[Marianne 4] - Marianne and the Rebels

by Juliette Benzoni

  'Oh, but I'm not mocking, believe me. I admire you! You have a part to play and you're playing it to perfection. You almost took me in.'

  'You mean that you do not believe I am who I say I am?'

  'No, I don't! If you were an envoy of the great Napoleon, and a friend of his into the bargain, you'd not be roaming the seas dressed as a Greek woman, in the company of a notorious rebel and looking for a ship to carry you to Constantinople for your felonious purposes. You'd be on a fine frigate flying French colours and—'

  'I was wrecked,' Marianne said indifferently. 'It happens not infrequently in these waters, as I understand.'

  'It happens, as you say, frequently. Especially when the meltemi, our dangerous summer wind, blows, but either there are no survivors – or else rather more than two. Your story won't stand up.'

  'Well, believe it or not, that's how it was.'

  'I don't believe it.'

  Without pausing for breath he went on to address her in Greek, a brief and violent speech of which she naturally understood not one word. She heard him out without a blink and even permitted herself the luxury of a contemptuous smile.

  'You are wasting your breath,' she told him. 'I have no idea what you are saying.'

  Silence. Nicolaos Kouloughis contemplated the woman before him with a scowl that brought his long nose and jutting chin dangerously close to one another. It was evident that she had disconcerted him. What woman could listen without flinching, even with a smile, to that stream of calculated insult, accompanied as it was by a detailed description of the subtle tortures in store for her to make her speak? It really did look as if this girl had not understood anything of what he had said. However, Kouloughis was not a man to hesitate for long, and he shrugged the doubt away, irritably, like a man getting rid of a tiresome burden.

  'Well, you may be a foreigner, after all – that or you have a nerve of iron! Either way it makes no differences. Your friend Theodoros will be handed over to the pasha of Candia, who'll pay well for him. As for you, you look as though you'd be worth keeping until Tunis. The bey might prove generous if you take his fancy. Come, I'll take you where you'll be more comfortable. Damaged goods lose their value.'

  He had grasped her by the arm and was dragging her towards the ladder, ignoring her resistance. Not even for the sake of an improvement in her own material surroundings, was she willing to be taken too far away from her companion who, she now found, had acquired a certain value in her eyes. Whatever else he might be, he was a brave man and the victim of the same involuntary betrayal on the part of the little winged messenger. She felt at one with him. But the renegade's sinewy fingers were clamped tightly round her slender arm, giving her as much pain as if they had been made of iron.

  As she had feared, it was to the sterncastle that he was taking her. Guessing that he was making for his own quarters, she was preparing to put up an energetic fight, for who could tell whether the pirate would not decide to test his captive personally before putting her on the market? It must happen often enough.

  The door he opened and closed carefully behind her was, in fact, that of his own cabin, but the cabin itself was the very opposite of what might have been expected of a Mediterranean pirate. Imagination might have predicted a combination of luxury and untidiness, mixed with a kind of oriental squalor.

  In fact, with its dark mahogany and brass nautical instruments, the room had the brand of austere and sober elegance that would not have disgraced a British admiral. It was, furthermore, meticulously clean. It was not empty.

  As Kouloughis thrust her inside, Marianne beheld a youth reclining on the bunk, amid the purple cushions which provided the single note of colour in the room. His appearance was sufficiently arresting to have attracted the most casual eye. In his way, he was undoubtedly a work of art, but of a somewhat perverse kind.

  He was dressed, with calculation, in full trousers of pale blue silk with a kind of matching dolman decorated with immense silken frogs. Thick black curls flowed from under a cap with a long golden tassel, and he stared up languorously out of doe eyes rimmed with kohl and further enlarged by dashing pencil strokes. The rose-bud lips that pouted in a face of milky whiteness also quite clearly owed the better part of their bloom to diligent applications of rouge.

  This androgynous creature, undeniably beautiful but with a beauty that was wholly feminine, was occupied in cleaning a statuette of a faun, his long, supple fingers polishing the thing, which was of a quite remarkable obscenity, as lovingly as a mother. Here, presumably, was the fastidious housewife responsible for this unexpectedly neat domain.

