'Then I have no intention of putting myself in his way. All I want to do is stretch my legs on deck and get a breath of air.'
'The weather's overcast, it's raining and there's a sea running.'
'So I saw. But I must have air. We'll take a stroll together, Jolival, if you'll be kind enough to come and collect me here in half an hour's time. I can see by your face that you're going to find some other horrid reason to stop me going out – such as that Agathe and I are the only women aboard among a hundred men! Well, the last thing I mean to do is to spend all my time cooped up in this hole, particularly when I know quite well that Jason will never so much as cross the threshold. Am I right?'
Jolival refrained from answering. Delivering himself of a fatalistic shrug, he began to steer an erratic course towards the door, negotiating the half-open trunks with their overflow of ribbons and furbelows.
When he had gone, Marianne looked round for her maid but Agathe had disappeared. Her call was answered only by a feeble groan. Stepping quickly to the communicating door, she found the wretched Agathe collapsed on her bed, retching spasmodically into her starched apron. All her prim flirtatiousness had vanished and there remained only a little girl, very green in the face, who looked up at her mistress out of hollow eyes.
'Good gracious, Agathe! Are you as ill as this? Why didn't you tell me?'
'It – it came over me all of a sudden. When I was bringing your tray… I didn't feel very well and then, just as I got here… It must have been the smell of the fried eggs and bacon – oooooooh!'
The mere mention of these items was enough to bring on another spasm and the little abigail disappeared again into her apron.
'Well, you can't go on like this,' Marianne said firmly, substituting a basin for the apron as a start. There's a doctor on board this beastly vessel and I'm going to find him. He's a Friday-faced creature but surely he can do something to help.'
She bathed Agathe's face briskly with cold water and eau-de-Cologne, gave her a bottle of salts and then, having first buttoned a close-fitting coat of honey-coloured cloth securely over her nightgown, she tied a scarf round her head and sallied forth in the direction of the companion-way leading up to the main deck. Climbing the steps to the deck proved something of a problem but eventually she emerged into the deck-housing between the mainmast and the mizzen.
At that moment, the brig encountered a squall. The sea fell away from the bows and she had to cling to the steps to keep herself from sliding down again on her face. When she came out on deck she found the wind astern and the strength of it took her unawares. The loosely-tied scarf was whipped from her head and her long, dark locks writhed about her like some wild creeping plant. The empty deck rose and fell. She turned towards the poop and received the wind full in her face. The ship was running before the squall. There were white caps to the waves and all around was the singing in the shrouds and the crack and murmur of the sails. She saw the helmsman on the poop, which was reached from the lower level of the deck by a flight of steep, ladderlike steps. In his heavy canvas jacket, he looked like a part of the ship, standing there with legs braced wide apart and big hands anchored firmly on the wheel. Looking up, Marianne saw that the better part of the duty watch were perched on the yards, frantically engaged in taking in topgallants, topsails and mainsail, hauling down the main jib to bear away down wind under foresail and fore staysail, according to the orders that came booming through the loud-hailer from the poop.
Without warning, a dozen or so barefoot monkeys dropped from above and began running about the deck. One of them cannoned into her so sharply that she was sent reeling towards the poop ladder. She flung out her hands and managed to grab hold of it in time to prevent herself from sprawling headlong, while the sailor pursued his way aft without a backward glance.
'Your ladyship must forgive him. I do not think he saw you,' said a deep voice gravely in Italian. 'Are you hurt?'
Marianne hauled herself upright, flinging back the hair that blinded her, and stared with a kind of shocked surprise at the man before her.
'No,' she said automatically… 'no, thank you.'
He moved away at once, with an easy gait that seemed to fit itself effortlessly to the irregular pitching of the ship. Marianne watched him go, petrified, for some reason she could not explain, but with a curious mixture of fear and admiration. Her season in hell was still too fresh in her mind for the sight of a black skin to inspire her with anything but alarm, and the sailor who had spoken to her, though not so dark as Ishtar and her sisters, was black, like them. Damiani's three slaves had been the colour of ebony whereas this man seemed to have been moulded in a kind of golden bronze, and despite an instinctive shudder based chiefly on the association of remembered fear and dislike, Marianne readily admitted that she had rarely beheld a more splendid figure of a man.
