The shore was closer now but the distance between the two swimmers had also diminished appreciably. Marianne was beginning to tire. Her movements were growing sluggish and her heart was thumping painfully in her breast. She knew that she was nearly at the end of her strength and that she had no choice now but to sink or let him overtake her.
Suddenly, she saw, directly in front of her, a minute crescent-shaped opening, paler than the surrounding rocks. Summoning up her last, remaining strength, she forced her limbs into one last effort but the man was gaining on her. He was close behind her now, a great black shadow with no distinguishing features. Terror stopped her breath and, at the very instant two hands reached out towards her, Marianne went under.
She returned to consciousness and to an awareness of strange sensations. She was lying on the sand in inky darkness and a man was holding her in his arms. He, too, was naked for she could feel the texture of his skin next to hers, smooth and warm but strongly muscled. She could see nothing at all, except perhaps a thickening of the darkness before her face, and when she stretched out her arms, instinctively, they touched rock to the side and above her. She was in some kind of low, narrow cave in the rocks. She tried to cry out, seized with a sudden terror at finding herself immured in this crevice in the rocks. A firm and burning mouth stifled her cries. She tried to struggle but the arms tightened round her, holding her still as the unknown man began to caress her.
Sure of himself, he made no attempt to hurry. His hands were gentle but subtly experienced and she knew that he was seeking to rouse her to the pitch where love becomes an irresistible fever. She tried to set her teeth and stiffen her muscles but the man had an extraordinary knowledge of the female body. Her fears had evaporated long ago, and now Marianne could feel long, shuddering waves of pleasure stealing up through her body. Still the kiss went on, that, too, strangely skilled, and Marianne found her breath sucked from her and her spirit weakening… It was so strange, this making love with a shadow. Little by little, she felt the weight of a tall body, full of strength and life, and yet it seemed to her that in some curious way she was making love with a ghost. Witches in the olden days who claimed to have had intercourse with the devil must have felt like this. She might have thought that it was nothing but a dream if that other flesh had not felt so warm and solid and but for the faint yet altogether earthly smell of mint which clung about the person of her unknown lover. Moreover, he was gradually attaining his ends. Possessed by the most primitive desires, Marianne was moaning now in his arms. The insistent waves of pleasure were mounting within her, higher and higher, overwhelming her… When, at last, the man allowed his long control to break, she burst like a red sun.
Two voices cried out together. That, and the chaotic beating of his heart was all that Marianne heard of her invisible lover. The next instant, he had risen, gasping, and was gone.
She heard the pebbles shifting under his running feet and raised herself quickly on her elbow, in time to see a tall figure dive into the sea. There was a tremendous splash, then nothing more. The man had not uttered a single word.
When Marianne crept out of the hollow in the rocks which the stranger had chosen to shelter them, she felt light-headed but physically curiously calm. It astonished her that she should feel so happy. She felt no shame or guilt for what had happened, perhaps just because the man had vanished so swiftly after making love to her, and had vanished so completely. No trace of his presence remained. He had simply melted into the night and into the sea whence he had come, as the morning mist is dissipated in the first rays of the sun. Who he was and where he came from, Marianne would probably never know. He was most likely a Greek fisherman, as she had first thought. She had seen many since landing on the island, beautiful and untamed as clouds in the sky, and still carrying about them a little of the aura of the old gods of Olympus who had been skilled at catching mortals unawares. He must have seen her go down to the beach and enter the water and it had been instinctive for him to follow her. The rest had been inevitable.
Perhaps it was Jupiter… or Neptune? she thought, amused in a way that astonished even herself. In the ordinary way, she would undoubtedly have felt outraged, baffled and indignant, and heaven knew what else, yet she felt none of these things. More than that, she was honest enough to admit to herself that those fleeting moments of passion had been not disagreeable and would linger rather pleasantly in her memory. She would be able to look back on it all simply as an adventure, a distinctly nice adventure!
The little inlet was not nearly so far from the beach as she had feared. She had been so frightened before that she had not been properly conscious of the direction. The moon, which was now rising beyond the point, sent a thin sliver of silver over the water, and it was suddenly much lighter, although just as hot.
Hoping that this time no one would see her, Marianne slid back into the water and swam to the beach, pausing when her toes touched the sandy bottom to take a cautious look up and down. Then she hurried out of the water and put on her clothes as fast as she could manage, without bothering to dry herself, only wringing the water out of her hair. Carrying her shoes to keep them from getting full of sand, she made her way up the beach to the dense shadow of the trees.
She was just stepping into it when she was frozen where she stood by the sound of a laugh. It was a man's laugh but this time Marianne was not in the least afraid. Anger and exasperation were uppermost. She was growing a little tired of this night's surprises. Besides whoever had laughed was probably the same… She felt her temper rising. She had been inclined to find her adventure rather charming, yet if he could laugh…
'Come out!' she cried. 'And stop laughing.'
'Good was it – your bathe?' came a mocking voice in execrably uncertain Italian. 'Good to watch, yes. Beautiful lady!'
As he spoke, the man emerged from under the trees and came towards Marianne. The flowing white robes he wore gave him a faintly ghostly appearance and the turban wound round his head made him seem to her to be very tall. She did not stop to think that this turbaned figure might belong to a henchman of the terrible Ali against whom she had been warned. She only thought that the man's words and his laughter had been an insult. Instantly, she darted forward and dealt him a ringing box on the ears, almost before she could see him.
'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.
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 my 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.
[Marianne 4] - Marianne and the Rebels Page 22