At last, this mute indifference began to have its effect on Damiani. As the days passed, Marianne could see the uneasiness growing in his eyes when he came to her at night. Little by little, the time he spent with her grew less until it was only a few minutes, and then, one night, he did not come at all. He had ceased to desire the marble being whose unblinking stare had perhaps power to disconcert him. He was afraid now, and soon Marianne did not see him at all except for the few moments every day when he came to inquire of Ishtar as to his prisoner's health.
He probably thought that by now he had done all he could to procure the child he wanted and that there was nothing to be gained from persisting in what had become a distasteful chore. Somewhere, beneath all her indifference, Marianne had felt a spark of joy at his fears, seeing them as a small triumph, though not enough to appease her hatred: that would only be satisfied with this man's blood, and she had patience to wait for that.
How long did this strange captivity continue, out of time, out of life itself? Marianne had lost all sense of hours and days. She no longer knew even where she was and scarcely who she was. Ever since her arrival she had seen only four people, and yet the palace was built to accommodate a huge staff, although now it was as secret and as silent as the tomb. Every sign of life, apart from the mere act of breathing, seemed to perish there, until Marianne began to think that perhaps death would come to her, creeping quietly of itself without her help. She would simply cease to be. The thing seemed, now, astonishingly easy.
Then, one evening, something did happen.
First of all, the usual watcher disappeared. There was a sound somewhere in the depths of the house, like a hoarse shout. The black woman heard it and, shuddering, left her accustomed place on the steps of the bed and went out of the room, not forgetting to close the door carefully behind her.
It was the first time for many days that Marianne had been left alone but she hardly noticed it. In a moment the woman would be back with the others, for it was near the time usually allotted for her bath. Without interest, she went and lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. The long imprisonment, with its enforced inactivity, was telling on her system. She often felt sleepy during the day and had got into the habit of following her own inclinations as meekly as the will of those outside herself.
She might have slept like that all night but for some instinct which woke her. She knew at once that something unusual had happened.
She opened her eyes and stared about her. It was pitch dark outside and the candles burned as usual in the great candelabra, but the room was as silent and empty as before. No one had come back and the hour for her bath was long past.
Marianne got up slowly and walked a little way across the room. A sudden draught, flattening the candle flames, made her turn her head towards the door and as she did so something stirred in her brain. The door was open.
The heavy oaken panel studded with iron swung back against the wall leaving a black hole between the tapestries. Hardly able to believe her eyes, Marianne moved forward to touch it, to convince herself that this was not simply another of the dreams which haunted her nights, in which, time and again, she had seen the door stand open on to limitless blue distances.
No, surely this time the door was truly open. Marianne could feel the faint draught it created. Even so, to make sure she was not dreaming, she went back to the candles and held one finger up to the flame. At once she gave a little cry of pain. The flame had burned her. Then, as she sucked her smarting finger, her eyes fell on the chest and she cried out again in surprise. There, neatly laid out on the lid, were the clothes in which she had arrived: the olive-green dress with the black velvet trimming, even her shoes and petticoat. Only the hooded cloak edged with Chantilly lace was missing. It was like a memory of another world.
Marianne put out her hand almost fearfully and touched the fabric, stroked it gently and then clutched at it like a drowning man at a straw. Something inside her seemed to snap and come away. She was suddenly alive again, capable of thought and action. It was as if she had been imprisoned in a block of ice and now the ice was broken and pieces were being chipped off and coming back to warmth and life.
With a surge of childlike joy, she tore off the hateful tunic they had put on her and fell on her own clothes as on something infinitely precious. She put them on, revelling in a sensation like feeling herself in her own skin after being flayed. She was so carried away that for the moment she did not even pause to wonder what it meant. It was simply wonderful, even if the heat made the garments uncomfortably hot to wear. She was herself again, from top to toe, and that was all that really mattered.
As soon as she was dressed, she marched determinedly to the door. Whoever had brought the clothes and opened the door must be a friend. She was being given a chance and she must take it.
Outside, everywhere was in total darkness and Marianne went back to fetch a candle to light her way. She saw that she was at the end of a long corridor with no other opening but another door facing her. It seemed to be shut.
Marianne's hand tightened on the candle and her heart missed a beat. Were they merely torturing her with false hopes? Was all this designed simply to bring her, helpless and more desperate than ever, face to face with yet another locked door?
But when she reached it, she saw that it was merely closed, not locked. It yielded to her hand and she found herself in an open gallery like a kind of long veranda, looking down on to a small courtyard. Overhead was a roof of broad, painted wooden beams supported on slender arched columns.
For all her haste to get away from the house, she paused for a moment in the gallery, drawing deep breaths of the warm night air.
It carried with it a disagreeable smell of mud and decaying refuse, but she had not been out of doors for so long and able to see the sky. It made no difference that the sky in question was heavy with cloud with not a star in sight: it was still the sky and therefore the ultimate symbol of freedom.
Resuming her cautious advance, Marianne came to a second door at the far end of the gallery. It opened to her hand and she found herself in China.
