'You ill-mannered lout!' she abused him. 'You were spying on me! How dare you!'
The slap had one good thing about it, in so far as it told her that this Turk or Epirote or whatever else he might be was not her erstwhile ravisher. Her hand had encountered a bearded cheek, whereas the other's face had been smooth. But far from resenting her attack, the stranger had begun to laugh.
'Why you angry? I have done wrong? I walk here every night – see no one. Sea, shore and sky, nothing else. Tonight I see a gown on the sand and someone who swims. I wait.'
Marianne was regretting the slap. He was only someone out for a late stroll, after all. Probably, his house was nearby. He had not been guilty of anything so very dreadful.
'I beg your pardon,' she said. 'I thought it was something else. I did wrong to hit you.' Then, as a new idea came to her, she added: 'But since you were on the beach, did you see anyone come out of the water before me?'
'Here? No, no one. A few minutes ago… was someone swimming – out there, by the point. That's all.'
'Oh. Thank you.'
Evidently her elusive lover must have been Neptune. Seeing that the man had nothing more to tell her, she prepared to go on her way. She supported herself with one hand against the trunk of a cypress while she put on her shoes, but the stranger, it seemed, did not intend to leave matters there. He came closer.
'You not angry now?' he said, and again there was that laugh which Marianne was beginning to think sounded a little simple. 'We… friends?'
He had both hands on her shoulders, trying to pull her towards him. It was a bad move, for Marianne, furious, pushed him away so fiercely that he was caught off balance and fell headlong on the sand.
'You—'
There was no time to search for a suitable adjective. The shot had been fired at the precise moment Marianne pushed the man away and the ball passed between them. She felt the wind of its passing and instinctively flung herself to the ground. A second shot followed almost at once. Someone was firing at them from beneath the trees.
The man in the turban wriggled towards her.
'Not move… not be afraid… shoot at me,' he whispered.
'You mean someone is trying to kill you? But whatever for?'
'Ssh!'
He was slipping dexterously out of his flowing white garment. Next he took off his turban and hung it on a bush. It was immediately made the target of two shots in quick succession.
'Two pistols. No more balls, I think…' the stranger said softly, almost gaily. 'Not move… Assassin come to see me dead…'
Realizing what he meant, Marianne flattened herself as best she could among the undergrowth, while her companion drew a long, curved knife silently from his belt and crouched, ready to spring. He did not have long to wait. In a little while, cautious footsteps crunched on the sand and a dark shape came gliding through the trees. It came forward a little way, then stopped, then, evidently reassured by the silence, came on again. Marianne had barely time to glimpse a thickset, remarkably energetic-looking figure moving with knife in hand, then, with a bound like a wild beast, the stranger was upon him. They rolled together on the ground, locked together in a desperate struggle.
The shots, meanwhile, had aroused the household and Marianne saw light approaching through the trees and the inhabitants of the Alamano estate turned out with lanterns and, no doubt, guns. They were led by the senator himself in his night-shirt and cotton nightcap with a pom-pom on the top, a pistol in each hand. After him came a dozen or so servants, variously armed. The first person they saw was Marianne, standing in the middle of the path.
'Princess!' the senator exclaimed. 'Is it you, here, at this hour? What is happening?'
For answer, she stood aside and let him see the two men still grappling one another furiously on the ground, uttering ferocious animal grunts. The senator gave one anguished howl and, stuffing his pistols into Marianne's hands, dashed forward to separate them. His servants rushed to help and in a few seconds the two adversaries had been parted by main force. But while the man with the turban was treated with the utmost solicitude, the other was instantly bound and flung on the ground with a roughness that made it quite clear he, at least, could look for no sympathy from the senator.
The Venetian was hastily assisting the stranger to resume his flowing robe and turban.
'You are not hurt, lord? You are quite sure you are not hurt?' he asked several times over.
'Not in the least, I thank you. But my life I owe to this young lady. She throw me down, just in time.'