He was barefoot, like all the crew, his lower limbs encased in tight canvas trousers, and he had the disturbing physical perfection of the great cats. To see him springing up the shrouds to stow a sail with all the lithe grace of a bronze leopard was an unforgettable experience. Nor did a brief glimpse of his face in any way disgrace the whole.
She was still lost in these reflections when a hand grasped her arm and hauled rather than helped her up the steps to the poop.
'What are you doing here?' yelled Jason Beaufort. 'What the devil do you mean by coming out in such weather? Do you want to be swept overboard?'
He sounded furious but Marianne noted, to her private satisfaction, a note of real concern underlying the rebuke.
'I was looking for the doctor. Agathe is dreadfully ill and must have help. She was very nearly sick bringing me my breakfast.'
'Then why was she bringing it? Your maid has no business in the galley, Princess. There are servants on board, thank God, whose duty it is to attend to such matters. Ah, there is Toby, now. He has orders to see that you want for nothing.'
Another black man had emerged from the galley regions, carrying a pailful of vegetable peelings. This one had a cheerful moon face surmounted by a circle of wiry, grizzled hair from the midst of which his bald crown rose in well-polished nakedness to confront the elements. His face split open in a beaming smile at the sight of his master, revealing a snowy crescent of white teeth.
'Go and tell Dr Leighton there's a patient for him in the deck house,' Beaufort called.
There was a faint frown in Marianne's eyes and she was unable to stop herself asking: 'Have you many negroes on board?'
'Why? Don't you like them?' Jason snapped back, for her look had not escaped him. 'There are plenty of them where I come from. I thought I had told you that my own nurse was black. It's not something people in France or England are accustomed to, I grant you, but in Charleston and anywhere in the South it's perfectly normal and natural. But, to answer your question: I have two, Toby and his brother Nathan. No, I was forgetting. I've three, now. I took on another at Chioggia.'
'At Chioggia?'
'Yes, an Ethiopian. The poor devil had been a slave of your friends the Turks and had escaped. I found him adrift in the port when I was taking on water. You can see him up there astride the tops'l yard.'
A creeping chill which had nothing to do with the weather, though it was cool for the time of year, stole over Marianne. The man whose appearance had made such an impression on her – was she dreaming, or did he really have light eyes? – was a runaway slave. And, runaways apart, what of the other two, the servants Jason had spoken of? Jolival's words returned unbidden to her mind, and because she could not bear the smallest cloud on her love she could not help asking the question that rose to her lips, although she phrased it with a little circumlocution:
'Yes, I had noticed him. Your "poor devil" is a fine-looking fellow – and very different from him.' She nodded at Toby, now engaged in emptying his bucket overboard. 'Is he another runaway slave?'
'There are as many different races of blacks as there are whites. The Ethiopians claim descent from the Queen of She
ba and her son by Solomon. Their features are in general finer and more aquiline than those of other Africans, and they have a fierce pride which does not take easily to slavery. Some of them are much lighter-skinned, too, like this one. But why should you think Toby and Nathan are runaways? They were born into my family's service. Their parents were very young when my grandfather bought them.'
The chill turned to ice. It seemed to Marianne that she was moving into a new and unfamiliar world. It had never occurred to her that Jason, a free American citizen, might regard slavery as something perfectly normal. She knew, of course, that the trade in 'black ivory', as Jolival had called it, illegal in England since 1807 and frowned on, although not actually banned, in France, still nourished in the American south where the country's wealth was largely built on black labour. She knew, too, that as a southerner, born in Charleston, Jason had been brought up among the negroes of his father's plantation. He had talked to her once, with some affection, about his black nurse, Deborah. But the problem which faced her now, in all its brutal realism, was one that she had not previously considered except in an abstract, almost disembodied light. Now she was looking at Jason Beaufort, slave-owner, discussing the buying and selling of human beings as dispassionately as if they were cattle. Obviously, this state of affairs seemed perfectly natural to him.
