When he had turned up, earlier, with Yorgo, Marianne had scarcely recognized him. He was dressed in rags, much like those in which she herself had been decked, but his were half-concealed under a rough woollen blanket, and with his face covered by a flowing beard that joined his hair and obscured his moustache, he looked like some mad prophet. His appearance was certainly an unlikely one for the servant of a fashionable Frenchwoman, but it fitted perfectly the part of a recent castaway.
The story which had been concocted to explain Marianne's return to her ordinary life was a fairly simple one. On his way to Naxos with a cargo of wine, Yorgo was supposed to have found the Princess Sant'Anna and her servant adrift, clinging to a few spars, in the water between Santorini and Ios, the vessel in which they were travelling having been sunk by pirates – who apparently abounded in the islands and were perfectly capable of sinking any vessel which came in their way.
Once arrived in Naxos, where there was a considerable population of Venetian origin and where the Turks tolerated the existence of a number of Catholic communities, the fisherman would take the two 'castaways' to a cousin of his, a man called Athanasius, who acted in the ill-defined capacity of gardener, steward and man-of-all-work to the last descendant of one of the old ruling families of the island, a Count Sommaripa. He, naturally, could not do otherwise than offer the hospitality of his house to an Italian princess who found herself in difficulties, until such time as a vessel should put in at Naxos that could carry her to Constantinople. If the pigeon from Ayios Ilias had done its job properly, that ship should not be long in coming.
This business of the ship that was to come for her made Marianne uneasy. In her view, any vessel would have done as well, even a Turkish xebec. All she wanted was to get to the Ottoman capital as soon as possible, since that was the only place from which to begin her search for the Sea Witch. She did not see at all why it was necessary for her to arrive in a Greek vessel, unless her mysterious new friends had some ulterior motive. In which case, what was it?
Melina had told her that there was a Greek merchant fleet, based on the island of Hydra, which even the Turks would hesitate to attack. The men who manned it were trustworthy, and strangers to fear. They covered the islands and were able to drop anchor with impunity off the quays of Phanar, and they carried, as well as grain, oil and wine, many of the conspirators' hopes. Hydra had been the pigeon's goal.
In other words, Marianne told herself, they are almost certainly pirates got up as merchants. She was beginning to wonder if her name was going to be used to cover not just one rebel with a price on his head, but a whole ship's crew of them. By this time she was seeing rebels everywhere.
There was, in fact, another passenger who had embarked at the same time as herself and the alarming Theodoras, and Marianne was not unduly surprised to see beneath the fisherman's cap the face of the tall dark girl who had steadied her on the way back from the rock where Sappho sang her hymn to the setting sun.
Released from his classical draperies, the young guest revealed himself as nature intended: a slim, energetic boy with a keen face, who had smiled at her with cheerful complicity as he handed her into the boat. She now knew that he was a young Cretan called Demetrios whose father had been beheaded a year earlier for refusing to pay a tax, and that he was going now to take up a prearranged position in one of the mysterious places where the rebellion, which no Greek ever doubted would soon come, was slowly ripening to fruition.
The voyage passed off without incident. The sea subsided towards morning and, although as a result the wind abated somewhat, there remained enough of a steady breeze to bring the scaphos, by about midday, into line with the opening of the bay of Naxos. Directly ahead, beyond the dunes covered with long rippling grasses and a species of tall greenish lily, a little town lay glaring white and dozing in the sun, clinging to the sides of a conical hill on whose summit the inevitable Venetian fortress crumbled slowly beneath the disillusioned folds of the Sultan's green flag with its triple crescent.
On a tiny island just outside the harbour the white columns of a small abandoned temple also seemed to droop dispiritedly.
For the first time since they had set sail, Marianne approached Theodoros.
'Are we landing now? I thought we should have waited until nightfall?'
'What for? At this time of day, everyone's asleep – and sleeping much more deeply than at night. It's too hot for anyone to put their nose out of doors. Even the Turks are having a siesta.'
