Marianne and the Lords of the East

by Жюльетта Бенцони

  "I know a great many things about you. From your godfather, firstly, for whom I have a great love, for he is kindness and understanding itself. And surely it was natural for me to feel some interest in your life? No," he added quickly, seeing her movement of protest, "I have not had you spied on—or not directly, at any rate. To have done so would have been to demean us both. But someone else did, against my orders and indeed without telling me everything. But most of my information comes from the emperor himself."

  "The emperor!"

  "Why, yes. Considering the circumstances of our marriage, it was common courtesy for me to inform him of it personally and to give him certain assurances concerning you, since I was to give my name to his son. I wrote to him and he wrote back—more than once."

  There was a pause while Marianne thought over what she had just heard. It was not hard to guess who it was who had set spies on her. Matteo Damiani, of course. But that there had been correspondence between Napoleon and the prince came as something of a surprise to her, although when the emperor had told her after François Vidocq had brought her back from Normandy that he wished her to return to her husband, he had mentioned a letter from Sant'Anna. She was not sure whether to interpret this as a sign of affection or of distrust and decided it was best to probe no further for the moment. There were too many other points on which she desired enlightenment.

  Corrado, respecting her silence, had been looking out at the gathering darkness in the garden. The sun had sunk behind the trees, outlining them dramatically against long streaks of purple and gold. A faint chill was creeping into the room and the air was vibrant with the muezzins' high-pitched calls.

  Marianne hitched up the green silk shawl which had slipped from her shoulders.

  "And was it the emperor who told you that Jason Beaufort would be in Venice?" she asked at last, with a little hesitation.

  "No. By that time I was in no position to discover anything at all. I learned of the trap which had been laid for you—and of what followed, from Matteo himself. In the end, I think, his ambition had driven him mad. I was chained and helpless and he had great satisfaction in describing it all to me. Thinking about it later, it seemed to me that it was for the pleasure of that he kept me alive."

  "Then how did you come to be aboard the Sea Witch?"

  Again, that faint, bleak smile.

  "That was pure luck. When first I managed to escape my one idea was to see justice done and set you free without your seeing me. Damiani had told me that you thought I was dead and at that time I saw no reason why you should ever learn otherwise."

  "But he had told you he wanted me to give him the Sant'Anna heir he needed?"

  "Yes, but I could see that he was sick, drugged, practically insane. I did not think that he could do it. So I struck out and fled to escape any awkward questions on the part of the authorities. I wanted to get to Lucca, the only place where I could show myself with any safety. I'd found money in Matteo's room—enough to pay a boatman to take me to Chioggia. And it was there that luck took a hand. I caught sight of the American brig—and the figure on the prow. I'd known for long enough whose ship she was, but your face on that figurehead told me I was not mistaken and I wanted to find out if she had come for you. I think you know the rest… And I want to ask you pardon."

  "My pardon? What have I to forgive?"

  "For yielding to the impulse which took me aboard that vessel. I had sworn that I would never stand in your way but that day I could not help myself. I had to see this Beaufort, know what kind of man he was. It was something stronger than myself…"

  For the first time since he had come into the room, Marianne really smiled. The surge of indignation which had taken possession of her a moment ago was still quivering inside, but she could not help feeling a sudden liking for this strange, unhappy man.

  "Don't be sorry. But for you, I don't know what would have become of us on that hellish voyage—and by now my old friend Jolival would be a slave or worse! As for Captain Beaufort, it was not within your power to save him from—from disaster!" Her voice broke and she said no more, knowing that she could not trust herself not to break down. The mere mention of Jason's name was enough to overwhelm her, even though she knew that such emotion was out of place here and that for all the unusual nature of the contrast between them it could not be pleasant for Prince Sant'Anna to be obliged to discuss his wife's lover.

  In fact he had risen with some abruptness and was pacing the room with his back to her. As before, on the deck of the Sea Witch, Marianne was struck by his lithe, easy bearing and by the impression of controlled strength about him, but she was discovering that even with his face uncovered, even without the leather mask whose whiteness now was self-explanatory, this man remained an enigma, not easily to be understood.

  She was too much a woman not to wonder how he felt toward her. The shattering announcement he had just made, the fact that he could say in so many words that he wanted her to have the child conceived under such appalling circumstances, was almost insulting. It suggested that the prince cared nothing for her feelings and that, to use a favorite expression of Napoleon's, she was in his eyes nothing more or less than a womb!

  And yet, when he could have gone quietly back to his Tuscan estates after killing Damiani, he had deliberately chosen a perilous adventure in order to go after a wife who, when all was said and done, had not been much good to him. What was it he had said? "I could not help myself… It was stronger than I was…"Or was his real interest in Jason? Curiosity, after all, was not an exclusively female prerogative. Perhaps it was only natural that he should want to meet the man his wife loved. But it was a very great risk to take for such a meager satisfaction because, in going aboard the Witch, Corrado Sant'Anna had been cutting himself off from all his usual roots. All he would have found at the end of the voyage as originally planned was the vast, unknown American continent, lying on the other side of the ocean—and the lifetime of slavery to which he almost certainly would have been condemned by the color of his skin.