'Young lady? Oh, the Princess, you mean? Lord!' This time the wretched senator was seen to be invoking his maker. 'Lord, what a business! What a business!'
'Perhaps if you were to introduce us?' Marianne suggested. 'It might make things a little clear. To me, at any rate.'
Still suffering somewhat from shock, the senator launched into a series of introductions and explanations which rapidly became hopelessly involved. All the same, Marianne was able to gather that she had just prevented a highly unfortunate diplomatic incident and succeeded in saving the life of a noble refugee. The man in the turban was now revealed as a youth of about twenty, who without his pointed beard and long black moustache would probably have looked a good deal younger. He was Chahin Bey, the son of one of the Pasha of Yannina's latest victims, Mustapha, Pasha of Delvino. After Ali's janissaries had taken their city and murdered their father, Chahin and his younger brother had sought refuge in Corfu where they were given a hospitable welcome by the governor. They were living in a pleasant house higher up the valley, overlooking the sea, where they were in sight of the watch at the fort. In addition, two soldiers were constantly on guard at their door, but even so, it was scarcely possible to prevent the young princes from walking abroad whenever they wished.
The attacker, apparently one of Ali's agents, was one of the fierce Albanians from the Chimera Mountains whose arid peaks could be seen across the northern channel. So much was dear from the red scarf he wore round his head. The remainder of his costume was made up of baggy trousers with a short skirt of heavy linen, silver-buttoned waistcoat and a pair of espadrilles. From the wide red belt that cinched his waist in tighter than any stays, the senator's servants took an astonishing selection of weapons. The man was a walking arsenal. Once bound, however, it proved impossible to get another word out of him. He was tied to a tree and remained there in brooding silence, guarded by a number of armed servants, while Alamano sent a messenger hurrying to the fort.
On learning the real identity of the woman whom he had taken for some pretty local girl out for a spree, Chahin Bey displayed just the right amount of confusion consonant with good manners. The sight of Marianne's face, revealed in the light of the lanterns, afforded him a degree of pleasure that was evidently enough to overcome all merely social considerations. Seeing his gaze fixed brilliantly on herself all the way up to the house, Marianne realized that she had awoken in him sentiments no whit less primitive than those which she had aroused in the unknown man in the water. The thought gave her no satisfaction whatever. She had had enough of the primitive for one night.
'I hope the story will not get about,' she confided to Maddalena, who had emerged from her chamber, clad in an abundantly frilled dressing-gown, to provide the heroes of the occasion with sustaining drinks on their return.
'It was quite by accident that I was able to thwart the attacker, you know. I had gone down to the beach to bathe. It was so dreadfully hot! And then, as I was coming back, I bumped into the Bey and had the good fortune to knock him down just at the very moment the assassin fired. It is really nothing to make a fuss about.'
'But that is what Chahin Bey is certainly doing. Listen to him. He is already comparing you to the houris of paradise! Besides declaring that you have the courage of a lioness. You are in a fair way to becoming a heroine to him, Princess.'
'Well, I've no objection to that, so long as he keeps his feelings to himself. And if the senator will say nothing about m
y part in the affair.'
'But why? You have done a very fine thing which does great honour to France. General Donzelot—'
'Need never know,' Marianne wailed. 'I am really a very retiring person. I don't in the least care to be talked about. It is so embarrassing.'
What was particularly embarrassing, just then, was the knowledge that if Jason heard of what had taken place that night on the beach, he was likely to draw very different conclusions from the real truth. His nature was too jealous to allow him to overlook the smallest thing. But how was she to explain to her hostess that she was madly in love with her ship's captain and his opinion mattered more to her than anything?
Maddalena's brown eyes, which had been observing Marianne's slowly reddening cheeks, were alight with laughter as she murmured:
'It all depends on how the story is told. We'll do our best to restrain Chahin Bey's enthusiasm. Otherwise, the governor might conclude that you – er – collided with our young friend while endeavouring to dissuade him from seeing himself as Ulysses meeting Nausicaa. And you wouldn't wish the governor to think…'
'Not the governor or anyone else! The truth is, I feel a trifle foolish and even my friends—'
'There is nothing particularly foolish in wishing to bathe when the weather is as hot as this. But then, I have heard that Americans are exceedingly strait-laced, and even prudish.'