The heat was certainly intense. It was reflected back from the white walls with a ferocity that was almost unbearable and all other colours were bleached into the general all-prevailing whiteness. The air vibrated as though with the humming of invisible bees, and there was not a living soul to be seen on the baking quay. Every house was closely shuttered against the glare, and whenever they did catch sight of a human being it was of someone fast asleep on the ground, back against a wall and cap or turban pulled well down over his eyes, in the shade of a rose trellis or a dark doorway. It was the Sleeping Beauty's island. The entire harbour lay under a spell of sleep and every single creature in it was firmly resting.
The scaphos eased up to her moorings, melting into the multicoloured mass of masts and hulls: Turkish chektirmes and caiques mingling with the Greek scaphai and sacolevi. The whole port stank indescribably from the quantities of refuse putrefying in the sun on the surface of the water, and, as they drew nearer to the white town which had looked so glorious in the sunlight from afar, Marianne saw that dirt and neglect reigned everywhere. The splendid white walls were cracked and the grand houses clustered round the citadel at the top of the hill were falling into ruin, almost as certainly as the fortress itself and the white temple collapsing slowly out in the bay.
'Hard to believe that this is the richest island in the Cyclades, isn't it?' Theodoros muttered. 'There are oranges and olives in plenty inland, but they are allowed to grow wild. We will not work for the Turks.'
They went ashore quietly, without attracting any attention. Only a cat, disturbed from its sleep, squawked, spat and then fled to find a more peaceful spot. Marianne, in her black cloak, and Theodoros, in his blanket, were both sweating profusely, scarcely able to breathe for the heat. But they did not have to endure it long. A few steps over the scorching hot stones brought them to a white house in fair condition with an arched doorway overshadowed by a dusty vine. This was the house of Yorgo's cousin Athanasius.
He was not at home. The newcomers found only an old woman muffled in black draperies, who poked a wrinkled face cautiously through the minute crack which she let appear in the door before starting to shut it in their faces. Yorgo began to argue with her in a rapid, breathless dialect but the old woman behind the door only shook her head and stood her ground. It was obvious that she wanted nothing to do with them. Thereupon, Theodoros pushed past Yorgo and advanced on the door. It yielded to a thrust of his hand and the old woman fled to the end of the passage, squeaking like a frightened mouse.
'I don't know whether or not we were expected,' Marianne said quietly, 'but I don't think we are very welcome.'
'We shall be,' the giant assured her.
He strode down the passage and spoke a very few words in rough, commanding tones. The effect was magical.
The old woman came back, looking as delighted as a condemned sinner reprieved from hell to heaven, and before Marianne's astonished gaze she knelt and kissed Theodoros' great hand with fanatical respect. He pulled her, none too gently, to her feet, whereupon she launched into a spate of voluble explanations and, opening a door, ushered her visitors into a low, cool room smelling strongly of sour milk and aniseed. Then she vanished in a swirl of black cotton petticoats, having first set on the rough wooden table a bottle, some wine cups and a dewy water-jar, as fresh as if it had that moment come from the well.
'She is Athanasius' mother,' Theodoros remarked. 'She's gone to fetch her son to take us to the Venetian.'
He poured water neatly into one
of the cups and offered it to Marianne. Then, throwing back his head, he let the water flow in a cool stream from the jar straight down his throat.
Yorgo had prudently returned to his boat. Thieves might not be deterred even by the sacred siesta hour and he had his cargo of wine to think of.
Young Demetrios had gone with him and, for the moment, Marianne and her supposed servant were alone, he leaning up against the small barred window, she seated on a stone bench, whose hardness was not greatly lessened by a thin cushion stuffed with dry grass. She was fighting off sleep. She had slept little on the boat, kept uneasily wakeful by the heavy seas running the night before. Nor were her spirits particularly high. It might have been because she was tired and lonely, but she came to fancy that she was doomed to wander, like Ulysses on his way home from the Trojan Wars, from island to island amid people who were strangers to her and events that were foreign to her way of life. The east, which she had pictured to herself in the glowing colours of a honeymoon, now seemed arid and inhospitable. She longed again for her garden, where the roses must just now be at the height of their beauty. Where now was the scent that used to mingle so gloriously with the honeysuckle on summer evenings?
