Marianne and the Rebels

by Жюльетта Бенцони

  Marianne turned her head away so that he might not see that he had wounded her. Her kind old friend had vanished utterly and in his place was now a stern stranger, a British officer who would do his duty even if it meant playing the part of gaoler. It even seemed to Marianne that, in the bitterness of his disappointment, he might not have been sorry to have dealt with her more harshly.

  'No, Sir James,' she said after a moment. 'I did not think that. But I wish you would not think too hardly of me.'

  Casting one last glance at the brig from which there came no noise or sign of life and which, as she looked, seemed to turn away from her indifferently, she submitted to being escorted back to her own cabin.

  The sound of the key turning in the lock grated on her nerves like a file. It was followed by the shuffle of feet and the sound of musket butts striking the deck. From now on, at least so long as they remained in Turkish waters, there would always be a pair of marines on guard outside her door. England was not going to let any friend of Bonaparte's slip through her fingers.

  She went slowly to the window and opened it, but leaning out she saw only what she knew already. Her cabin, situated next to the captain's own, was high above the level of the water. Perhaps, in her disappointment, she might even then have made up her mind to the hazardous dive, in a faint hope of escaping from her captors and the fate that lay ahead; but even that desperate course was denied her. All round the stern of the ship as she lay at anchor was clustered a mosaic of little boats, rowing boats, caiques and peramas, thronging round her, as they were round any other ship of any size, like so many baby chicks around their mother hens. More boats were plying back and forth across the water, ferrying passengers and goods from one shore to the other. To jump would have been tantamount to breaking her neck.

  Marianne wandered miserably back to her cot and sank down on to it. It was not until then that she noticed they had removed the sheets. Apparently Sir James was determined to take no chances.

  That reminded her of Theodoros, and she reflected rather bitterly that he must be a long way off by this time. He had been just in time to benefit from the captain's weakness for the little Marianne he remembered. No one would come and loose her bonds to let her escape.

  The Greek had achieved his object. All that she had left was the faint, private satisfaction of having kept the oath that she had sworn on Santorini. In that respect, at least, she was free, if in no other.

  The hottest hours of the day slipped by, one by one, each more oppressive than the last, and swifter. There was so little time left for her in Constantinople! And the nearness of the Sea Witch made the inevitable prospect of departure more desperate than ever.

  Very soon now, with the coming of the new day, the British ship would hoist sail and carry off the Princess Sant'Anna to a dismal future, to be swallowed up in the fogs of England, without even the relieving spice of danger. They would simply put her away somewhere and that would be that. Unless Napoleon remembered her, she would probably be forgotten by all the world.

  At sunset came the wailing cries of the muezzins, calling the faithful to prayer. Then darkness came and the tumultuous life of the harbour slackened and died, while the riding lights of the different vessels shone out one by one. With the darkness came a cold wind from the north, which blew into the cabin. Marianne shivered but she could not bring herself to close the window, because by leaning out a little she could still just manage to make out the bowsprit of Jason's ship.

  A seaman came in bringing a lighted candle and was followed by another with a tray. These they set down without a word. Probably they were under orders. Their faces were so devoid of all expression as to have become curiously alike. Marianne said nothing, either by word or look, and they went away.

  She cast her eye over the tray without interest. That they gave her food and light meant nothing to her. A prison is still a prison, however many comforts it contains.

  Nevertheless, she realized that she was very thirsty and, pouring herself a cup of tea, she drank it and was in the act of pouring out a second when she heard a heavy thud which made her start and turn her head. There was something on the floor.

  Bending, she saw that it was a jagged stone with a thin black thread tied tightly round it. The other end of the thread disappeared through the window.

  She tugged it gently, her heart beating fast, and then more strongly. The thread yielded. More of it appeared and was followed by a stout rope knotted on to it. Realizing suddenly what it meant, Marianne hugged the hempen cord to her in a wild access of almost hysterical joy, pressing it to her lips and kissing it as if it were an angel of deliverance. She still had one friend at least!