'Americans? Why Americans? I am certainly travelling in a vessel of that nation but I don't see…'
Maddalena slid her arm quietly through Marianne's and walked with her to the staircase that led to her room.
'My dear Princess,' she said softly, selecting a lighted candle from among those placed on a side table, 'let me tell you two things. One is that I am a woman and the second that, although I do not know you very well, I like you a great deal. I shall do all I can to shield you from the slightest inconvenience. If I spoke of Americans, it was because my husband told me of your captain's alarm when you were unwell at the harbour, and also what an excessively charming man he is! Don't worry. We'll try and ensure that he knows nothing. I will speak to my husband.'
As it turned out, Chahin Bey's enthusiasm was not of a kind to be stemmed. Alamano was silent about the part played by Marianne when handing the would-be assassin over to the island's police force, but as soon as it was light a procession of the Bey's servants entered the senator's garden bearing gifts for the 'precious flower from the land of the infidel caliph' and settled themselves outside the front door, waiting with the inexhaustible patience of the east until they could deliver their messages.
These, in addition to the presents, consisted of a letter couched in the most flowery Greek vernacular in which Chahin Bey declared that since 'the splendour of the princess of the sea-coloured eyes has put to flight the black-winged angel Azrael', he was her knight for all the days allotted to him by Allah on this sinful earth and meant to devote to her and to his oppressed people, groaning under the heel of the infamous Ali, the remainder of a life which, but for her, would already be no more than a memory too brief for glory.
'What does he mean?' Marianne asked uneasily, when the senator had concluded his somewhat halting but adequate translation.
Alamano spread out his arms in a gesture of ignorance.
'My dear Princess, I assure you I have not the least idea. That kind of phraseology is typical of oriental politeness. Chahin Bey means, I take it, that he will no more forget you than he will forget his own lost people.'
Maddalena, who had been following the reading of the letter with a good deal of interest, put down the big fan of woven reeds with which she had been trying to mitigate the heat and smiled at her new friend.
'Unless he is declaring his intention of offering you his hand as soon as he has recovered his domains? It would be quite in keeping with his romantically chivalrous nature. My dear, that boy fell head over ears in love as soon as he set eyes on you!'
What Chahin Bey actually meant was not made plain until that evening, with the arrival of Jason Beaufort, white with rage. He stormed on to the terrace where the two women were stretched in long chairs taking some refreshments and watching the sunset and it was all he could do to remember the ordinary observances of civility due to his hostess. As he made his bow to Maddalena, Marianne could tell from the frowning glance he cast in her direction that he had something to say.
The usual polite exchanges took place in an atmosphere so charged with electricity that Countess Alamano could not fail to notice it, and she took the first opportunity to excuse herself gracefully, on the score of being obliged to speak to her cook, realizing that the other two wished to be private together.
Almost before her dress of lilac muslin had vanished through the french window leading into the house, Jason turned on Marianne and accused her roundly:
'What were you doing down on the beach last night with that crazy Turk?'
'Good God!' Marianne exclaimed faintly, subsiding despairingly on to her cushions. The gossip on this island flies faster than in Paris!'
'This isn't gossip. Your admirer – there is no other word for the fellow – came on board just now and told me that you saved his life last night in circumstances which are to say the least obscure – as obscure as the jargon he talks!'
'But why should he go and tell you that?' Marianne said, mystified.
'Ha! You admit it, then?'
'Admit what? I have nothing to admit. Nothing that signifies, at least. It's true I did happen to save the life of a Turkish refugee last night, quite by chance. It was so hot that I could not bear to stay in my room and I went down to the beach for a breath of fresh air. At that hour of night I thought I should be quite alone there—'
'So much so that you thought you could bathe. You took off your clothes – all your clothes?'
