Marianne and the Rebels

by Жюльетта Бенцони

  Holding her hands stretched out in front of her, like a blind woman, she at last encountered warm brick and began following the wall with the intention of making a circuit of the garden. Then, if she did not find a way out, she would climb up into a tree and wait, though goodness knew how long, until the way was clear.

  She traversed some thirty yards in this way before the wall turned a corner. A few more steps and the wall ended abruptly, giving way to emptiness and curved ironwork. By this time, her eyes were growing much more accustomed to the darkness and she was able to make out that she was looking at a small opening barred with scrollwork in wrought iron, which made a lighter patch in the surrounding black.

  On the other side, contrary to what she had feared, was no canal but an alleyway lit faintly by a distant lantern. Here at last was her way of escape.

  As ill-luck would have it, Marianne found herself no better off. The bars were strong and the gate fastened with a padlock and chain. It refused to open. Yet the breath of free air in her lungs was enough for Marianne. She would not despair. Besides, the noises from the house seemed to be coming nearer.

  Stepping back a pace, she measured the height of the surrounding wall with her eye. What she saw satisfied her. The gate might not open but it looked a comparatively simple matter to climb: the ironwork offered plenty of footholds, not too far apart, while the piece of wall directly above was not more than eighteen inches high and the brickwork sufficiently ancient to provide a good grip. She thought she could get over it without difficulty.

  The sounds were getting more distinct. Voices and footsteps. A light flashed under the trees at the entrance to the garden. However, climbing was out of the question encumbered by a long, thick skirt.

  In spite of her haste and her alarm, she made herself take time to take it off and stuff it through the gate into the alley. Then, dressed only in her chemise and cotton drawers, she turned her attention to the climb.

  It was, as she had foreseen, a fairly simple matter. This was just as well because her muscles, weakened by her long incarceration and inactivity, had lost much of their old elastic strength.

  By the time Marianne reached the top of the wall, she was sweating and gasping for breath. Her head was swimming and she felt so dizzy that she was obliged to sit on the ridge for a moment to recover from the pounding in her chest. She could never have believed that she was so weak. Her whole body was trembling and she had the alarming feeling that her sinews might give way at any moment. Yet there was no choice but to go down.

  Marianne shut her eyes and, holding tight to the top of the wall, swung her legs over and groped for a foothold. She managed to move one foot, then the other, one hand, then the other, but as she tried to take the next step downwards her muscles gave way suddenly, she felt the bricks burn her clutching hands and then she fell.

  Luckily it was not very far and she landed on the clothes she had pushed through the gate. The thick velvet-trimmed fabric broke her fall, so that she was able to get up at once, rubbing her bruised seat, and cast a swift glance up and down. As she had guessed, she was in a narrow passage, and at either end was a small hump-backed bridge. On one side, the left, there was a faint glimmer of light. In both directions the alley was completely deserted.

  Marianne slipped her dress on again hurriedly, taking care to keep in the shelter of the wall, and then hesitated for a moment. As she did so, there came a distant roll of thunder and a gust of wind blew down the passage, lifting her unbound hair. The effect on her was electric. She flung both arms wide, as though to grasp the wind, and took a deep intoxicating breath. The breeze held more dust than it did sea air, but she was free! Free at last! Even if it was at the cost of four killings by a mysterious unknown hand, she was still free, and the dead who lay in the ancient splendours of their stolen palace were not worth a thought. To the newly-escaped prisoner it seemed a veritable judgement of God.

  She paused for a moment, undecided which way to go, then, feeling suddenly lighthearted, she turned to the left and made her way towards the gleam of yellow light.

  At the same instant, big, heavy drops of rain began to fall, making little coin-sized craters in the dust. The storm was reaching Venice.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A Sail on the Giudecca

  Before Marianne had crossed the little bridge, she was caught in a torrential downpour. She saw people running for the doorway of the Soranzo palace and a cluster of gondolas nosing up to a small landing stage. Then, in a few seconds, everything was blotted out. Venice was drowned in a world of water, only pierced now and then by streaks of white lightning which brought the street into sudden sharp focus. The light for which Marianne had been making, probably an oil lamp burning before some holy statue, had vanished.

