Never in his career had Captain King found himself confronted with such a motive for attempted murder. Or in such a quandary. Privately, he cursed the architect for his busy tongue and his insatiable appetite for destruction, incomprehensible to his seaman's mind. There was Marianne, pleading earnestly for her servant. Obviously, she would never forgive him if he sacrificed the man to this encroaching civilian. On the other hand, the affair had occurred openly, on board one of His Majesty's ships. He did his best to reach a compromise by reiterating his order that Theodoros be put in irons, but added that nothing was to be decided concerning his case until they reached their destination. The outburst was probably attributable to the effects of heat on an already fiery constitution, he concluded, and he placed perfect confidence in Miss Selton's ability to deal with her own servant as she thought fit. The implication was that in thirty-six hours' time, Theodoros would be free to take himself to the devil any way he chose: at least the architect would be safe from his temper at present.
Marianne breathed again, but this degree of leniency by no means suited Cockerell's book. He had received too great a fright not to have been made exceedingly angry, and he had no sooner recovered his ability to speak than his shrill voice was raised to demand immediate punishment of his attacker. In this he was seconded by his colleague, in whom the affair had suddenly engendered a miraculous solidarity.
'I'm a British subject!' Cockerell shrilled. 'And you, Captain King, as an officer of his Britannic Majesty's Navy, owe me protection and justice! I demand that you hang this man on the spot for his attempt on my life!'
'Well, you haven't died of it, so far as I can see,' the captain replied pacifically. 'And you can hardly call it justice to sacrifice another human life to your very reasonable annoyance. The man is safely stowed in the cable tier by this time, and there he stays until we drop anchor.'
'That won't do. I insist. I command—'
But that, after a lifetime at sea, was too much for Captain King. His patience snapped.
'Here, on this ship,' he said harshly, 'I am the only one who commands. Miss Selton has declared, in your hearing and in mine, that she will assume complete responsibility for her servant. After all your protestations of devotion, that is something you appear to have forgotten. Do you really wish to disoblige her in this matter?'
'I yield to no one in my admiration and respect for Miss Selton, but I also have a good deal of respect for my own life. You may think that a matter of small importance, Captain, but that only makes me the readier to defend it. Either you punish this man as he deserves or I must request you to stop at the first Anatolian harbour and put me ashore. I shall continue my journey to Constantinople on horseback! It is no great distance.'
'Mr Cockerell, this is quite absurd,' Marianne said. 'I am prepared to make any apology you require on my servant's behalf. Believe me, I would not have had this happen for the world and I will see to it that the man is duly punished after we land.'
'It is easy for you to speak of apologies, ma'am,' the architect said sourly. 'But much as I admire you, I cannot look on the matter in quite the same trivial light. With your permission, I repeat what I have already said: either he suffers, or I leave this ship.'
'Then you may go with my goodwill!' Sir James said testily. 'You shall be put ashore, sir, since you insist upon it. Mr Spencer—' he turned to his first lieutenant. We will drop anchor at Eregli, if you please. See to it that these gentlemen's baggage is got ashore. I am assuming you will wish to go also, Mr Foster?'
'Most certainly,' came the answer, delivered in a tone of stiff pomposity. 'We Liverpuddlians aren't ones to desert our friends in a crisis. I'm right beside you, Cockerell.'
'I never doubted it, Foster. Come, we must see to our preparations. We shall leave no regrets behind us.'
The two of them shook hands with what they evidently considered a most noble and affecting dignity, then went below to their respective cabins to see to the packing of their respective belongings. Captain King, on whom this touching demonstration had produced no more effect than the sardonic lifting of an eyebrow, watched them go, half-angry, half-amused.
'Just take a look at the pair of 'em,' he growled to the still gaping Marianne. 'Pylades consoling Orestes after being spurned by Hermione, shouldn't you say? What those two can't stomach is the fact that their beloved Miss Selton didn't stand up for 'em and offer 'em the Greek's head on a platter! They're furious with me, now, but it's you they won't forgive.'
'Do you think not?'