  He showed no sign of being disturbed by Kouloughis' tumultuous entry with his captive, but merely raised his exquisitely plucked eyebrows and favoured the girl with a glance that was half-affronted, half made up of sheer distaste. No doubt he would have looked much the same had Kouloughis suddenly thrown a bucketful of slops into his well-ordered world: a new and startling experience for one of the prettiest women in Europe.

  The big cabin was well lighted by clusters of perfumed candles. Kouloughis dragged Marianne over to one of these and with a quick movement ripped off the embroidered shawl that covered her head and shaded her eyes. The light shone on the gleaming black mass of her plaited hair, and her green eyes sparkled angrily. She shrank back instinctively from the renegade's hand.

  'How dare you! What are you doing!'

  'Taking a good look at the goods I propose to sell, that's what I'm doing. There's no gainsaying you've a lovely face and your eyes are very fine – but it's hard to tell what may lie under the clothes worn by the women of my country. Open your mouth!'

  'What—!'

  'I said open your mouth. I want to see your teeth.'

  Before Marianne could stop him, he had gripped her face between his hands and forced her jaws apart with a deftness born of long practice. Marianne might rage as she liked at finding herself treated precisely like a horse; she was compelled to endure the mortifying examination which, it seemed, was entirely to the satisfaction of the examiner. But when Kouloughis tried to undo her dress, she sprang away and fled for refuge behind the table in the centre of the cabin.

  'Oh, no, you don't!'

  The renegade looked vaguely surprised but he only gave a small shrug of annoyance and called:

  'Stephanos!'

  This was obviously the name of the dainty occupant of the bunk and, no less evidently, Kouloughis was summoning him to help.

  Apparently the youth disliked the idea, because he began to shriek alarmingly and wriggled himself further down among his cushions as though defying his master to dislodge him, giving vent to a stream of words, uttered in a shrill tone that grated on Marianne's ears like a rasp, the gist of which was unmistakable: the delicate creature was refusing to sully his hands with anything so repulsive as a woman.

  Marianne, who reciprocated his dislike to the full, had a momentary hope that his refusal might earn him a box on the ears, but Kouloughis merely shrugged and smiled, an indulgent smile that sat ill on his face. Then he turned back to Marianne.

  Her attention deflected by the little scene, she was not expecting this new attack, but he made no further attempt to open her dress, being content merely to run his hands swiftly over her body, lingering a little over the breasts and acknowledging their firmness with a satisfied grunt. This treatment was not at all to Marianne's liking and she responded by dealing the slave-driver two resounding slaps.

  For a brief instant, she tasted the fierce joy of triumph. Kouloughis stood stock still, rubbing his cheek mechanically, while his little friend seemed ready to faint with shock and indignation. But it was only for an instant. A second later, she saw that she would have to pay dearly for her gesture.

  The corsair's sallow face seemed to turn dark green before her eyes. The fact that he had suffered this humiliation before the eyes of his minion made him wild with rage and, staring with dilated eyes, he suddenly seemed to her a creature less than human.

  Urged on
by the boy, who was now screaming excitedly in the nasal whine of a maniac muezzin, Kouloughis seized hold of Marianne and dragged her bodily out of the cabin.

  'You'll pay for that, daughter of a bitch!' he snarled. 'I'll show you who's master!'

  'He's going to beat me,' was Marianne's terror-stricken thought as she was jerked towards one of the carronade's that formed the polacca's armament, 'or worse!'

  In a trice she found herself bound to the breech. Two men had covered it first with a tarpaulin but not, it was soon clear, with any idea of sparing her unpleasant contact with the metal.

  'The meltemi is coming,' Kouloughis told her. We'll have a storm and you shall remain out here on deck until it's over. That may cool your temper. When you're cut loose, you'll have thought better of trying to strike Nicolaos Kouloughis. You'll go down on your knees and lick his boots to spare you further tortures! If you're still conscious!'