The old woman's return broke into this melancholy train of thought just as she was beginning to reflect miserably that as things stood she could not even ask to be taken to Athens and put on the first ship back to France. Quite apart from the trouble she might expect from Napoleon if she returned with her mission unfulfilled, she was now saddled with this great fellow to drag about with her, and he was watching her as closely as a good housewife watched, a pan of milk over the fire!
The man now accompanying the old woman did a good deal to reconcile her to existence. Athanasius was a tubby, smooth-skinned little man with the face of a cherub under a cluster of grey curls, and the pleasantly rounded figure of the verger of a Norman cathedral. He welcomed the enormous, ragged Theodoros like a long lost brother, and the dirty, dishevelled gipsy that was Marianne like the Queen of Sheba in person.
'My master,' he announced, bowing as low as his stomach would permit, 'is eager to offer your most serene highness the hospitality of his palace. He begs you to forgive him for not coming himself to greet you, on account of his great age and rheumatism.'
Her most serene highness thanked Count Sommaripa's steward, thinking meanwhile that she must be giving the poor man a very strange idea of grand Franco-Italian ladies in general. At present she would look distinctly out of place in a nobleman's residence. All the same, she could not help looking forward to a temporary return to the comforts and luxuries of an aristocratic household, and it was with a lighter step that she set out with the obliging Athanasius for this promised paradise, Theodoros following at her heels.
They passed through a maze of steep cobbled alleys, where the big round stones were painful to the feet, through strange medieval streets, tortuous and evil-smelling, and by vaulted passages that offered a brief, welcome coolness, until at last they reached the summit of the hill and the Venetian quarter built around the citadel and the ancient ramparts. Here there were indeed some western religious houses, showing the Roman cross: the Brothers of Mercy side by side with the Ursulines, together with an austere cathedral that seemed oddly out of place, and one or two noble façades that still displayed some dim reflection of the former glories of the dukes of Naxos and the Venetian court. The once-lordly houses with their crumbling armorial bearings seemed to crowd up against the ramparts as though in search of some last reserves of strength, but as she crossed the worn threshold of the Sommaripa palace, with its Latin inscription, Marianne realized that the worthy Athanasius' notions of what a real palace ought to be were not so very well-formed either.
This was only the ghost of a palace, an empty shell where echoes lived and, by amplifying the smallest sound, attempted to bring back some semblance of life to the place. Marianne stifled a regretful sigh: it was not here that she would find the comforts of civilization.
An old man appeared in the doorway of a huge empty room which was furnished only with stone benches and a vast cedar-wood table, with a red geranium spilling out of a round earthenware pot on the sill of a dear little arched window. He should, she felt, be the familiar spirit of this timeless place. He was a tall, blanched individual with a vacant gaze, and his flowing garments looked for all the world as if they had been woven out of the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling. He was so pale that he might have lived for years in a cavern underground, away from light and air. He must have lived long in the shadow of these ancient stones, turning his back on reality. He could never have felt the touch of the sun or the sea winds.
He, too, seemed unconscious of Marianne's appearance. He bowed over her hand with all the dignity of a Spanish grandee receiving an infanta, assuring her of the honour done to his house, and proffering a hand as knotty and wrinkled as an olive kernel to lead her to the apartment set aside for her.
It might be the siesta hour, but the passage of two ragged strangers through the streets of Naxos had not gone unobserved by the Turkish watch, and the Count was just leading Marianne towards the uneven stone staircase when a dozen soldiers in red leather boots and red and blue striped turbans marched into the porch. Commanding them was an odabassy wearing a kind of white felt mitre with a green crown. His rank corresponded roughly to that of artillery captain, but he also had authority over the inns on the island. The new arrivals seemed to interest him.