'Sure of it. They tied themselves in knots to please you and you never melted a fraction. Simply ignored their efforts. They're the kind that makes revolutions. They hate anything that's better than themselves, or won't give in to them.'
'But why leave the ship? Theodoras is in irons. Mr Cockerell is perfectly safe.'
'Why, to reach Constantinople before us, to be sure, and get the ambassador to order his arrest.'
Marianne's heart missed a beat. Theodoros had barely escaped from one peril, thanks to Sir James, before another, yet more serious, reared its head. If he were to be arrested after they dropped anchor, nothing could save him. She remembered all too clearly what Kouloughis had told her. The head of a rebel leader had too high a price on it for any diplomat, anxious to ingratiate himself with a head of state, to let slip such an opportunity. Let the law once get its hands on him, and his fragile alias would soon be broken. And she had sworn before the icons of Ayios Ilias to do her utmost to get her companion safely into the Ottoman capital.
She gazed up at her old friend with tears in her eyes.
'And so all your kindness to my poor servant will be wasted?' she said pitifully. 'For one moment's loss of temper, readily understandable in any man who loves his native land, he must hang! Yet my gratitude to you, Sir James, is none the less. You did all you could. I have been a horrid trouble to you.'
'Come, come! We should all have been bored on this voyage but for you. And I'm not the only one to say so. You have made it a real joy to us all, my dear. And as for that tiresome watchdog of yours – the best thing he can do will be to slip quietly over the side as soon as we drop anchor in the Bosphorus. He'll have plenty of time. I don't imagine we'll find Stratford Canning – he's our present ambassador, y'know – waiting on the quayside with an armed guard to greet us. The business is too unimportant, and so are the plaintiffs. So, stop worrying your pretty head and come and drink a cup of tea with me. There's nothing like a nice hot cup of tea for refreshment in this confounded heat.'
For all Sir James's comforting words, Marianne could not feel at ease. There was danger in the two men's anger and resentment, whatever their credit with the embassy, but she had known from the glowering looks cast at her by her former admirers that it would be a waste of time and dignity to attempt to reason with them. They had all the inflexible obstinacy of mean little men, and they would regard any such attempt as an unfortunate and incomprehensible sign of weakness on behalf of one whom they certainly felt to be among the dregs of humanity. Her best course was still to trust Sir James's judgement and his friendship for herself. Hadn't he as good as told her he would not stand in the way of the culprit's escape? She was even fairly sure that he would let her slip a note to Theodoros in the cable tier, warning him to be ready to escape as soon as he heard the vessel drop anchor.
'I'll have the irons off him as soon as we're under way again,' Captain King remarked as, round about sunset, they came in sight of what had once been the ancient port of Heraclea on the Sea of Marmara. That'll make it the easiest thing in the world for him to leave us. Although, you never know. We may be imagining things – painting your two admirers blacker than they are.'
'It's still wise to be prepared,' Marianne replied. 'I can't thank you enough, Sir James.'
Thus it was with a more tranquil eye that she watched the two Englishmen go ashore, amid a welter of baggage slung over the side and the shouts of the boatmen and porters hired to transport them from the three-decker,
by means of a caique, to the waterfront, where a bustling, cheerful crowd was welcoming the cool of the evening.
Cockerell and Foster quitted the ship without a word of thanks or farewell, and for a long time their green sunshades could be seen bobbing on a sea of turbans and felt hats. They vanished at last into the compact mass of brightly coloured houses and mosques, riding jerkily on donkeys and surrounded by guides armed with staves and by an eager, screaming throng of small boys.
'The ingratitude of it!' Marianne said. They didn't even say good-bye to you. After all you've done for them!'
But Sir James only laughed and gave the order to weigh anchor. The Jason heeled over gracefully, almost as though relieved of a disagreeable burden, and resumed her course, while the setting sun turned the sea to amethyst and silvery dolphins played about the golden islets.
This was the last stage. The long exhausting voyage, which had so nearly cost Marianne her life on so many occasions, was drawing to an end. Constantinople was a bare thirty miles away now, and she was half-amazed to think it could be so near.