  Unable to find an answer to any of these questions, Marianne gazed helplessly at the tall white figure. Their conversation had reached such an extremely difficult stage that she was at a loss how to go on. But it was the prince who broke the silence.

  Standing before the portrait of the hospodar which he was studying with remarkable concentration, he said without turning around: "Man has a very great need to perpetuate himself. That one up there tried all his life to do it but without success. I am an aberration in my family tree which will pass and be forgotten, but only if there is an heir—one who is normal and free from the taint I bear—to come after me. You are my one chance of that. Will you give me my heir?"

  Marianne knew that the moment she dreaded had arrived and she screwed up her courage for the battle ahead. When she spoke, her voice was gentle but firm.

  "No," she said. "I can't. Nor have you any right to ask it of me, knowing my horror of this child."

  Still, he did not look at her but he said: "That evening, in the chapel of our house, you swore to honor—and obey."

  There was no mistaking his meaning and Marianne shuddered, overcome by a bitter sense of shame because this unexpected husband of hers, whom she had thought to keep quite apart from her private life, had known better than anyone in what light she had regarded her marriage vows. What had seemed to her then a mere formality had become all too serious now.

  "It is in your power to compel me," she said in a low voice. "You have already done so, indeed, by bringing me here. But you will never obtain my consent willingly."

  He came toward her slowly and Marianne stepped back instinctively. There was no trace of sadness now in that dark, handsome face, nor yet of gentleness. The blue eyes were chips of ice and where she had expected to see disappointment she read only cold contempt.

  "Then you will be taken back to the house of the Jewess tonight," he said," and by this time tomorrow nothing will remain of the thing that so disgusts you. For m
yself, it only remains for me to bid you goodbye, Madame."

  "Goodbye! When we have only just met?"

  He bowed curtly. "This is where we part. You had better forget that you have ever seen my face. I can trust you to keep my secret, I hope. You may inform me of what you have decided through Princess Morousi when you see fit to do so."

  "But I haven't decided anything! This is all so sudden, so—"

  "You cannot live openly with another man and yet continue to bear my name. These new laws of Napoleon's will make it possible for you to obtain a divorce as you could not have done before. Make use of them. My men of business will see to it that you have no cause for complaint. After that, you will be able to carry out your original intention as it was before your plans were so rudely interrupted at Venice and follow Beaufort to America. I will take it upon myself to inform the emperor, and your godfather when I see him."

  Stung by his contemptuous tone, Marianne gave a little shrug.

  "Follow Jason?" she said bitterly. "You may well say that when you know it is impossible! We don't know where he is or even if he is still alive…"

  It was these words which finally succeeded in shattering the prince's iron control. Abruptly, his anger exploded.

  "And that's the only thing you care for in the whole world, isn't it?" he snarled. "That slave trader behaved to you like a swine, he's treated you like a wench out of the gutter! Have you forgotten that he would have given you to the lowest man on board his ship? To the runaway slave he picked up off the dock at Chioggia, whom his friend Leighton thought to sell at a good profit at the first opportunity? And still you want to lick his boots and crawl after him on your belly like a bitch in heat! Well, you will find him, never fear, and then you may go on destroying yourself for his pleasure."

  "How do you know?"

  "I'm telling you he's alive! The fishermen of Monemvasia who found him wounded and unconscious when his precious Leighton cast him off like unwanted baggage, when he could get no more use of him, have cared for him and are doing so still. Moreover, gold has been given them and their orders are clear. When the American is quite recovered he will be handed a letter telling him that you are in Constantinople, and so, too, is his ship. For after all," he added with a scornful laugh, "we cannot be sure that your presence alone would be enough to bring him here! So you have only to wait and your hero will come to you. Farewell, Madame!"

  He bowed briefly and before Marianne, stunned by his outburst, could make a single move, he was gone.

  In the middle of the darkening room, Marianne stood for a moment as though turned to stone, listening to the angry footsteps dying away along the stone floor of the wide hall. She was a prey to the strangest feeling of loneliness and desolation. The brief meeting, a first encounter which looked very much as if it would also be the last, had left her oddly drained. She felt unhappy and miserably conscious of having in some way, by her own doing, stepped down from a pedestal.

  Now that she knew what her extraordinary husband was really like, things had begun to assume very different proportions and she could no longer afford the same detachment and mental freedom in relation to everything concerning him which had been hers hitherto. Things were very different now, and if the prince's anger—of which she was very well aware—sprang largely from disappointment, that in turn might be less for the child denied him than for the woman who denied it.

  At that moment Marianne was so overburdened with shame and remorse that even the joy of knowing Jason was still alive could not bring more than a glimmer of light.