He was waving a fly-whisk, languidly, and his evident bad temper betrayed clearly enough the irritation he felt at having been dragged out of the cool shade of the fortress just when the afternoon was at its hottest. It showed, too, in the tone he used to address Count Sommaripa, which was that of a master to a disobedient servant.
Possibly because there was a woman present, and a foreign woman at that, the old man appeared to rouse himself. He gave a round answer to the odabassy's contemptuous speech and, although Marianne did not understand a word of the Ottoman language, she was still able to grasp the gist of what was being said. She heard her own name mentioned several times, and the name of Nakshidil Sultan, and gathered that the Count was informing the Turkish officer, with some hauteur, of the identity of the unfortunate traveller and the importance of leaving her in peace.
The odabassy showed no disposition to persist. His sneer was transformed into a smile and he bowed to his Empress's cousin as agreeably as he knew how, before departing with his troop.
The rebel, Theodoros, had remained standing rigidly, three steps behind his supposed mistress, while all this perilous explanation was going on. In all that time, he had not flinched, but judging from the long breath he let out as they turned back to the staircase at last, Marianne guessed that he had suffered a nasty moment, and smiled to herself, thinking that, for all his great size, the mighty warrior was only human after all and subject to the same anxieties as ordinary men.
The room to which the old Count led Marianne could not have been in use since the days of the last dukes of Naxos. A bed that could have sheltered an entire family behind its curtains of faded brocade reigned in splendid isolation between four walls proudly adorned with tattered and rust-spotted banners, while a selection of broken stools huddled together in the corners of the room. But there was a magnificent mullioned window with a view of the sea.
'We were not prepared for such an honour,' the old Count was saying apologetically. 'But your servant shall bring you what you need and we will send to the Mother Superior of the Ursuline convent for a suitable gown – since our own size is somewhat different…'
The use of the plural form was bizarre but no more so than the rest of the Count's person or his rather toneless voice and Marianne did not dwell on it.
'I should be most grateful for the dress, my lord Count,' she said, smiling, 'but for the rest, I beg you will not put yourself out. I am sure that we shall have no difficulty in finding a ship—'
The old man's curiously vacant gaze seemed to light up at the
word.
'The larger vessels do not often call here. We live in a forgotten land, madame, a land passed over by the hubbub and the glory and the recollections of the great ones of the earth. It is enough to keep us alive, fortunately, but you may find that your stay is longer than you imagine. Come with me, my friend.'
The last words were addressed to Theodoros, who had already been drawn to the window, as though to a lover, and was gazing out hungrily at the empty sea. He dragged himself away unwillingly and followed the Count, as befitted his role of the perfect servant. He returned in a short whole with Athanasius, the two of them carrying a heavy table which they placed in the window. This was followed by a variety of toilet articles and linen, slightly but not impossibly worn.
While he busied himself making the room more or less habitable, Athanasius chatted away, thoroughly enjoying the sight of new faces and the opportunity of having a foreign lady to serve, but the more expansive he became, the more Theodoros withdrew into his shell.
'Almighty God!' he cried at last, when the little man urged him to come and help in making up the bed, 'we are only staying a few hours, brother! One would think from the way you are going on we were to stay for months! Our brother Tombazis in Hydra should have got the pigeon and the ship may come at any moment now.'
'Even if your ship were to appear at this minute,' Athanasius responded peaceably, 'it would still be advisable for madame to play her part – you and she have been shipwrecked. You must be tired, exhausted. You need at least one night's rest. The Turks would not understand it if you flung yourselves on board the first vessel, without so much as pausing for breath. Odabassy Mahmoud is stupid – but not as stupid as that! Besides, it makes my master happy. Madame the Princess's coming here is to him a reminder of his youth. He has travelled in the west, you know, long ago, and visited the doge's court in Venice and the king of France.'
Marianne and the Rebels Page 31