Gradually, in the dire days that had passed, the city of the golden-haired sultana, from whom she had hoped for so much, and most of all a reason to hope, had come to seem to her like a mirage, a kind of legendary city, eternally receding from her into time and space. Yet now that harbour lay close at hand. The numbers of sails that studded the darkening sea bore witness to it, as did the lighter trails in the deep blue of the sky, already velvety with oncoming night.
Later that evening, when the wind had dropped suddenly and the ship sailed on under slackened canvas, sliding with a silken rustle through the calm waters, Marianne stood on deck and gazed at the stars of an oriental night that was as balmy as anything she had imagined in the days when the future was still inscribed for her with the name 'Jason Beaufort'. Where was he at that moment? What seas was he sailing in his pride or his grief? Where was the Sea Witch spreading her white sails, and whose hand was at the helm? Was he still living somewhere on the face of this earth, the man who only yesterday had claimed in his pride and mastery that there were two things only in this world he loved, the woman he had won only to lose and the ship that bore the likeness of her face.
On that last night of wandering, the onslaught of regrets grew ever more determined. She had trodden a long and painful road to reach the city whose nearness she could now sense, with the aim of doing her utmost to recall its heart – a fragile heart because it beat in a woman's breast, however ardent – to its 300-year-old alliance with France. She had shed on the way all that was true and real in her life: love, friendship, self-respect, fortune, even her clothes, to say nothing of the husband she had never even seen, murdered by the hand of a madman. Would there ever be a harvest? Would she at least return to France with the old alliance renewed? Or would there be failure there also, to match the private tragedy that still lurked in her womb, clinging with such tenacity that nothing, it seemed, could dislodge it?
She remained there for a long time, watching the big bright stars and searching for some sign of hope or encouragement. One in particular seemed to glow more bright and then fell away from the blue vault and plunged like a miniature meteor to extinction.
Marianne crossed herself, hurriedly, and with her eyes fixed on the point where the star had disappeared, murmured the traditional wish into the evening air.
'Let me see him, Lord! Let me see him again, whatever the cost! If he is still alive, let me see him again, just once…'
That Jason was still alive, in her heart of hearts, she did not doubt. In spite of the cruel way he had treated her, in spite of his raging jealousy and a manner so strange that she had come to wonder if Leighton had not been feeding him secretly with some drug to induce a murderous and frenzied state, she knew that he was too deeply embedded in her heart for her to tear him out without destroying herself; and that even if he were at the other end of the earth, his life could not cease without her being in some way aware of it, through the mysterious vibrations of the soul.
The capital of the Ottoman Empire came in sight just at sunrise. At first it was no more than an outline, seen through a silvery haze on the distant skyline over the pearly sea, made up of nebulous domes and the faint spires of minarets.
On the Asian side the dark green hills, dotted with white villages, tumbled into a sea thick with shipping that looked as if it might have come straight out of some eastern tale: dark brown mahones, driven by the powerful arms of colourfully-dressed oarsmen; caiques gilded and painted like odalisques; shark-nosed xebecs, red and black; antiquated galleys with their long sweeps lying parallel on the surface, like gigantic water beetles; chektirmes, with angular, skyward-pointing sails – all converging on that unreal city shimmering in the sunlight.
Slowly it grew, until the entire city was spread out before them, flowing away from the ochre-coloured walls strung out between the fortress of the Seven Towers, past the Seven Hills and the Seven Mosques, like the arches of some titanic bridge, all the way to the black cypresses of Seraglio Point, in an astonishing jumble of red roofs, translucent domes, gardens and ruins of antiquity, like mighty shoulders braced at the critical moment to prevent the whole edifice of white cupolas ranged between the six minarets of the mosque of Ahmed and the great buttresses of St Sophia from rushing headlong into the sea.
As they rounded the Princes' Island they could see the crenellated line of the sea-wall, and the iridescent pearl began to take on a more precise definition.
The great ship curtsied daintily, her tall white sails dipping to the morning breeze as she came round Seraglio Point and entered the Golden Horn.
