They stood for a moment, looking at one another without speaking, as if they were really seeing one another for the first time. Then, very slowly, the Greek princess moved closer to her new friend and kissed her on the brow.
'I want to thank you,' she said simply. 'I know what it must have cost you to agree to take Theodoros with you, and I want you to know that, even if you had refused, I should not have let him kill you.'
'He may still do so when we are far away from here,' Marianne muttered, unable to repress a certain resentment against the giant.
'Of course not. First of all, he needs you – and then he has a strict sense of honour. He is rough, violent and passionate but, from the moment that you are travelling companions, he will die for you if you are in danger. That is the law of the mountain klephts.'
'Klephts?'
The mountaineers of Olympus, Pindus and Taygetos. They live by brigandage, of course, but they are really much more like your Corsican bandits than ordinary robbers. Theodoros, like his father Constantine before him, was their chieftain. There is no more valiant fighter for Greek freedom… As for you, you are one of us now. The service you are rendering gives you the right to ask aid and protection from any one of us. Go to sleep now, and peace be with you.'
Peace? In spite of all her heroic efforts, Marianne did not find it again that night. What lay before her was not conducive to peace of mind; in fact she had never found herself in a worse mess. For the first time since leaving Paris, she began to long for her quiet, comfortable house in the rue de Lille, the roses in her garden, and her cousin Adelaide's sardonic, reassuring presence: Adelaide who must be waiting there quietly, dividing her time between the gossip of the neighbourhood, the services at the church of St Thomas Aquinas, and her interminable little snacks, for the letter which would summon her to America, to join Marianne and her old friend Jolival… A letter that would never come. Unless the threads of destiny were to sort themselves out at last, which did not look like happening!
'I'll make you pay for this, Jason Beaufort!' Marianne exclaimed suddenly, anger reviving in her at the memory. 'If you are still alive, I'll find you, wherever you are, and make you pay for all I've suffered on your account, through your stupid obstinacy! And now it's all your fault I'm mixed up in this insane business, putting to sea with a boatload of dangerous rebels…'
She was within an inch of echoing Antigone's anguished cry: 'I was made for love, not for hate.' Yet it did her good to be the old Marianne again, with her hopeless rages, her miseries, quarrels and follies, just as she had derived comfort from the thought of her home and her cousin, even if it was only the comfort of regret.
So much had happened to her already, she had suffered such a variety of experiences, that her present situation was not really so much worse than it had been on other occasions in the past. Even the fact that she was pregnant by a man she loathed had ceased to matter so very much. That was now the least of her problems. A slightly philosophical note began to creep into her angry thoughts.
'All I need now,' she thought, 'is to find myself becoming a brigand chief! But with Theodoras perhaps that won't be so very far off!'
In any case, the important thing for the moment was how they were to get to Constantinople, wretched place! She had lost all her papers, passports, credentials, of course; everything had gone that could prove her identity. However, she knew herself to be equal to persuading the ambassador, at least, to recognize her, and there was a small inner voice which whispered to her, stronger than all the reason and logic in the world, that at all costs, somehow, she had to reach the Ottoman capital, if she had to travel on a fishing boat, or even swim! And Marianne had always placed great faith in her inner voices.
CHAPTER TEN
The Island Where Time Stands Still
Yorgo's boat cast off, slid over the dark water in the shadow of the cliffs and put to sea. The white figure of Melina Koriatis, standing in the entrance to the little cave that served as a discreet landing stage, receded and her waving hand was lost in shadow. Soon, even the cave mouth itself had disappeared.
Marianne sighed and huddled in the big black cloak given her by her hostess, seeking what shelter she could find from the spray in the lee of the heavy canvas that was laced across from side to side of the vessel to protect the cargo, in this case jars of wine.
The fisherman's boat was a scaphos, one of those curious and rather badly-built Greek vessels that have nothing essentially Mediterranean about them, save their gaudy sails: a jib and a big gaff mainsail rigged up to a yard of inordinate length. She rode very low in the water, amply justifying the expanse of canvas, especially at times like the present when there was a heavy sea running. It must have been blowing a gale somewhere, for the night was cold, and Marianne blessed the warm wool they had bundled her up in, over her tattered gown.
She had felt a little sad at parting from the woman called Sappho. She had liked the revolutionary princess with her strangeness and her courage, recognizing in her something akin to herself and to those other women she had known with the capacity to grasp life with both hands: women like her cousin Adelaide and her friend Fortunée Hamelin.
Their good-byes had been brief.
'We may meet again, perhaps,' Melina had said, shaking her hand with a firm grip, like a man's. 'But if our paths should not cross, then go with God.'
That was all, and then she had gone with them down the dark narrow staircase cut in the rock beneath the floor of the chapel in which Marianne had been housed.
The sight of Yorgo lifting up the heavy stone and sliding into the lightless hole with the ease of long practice had told Marianne all that she needed to know about how she had come to find a fish by her bed, but Melina had coolly furnished her with the details. It appeared that whenever Yorgo and his brother were landing contraband articles such as guns, powder, shot or similar items, they were in the habit of carrying it in their baskets, hidden under a batch of fresh fish, and bringing it up the steps under the chapel. These led down by means of a long and fairly gently sloping chimney cut in the rock to a cave, half-filled with water, where a fishing boat could tie up out of sight of anyone.
Running before a southerly wind that filled the sails and whipped up the sea, the scaphos made good speed along the east coast of Santorini, before heading straight out to sea. No one had said a word since they left the cave. The passengers sat apart from one another, as though in mutual distrust, and gave themselves up to the rhythm of the ship. Only Theodoros took his turn at the helm.
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 car
ry 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.
[Marianne 4] - Marianne and the Rebels Page 31