All round the walls of the delightful little salon, slant-eyed princesses danced a mad fandango with a joyous troop of grinning monkeys, in and out among black lacquered screens and gilt whatnots bearing quantities of rose and yellow porcelain, over which a Murano lustre cast a shimmering rainbow brightness. It was, in truth, a very pretty room but so much festive illumination made an uneasy contrast with the stillness that reigned there.
This time, Marianne passed on without a pause. Beyond, all was again in darkness, but she was in a broad gallery from which a staircase led, apparently, down to ground level.
Marianne's feet, shod in thin leather, made no sound on the polished marble mosaic as she glided, ghostlike, past the bronze columns that emerged from the walls on either side like ships looming out of the fog, and past the blind stone warriors. Everywhere, on the long inlaid chests, miniature caravels spread their sails to a non-existent wind, and gilded galleys dipped their long oars in invisible seas. On all sides, too, were banners of curious shape bearing the often-repeated crescent of Islam. Lastly, at either end of the gallery, reflected in tall, tarnished mirrors, a great terrestrial globe stood still and useless, dreaming of the tanned hands which had once set it turning in its bronze rings.
Impressed, in spite of herself, by this kind of mausoleum to the warlike, seafaring Venice of other days, Marianne found her feet dragging unconsciously. She had almost reached the staircase when she came to a sudden halt, her heart thudding, and listened intently. Someone was walking about downstairs, carrying a light which was moving slowly along the wall of the gallery.
She stood, rooted to the spot, scarcely daring to breathe. Who was it moving down there? Matteo? Or one of her three sinister keepers? Marianne cast about her for a refuge in case the bearer of the light should come upstairs and catch her unawares. Selecting the statue of an admiral whose armour was partly covered by a cloa
k with ample folds of stone drapery, she slipped softly behind it and waited.
The light stood still. Whoever it was must have put it down somewhere, because the footsteps went on, growing fainter.
She was just beginning to breathe again when her blood froze. A groan had come from below. There was a muffled cry, as though of terror and surprise, and then, almost at once, the sound of two sets of feet, one running from the other. A crash like the clap of doom told of the collapse of some piece of furniture, evidently laden with bric-a-brac. A door slammed, and the noise of the pursuit dwindled rapidly. Marianne heard a second and much fainter cry followed by the faint but horrible sound of a death-rattle. Somewhere, in the house or garden, a person was dying… After that, nothing. Only an overpowering silence.
Striving to still the thudding of her heart which seemed to echo through the silence like a cathedral bell, Marianne left her hiding place and tiptoed nervously towards the stairs, since there appeared to be no other way out. She reached them, but the sight which met her eyes froze her where she stood.
The stairs ran down to a noble hall sombrely furnished and hung with long tapestries and paintings in the style of Tiepolo, but to Marianne the room looked like a battlefield. A tall candlestick stood on a long stone table and nearby lay the bodies of the two black servants whose living voices she had never even heard. One was on the floor beside an overturned chair, the other lay across the table. Both had died in the same way, stuck through the heart with merciless precision.
But there was a third body, lying right across the lowest steps. Matteo Damiani sprawled with eyes wide open on an eternity of horror and the blood from his severed throat spreading in slowly widening pools over the dripping steps.
'He is dead!' Marianne said aloud, half-unconsciously, and the sound of her own voice seemed to come from an immense distance. 'Someone has killed him – but who?'
The horror of it was mingled in her with a savage joy that was almost painful in its intensity, the instinctive joy of the torture victim who finds the dead body of the torturer stretched suddenly at her feet. Some unknown hand had simultaneously avenged both the murdered Prince Sant'Anna and the sufferings of Marianne herself.
Abruptly, the instinct of self-preservation reasserted itself. There would be time to rejoice later, when she was safely out of this nightmare, supposing she ever got out of it, for there were only three bodies in the room. Where was Ishtar? Was it the black witch who had slain her master? She was certainly capable of it but, if that were so, why had she also killed the other two women of her own race whom she called her sisters? Then, there had been that other cry, the sounds of pursuit and that dying groan… Was that Ishtar? And, if so, who was the author of this slaughter?
Since her arrival at this accursed palace, Marianne had learned nothing of its inhabitants save for Matteo himself and the three negresses and the oily Giuseppe. Yet Giuseppe did not possess the physical strength to overcome a man like Damiani, far less Ishtar. Yet there might be other servants and it was possible that one of them had done this, for reasons of his own.
It occurred to her at this point that the murderer might well return and would not necessarily make any distinction between herself and his earlier victims. She fought off her sense of paralysing horror. She must not stay here. She had to escape from this charnel hell, walk down the stairs, past the red stains at their foot and past the body in its bloodstained golden robe with its hideous gaping wound and its staring eyes.
Shuddering, she crept down, flattening her back against the marble baluster, towards the dark red pools which now gleamed with an oily sheen as they congealed.
She gathered her dress up in trembling hands to keep it from contact with the blood, but could do nothing to save her shoes.
As she went down, she could not drag her eyes away from Matteo's body. They were drawn by the fascination of horror which afflicts imaginative minds, when they have not fainted outright.
So it was that she became aware of the nature of a curious heap of metal lying on the dead man's chest: it was made up of chains, a prisoner's chains and shackles. They were old and fairly rusty but they were unlocked and evidently placed there deliberately.
