Marianne and the Rebels

by Жюльетта Бенцони

  It was not far, but to Marianne, carried up and down several times, half-suffocated, it seemed interminable. The cloth in which she was enveloped had a peculiar smell, of incense and jasmine combined with another, more exotic odour. She tried to struggle free of it but whoever was carrying her seemed to be unusually strong and her efforts only made them tighten the grip on her ankles painfully.

  She felt them climb one more flight of steps and walk forward a little way. A door creaked. Finally, came the feel of soft cushions underneath her and almost at the same moment the light returned. Not before time: the stuff in which she had been muffled must have been remarkably thick, since no air had penetrated it.

  She took a few deep breaths before sitting up and looking round to see who had brought her here. The sight that met her eyes was strange enough to make her wonder for a moment if she were dreaming. Three women stood a little way from the bed, eyeing her curiously, but three such women as Marianne had never seen before.

  They were all very tall and dressed identically in dark blue draperies with a silver stripe and a multiplicity of bangles, and they were all three black as ebony and so alike that Marianne thought exhaustion must be making her eyes play tricks.

  Then one woman moved away from the group and gliding like a ghost towards the open door vanished through it. Her bare feet made no sound on the black marble floor and, but for the silvery tinkle that accompanied her movements, Marianne might have believed her an apparition.

  The other two, taking no further notice of her, began lighting a number of tall candles made of yellow wax which were set in large iron candle-holders ranged about the floor. Slowly, the details of the room began to emerge.

  It was a very large room, and at the same time sumptuous and sinister. The tapestries hung from the stone walls were picked out in gold, yet the scenes they portrayed were of an almost unbearable violence and carnage. The furniture comprised an enormous oak chest, massively locked, and a selection of ebony chairs covered in red velvet, all suggesting a positively medieval degree of discomfort. A heavy lantern made of gilded bronze and red crystals hung from the beamed ceiling, but was unlighted.

  The couch on which Marianne herself was lying was nothing less than an immense four-poster bed, big enough for a whole family and draped all round with heavy curtains of black velvet lined with red taffetas, to match the gold-fringed counterpane. The hems of the curtains were lost in the black bearskin rugs that covered the two steps on which the bed stood raised up, like an altar dedicated to some savage divinity.

  To shake off the dread which was creeping over her, Marianne tried to speak.

  'Who are you?' she asked. 'Why have you brought me here?'

  But her voice seemed to her to come from a long way off, faint and distant as in the worse nightmares. Nor did either of the negresses make the slightest sign to show that they had heard. By now, all the candles were alight, reflecting bunches of flames in the black tiles that shone like a lake beneath the moon. Another candlestick on the chest was also alight.

  In a little while, the third woman returned bearing a heavily laden tray which she set down on the chest. But when she approached the bed, gesturing to the others to follow, Marianne saw that the resemblance between the three came largely from their being all much of a height and size and from their dress, for the third was by far the most beautiful. In her the negroid characteristics so marked in the other two were refined and stylized. Her eyes were cold and steely blue, almond-shaped, and despite the almost animal sensuality of her thick lips, the profile might have belonged to some ancient Egyptian queen. Certainly the girl had all a queen's proud grace and scornful assurance. Seen in the melancholy light of the candles, she and her companions made a strange group, but there was no doubt as to who was mistress: the other two were clearly there only to obey her.

  At a sign from her, they seized hold of Marianne again and pulled her upright. The beautiful negress, ignoring her feeble attempts at resistance, which were quickly overcome, began to unfasten the girl's crumpled dress. When it was off, she also removed the undergarments and stockings.

  Naked, Marianne was borne away by her captors, who seemed possessed of phenomenal strength, to a sunken bath. She was deposited on a stool in the middle and the negress proceeded to wash her with a sponge and scented soap, still without uttering a word. Marianne's attempts to break the silence had no effect whatever.