  It was a fact that an ominous swell was getting up and the ship was beginning to roll. Marianne could feel a queasiness inside that intimated sickness to come, but she forced herself not to blench. She was not going to show this brute that she was ill. He would only think she was afraid. Because of this, she chose to attack instead.

  'You're a fool, Nicolaos Kouloughis. You don't know your own interests.'

  'My interest is to avenge an insult dealt me in front of one of my men!'

  'That? A man? Don't make me laugh! But that's beside the point. You're going to lose a lot of money.'

  In no circumstances could anyone utter the word money in Nicolaos Kouloughis's presence without arousing his interest.

  'What do you mean?' he said, automatically, disregarding both the fact that only a few moments before he had been on the verge of strangling this woman and the undoubted absurdity of entering into this kind of argument with a prisoner lashed to the breech of a gun.

  'It's perfectly simple. You said, didn't you, that you were going to hand Theodoros over to the pasha of Candia and sell me in Tunis?'

  'I did.'

  'That's why I tell you you are going to lose a lot of money. Do you think the pasha of Candia will pay you as much as the prisoner's worth? He'll try and bargain with you, give you something on account and tell you he needs time to get the rest together… whereas the Sultan will pay much more, and on the spot, in good solid gold! For me too. If you won't believe who I really am, or listen to reason, you will at least admit I'm worth more than the grubby harem of some Tunisian bey! There isn't a woman in the Grand Signior's harem to match me for beauty,' she declared brazenly.

  Her plan was a straightforward one. If she could once get him to alter course for the Bosphorus, instead of taking her off to Africa where she would be lost beyond recall, and the very thought of which appalled her, she knew that this in itself would be something of a victory. The important thing, as she had decided once already in Yorgo's boat, was to get there, no matter how.

  She studied the corsair's crafty face anxiously to gauge the effect of her words. She knew that she had touched him on the raw, and very nearly breathed a sigh of relief when he muttered at last:

  'You may be right…' But in a moment the meditative tone had changed to one of anger and resentment. 'But you've deserved your punishment!' he cried. 'And you shall suffer it none the less. When the storm is over you shall know what I have decided – perhaps!

  He went away forward, leaving Marianne alone on the empty deck. Was he going to alter course? Marianne had the feeling suddenly that something was wrong. She had seen how Jason's men had acted during the storm the Sea Witch had run into after leaving Venice, and it bore no resemblance to the behaviour of Kouloughis' crew.

  The seamen on the brig had taken in all sail, leaving the yards bare of everything but the jib and staysail. The men on the polacca were gathered in the bows in what appeared to be some kind of conference, broken now and then by the roars of their captain. Some, the bravest probably, began taking in the more accessible canvas, without enthusiasm, glancing uneasily at the topsails to see how they were standing up to the weather. No one showed the slightest inclination to brave the perils of the shrouds that were now swinging and lashing with the pitching of the ship.

  Marianne, for her part, was feeling increasingly unwell. The ship was tossing now like a cork in boiling water and the ropes binding her were beginning to bite into her flesh. She gasped as a wave broke right over her and ran away, foaming, into the scuppers.

  All the same, when Kouloughis staggered past her on his way aft, she could not resist jibing at him:

  'A fine lot of seamen you've got! If this is how they behave in a storm…'

  'They put their trust in God and the saints,' the corsair flung back at her. 'The storm is from heaven; it is for heaven to decide the outcome. All Greeks know that.'

  This talk of God was the last thing that might have been expected from a renegade pirate, but Marianne was beginning to form her own idea of the Greeks. They were a strange people, at the same time brave and superstitious, ruthless and generous, and for the most part hopelessly illogical. Consequently she merely raised her eyebrows a little and observed:

  'I imagine that is why the Turks find them so easy to defeat. Their method is rather different – but I daresay you must know that, from having decided to serve them.'

  'I know. That's why I am going to take the helm, even if it does no good.'