  Hastily snuffing out the candles, she went to the window and leaned out. Down below, in the dense shade of the waterfront, it seemed to her that she could distinguish a human form, but she wasted no time on idle speculation. If she wanted to escape, there was no time to waste. She tiptoed to the door and laid her ear against it. There was not a sound to be heard from the ship, except for the faint creaking of her timbers as she rode at anchor. Even the sentries outside her door were silent.

  Moving as silently as she could herself, Marianne fastened the rope's end securely to the leg of her bed. Then she hoisted herself through the window, an operation of some delicacy since it was not very large, and immediately felt the rope held taut by some invisible hand. Slowly, she began the descent, taking care not to look down at the gaping blackness beneath and groping for toe-holds on the vessel's side. Fortunately, none of the windows in the lower decks were open. All the officers except those of the watch must be ashore, enjoying their one night of leave.

  The descent was one interminable horror. The rope soon burned her hands raw. Then, at last, she felt arms round her, holding her.

  'Let go of the rope,' said Theodoros' voice. 'You've arrived.'

  She obeyed and dropped into the bottom of the small boat where he had been waiting for her, and groped in the darkness for his hand. She saw his giant shape loom over her and, at the knowledge that she was free, miraculously, from her floating prison, she was suddenly overflowing with speechless gratitude, struggling at the same time to get her breath and to find the words to tell him what she felt.

  'I thought you were far away,' she whispered, 'and now you are here. You came to save me! Oh, thank you… thank you… But how did you guess? How did you know?'

  'I didn't guess. I saw. I'd just left the boat when the tall, fair Englishman arrived, and I hid on a lighter close by, among a load of timber, to see what I should do. I had a view of what was happening on deck there and when the soldiers took you away, I knew something was wrong. Have they found out who you are?'

  'Yes. Cockerell and Foster went to complain and they gave a description of me.'

  'I ought to have killed him,' Theodoros muttered, listen, we can't stay here. We've got to get away, fast.'

  He unshipped the oars and, softly fending off the perama, began rowing for open water.

  'I'm going to row us round Galata point and land by the mosque of Kilij Ali. It's a quiet spot, and not far from the French embassy.'

  He was bending vigorously to the oars when Marianne laid a hand on his arm. Not far away, the dark outline of the brig rose out of the black waters. There was only one riding light and from the forecastle a faint, fugitive gleam, but that was all.

  'That's where I want to go,' Marianne said.

  'There? To that ship? Are you mad? Why there?'

  'Because it belongs to a friend – a very dear friend whom I had thought lost. It's the same one on board which the mutiny nearly cost me my life. But I must go.'

  'And how do you know it's not still in the hands of the mutineers? Do you really want to reach this city, or only to add to your troubles? Haven't you had enough danger?'

  'If it were still in their hands, then it would not be here. The man who stole it didn't want to come to Constantinople. Oh, please, Theodoros! Take me to that ship! It matters dreadfully to me! It
's the thing that matters most in all the world because I thought that I should never see him again.'

  She was strung taut, like a bowstring, striving with all her might to persuade him. Finally, in a low, breathless voice, as though she were ashamed after all that he had done, she said:

  'If you won't take me, I'll go all the same. I'll swim. It's not very far.'

  There was silence while the Greek sat with bowed head, thinking, and the little boat drifted gently with no pull at the oars. After a moment he said:

  'Is he – the man you call Jason?'

  'Yes.'

  'Very well. If that is so, then I will take you, and God help us!'

  He resumed his work at the oars and the perama began to slide again, silkily, through the water. Very soon, they were in the shadow of the Witch and her steep sides loomed above them. Here, too, there was no sound. Theodoros shipped the oars, frowning.

  'It's as if there's no one aboard.'

  'There must be! Jason would never leave his ship at night in a strange port. She isn't even berthed… And listen! I think I can hear voices.'

