Marianne and the Rebels

by Жюльетта Бенцони

  'Tomorrow?'

  'Yes. The repairs are almost done. By working all night we'll be able to leave in the morning. I'm not leaving you here much longer, not with that besotted ape on your doorstep. Tomorrow I'll take you away. Tomorrow our new life will begin. I'll do anything you want – only for pity's sake don't let's hang about in Turkey! I can't wait to get you home – to our home. Only there will I be able to love you as I want to… and I do want to, so very much.'

  As he spoke, Jason's voice had dropped until it was no more than a deep, passionate murmur, punctuated by kisses.

  Around them, dusk was falling and the glow worm lights were springing up about the garden. Yet to Marianne, in the arms of the man she loved, there came, oddly enough, none of the joy she would have imagined, only a few minutes earlier, from such a signal victory. Jason was surrendering, he was admitting defeat: she ought to have been wild with delight. But while her heart melted with love and gladness, her body had no share in it. In fact, she was not feeling at all well. She had the impression she was going to faint, as she had the other day, getting off the boat… Perhaps it was the faint tobacco smell that clung to Jason's clothes, but she was almost sure that she was going to be sick…

  He felt her slump suddenly and start to slip from his arms. He caught her just in time. In the last glimmer of daylight, her face was deathly pale.

  'Marianne! What is it? Are you ill?'

  As he spoke, he picked her up and laid her down gently in her nest of cushions, but this time Marianne had not lost consciousness altogether. Gradually, the dreadful sick feeling passed off and she managed to smile.

  'It's nothing… the heat, I expect.'

  'No, you are not well. This is the second time you've swooned like that. You must see a doctor.'

  He stood up as though to go in search of Maddalena but Marianne clutched his arm and pulled him back.

  'It's nothing, I tell you. I'm quite sure I don't need a doctor. I know what it is.'

  'You do? Then what is it?'

  She cast about desperately for a plausible lie and said at last with an assumed carelessness:

  'Nothing – or almost nothing. It's just that my stomach is a little delicate these days. It's – it's since – since I was a prisoner.'

  Jason studied the pale face for a moment, mechanically chafing her icy hands as he did so. He was clearly only half convinced. Marianne was not the kind of woman to faint for nothing, swooning over the scent of a flower or the slightest emotion. Something about it worried him. However, he had no time to ask further questions.

  The sound of approaching footsteps evidently indicated the return of Maddalena. Marianne sat up quickly and, evading his instinctive move to prevent her, got to her feet.

  'What are you doing?'

  'Oh, please, don't say that I was ill. I hate to have people fuss over me. Maddalena would only worry, and then I should have to put up with her cosseting.'

  Jason's protests were lost in the click of heels as the Countess reappeared, bearing an oil-lamp with a thick glass shade. Warm yellow light spilled over the terrace and gleamed on her red hair and gently teasing smile.

  'Would you rather it were dark?' she said. 'But here come my husband and Monsieur de Jolival. We are just going to dine. You'll stay, of course, Captain?'

  The American inclined his tall person in an apologetic bow.

  'I'm truly sorry, Countess, but I must return to my ship. We sail tomorrow.'

  'So soon?'

  'My repair work is finished and we have to reach Constantinople as quickly as possible. It grieves me to be obliged to rob you of the Princess so soon, but the sooner we are there the better. The frigates that are to escort us have many other calls on their time. I should not wish to detain them too long. You will have to excuse me.

  As though in haste, suddenly, to be gone, he said his farewells and bowed over the hands of both ladies, letting his blue gaze dwell for a moment, with a faintly troubled look, on Marianne's. Then he went away through the garden, just as the voices of Jolival and Alamano made themselves heard inside the house.

  'A strange man,' Maddalena remarked, looking thoughtfully after the captain's tall figure as it vanished into the darkness. 'But certainly attractive! Perhaps, all things considered, it's just as well he's not staying here too long. Every woman on the island would be mad for him. There is something masterful about his eyes that suggests he doesn't take kindly to being crossed.'