  Drenched to the skin in no time, Marianne dashed on, without slackening her pace. The joy of being able to run, to forge straight ahead without thought for where her path might lead! So she simply put down her head and bowed her shoulders against the downpour.

  For the storm which burst over the city was a good storm and the rain did her good, washing her more thoroughly than Damiani's slaves with their complicated ritual. It was as if the heavens had decided to send down a flood and wash away all trace of the blood and hate and shame, and Marianne revelled in the stinging rain with a blessed sense of release. She longed to scrub each fibre of her being clean of all memory of what had passed.

  However, she could not go running about Venice all night long until she dropped with exhaustion. She had to find somewhere to go, and quickly, because, apart from the possibility of being picked up by the police, it was not unlikely that by daylight her strange appearance, and her sodden clothes and hair, would begin to attract attention.

  It seemed to her that her best course was to look for a church where she could ask for help and succour, and also find out what the date was.

  That was the one place where she could feel safe. The ancient right of sanctuary which had so often stood between the criminal and the law might also extend its inviolable shield to guard a woman, whose only crime was her desperate longing for happiness, from an authority which, she knew in her bones, would be both inquisitive and interfering. As a last resort, she could claim her kinship with the Cardinal San Lorenzo and hope that someone would believe her.

  She ran on, between rows of greengrocers' stalls, closed at this hour, towards another bridge, and another alley. Blinded by the rain which streamed into her eyes, stumbling over leeks and cabbage stalks lying in the gutter, she nearly measured her length a dozen times in the mud.

  It was pouring harder than ever by the time she came to a largish canal and, following it, crossed over another bridge to emerge breathless into an open square. In the glare of a flash of lightning, the graceful russet-coloured façade of a Gothic church loomed up out of the deluge on her right. But only for a moment. Then the pall of rain and darkness fell thicker than ever and the thunder cracked and rolled directly overhead.

  Marianne veered and aimed herself by guesswork at the church glimpsed momentarily through the driving rain, only to be brought up short as she crashed painfully into a projecting corner of stonework. Her gasp of anguish changed to a startled scream as another lightning flash illumined the obstacle she was striving to circumvent. It was nothing but a statue, some equestrian warrior of the fourteenth century, but it reared over her with such vivid realism that it seemed to be plunging out of the very heavens, and, through the sculptor's skill, there was such brutal strength and power in the figure of the greenish-bronze horseman, and in the expression of the face and the jutting jaw outlined below the helmet's brim, that Marianne recoiled in spite of herself, as though the gigantic charger was about to trample her underfoot. On such a night of violence, nothing strange or supernatural seemed out of place, and the bronze condottiere surging unbidden out of the storm bore too much resemblance to the evil genius which dogged her. He reared up before her, crushing her with his pride and menace, as though daring her to try and p
ass him by…

  Dragging herself away, she turned towards the church, which showed up again for a brief instant, and made a dash for the shelter of the porch. The door refused to open but she pressed herself against it in an effort to get out of the wet. Unhappily the porch was not deep and the rain beat down on her.

  It had turned a lot colder since the rain, and Marianne was shivering now, with the water streaming in fountains from every stitch of clothing. She tried again and again to open the door, but without success.

  'They always shut the church at night,' a quavering little voice spoke close beside her. 'But you can come over here if you like. It's not so wet and we can wait till the rain stops.'

  'Who's that? I can't see.'

  'Me. Over here. Stay where you are an' I'll come to you.'

  There was a sound of splashing and then a small hand was slipped into Marianne's. So far as she could tell from his size, it belonged to an urchin of about ten years old.