  There was, in fact, a murmur of voices from the bows. Forgetting everything in her impatience, Marianne stood up and began groping with her hands along the side of the ship, looking for something to climb.

  'Sit still!' the Greek grunted. Like a cat, he seemed as well able to see as in broad daylight. 'There's a companion ladder farther on… You'll have us over!'

  He edged the perama gently along the hull, but when Marianne tried to catch hold of the ladder, he stopped her.

  'Stay where you are. I don't like the look of this. There's something odd about it and I didn't get you away from the English just to let you walk into another trap. You wait here. I'm going up.'

  'No! I can't!' Marianne broke out wildly, no longer able to contain her impatience. 'I've waited days and days for this moment when I could set foot on that ship again, and now you want me to stay here in the boat and wait? Wait for what? Everything I want is there, a few feet away! You must see I can't bear it any longer!'

  Seeing that no power on earth could restrain her, Theodoros gave in with a bad grace.

  'All right, come on then, but try not to make a noise. I may be wrong, but I think they're speaking Turkish.'

  In turn, they swarmed noiselessly up the ladder and dropped on to the empty deck. Marianne's heart was thudding so that she could hardly breathe. Everything looked just the same, and yet somehow different. The deck had lost its impeccable whiteness. Odd things seemed to be lying about there; the brass was dull and sheets hung loose, swaying slightly in the night wind. Then there was the silence…

  She could not explain the apparently deserted condition of the vessel. Someone must surely come… a seaman… the lieutenant, Craig O'Flaherty… or perhaps her old friend Arcadius, whom she missed in his absence almost as much as Jason himself. But no. There was no one. Nothing but that glimmer of light forward. It was towards this that Theodoros was now moving cautiously, one step at a time, only to draw back swiftly into the shelter of the mainmast as two men, carrying long-muzzled guns, came out of the forecastle hatch. Marianne and her companion knew at once what they were, from their red and blue garments, their tall felt hats with the spoon for rice stuck in it, their gleaming weapons and the warlike air. They were janissaries.

  'They are guarding the ship,' whispered Theodoros. 'That means there is no crew on board.'

  'Maybe, but that isn't to say the captain isn't here either. Let me go and look.'

  Unable to endure the uncertainty a moment longer, gripped by a fear she could not have described, and by the same sense of something amiss which had struck Theodores earlier, she glided like a shadow past the deckhouse, its door swinging crazily off its hinges, and reached the poop and climbed up, taking care to avoid the faint beam from the single stern light.

  Eagerly she sprang towards the door that led into the after-cabin and the captain's own sleeping cabin, but there she pulled up short, staring in bewilderment at the boarded-up doorway and, on the planks nailed across it, the great seals of red wax, like drops of blood.

  Only then did she look around her, taking in the details she had missed before but which now stood out clearly in the dim light. Everywhere there were traces of a fight: in the splinters of wood torn from the rails and spars, the twisted metalwork and the marks gouged in the deck by cannon shot, and most of all in the dark stains which were most sinisterly evident around the wheel.

  At that moment hope abandoned her.

  There was nothing more to wait for, nothing to look for, either. Jason's beautiful ship was now a ghost-ship, the battered remnant of the thing she had once been. Someone, certainly, had recaptured her from the mutineers, but whoever that someone was, it was not Jason, could not be, or why these signs of battle? Why the seals? A Barbary pirate, perhaps, or perhaps some Ottoman rais had come upon the Sea Witch far from land, half out of control in the inexperienced hands of Leighton and his crew, and she had fallen an easy prey.

  To Marianne's distraught mind, it seemed all too clear what must have happened, from the grim traces left on board. Everything proclaimed a battle lost, defeat and death, even down to the bored soldiers keeping guard over the floating wraith, since, for good or ill, it was now obviously the property of some noble person.

  As for those she loved and had last seen here, where no echo of their voices now remained, she would never see them more. She knew that now, for certain. They were dead.