This was the great crossroads of the sea, where the hubbub of old Europe met the silence of Asia. The majesty of this threefold city was overwhelming. It was like stepping into some Ali Baba's cave: your eyes were blinded by the light and brilliance of it all so that you did not know where to look or what to wonder at the most. Then, in the same instant, the sheer seething life of this melting pot of all civilizations took you by the throat and left you helpless.
Clinging to the quarterdeck rail beside Sir James, who was taking it all in with worldly, unastonished eyes, Marianne stared about her at the vast, pullulating harbour like a blue tongue poked in between two different worlds.
To the left were the colourful, picturesque ships of the Ottoman Empire, tied up to the quays of Stamboul. Facing them, at the Galata moorings, were the ranked vessels from the west: black Genoese, Dutch and English, the multicoloured pennons decking their bare yards like so much fruit left unpicked by a careless gardener.
On either shore swarmed the busy crowds who, directly or indirectly, won their livelihood from the sea: seamen, customs-men, brokers, scribes, agents of merchants or foreign embassies, porters, stevedores, tradesmen and shopkeepers, and, everywhere, the tall felt hats and military figures of the janissaries of the port police.
Boatloads of men tugged furiously at the sweeps to tow the three-decker ponderously to her anchorage. At the same moment, a barge manned by hard-hatted English seamen put out from the shore and came to meet her. Upright in the stern was a very tall, thin, fair man, dressed with immense elegance. His arms were folded on his chest, and a flowing, light-coloured cloak blew about him.
At the sight of him, Sir James gave a start of surprise.
'Well, God bless my soul! It's the ambassador!'
Marianne was startled out of her own contemplation.
'What?'
'It would seem, my dear, that our two troublemakers must have rather more influence than we thought. The man in that barge is Stratford Canning.'
'Are you trying to tell me he is coming here in person to arrest a poor devil of a Greek who so far forgot himself as to try and choke the life out of a measly architect?'
'It hardly seems likely on the face of it but – Mr Spencer!' The lieutenant appeared at his side. 'Be so good as to ask the midshipman of the watch to step down to the cable tier and cast his eye over it. If the p
risoner's still there, heave him out of a gun-port if you must, only get him off this ship. Or I won't answer for the consequences. I trust his irons have been properly filed through?'
The young man smiled. 'No need to fret about that, sir. Saw to it myself.'
'Then all that remains for us to do,' the captain observed, surreptitiously mopping his brow with his handkerchief, 'is to greet his excellency. No, don't you run away, my dear,' he added, as Marianne made a movement to withdraw. 'I'd rather keep you with me. I may need you. He's seen you, in any event.'
This was true. The ambassador, looking up at the little group on the quarterdeck, could not have failed to notice Marianne in her bright costume.
Resigning herself, she watched the diplomat's approach. She was amazed to find him so young. Not even his great height and upright bearing could add many years to an undeniably boyish face. How old was Stratford Canning, she wondered? Twenty-four, twenty-five? Certainly not much more. He was handsome, too. His features might have belonged to a Greek statue. Only the thin, thoughtful mouth and rather long chin were unmistakably from northern Europe. The deep-set eyes were thoughtful also, and betrayed the poet and dreamer lurking behind the correct, diplomatic exterior.
When the barge had hooked on to the chains, he came up the companion ladder with the ease of the born athlete and, as he came forward to where they stood waiting to greet him on the deck, Marianne could see that he was even more attractive than he had looked at first sight. There was an undeniable charm about his person, his manners and his grave, pleasant voice.
Then, as her eyes met his for the first time, something inside her warned her that there was danger also. This man was as hard and bright and clean as a blade of tempered steel. Even his manner, perfect as it was, had something unyielding about it. Furthermore, no sooner was the ceremony of his arrival on board completed and the usual civilities exchanged than he turned from the captain and, without waiting for introductions, made her an exquisite bow and addressed her in a voice of smoothest courtesy:
[Marianne 4] - Marianne and the Rebels Page 38