  Suspecting that the women were as dumb as the handsome Jacopo, Marianne submitted without further protest. The journey had been a tiring one and she felt weary and dirty. The bath was invigorating and when, after energetic towelling, the woman began to massage her body with hands which were suddenly amazingly gentle, rubbing in a strangely pungent oil which soothed all the tiredness out of her muscles, Marianne felt much better. After that her hair was brushed and brushed again until it crackled.

  Finally, washed and brushed, she was carried back to the bed, which had been turned down, revealing purple-red silk sheets. The chief of the women brought the tray and set it down on a small table by the bed, then, ranged in a line at the foot of the bed, the three strange waiting-women bowed slowly in unison, turned and filed out of the door.

  Marianne had been too much astonished to make the slightest move, and it was not until the last one had disappeared that she became aware that they had taken her clothes with them, leaving her alone in the room with no other covering than her own long hair, except, of course, for the covers of the bed on which they had placed her.

  The purpose for which she had been left lying naked on the turned-down bed was self-evident, and all Marianne's sense of physical well-being evaporated swiftly in a single furious gust of anger. She had been made ready, stretched on the sacrificial altar as an offering to the lusts of the man who called himself her master, like the virgins and the white heifers once offered up to the old pagan gods. All she needed now was a crown of flowers on her head!

  The three negresses must be slaves, bought by Damiani from some African trader, but it was not hard to guess what relations the creature enjoyed with the most beautiful one. Gentle her hands might be, but her eyes, as she bestowed her skilled attentions on the person of the newcomer, betrayed her feelings unmistakably: that woman hated her, probably seeing her as a new favourite and a dangerous rival.

  Marianne felt herself colouring with shame and anger at the word. Seizing one of the red sheets, she hauled it off the bed and swathed it round her, like the wrappings of a mummy. She felt better then, and much more confident. How could she retain any dignity before her enemy if she were obliged to face him naked as a slave in a slave market?

  Thus swaddled, she set out to explore the room in search of a way out, a crack through which to slip to freedom. But apart from the door, which was low and forbidding, a real prison door sunk in walls more than a yard thick, there were only two narrow pillared windows giving on to a blind inner courtyard, and these were blocked on the outside by a kind of cage of criss-cross iron bars.

  There was no escape in that direction, short of prising out the bars and risking a nasty fall to the paved bottom of the well, from which there might be no other exit. It smelled unpleasantly damp and mildewy.

  Yet there must be some means of access down there, a door or a window perhaps, because she could see a leaf fluttering in a draught of some kind. But that was mere guesswork and in any case how could she possibly escape, stark naked, from a house which could only be reached by water? She could hardly swim in a sheet, but neither could she imagine herself rising like Venus from the waves of the Grand Canal to go knocking coolly on someone's front door.

  So the motive in removing her clothes had been twofold: to deliver her, helpless, into Damiani's arms, and at the same time make it impossible for her to escape.

  With a heavy heart, Marianne made her way back to the bed and sat down on it dejectedly, trying to collect her thoughts and overcome her fears. It was no easy task. Then her eye fell on the tray which had been left for her. Without t
hinking, she lifted the gilded cover from one of the two plates set on the lace cloth alongside a golden-brown roll and wine in a speckled carafe of Murano glass, slender and graceful as a swan's neck.

  A savoury smell rose from the dish which contained a stew of some kind that made Marianne's mouth water. She realized suddenly that she was ravenously hungry and, seizing the golden spoon, plunged it eagerly into the luscious-looking caramel-coloured gravy. Then, with the spoon half-way to her lips, she paused, struck by an unpleasant thought: suppose this delicious-smelling dish contained a drug which would send her to sleep and leave her a defenceless prey to her enemy, like a fly in a spider's web?

  Fear was stronger than hunger. Marianne put down the spoon and turned instead to the other cover. The second dish contained rice but that too was served with such unfamiliar sauce that the prisoner renounced it also. She was already feeling quite sufficiently alarmed about that inevitable moment when, overcome with fatigue, she would be bound to fall asleep at last. There was no need to meet the danger half-way.