'Oh, so you know that, too?'
'Of course. I gather the memory of it kept your exotic swain awake all night. He saw you emerge from the sea in the moonlight, as naked as Aphrodite, it seems, and by far more beautiful! What have you to say to that?'
'Nothing!' Marianne cried, stung by Jason's accusing tone, especially as she was beginning to feel slightly more guilty and a trifle less nostalgic about the passionate scene of the previous night. 'It's quite true I took my clothes off. My goodness, what's wrong with that? You're a sailor yourself. Don't tell me you never swam in the sea? Would you put on a dressing-gown and slippers and a nightcap to get into the water?'
'I'm a man,' Jason snapped. 'It's not the same.'
'I know!' Marianne flashed bitterly. 'You are creatures apart, demi-gods to whom all is permitted, while we poor females are only allowed to enjoy the water all bundled up in shawls and overcoats! The hypocrisy of it! When I think that in the days of King Henry IV the women used to bathe stark naked in the middle of Paris in broad daylight, right below the Pont Neuf, and no one thought a penny the worse! And now I'm committing a crime because I try to forget the heat for a little while on a dark night on an empty beach on what is practically a desert island! Well, I was wrong and I'm sorry. Will that do?'
Something of the venom in her tone must have penetrated, because Jason stopped striding up and down the terrace, hands behind his back, much as he was used to do on his own deck, although rather more furiously and came instead to stand before Marianne. He looked at her for a moment and then said on a note of vague surprise:
'You're angry?'
She stared up at him with flashing eyes.
'Is that wrong of me, as well? You come here steaming with rage, you rant at me, determined to find me guilty, and then when I object you are surprised! You always make me feel halfway between a hysterical bacchante and the village idiot!'
The privateer's set face relaxed for an instant into a fleeting smile. He held out his hands and plucked her from her cushions, drawing her up to stand within the circle of his arms.
'Forgive me. I know I've been behaving like a brute again, but I can't help it. As soon as it is anything to do with you, I
see red. When that blundering idiot came along, all smiles, and told me about your exploit, incidentally describing how he'd seen you coming out of the water all glistening in the moonlight, I very nearly throttled him.'
'Only nearly?' Marianne said nastily.
This time Jason laughed outright and held her closer.
'Are you sorry? If it hadn't been for Kaleb – you remember the runaway slave I found – who got him away from me, I'd have done Ali Pasha's work for him after all.'
'The Ethiopian?' Marianne said thoughtfully. 'Did he dare to come between you?'
'He was at work on the planking close by, and on the whole, just as well,' Jason said indifferently. 'Your Chahin Bey was squealing like a stuck pig and people were beginning to notice.'
'He's not my Chahin Bey!' Marianne broke in with annoyance. 'And you still haven't explained what made him go off and tell all this to you, of all people?'
'Didn't I tell you? For the simple reason, my angel, that having made up his mind to go with us to Constantinople he came to ask me to take him on board with his household.'
'What? He wants—'
'To go with you, yes, my darling. The boy seems to know what he wants. His plans for the future are quite cut and dried: to go to Constantinople and complain to the Grand Signior of the wrongs done to himself and his people by Ali Pasha, then set off home with an army – oh, and yourself – and when he has reconquered his province to offer you the position of first wife to the new Pasha of Delvino.'
'And – and you agreed?' Marianne cried, appalled at the idea of trailing the young Turk after her for weeks to come.
'Agreed? I told you, I nearly strangled him. After Kaleb got him away from me, I told him to see him ashore, and I informed your admirer that under no circumstances would I have him set foot on board my ship again. I've no use for would-be pashas. For one thing I didn't like him, and for another I'm beginning to think there are a deal too many people aboard the Witch as it is. You don't know how much I long to be alone with you, my love… Just you and me, the two of us, day and night. I think I must have been mad to think I could ever part from you! Ever since Venice, I've gone through hell, just wanting you. But that's all over now. We sail tomorrow—'
Marianne and the Rebels Page 22
