, now coolly considered the possibility of killing her guard in order to escape. It all depended, of course, on whether she had the strength to do it and the turn of speed to surprise a creature with the reflexes of a wild cat…

  In this way, the day passed, monotonously but not without interest, in concocting any number of plans, some more practicable than others, for getting rid of her gaoler. But when night fell, Marianne knew that she had little chance of carrying out any of them, for after supper Matteo returned, walking into the room with a candlestick in his hand: a Matteo so altered from the one she had seen hitherto that for a second Marianne forgot her anger.

  It was not simply that the mad sorcerer of the other night had vanished as if he had never been, or that the man no longer showed the slightest hint of drunkenness. He had also bestowed an unaccustomed degree of care on his appearance. He was shaved, brushed, pomaded, his nails gleamed like agate and he wore a dressing-gown of heavy dark-blue silk over a dazzling white shirt. There floated about him such a powerful smell of eau-de-Cologne that for a moment Marianne was reminded of Napoleon. He, too, was in the habit of drenching himself in eau-de-Cologne like that when—

  Her brain recoiled from the horrid comparison which suggested itself. Yet Matteo certainly looked just like any rustic bridegroom on his wedding night – only without the inevitable look of embarrassment, for his face bore a triumphant smirk and he seemed highly pleased with himself.

  Marianne drew her brows together, suddenly on her guard. When she saw him set his candle down on the bedside table she uttered an indignant protest.

  'Take that candle away, and yourself too! How dare you come to me like this! What do you think you're doing?'

  'Why… I've come to sleep with you! After all, you are, in some degree, my wife now, Marianne, aren't you?'

  'Your—'

  Words failed Marianne but only for an instant. Then the torrent of her rage burst forth in a stream of abuse in several languages, borrowed indiscriminately from the stable oaths of old Dobs, her groom, and the vocabulary of Surcouf's seamen. She even succeeded in astonishing herself, and the steward fell back stupified before the storm.

  'Out!' Marianne commanded. 'Get out of here at once, you murderous brute! You miserable, sneaking cur! You're nothing but a lackey, the swinish offspring of a sow and a he-goat! Even your weapons are a lackey's weapons! The snare and the knife in the back! That's how you killed your master, isn't it? Cowardly, from behind? Or did you cut his throat while you were shaving him? Or was it a drug, like the one you used on me to get me in your power? And do you think, now, that your mumbo-jumbo has made me like yourself? Do you imagine I enjoyed the things you did to me? And do you think I must be so enamoured of your charms I'll share my bed with you, like any tradesman's wife! Take a look at yourself – and look at me! I'm no milkmaid to be tumbled in the hay, Matteo Damiani, I'm—'

  'I know what you are!' Matteo cried, his patience at an end. 'You have told me often enough! Princess Sant'Anna! Well, like it or not, I'm a Sant'Anna, too, and my blood—'

  'That is not proved, and yo
u have yet to convince me! Easy enough to claim a great lord as your father when he is no longer there to confirm it. And, so far, the way you go about things tells against you. From what I know of the Sant'Annas, they at least killed openly. Theirs may have been a cruel and merciless kind of justice, but I do not think that they would ever have recourse to an African sorceress to help them get the better of a helpless woman—'

  'Any means are fair with such a woman as you! Your own marriage was a cheat. Where is the child you pledged yourself to give your husband? Where is it, the one thing he married you for, you emperor's whore?'

  'Miserable flunkey! One of these days, before I see you hanged, I'll have you flogged until you scream for mercy, until you wish you'd never dared to raise your hand against me – or your master!'

  The room re-echoed with their rage as they confronted one another, face to face, both gripped by an equal fury, if not of an equal quality.

  Marianne, white-faced, her green eyes flashing, poured scorn on the apoplectic Damiani who, with bloodshot eyes and heavy, congested features quivering with rage, was clearly in a mood to kill, but she was past caring. Her anger was beyond all control now, and she spat out her hatred and disgust without even pausing to ask herself why this strange urge had come upon her to avenge a husband who, not so long ago, had inspired her with nothing but fear.

  Matteo, beside himself, was on the point of hurling himself at Marianne to throttle her, but even as his hands went for her throat, Ishtar sprang between them.

  'Are you mad?' she cried. 'You are the master and whatever she may say, she is yours! Why should you kill her? Have you forgotten what she means to you?'

  Her words acted on Damiani like a douche of cold water. He stood for a moment, breathing heavily, striving to take hold of himself, and then, with unexpected gentleness, he put the negress aside and turned again to Marianne.

  'She – she is right,' he gasped. 'Flunkey I may be, Princess, but this flunkey has got you with child, I doubt not, and when the child is born—'