  'You're quite right,' Marianne said, her mind elsewhere. 'He hates to be contradicted.'

  The Countess smiled. 'That wasn't altogether what I meant,' she said. 'Shall we join the gentlemen indoors?'

  Jolival was the very person Marianne needed to see just at that moment. This second spell of faintness had seriously alarmed her, for if she were to have many more like it life on board ship promised to become almost impossible. Meanwhile, Arcadius had practically disappeared. She had scarcely seen him since the night of her arrival and that, too, had worried her because it was not a good sign.

  She sat through dinner with her anxieties undiminished. Jolival looked tired. He was making an effort, visible only to those who knew him well, to respond to his hostess's bright conversation, but his light easy chatter was belied by the troubled look in his eyes.

  'He's failed,' Marianne thought. 'He hasn't been able to find what I need. He wouldn't look like that if he had.'

  Even Maddalena's witty account of Marianne's nocturnal adventures failed to smooth the lines of care wholly from his face.

  When he came to her room for a few moments, before retiring to his own, Marianne learned that he had indeed drawn a complete blank.

  'I did hear of an old Greek woman, some kind of witch who lived in a hut on the side of Mount Pantocrator, but when I managed to find the place at last, this afternoon, there was nothing but a few mourners and an aged papas about to conduct her funeral. But don't despair,' he added, quickly, seeing her face fall. 'Tomorrow I'll go back to the Venetian tavern where I got the information and—'

  Marianne sighed wearily.

  'It's no good, Jolival. We are leaving tomorrow morning. Didn't you know? Jason came just now to tell me. He's in a hurry to leave Corfu… largely, I think, on account of my ridiculous adventure with Chahin Bey.'

  'He knows of that?'

  'The idiot wanted to go with us. He went and told Jason the whole story.'

  There was a silence, occupied on Jolival's part by restless fiddling with the crystal rose-bowl on the table.

  'How do matters stand between you?'

  In a few words, Marianne described their last encounter on the terrace and the manner in which it had ended.

  'He gave in sooner than I expected,' was Jolival's comment when it was done. 'He loves you very deeply, Marianne, in spite of all his temper and his rudeness and his fits of jealousy… I wonder if you wouldn't be better advised to tell him the truth.'

  'The truth? About my condition?'

  'Yes. You are not well. I was watching you at dinner. You're pale and nervous and you scarcely ate a thing. You'll suffer dreadfully on board ship. And there's that doctor, Leighton. He never takes his eyes off you. I'm not sure why, but you've made an enemy there who'll stick at nothing to be rid of you.'

  'How do you know?'

  'Gracchus tipped me the wink. Your coachman, in case you didn't know it, is beginning to discover his vocation as a seaman. He lives with the crew and he's found a friend who can speak French. Leighton has a few supporters among them who are always grumbling at the presence of a woman on board. Besides, he's a doctor. He may discover the truth about your illness.'

  'I thought doctors were bound to secrecy by the rules of their profession,' Marianne said bluntly.

  'So they are, but as I said, this one hates you and I'd judge him capable of a good deal. Listen to me, Marianne. Tell Beaufort the truth. He is capable of understanding, I'm sure of it.'

  'And what do you think he'll say? I can tell you. He won't believe me! I'd never dare t
o tell him such a thing straight out.'

  Like Jason on the terrace, earlier that evening, Marianne was pacing up and down her room, kneading a tiny lace handkerchief between her hands. In imagination she was picturing the scene she had conjured up of herself facing Jason, telling him that she was pregnant by her steward. Enough to make him shun her like the plague!

  'You, who are always so brave, are afraid to have it out?' Jolival reproached her softly.

  'I'm afraid of losing the man I love for ever, Arcadius. Just as any woman in love would be.'

  'How do you know you would lose him? I've told you, he loves you, and perhaps—'

  'There, you see!' Marianne interrupted him with a little hysterical laugh. 'You said perhaps. Perhaps that's what I don't want to risk.'

