[Marianne 4] - Marianne and the Rebels

by Juliette Benzoni

  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 Leighton'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.'

  'He doesn't know what's the matter with me,' Marianne said faintly. 'How can he make me better?'

  'I don't know but he assured me it was a certain cure for the seasickness and disorders of the stomach. You never know… the medicine might do you good, my lady. You ought to try it.'

  Marianne hesitated for a moment, then she dragged herself painfully upright among her pillows and held out her hand.

  'Give it to me, then,' she sighed. 'You may be right. In any case, I feel so ill that I'd be glad to accept poison from the Borgias themselves! Anything rather than go on like this!'

  Agathe made her mistress as comfortable as she could and sponged her clammy forehead with a cloth soaked in eau-de-Cologne before putting the glass to her lips.

  Marianne sipped cautiously, half-convinced that she would not be able to keep the potion down for five minutes. She drained the glass to the last drop, all the same, and, amazingly, felt no trace of nausea.

  It had a queer taste, faintly bitter yet sweetish, but not unpleasant. There was some kind of spirit in it which burned a little as it went down but revived her. Gradually, the spasms of nausea that had racked her for the past two days diminished and finally ceased altogether, leaving only a profound sense of exhaustion and a longing for sleep.

  Marianne's eyelids drooped irresistibly but, before she closed her eyes, she smiled with sleepy gratitude at Agathe, who was watching her anxiously from the foot of the bed.

  'You were quite right, Agathe. I feel much better. I think I'
ll sleep now. You get some rest as well, but go and thank Doctor Leighton first. I must have misjudged him, you know, and now I'm ashamed.'

  'Oh, there's nothing to be ashamed about,' Agathe said. 'He may be a good doctor but I'll never manage to bring myself to like him. Besides, it's his job to tend the sick. But don't worry, my lady, I'll go.'

  Agathe found John Leighton on the forecastle in low-toned converse with Arroyo. Since she liked the boatswain no better than the doctor, she waited for him to go away before delivering her message. When she thanked the doctor on her mistress's behalf, she was bewildered to see him laugh.

  'What's so funny about that?' she demanded indignantly. 'It's very nice of my lady to say thank you! You were only doing your job, after all!'

  'As you say,' Leighton agreed. 'I was only doing my job. I do not need her thanks.'

  Turning his back upon the abigail, he went away aft, still laughing. Agathe flounced back to the cabin to tell her mistress but found Marianne sleeping so peacefully that she had not the heart to wake her. So she tidied the cabin, let in some fresh air and then went to bed herself, with the satisfaction of a job well done.

  Dawn was just breaking when there came a violent hammering on the cabin door, waking Marianne with a start. Agathe, who had taken the precaution of leaving her own door ajar, woke also. Although in general a heavy sleeper, she had been sleeping remarkably lightly since coming on board and now she tumbled out of bed in a moment, still half in a dream, and crying out in terror: 'What is it? What's happened? Oh, Lord, we're sinking!'

  'I don't think so, Agathe,' Marianne said calmly, propping herself up on her elbow. 'It is only someone banging on the door. Don't open it. It's probably some drunken sailor.'

  The blows were redoubled and in a moment they heard Jason's voice shouting furiously:

  'Are you going to open this damned door or do I have to break it down?'

  'Oh, Lord, my lady!' wailed Agathe. 'It's Monsieur Beaufort! He sounds ever so angry, too… What do you think he wants?'

  Jason undoubtedly sounded beside himself with fury and there was a note in the harsh, thickened voice which sent a thrill of fear down Marianne's spine.

  'I don't know, but we'll have to let him in, Agathe,' she said. 'He'll do as he says and if we let him break the door down it will only make matters worse.'

  The shivering Agathe put a shawl over her nightgown and went to open it. She had barely time to flatten herself against the bulkhead before it was flung back in her face and Jason burst into the room like a cannon shot. At the sight of him, Marianne let out a scream.

  In the red glow of the rising sun, he looked like a devil. His hair was standing on end, his neckcloth hanging loose and his shirt unfastened to the waist, and he had the brick-red complexion and glassy eyes of a man in the last stages of drunkenness. Drunk he certainly was, and Marianne's nostrils quivered at the heavy odour of rum that filled the cabin.

  Yet she was suddenly too frightened to have any thought to spare for being ill. Never had she seen Jason in such a state. There was madness in his eyes and he was grinding his teeth as he advanced on her with terrible slowness.

  Agathe, equally terrified but ready to defend her mistress at all costs, tried to fling herself between them. One glance at his tensely-working fingers had convinced her that he meant to strangle Marianne, a conviction that her mistress fully shared. But Jason seized her ruthlessly by the shoulders and propelled her, heedless of her protests, out of the cabin and locked the door on her. Then he turned back to Marianne who was shrinking back against the wall behind her cot, trying desperately to press herself bodily into the silk and mahogany furnishings. She read her death in Jason's eyes.

  'You, Marianne…' he snarled, 'you are with child?'

  She uttered a cry of terror, denial springing automatically to her lips:

  'No! No, it's not true…'

  'Come, come! That was it, wasn't it? Your fainting and your sickness and your upset stomach! You're big with child, by God knows who! But I mean to know… I'm going to find out whose bed you've wallowed in now! Who was it this time, eh? That Corsican lieutenant of yours? The Duke of Padua? Your phantom husband, or your Emperor? Answer me! By God, I'll make you speak!'