  'Come on,' he commanded her, towing her after him without further ceremony. 'There's more room in the porch of the Scuola and the rain's not coming that way. Your dress and your hair are sopping wet.'

  'How do you know? I can hardly see you.'

  'I can see in the dark. I'm like a cat, Annarella says.'

  'Who is Annarella?'

  'My big sister. She's like a spider. She makes lace. The finest lace in all Venice!'

  Marianne laughed. 'Well, if you're hoping for a customer, you're wrong, my lad! I haven't a bean. But you sound like an odd family, I must say! The cat and the spider. It's like a fairy story.'

  With the child leading, they ran together to the entrance of another building a few seconds' away, to the right of the church. A brief flash revealed an elegant Renaissance front with curved pediments, on one of which was the lion of St Mark. As the boy had said, the broad pillared portal guarded by a pair of couching beasts was very much more comfortable than the church porch.

  Marianne had room to shake out her dress and wring the water out of her streaming hair. In any case, the rain was beginning to ease off. The child had not spoken again but for the sake of hearing his voice, which was pure and clear as crystal, she started to question him.

  'Surely it's very late? What are you doing out at this hour? You ought to be in bed.'

  'I had something to do for a friend,' the boy said vaguely, 'and I got caught in the rain, like you… Where have you come from?'

  'I don't know,' Marianne answered with a pang. 'I was locked up in a house and I escaped. I was trying to get into the church for shelter.'

  There was silence. She could feel the child looking at her. He was probably thinking she was a lunatic and had escaped from some institution. She must look like it. But he only said, in the same matter-of-fact tone:

  'The sacristan always locks San Zanipolo. In case of thieves. On account of the treasure. Lots of our doges are buried there – and he's there to keep guard over them,' he added, pointing to the bronze horseman who, seen from the side, seemed to be riding ahead of the church.

  Lowering his voice suddenly, the boy whispered: 'Was it your lover who locked you up – or the police?'

  Something told Marianne that her young friend would be more impressed by the latter. In any case, she could scarcely tell him the truth.

  'The police! If they catch me, it's all up with me! Tell me, now – by the way, what's your name?'

  'I'm called Zani – same as the church.'

  'Well, Zani, can you tell me what day this is?'

  'Don't you know?'

  'No. I have been in a room with no light and no windows. It makes you lose count of time.'

  'Peccato! You were lucky to get out! They're a bad lot, the police, and they've been worse than ever since Bonaparte's people came. Each trying to go one better than the other!'

  'Very true, but please, please tell me what day…' She clutched at his arm.

  'Oh, yes, I was forgetting. It was the twenty-ninth of June when I set out. It must be the thirtieth now. It's not far off dawn.'

  Marianne leaned weakly against the wall. Five days! For five days now Jason must have been waiting in the lagoon! He was so near, was probably spending his nights peering into the darkness looking for her, while she had been submitting in passive despair to Damiani's hateful caresses!

  When she had left that dreadful house she had believed that she still had some time left to sort out her feelings, to think things over and try and wipe out the memory of the foul and shadowy time that lay behind her. She felt that she needed a breathing space before she faced Jason's penetrating eyes. She knew his perspicacity too well, and the unerring, almost animal instinct which made him invariably put his finger on the weakest spot. He would know at a glance that she was not the same woman he had said good-bye to aboard the Saint-Guénolé six months before. The blood which had been shed might avenge her shame but it could not do away with the living evidence that might remain inside her, although at this moment she could not bear to believe or even think of the possibility. Yet now, already, he was waiting for her!

  In a few minutes, an hour perhaps, she might be with him. It was agony to think that the moment she had looked forward to so passionately for so long now held nothing but terror for her. She did not know now what awaited her beyond these watery streets and streaming domes, across this rain-drenched city which lay between her and the sea.