  'And suppose he finds out? Suppose he guesses somehow?'

  'Then he does. Let's say I'd rather play all or nothing, if you like. In a little more than a week, if all goes well, we'll be in Constantinople. I'll do what's necessary there. Until then, I'll try and hold out.'

  With a sigh of resignation, Jolival rose from his chair and went to Marianne. Taking her face between his hands, he deposited a fatherly kiss on the forehead which was set just now in an obstinate frown.

  'You may be right,' he said. 'I've no right to compel you. But – I suppose you wouldn't, well, accept the notion of letting me deal with the explanations that frighten you so much? Jason likes and, I believe, respects me. I expect he would believe me.'

  'He'd believe that you are very fond of me and would stand up for me at all costs – and that I had spun you an enormous yarn! No, Arcadius. I won't let you. But I thank you from the bottom of my heart.'

  He bowed, smiling a little sadly, and went to his own room, while for Marianne there began a sleepless night haunted, paradoxically, by the shadow hanging over the days to come and by the strange sense of quietude left over from the night before. The sense of fulfilment which had come to her in that fantastic interlude, outside time and ordinary reality, was still strong enough to engender in her a kind of private exultation, free from any feelings of shame or false modesty. In the arms of her anonymous lover, she had experienced a moment of exceptional beauty, made beautiful by the very fact that she still did not know who he was.

  The next day, as she leaned on the Witch's rail and watched the white houses and the old Venetian fortress of Corfu fade into the golden morning mist, she could not help giving one more thought to the man who was somewhere in that jumble of rock and tree, and who, it might be, would return sometimes to cast his nets or tie up his boat in that little inlet where, for one unknown Leda, he had been, for a little while, the embodiment of the ruler of the gods.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Cythera

  For two days the Sea Witch sailed southwards, escorted by the Pauline and the Pomone. The three vessels negotiated the English possessions of Cephalonia and Zante without incident and followed the coastline of the Morea, standing far enough out to sea to avoid the pasha's flotillas.

  The weather was glorious. The blue waters of the Mediterranean shone like a fairy's mantle. Even the heat was not unendurable, thanks to the steady breeze that filled the great square sails, and the three ships made good speed under their majestic piles of white canvas, their colours flying jauntily.

  The enemy was lying low, wind and sea were ideally favourable, and to the fishermen who looked up from their lobster-pots to watch the passing of the tall white pyramids, the two frigates and the brig presented a perfect picture of serene and graceful power.

  Yet on board the American brig, nothing seemed to go right.

  To begin with, Marianne was ill, just as Jolival had foretold. Ever since they had passed through the southerly channel between Corfu and the mainland and headed for the open sea, she had been obliged to keep to her cabin. Calm though the sea was, she had not stirred outside but had remained stretched on her bunk, suffering tortures every time the boat rolled, even slightly, and wishing over and over again that she were dead.

  Nor did the faint smell which still persisted in the interior of the ship do anything to improve matters. It had begun to seem almost intolerable. Marianne lived in a hideous nightmare of sea-sickness for no apparent reason, unable to think two consecutive thoughts. There was only one fixed idea which haunted her, firm and unalterable, and that was at all costs to keep Jason out of her cabin.

  Agathe was horrified to see her mistress, whose health was usually robust enough for anything, in this condition. To her, Marianne decided to tell the truth. She had complete confidence in her maid, who had always been unfalteringly loyal, and in her present state she desperately needed a woman's help. Agathe proved worthy of her trust.

  Instantly the flighty, scatterbrained and timorous girl became transformed into a kind of dragon, a watchdog with a totally unexpected bite. Jason was the first to feel it when, in the evening after they sailed from Corfu, he came and tapped on the door, confident of his welcome. Instead of the smiling, deferential and mildly conspiratorial Agathe he was expecting, he was confronted, behind the mahogany panel, by an impeccably starched abigail who informed him with the utmost formality that her highness the Princess was indisposed and quite unable to receive visitors. After which, having delivered herself of an apology worthy of an ambassador, Agathe shut the door in his face.