  He had one knee on the bed and his hands round Marianne's throat were forcing her back among the tumbled sheets, but his grip had relaxed.

  'You're mad!' she croaked at him in terror. 'Who told you this?'

  'Who? Why Leighton, of course! You felt better, didn't you, after his potion? But you don't know what it was he dosed you with. It's what they give to pregnant negresses on board the slavers to keep them alive until the voyage ends. They can't afford to let them die, you see, not when it's two lives for the price of one!'

  Marianne was filled with an overriding horror that made her forget her fear for a moment. It was Jason saying these horrible things, using these foul words! With a supple movement, she jerked herself free and crouched back in the corner of the alcove, hands up to protect her throat.

  'On board the slavers! Are you telling me you've dealt in that filthy trade?'

  'Why not? It's hugely profitable!'

  'So – that smell?'

  'Aha! You noticed it? It's true, it clings. There's no amount of scrubbing can quite get rid of it. Yet I only carried black ivory the once – to oblige a friend. But we weren't talking of what I've done, but of you. I swear to you I mean to make you talk!'

  He pounced on her again, dragging her out of her refuge, trying to get his hands round her neck once more. But by now anger and disappointment had come to Marianne's aid. She hit him, hard, sending him staggering back off the bunk, the alcohol in his system impairing his balance, to crash heavily into a chair which broke under his weight.

  There was a fresh knocking on the door and Jolival's voice made itself heard. Marianne guessed that Agathe must have run to him for help.

  'Open up, Beaufort!' called the Vicomte. 'I must speak to you.'

  Jason struggled to his feet and went over to the door but he did not open it.

  'Well I don't want to speak to you,' he snarled. 'Take yourself off! My business is with the lady!'

  'Don't be a fool, Beaufort! And don't do anything you'll be sorry for afterwards! Let me in—'

  There was fear in his voice, the same fear that gripped Marianne, but Jason only laughed again, with that dreadful laughter that was not his own.

  'Why should I let you in? So that you can tell me how she got herself pregnant? Or is it your own part as pander you want to explain?'

  'You're drunk! You're out of your mind! Why not open the door?'

  'Oh, but I will, my dear friend, I will… when I've dealt with this drab here as she deserves!'

  'She is a sick woman! You aren't normally a coward, have you forgotten?'

  'I've forgotten nothing!'

  He swung round from the door and sprang at Marianne so suddenly that she was taken by surprise. Hurled violently to the deck, she screamed aloud, as much from terror as from hurt.

  In another moment, the door burst open under the combined attack of Jolival and Gracchus. They almost fell into the room, Agathe on their heels, and snatched Marianne away from Jason, who appeared to have the fixed intention of strangling her. At the same time, Agathe seized a big water jug and flung the contents full in his face. He spluttered and shook himself like a dog, but slowly a spark of life began to show in his glazed eyes.

  Sobered, to some extent at least, he tossed back the black hair dripping in his eyes and glared bitterly at the little group. Agathe had helped Marianne to her bed and after a brief, compassionate glance at the motionless form, Arcadius turned to Jason, shaking his head sadly at the ravaged face where the marks of suffering had bitten deeper than anger.

  'I should have made her tell you the truth,' he said quietly, 'but she would not. She was afraid, horribly afraid of what you would say.'

  'Was she?'

  'Judging by what had just happened, she had every reason to be! But I give
you my word of honour as a gentleman, Beaufort, that she was in no way to blame for what occurred. She was raped, appallingly. Will you let me tell you the whole dreadful story?'

  'No! I can easily imagine your fertile imagination will have invented a splendid tale, calculated to appease my anger and to make me more her slave than ever. Unfortunately I do not want to hear it.'

  Before Jolival could utter another word, Jason had taken the whistle he wore on a chain round his neck and blown three sharp blasts. At once, the boatswain appeared, framed in the broken doorway. Other men were visible behind him so that it seemed probable that half the crew had been listening eagerly.

  Jason indicated Jolival and Gracchus.

  'Put these men in irons, until further orders.'

  'You have no right!'

  Marianne had come to her senses and, despite Agathe's efforts to restrain her, had sprung to her friend's side. She was overpowered in a moment.

  'I have every right,' the American retorted. 'I am sole master after God aboard this ship!'

  'If I were you,' Jolival observed, moving calmly to the door, a seaman on either side of him, 'I should leave God out of this. The real winner here is the devil… and your friend the doctor, of course. Honest, honest Iago – as Shakespeare so aptly puts it.'

  'We'll leave Dr Leighton out of this.'

  'Indeed? Even though he broke his Hippocratic oath by betraying Marianne's condition?'

  'He was not called to attend her. Therefore she was not his patient!'

  'A nice, specious bit of reasoning – that did not come from you. Suppose we say he laid a trap, the basest kind of trap, concealing it under charity, and you applaud him for it! It's not like you, Jason.'

  'Take him away, I said,' Jason roared. 'What are you waiting for?'

  Gracchus fought like a tiger as the crew dragged them away but he was heavily outnumbered. Even so, as he was hustled past Jason, he managed to wrench them to a halt for a moment and looked straight into his eyes, his own hot with indignation.