  Utterly broken by this latest blow, Marianne slid to the deck, oblivious of everything around her, and with her head against the boarded-up door that Jason would never use again, gave herself up to silent tears. It was there that Theodoros found her, huddled against the wood as though trying to become a part of it.

  He tried to make her stand but could not, for all his great strength. She had become a dead weight, loaded down with an immense burden of misery and despair which were beyond him, as a man, to cope with. She simply lay there, crushed to the ground by the rocklike pressure of grief and disappointment, and he knew that she would make no attempt to drag herself out of it. For her the outside world had simply ceased to matter.

  Theodoros knelt beside her and, feeling for her hand, found it cold as if all the blood had already drained away from it. Yet the hand moved, pushing him away.

  'Leave me alone…' she whispered. 'Go away!'

  'No. I'm not leaving you. You are grieving, therefore you are my sister. Come.'

  She was not listening. He guessed that she had wandered away from him again, borne on the bitter stream of her own tears, far beyond all reason and logic. Cautiously he raised his head and looked about him.

  The janissaries were away up in the bows of the ship and had heard and seen nothing. They were sitting on coils of rope, their guns between their knees, and had taken out long pipes and were smoking placidly, gazing out at the night. The rich scent of tobacco mingled with the smell of seaweed on the breath of the breeze that wafted to them from the Black Sea. Obviously, neither of them suspected there was any other creature on board but their two selves.

  Slightly reassured, Theodoros bent over Marianne once more.

  'Please, you must try! You cannot stay here… it is madness! You must live, you must go on fighting!'

  He was using his own terms to persuade her, the things that made up all the world for him. She did not even answer but only shook her head, almost imperceptibly, and he could feel her tears wet on his hand. He was overwhelmed with compassion such as he had never felt before.

  He knew that this woman was brave and eager for life, and yet the words of life and battle had no power over her now.

  She lay there, as a dog will lie outside the door of its dead master, and he knew that she would never move again unless he did something. All she wanted was simply to lie where she was until death took her. Yet she was so young… so beautiful.

  He was seized with anger against all those who had tried to make use of that youth and
beauty, so ill-protected by the resounding titles which did not compensate for the load of responsibility they had burdened her with, himself among the rest. He was ashamed of himself, remembering the oath he had wrenched from the castaway before the sacred icons. Not everything was justified in the cause of freedom. And now that she could no longer help herself, this over-tried child who, for all that, had done her best to help him, had even killed for him, he was not going to abandon her.

  She had not moved for some time, but when he tried again to lift her, he felt the same refusal, the same resistance which told him that if he persisted she was capable of screaming aloud. Yet they could not stay where they were for ever. It was too dangerous.

  'I'm going to make you live in spite of yourself,' he muttered through his teeth, 'but for what I am about to do, forgive me!'

  He raised his huge hand. He had learned much about all forms of fighting and he knew how to knock a man out with a single, scientifically-delivered blow to the back of the head. Judging the power of his arm to a hair's breadth, he struck. There was no more resistance. The girl's body slumped instantly and relaxed. Immediately, he slung her across his shoulder and, bending double so as to be indistinguishable from the bulwark, he made his way back to the entry port where the companion ladder hung.

  It was no effort at all. His burden was as nothing to the joy of getting her away.

  Seconds later, he had taken the sculls and was steering the perama towards the harbour entrance. A few minutes more and he would have reached the place that he had selected and could carry his companion to the French embassy, which he knew well. Only then would he be able to return to his own battle and to the terrible sufferings of his country. But first he had to return this child to her own place and her own people. She was like a delicate flower that cannot live in strange soil but can only find the nourishment it needs to live and grow in its own ground.

  The boat rounded Galata point, past the walls of the old castle, and the minarets belonging to the mosque Kilij Ali lifted their vague white columns to the star-filled sky. They were out on the choppy little waves of the Bosphorus now, and the boat began to dance a little.