  Dr Leighton met with no more success when he presented himself some minutes later to examine the invalid and offer his services. Agathe, more frigid than ever, assured him that her highness had just gone to sleep, and categorically refused to interrupt such a beneficent slumber.

  Arcadius de Jolival, taking the hint, did not appear. This abstention left him to bear the full brunt of Jason's hurt surprise. Considering, with some justification perhaps, that he need not expect to be treated like any ordinary visitor, Beaufort was already lashing himself into a temper by the time he came to discuss Marianne's inexplicable behaviour with Jolival.

  'Does she think I don't love her enough to stand the sight of her in bed ill? How the devil does she mean to go on when we're married? Shall I have to leave the house, or resign myself to getting news of her from her abigail?'

  'But there is just one thing you're forgetting, my friend. At present you are not yet married. And even if you were, it wouldn't surprise me overmuch if things were as you say. You see, Marianne is too much a woman, too proud and it may be too much of a coquette as well, not to know that there are limits to the degree of intimacy that can exist in even the greatest love. No woman in love wants to be seen looking low and ugly. She's always been the same, even with her best friends. Whenever she was ill in Paris, her door was always kept tight shut – even to me,' Arcadius lied superbly, 'who am like a father to her.'

  Then Leighton took a hand. Assiduously filling his long clay pipe – an operation which made it unnecessary for him to look up as he spoke – he produced a thin smile which made no alteration to his cheerless face.

  'Such feelings are natural to a pretty woman, but a doctor ought not to be regarded as a man, or as an ordinary visitor. I find it hard to understand why the Princess should show reluctance to submit to my examining her. When her maid was ill, she came in search of me at once with, I flatter myself, excellent results.'

  'What makes you think she was reluctant?' Jolival retorted frostily. 'I understood you to say the Princess was asleep? Surely sleep is the best possible cure?'

  'Well, let us hope it will prove sufficiently efficacious for the Princess to be well again tomorrow. I shall call upon her again in the morning.'

  The doctor's tone was smooth, even conciliating, but Jolival did not like it. There was a vague threat underlying the apparently harmless words which made him uneasy. The man was quite determined to see Marianne and examine her, precisely, perhaps, because she did not seem to want it. The devil only knew what conclusions he might jump to if she refused to admit him again. Jolival lay awake all night trying to think of some way to avert the danger. He could not help looking on Le
ighton's interest as a very real danger: the man was malevolent enough to guess precisely what it was they wished to hide.

  As it happened, the doctor did not prosecute his plan and Agathe was not called upon to invent a fresh excuse to keep him out. Considerably to Jolival's surprise, he divided his time that day between his own cabin and the crew's quarters, where a sudden outbreak of dysentery had occurred, and appeared to have lost interest in their passenger.

  When Jason tapped on the cabin door again that afternoon, Agathe told him merely that her mistress was still feeling too far from well to see anyone but that she hoped to be better soon.

  This time, Jolival heard no complaint from him but the crew bore the brunt of Jason's black mood. Pablo Arroyo, the boatswain, had to endure some scathing criticisms of the state of the decks and Craig O'Flaherty was hauled over the coals for the flushed condition of his nose and the smell of wine on his breath.

  Meanwhile, Marianne lay in bed and suffered, swallowing the endless cups of tea, brought by Toby, which was all her stomach could support. She felt weak, ill and incapable of the smallest effort. It was like nothing she had ever experienced in her life.

  It was after dark when Agathe, who had gone out at her mistress's insistence to get some air on deck, returned, all smiles, carrying a dumpy bottle from which she proceeded to pour a dose into a glass.

  'That doctor may not be as bad as you think, my lady,' she said. 'I met him just now and he gave me this. He said you should feel better very quickly.'