  When she saw Jason, would it be as a happy lover, full of the joys of being reunited, or would he also be an inquisitor, nursing dark suspicions? He was expecting a happy woman, coming to him in the sunshine and in all the dazzle of beauty fulfilled, and he would see a hunted creature, as fearful and uneasy in herself as in her draggled clothes. What would he think?

  'It's stopped raining, you know.'

  Zani was pulling at her sleeve. She opened her eyes with a shiver and looked about her. It was true. The storm had ceased as suddenly as it had started. The thunder was rumbling away into the distance and the din and drenching rain of a moment ago had given place to a great calm, hardly broken by the trickle of water from the eaves. The exhausted air seemed to have paused for breath.

  'If you've nowhere to go,' the child went on, his eyes shining like stars in the darkness, 'you can come to us. You can shelter there from the rain and the carabinieri.'

  'But what will your sister say?'

  'Annarella? Nothing. She's used to it.'

  'Used to what?'

  But Zani did not answer and Marianne sensed that his silence was deliberate. He simply walked on with his head held high and that air of innocent self-importance which denotes the bearer of weighty secrets. Forbearing to question him further, his new friend followed. The thought of a roof over her head was an agreeable one. A few hours' rest would do her good and might help her to dredge up from somewhere some semblance of the woman Jason was expecting to meet.

  They set off in the direction from which Marianne had come but in the street of the vegetable stalls they turned left and were swallowed up in an infinity of narrow alleys broken by canals which appeared to Marianne a perfect maze.

  The way they took was so circuitous that she could have sworn they had doubled back on their tracks a hundred times, but Zani never hesitated for so much as an instant.

  The sky lightened to grey and somewhere a cock crowed, hailing the dawn, the only sound in the whole empty labyrinth where all human life lay hidden behind thick wooden shutters and the cats reigned supreme. These had lain snugly in some dry corner while the storm lasted but now they appeared on all sides, slinking past dripping gutters and leaping over puddles as they made their way home. Now, slowly, the houses were becoming visible: whimsical rooftops, pinnacles, balconies and weird funnel-shaped chimneys silhouetted against the first light of day. Everywhere was perfect peace and the two night-walkers might have thought they had the street to themselves when suddenly they ran into ill-luck.

  They had just turned into the Merceria, a thoroughfare a little wider than most, although
twisting, and lined with shops on both sides, when they came upon a patrol of National Guardsmen. A bend in the street made it impossible to avoid them.

  In a moment, Marianne and the child were surrounded by soldiers, two of them bearing lanterns.

  'Stay right where you are!' their leader ordered, with more force than logic since it was impossible for them to do anything else. 'Where are you off to?'

  Taken by surprise and struck dumb by the sight of the uniforms, Marianne could only stare at him. He was a young officer with an arrogant expression, evidently very well-pleased with his smart uniform and white leathers and sporting a moustache big enough for a small breastplate. He reminded her of Benielli.

  But Zani, like a good Venetian, was already deep in a rapid stream of explanations. They poured from him at such a rate that his small, piping voice seemed to fill the street. He knew, of course, that this was no time for a boy of his age to be wandering round Venice but it wasn't their fault and the officer must please believe him because this was how it came about: he and his cousin had been called out last night to the bedside of Zia – that is, Aunt Lodovica who was sick with malaria. Cousin Paolo had sent for them before he went off fishing and of course they had gone at once because Zia Lodovica was old and so ill that her mind was wandering which was a terrible thing! She was such a clever woman, too, and the foster-sister and servant to Monsignior Lodovico Manin, the last doge. And, seeing her like that, himself and his cousin, they had not liked to leave her so they had stayed and watched by her and done what they could for her and so the time had gone by. And then, when the crisis was over and their aunt had gone to sleep it was very late. Since there was nothing more they could do and Cousin Paolo would be back in the morning, Zani and his cousin had set off home because his sister Annarella would be worrying about them. Then they had got caught in the rain and been obliged to take shelter until it was over. So now, if the noble soldiers would kindly let them go on their way…