However, Marianne wasted no time on this latest mystery. A rush of panic swept over her and as soon as her feet touched the ground she began to run down the hall, too much in the grip of fear to care how much noise she made. She plunged through the double doors which stood half-open, without a thought for the murderer who might be lurking outside, and found herself in the entrance hall.
As it happened, it was empty. The two ship's lanterns she remembered were alight and the garden door was also open.
Not checking in her stride, Marianne sped towards it and went down the steps leading to the shadowy garden at breakneck speed in her haste to reach the door to the canal. That, too, stood open, giving a glimpse of the sheen on dark water.
Freedom! Freedom was there, within reach…
She was swerving to avoid the vague shape of the wellhead which loomed clearer as her eyes became accustomed to the dark, when she stumbled and fell headlong over something warm and soft. This time she almost screamed aloud, for the thing which had tripped her was a human form. Her hands encountered damp, silken cloth, and by the exotic scent, mingled with the sweet, sickening smell of blood, Marianne knew that it was Ishtar. So, that death cry had been hers. The mysterious killer had not spared her, any more than her sisters.
Choking back a hysterical sob, she was about to rise when suddenly she felt the body move under her and heard a feeble groan. The dying woman muttered something Marianne could not understand and, instinctively, she bent closer to hear, lifting the head a little as she did so.
In the dimness, she was aware of the black woman's hands moving, groping like a blind person's at the supporting arms, but she felt no fear. The woman was dying: nothing now remained of her phenomenal strength. Then, suddenly, she heard words:
'The… the Master!… Forgive… oh, forgive…'
The head fell back. Ishtar was dead. Marianne laid her down on the ground and got up quickly, but stopped dead as she turned towards the door.
Framed in the opening, two figures had appeared on the small landing. There was no mistaking their military outline and they were followed by others, less clear.
'But, officer, I heard screams, I assure you, frightful screams,' came a woman's voice. 'And now this door open – and that other, up there, at the head of the stairs. It's not right. I always thought there was something funny going on here. If people had only listened to me…'
'Quiet everybody!' A rough voice broke in authoritatively. 'We'll search the house from top to bottom. If there's been a mistake made, then we'll apologize, of course. But it'll go hard with you, my good woman, if you've brought us on a wild-goose chase!'
'I'm quite sure I haven't, officer. You'll thank me, I daresay. I've always said that house was a wicked place.'
'Well, we'll soon see. Bring up some light, there!'
Slowly, holding her breath, Marianne backed away, half-crouching, into the shelter of the dark walled garden which lay beyond a stone arch. It seemed to run parallel with the canal. Her instinct told her that it would not do for her to be seen by the soldiers or by any of these people who, however well-intentioned, were a great deal too inquisitive. She could guess only too well what would happen if she were found, the only one alive in a house full of corpses. How could she expect them to believe her terrible but, on the face of it, improbable tale? At best they would take her for a madwoman and probably lock her up again, and in any case she would be detained by the police and questioned endlessly. Previous experience at Selton Hall, after her duel with Francis Cranmere, had taught her how easily the truth can be distorted. Her dress, her shoes, her hands were all stained with blood. She might very easily be accused of fourfold murder, and then what would become of her rendezvous with Jason?
She was conscious of faint surprise at the readiness with which her lov
er's name came to her mind, with no touch of fear or foreboding. It was the first time, since awakening from her long-drawn nightmare, that she had thought of the prearranged meeting in Venice. After her rape by Damiani she had experienced a dreadful sense of something irrevocable having occurred, and such a revulsion from her own body that death had seemed to her the only proper end. But now that she had her freedom so unexpectedly restored to her, her own spirit reawakened and with it her passionate love of life and the accompanying instinct to fight.
She remembered now that somewhere in the world there was a ship and a sailor on whom all her hopes were concentrated, and that she wanted to see them again, the ship and the sailor, whatever else might come of it. Unfortunately, in this house of madness, the combination of drugs and despair had made her lose all count of time. The time for their meeting might have come or gone, or it might be still some days ahead: Marianne had no means of knowing. The first step towards finding out was to get out, but that was easier said than done.
Not knowing what to do next, Marianne huddled in the midst of a large flowering shrub and tried to think of a way out of the garden which, for all its scents of orange blossom and honeysuckle, was still a trap. The walls were high and smooth and in a little while the trap would surely be sprung.
Back towards the house, lanterns had been brought and flitted about in the darkness. What looked like a crowd of people poured into the courtyard, led by the two soldiers. From her hiding place, Marianne saw them bend over the body of Ishtar, lying near the well, uttering exclamations of horror. Then one of the soldiers went up the steps and disappeared into the house, followed by a train of interested spectators, only too glad of the chance to see inside the grand house and, maybe, pop something into their pockets on the sly.
It dawned on Marianne then that if she did not want to be discovered, she had very little time left. She crept out of her precarious shelter and stepped out into the garden, searching the wall for some other door, if any existed. It was as dark as the pit. The trees met in a thick roof overhead, making the night blacker than ever underneath.
Marianne and the Rebels Page 10