  With a sigh, she nibbled at the roll, which alone looked really harmless, but it was not nearly enough to satisfy her hunger. The carafe of wine was rejected also, after a tentative sniff, and, sighing again, Marianne got out of bed, trailing festoons of red sheet, and drank from the big silver ewer which the black woman had used for her bath.

  The water was warm with a disagreeably musty after-taste but it went some way towards quenching a thirst which was growing every moment more intolerable. The heat which had hung over Venice all day had not abated with nightfall. On the contrary, it seemed to have grown still more oppressive and not even the thick walls of the room could keep it out. The dark red silk of the sheet clung to Marianne's skin, and for a second she was tempted to take it off and lie down naked on the tiles which felt so cool to the soles of her feet. But that sheet was her only protection, her last refuge, and so, reluctantly, she resigned herself to returning to the sumptuous bed, which made her nearly as uneasy as the food on the tray.

  She had scarcely got in before the beautiful negress was back and gliding towards the bed with her lithe tread, like some half-tamed jungle cat.

  Marianne recoiled instinctively, shrinking into her pillows, but the woman ignored the movement, perhaps interpreting it as one of fear or dislike, and raised the covers from the two plates. Her eyes gleamed mockingly under their blue-painted lids and, picking up the spoon, she began to eat as calmly as if she were alone.

  In a few minutes both plates and carafe were empty. A sigh of repletion greeted the end of the meal and Marianne could not help finding this quiet demonstration infinitely more mortifying than any quantity of reproaches, since it carried overtones of both mockery and contempt. The woman seemed positively to enjoy making her caution look like cowardice.

  Stung, and seeing moreover no reason to go on starving herself voluntarily, Marianne said shortly:

  'I do not care for those foreign dishes. Bring me some fruit.'

  Considerably to her surprise, the negress acquiesced with a flicker of her eyelids and clapped her hands at once. When one of her companions appeared, she said something to her in a guttural foreign language. It was the first time Marianne had heard her voice: it was strangely deep and almost without inflexion, and went well with her enigmatic character. One thing, however, was quite certain. The woman might not speak Italian but she understood Marianne's. The fruit duly arrived in a very few minutes. And at least the woman could speak.

  Encouraged by this success, Marianne selected a peach and then, in a perfectly normal tone, asked for her clothes, or at the least for a nightgown. But this time the negress shook her head.

  'No,' she said simply. 'The master forbids.'

  'The master?' Marianne took her up at once. 'That man is not master here. He is my servant and nothing in this house is his. It belongs to my husband.'

  'I belong to him.'

  It was said on the surface, quite calmly but with a curious throb of passion underlying the simplicity of the words. Marianne was not greatly surprised. From the first moment of seeing the beautiful negress, she had sensed that there was something between her and Damiani. She was both his slave and his mistress, ministering to his vices and ruling him, no doubt, through the sensual power of her beauty. There could be no other explanation for the presence of the three strange black women in the Venetian palace.

  However, the prisoner had no time to ask the questions on the tip of her tongue, for at that moment the door opened to admit Matteo Damiani himself, still decked in his gold dalmatic, but terrifyingly drunk.

  Lurching, he started to cross the shining expanse of tiles, one hand stretched out before him in search of support. He found it in one of the columns of the bed and clung there, gripping it with all his strength.

  Marianne watched with disgust the nearer approach of that dark, mottled face, its once not ignoble features now dissolved in fat. The eyes which she remembered clear, insolent, even ruthless, were bloodshot and wandering like candle flames in a draught.

  He was panting as if he had just run a long way, and the smell of his breath, heavy and sour, sickened her. He spoke thickly.

  'Well, then, my beauties? Been – getting to know each other, have you?'

  Her mind torn between disgust, fear and sheer astonishment, Marianne tried vainly to understand how the man had come to this. He had been strange, even frightening, but he had possessed a certain dignity and an overweening vanity. How could that devil, whom Leonora had painted in all the colours of the subtlest evil, and whom Marianne herself had seen practising the rites of black magic, have become this lump of lard soused in drink? Was it the ghost of his unhappy and too-trusting master haunting the faithless servant who had murdered him? Always supposing Matteo Damiani was capable of remorse.