  Marianne was prevented from answering this as another dollop of salt water slapped over her, sweeping the deck from end to end. She was choking for breath, coughing and spluttering to free her lungs. When she could see anything again, she caught sight of Kouloughis gripping the wheel with both hands and glaring wildly at the raging sea. The helmsman was crouched under the lee of a bulwark, clutching his beads.

  Daylight had crept up slowly, a grey daylight that revealed a gloomy sea. Like a wanton woman doing penance, it had put off its blue satins for grey rags. The waves were mountainous and the air full of flying spume. For all Kouloughis' efforts at the wheel, the vessel was driving forward blindly on a course known only to herself and perhaps to the Devil, however illogically the pirates might persist in seeing the hand of God in it.

  The renegade seemed to regard the prayers of his crew as perfectly normal, and it may have been that he himself was leaving it to the storm to decide the outcome of his private dilemma, whether to continue towards Crete or alter course for Constantinople.

  A jib was torn off, its sheets frayed and parted, and sailed away into the murky sky like a drunken bird. It did not seem to occur to anyone to do anything about replacing it; but the clamour of invocations to heaven was redoubled, except when drowned by the spray that came on board or by the howling of the wind. The mastheads were dipping and dancing madly against the clouds.

  But soon Marianne was past noticing anything. Soaked to the skin, blinded by spray and deafened by the roar of the water, with the wet ropes tightened cruelly and bruising her flesh, she was discovering that her punishment was worse than anything she had imagined. She longed to lose consciousness but could not, and this rough treatment had at least the advantage of making her forget her sickness. On the other hand, the risk of death by drowning was becoming more real every minute and it was beginning to seem to Marianne that she was bound to die where she was, like a rat in a trap.

  The slave-trader may have thought the same, or feared to see his profit slipping through his fingers if he prolonged the ordeal, because when there came a slight lull in the storm he locked the wheel and came slithering down from the poop to cut the ropes that bound her.

  It was not before time. Marianne's strength was almost exhausted and he had to put both arms round her to keep her from falling on to the steeply tilting deck as the vessel pitched sharply. Half-carrying and half-dragging her to the hatch, he opened it and lowered her down, letting in a fair amount of water at the same time.

  The foetid atmosphere of between-decks and the overpowering stench that filled the place succeeded where the onslaughts o
f the sea had failed, and Marianne was violently sick. The spasms of retching were painful and prolonged, but when it was over she felt better. She groped her way in the semi-darkness to the sacks where she had lain before and stretched herself out on them.

  What with the water that had entered below decks and her own sopping wet dress, the sacks were soon in a fair way to being as wet as the deck above, but Marianne told herself that she must bear her troubles patiently. At least she was no longer cold: in fact it was as hot as an oven down there.

  Gradually she came to herself again, assisted by a grinding headache. In that enclosed space the sound of the sea against the hull was like the banging of a drum and it was a little while before she realized that not all the thuds that seemed to go right through her head were made by the storm. At the other end of the deck, someone was knocking.

  Suddenly she remembered Theodoros and began to make her way awkwardly, more often than not on all fours because of the rolling of the ship, towards the place from which the knocking seemed to come. There was a door made out of great baulks of timber loosely nailed together, but it was fastened by a massive lock.

  Marianne put her ear anxiously to the door, clinging as best she could. After a moment, the sound came again and she felt the door shake under her hands.

  'Theodoras!' she called. 'Are you there?'

  She was answered by an angry voice that seemed to recede slightly as the vessel climbed, hurling her forward against the door.

  'Of course I'm here! The dogs have bound me so tightly that I can't hold on! Every time this misbegotten hulk rolls I'm flung up against this damned bulkhead! If it doesn't stop soon I'll be smashed to pulp!'

  'If only I knew how to open the door… but there's simply nothing here that I can use.'

  'What? You're free to move about?'

  'Yes…'

  In a few words, Marianne told her companion all that had passed between her and the corsair. Once, she heard him laugh, but his laughter ended in a curse as once again the bulkhead shuddered under the impact of its involuntary human battering ram. Yet it seemed that the collision had been lighter.