As things stood between them just then, Marianne might have been wiser to conceal her feelings, but she had never learned to resist the impulse of her heart, especially where the man she loved was concerned.
'Slaves! How strange to hear that word on your lips,' she murmured, instinctively abandoning the superficial, hurtful formality which had subsisted between them. 'You have always seemed to me the very image and symbol of liberty. How can you even bring yourself to say it?'
For the first time that morning, she beheld a genuinely arrested look in the faint widening of the blue eyes turned on her, but the smile which followed that unguarded expression was sardonic as ever, and neither candid nor even remotely friendly.
'I should imagine your Emperor can say it readily enough. He reintroduced slavery and the slave-trade as First Consul, after it had been abolished by the Revolution. He shuffled off the best part of the problem with Louisiana, I grant, but I've never heard that the folks of San Domingo had much cause to bless him for his liberalism.'
'Let's leave the Emperor out of this. I am talking about you and only you.'
'Are you condescending to criticize my way of life, and the ways of my people? That's rich! Well, let me tell you something. I know the blacks better than you. They're fine fellows for the most part and I like them, but you can't alter the fact that they're still no more sophisticated than children. They laugh and cry as easily, and they have the same unpredictability and the same warmth of heart. But they need guidance.'
'With a whip? With chains on their legs and treated worse than cattle! No man, whatever his colour, was put on this earth to be a slave. I wonder what the Beaufort who left France under Louis XIV, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, would have thought of your reasoning. I daresay he knew freedom was worth any sacrifice!'
A certain tightening of the lines round Jason's mouth might have warned Marianne that his patience was wearing thin, but she herself was spoiling for a fight. She would a hundred times rather face up to a good row between them than this frigid politeness.
There was a black look in the privateer's eyes and a scornful curl to his lip but he answered with no more than a shrug:
'My poor idiot, it was that very ancestor who started our plantation at La Faye-Blanche and bought the first slaves. But the whip has never been in use with us, and our blacks have had no cause to complain of their treatment. Ask Toby and Nathan! If I'd tried to give them their freedom when the estate was burned they would have lain down and died at my door.'
'I didn't say that you were bad masters, Jason—'
'What did you say then? Was I dreaming when I heard you referring to chains and men treated like cattle? Not that I'm surprised to find you such a staunch supporter of liberty! It's not a word much in use among women of your kind. The majority prefer, I might even say insist on a form of sweet servitude. You don't like the word? But then you, perhaps, are not altogether woman! You're quite at liberty, though, madam! At liberty to ruin everything, to smash everything around you, beginning with your own life and other people's! Oh, there's nothing to touch a truly liberated woman! She's capable of anything! Give woman freedom and they turn into dear little puppets, clinging like crazy to their crowns and peacock feathers!'
The arrival on the scene of Jolival cut short this diatribe. Jason, now quite beside himself, was shouting loudly enough for the whole ship to hear him. He had contained himself too long and now his pent-up anger was released. Catching sight of the little vicomte's amiable features, he barked furiously:
'Take this lady back to her cabin. Treat her with the respect due to a free ambassadress of a liberal Empire! And don't let me see her here again. The quarterdeck is no place for a woman, however liberated! Nor am I obliged to endure her. I too am free!'
And turning on his heel Jason went swiftly down the ladder and strode forward to shut himself up in the chart room.
Jolival made his way to Marianne who was gripping the rail with both hands, struggling with the wind and a violent desire to cry.
'What have you done to him?'
'Nothing! I was only trying to explain to him that slavery is an abomination and how shocking it is that there are poor wretches on this ship without the right to call themselves men! And you saw how he spoke to me!'