  Casting himself bodily on to the bed, he was clutching with trembling fingers at the red silken sheet which covered the cowering Marianne.

  Take this off, Ishtar!… It's too hot… and anyway, I told you I would not have you leave her any clothes! She… she's a slave and s-shlaves go naked in that heathenish land of yours. S-shlaves and c-cattle! An' she's the brood mare on whom I'll get the princely foal I need.'

  'You're drunk!' the black woman told him with contempt. 'If you go on soaking yourself this way you'll never get your foal – unless another does it for you. Look at you, sprawling there! You're in no fit state to make love!'

  The man gave a drunken laugh which ended in a hiccup.

  'Give me some of your potion, Ishtar, an' I'll be s-shtronger 'n' a bull! Bring me a drink to heat my blood, my lovely witch! An' be sure you give her some as well… make her pull like a she-cat on heat… But first, help me to get this off her! Let me once see her body and I'll be strong again! I've dreamed of it… night after night!'

  He scrabbled at the sheet with clumsy, drunken hands, itemizing her charms with a madman's concentration, while the girl shrank away from him in horror. Within an ace of retching, she sought desperately for some way of fending off the drunkard and his black helper. Terror lent her unexpected strength. Snatching the silky fabric out of the fat man's hands, she jerked herself with a swift twist of her body sideways out of bed and across the room, securing the sheet tightly under her arms as she ran. As she had done earlier downstairs, she grasped the iron candelabra on the coffer with both hands and held it poised, with its load of lighted candles. Burning hot wax fell on her arms and on her naked shoulders, but anger and fright redoubled her strength and made her insensible to pain. In the uncertain light, her green eyes glittered like those of a panther brought to bay.

  'This is for the first of you that tries to touch me!' she hissed through clenched teeth.

  Ishtar, who was looking at her with awakened interest, shrugged.

  'Don't waste your strength. He'll not touch you tonight. The moon is not at the full and the stars are contrary. You would not conceive… and he is quite incapable!'

  'He shan't touch me, tonight or ever!'
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  The dark face hardened into an expression of such implacable rigidity that for a moment it looked like a statue carved of ebony.

  'You are here to bear a child,' the woman said harshly, 'and you shall do it. Remember what I said: I belong to him and when the time comes I shall help him.'

  'How can you belong to him?' Marianne cried. 'Look at him! He is vile, loathsome – a lump of lard steeped in wine!'

  Indeed, Damiani was slumped on the bed in his crumpled gold doth, as though the matter had ceased to concern him. He was breathing heavily and so obviously sunk in a drunken stupor that Marianne began to take heart. The man was a confirmed toper and all Ishtar's efforts to restrain him had evidently failed. It might be a long time yet before the stars were 'favourable', and before then some way of escape from this madhouse might present itself, even if she had to jump stark naked into the cut and swim ashore in broad daylight in the middle of Venice. She would probably be arrested but at least she would escape from this nightmare.

  Her arm muscles were trembling with the strain of holding up the candelabra and, slowly, she relaxed. She had no strength left and perhaps, after all, it was not really necessary. Across the room, Ishtar had grasped Matteo round the body and was hoisting him over her shoulder as if he were nothing more than a sack of meal. Not even bending under his weight, she bore him to the door.

  'Get back to bed,' was her contemptuous advice to Marianne. 'For tonight, you may sleep in peace.'

  'And – other nights?'

  'You'll see. At all events, don't flatter yourself he'll drink as much in future. I'll see to that. Tonight, perhaps, he… overdid the celebrations. He has been waiting a long time for this. Good night.'

  The strange creature vanished with her burden and Marianne found herself alone again with the prospect of long hours ahead. The nightmare feeling lingered, even in her tired brain which no longer seemed to be working very well, so that it could not grasp the idea of her mysterious husband's death, or the incredible alteration in circumstances which followed from it.