'Oh, so now you're fighting about the condition of mankind, are you?' Jolival said helplessly. 'Good God in heaven, Marianne! Haven't you enough to quarrel about, you and Jason, without adding things that are no concern of yours? Upon my word, anyone would think you actually enjoyed tearing yourselves to pieces! He's dying to take you in his arms and you're ready to throw yourself at his feet, yet put you together and you're at each other like a pair of fighting cocks. And in front of the hands!'
'But, Jolival, have you forgotten the smell?'
'Did you mention that to him?'
'No. He didn't give me time. He got angry straight away.'
'And just as well! My dear child, what do you think you're doing? When will you learn that men have their own lives and will live them as they think best? Come along now, let me take you to your cabin. I'm damned if I'll let you out alone again!'
Marianne went with him meekly, accepting the arm he offered to escort her back to the deck-house. This time they had to make their way past the members of the crew who had now descended from the shrouds. The wind being aft had enabled them to follow the quarrel with interest, and Marianne caught a number of broad grins, which covered her with confusion. However, she pretended not to notice them and to be absorbed in conversation with Jolival who was discoursing fluently upon the weather.
They were about to descend the stairs leading below when she saw the dark-skinned fugitive leaning against the mainmast. He had seen her, too, but he did not smile. His eyes, actually of a kind of bluish tint, held a rather melancholy expression. Half-unwillingly, Marianne took a step towards him.
'What is your name?' she asked, a little nervously.
He abandoned his indolent pose and stood up to answer her. Once again, she was struck by the savage beauty of the man's face and the strangeness of his light eyes. Except for his dark skin, the runaway slave had nothing at all negroid about him: the nose was finely chiselled and there was no thickening about the firm, well-shaped lips. He bowed slightly and said softly:
'Kaleb… at your service.'
A profound pity, the outcome of her recent dispute with Jason, swept over Marianne for the poor wretch who was, after all, no better than a hunted animal. She tried to find something to say to him and, recalling what Jason had told her, she asked:
'Do you know that we are going to Constantinople? I am told that you have escaped from the Turks.
Are you not afraid—'
'Afraid of being recaptured? No, madame. If I do not leave the ship, I have nothing to fear. I am a member of the crew now and the captain will not allow anyone to touch one of his men. But I thank you for your kind thought, madame.'
'It was nothing. Was it in Turkey that you learned to speak Italian?'
'Just so. Slaves there are often given a good education. I speak French also,' he added in that language, after only the faintest hesitation.
'I see.'
With a little nod, Marianne at last followed Jolival down the dark companion ladder.
'If I were you,' Jolival remarked humorously, 'I should be careful how you talk to the men. Our dear captain is quite capable of deciding you are inciting them to mutiny, and probably clapping you in irons without more ado.'
'Quite capable, I agree. But, Arcadius, I can't help feeling sorry for that poor man. A slave – and a runaway slave at that – it's so dreadfully sad. And it's terrifying to think what might happen to him if he were recaptured.'
'Oddly enough,' Jolival said, 'I don't feel in the least sorry for your bronze sailor. Possibly on account of his physique. Any master, however cruel, if he had the smallest regard for his money, would think twice about killing such a valuable property. Besides, he told you himself, he has nothing to fear. He has the American flag to protect him.'
As Marianne entered her cabin, the smell caught her by the throat. There was no doubt about it, Agathe was very ill indeed. However, as she came in, Dr Leighton was in the act of closing the door to the maid's tiny chamber.
He told Marianne that, closed to the eyebrows with belladonna, the girl would sleep off her miseries, and went on to add that she should not be disturbed. Marianne, however, did not like his tone, any more than she liked the look of her cabin.
Soiled towels were strewn about everywhere and right in the middle of her dressing table was a basin part-full of a yellowish liquid which slopped to and fro uninvitingly. The smell which greeted her left Marianne in no doubt of its contents. All this was quite clearly deliberate and gave her a very good idea of what kind of cooperation she might expect from Dr Leighton.
[Marianne 4] - Marianne and the Rebels Page 17