  By guarding the life of the man who had used him so cruelly, by having him tended and cared for and providing him with the means to be reunited with all that he loved best in the world, the pretended Caleb had given both of them, Marianne and Jason alike, a lesson in magnanimity it would have been hard to equal.

  Feeling rather ashamed of the not very admirable part she had elected to play and in the belief that it was her right, Marianne wanted to run after the prince and stop him, but by the time she had managed to pull herself together the front door had slammed behind him. To chase him then would have done no good and only made her look ridiculous, so she went out into the garden instead, drawn by the coolness and the quiet. Hugging the shawl around her shoulders, she stepped out through the stone bay and began to stroll along a little blue mosaic path that wound its way between the rose trees and the beds of glowing dahlias which blossomed like colorful set pieces on either hand.

  To go into the garden had always been a natural reaction with her whenever she wanted time to think or to recover her temper. As a little girl at Selton, she would run and hide herself in the farthest corner of the park, where the shade of the great trees was densest, whenever she was suffering from one of the childish tragedies that seem so trivial to grown-up persons. In Paris, too, the little walled garden in the rue de Lille had often been the scene of solitary, anxious meditations as Marianne sought there, if not comfort or counsel, at least a brief respite from her troubles.

  She plunged into this unfamiliar garden as though into a soothing bath, but its solitude, as she very soon discovered, was by no means absolute, for she was approaching a seat half-hidden in an arbor of clematis when she saw the figure of a man rise to its feet. This time the man wore European dress and she had no difficulty in recognizing her old friend Arcadius de Jolival. She came upon him so suddenly that she had no time to be alarmed, while her capacity for astonishment had been somewhat blunted by the revelations of the past two hours.

  Therefore she said nothing more than: "Oh, are you here? How did you get here?"

  "As fast as I could," Jolival said crossly. "We were at our wit's end at the embassy, having had no word of you since last evening. So when a message came to say that you were at the house of Princess Morousi and I was cordially invited to join you there, I lost no time about it, I can tell you, but packed a bag and came. As for our friend Latour-Maubourg, while he hasn't the least idea how you come to be staying in Phanar with the widow of the hospodar of Walachia when you set out to go to Scutari with the sultana, he's so delighted to find you moving in circles so close to the Ottoman throne that he's lighting candles to every saint in the calendar remotely connected with diplomacy. He's going to be very disappointed to see you back again. He won't understand it in the least."

  "See me back again?"

  "Good God! If you're going back to that angel-maker of yours tonight, you'll hardly be coming here afterwards to convalesce, will you?"

  Marianne looked hard at her old friend, but he sustained her regard unflinchingly.

  "You heard what passed—in there?" she demanded, indicating the room behind her. Jolival bowed.

  "Every word. And don't ask me what miracle brought that about, because I'll only repeat that I heard. You see, I'm like your cousin Adelaide. I've never managed to believe that it's a cardinal sin to listen at keyholes. It seems to me a useful talent, first because it's easier than you'd think, and secondly because it helps to avoid a great many mistakes, as well as saving lengthy explanations which are always tiresome and often embarrassing. So you need not tell me what passed between you and Prince Sant'Anna, because I know."

  "So that you also know who he is?"

  "As a matter of fact, I knew that before you did because it was the prince himself who came to the embassy. I may say that he did so under the name of Turhan Bey but, in return for my word of honor, he consented to raise that white mask of his."

  "What did you think when you learned the truth? You must have been surprised at least to find that the slave Caleb was really Prince Sant'Anna?"

  The Vicomte de Jolival twirled the thin, black mustache which, in conjunction with his large ears, gave him such a startling resemblance to a mouse, then shook his head and sighed.

  "Well, not altogether," he confessed. "In fact, I don't think I was surprised at all, really. There was too much about Caleb that did not fit, so many peculiarities to suggest that the character of the runaway slave
was a cover for someone a great deal more distinguished than we guessed. I believe I even said something of the sort to you at one time. Of course, it never occurred to me to identify him with the mystery man you had been married to, but the fact explained a good deal. So much so that when I met him face to face it was like finding a satisfying answer to an irritating riddle." He gave her a little smile. "And now," he added, "I'd like to hear your own impressions. What were your feelings, Marianne, when you saw your dark-skinned husband?"

  "Honestly, Arcadius, I don't know. It was a surprise, of course, but all in all not such a horrid surprise as I'd feared. Indeed, I confess that I don't really understand his behavior, all this mystery he surrounds himself with—"

  "I know. I said so to him. You don't understand because you are a woman, and because, in spite of the color of his skin, or maybe even because of it, he is an exceptionally handsome fellow. His Negro blood has brought a new vitality, I might almost say a new virility, into a line which, if not actually decadent, had undoubtedly reached such a stage of inbreeding as to be verging on it. But you may believe me when I tell you there is not a gentleman in the world, not a man at all, indeed, who could fail to understand him or to understand the terrible way his father reacted on being presented with a black baby. I suggest you try asking our friend Beaufort the same question—"

  "Jason comes from a country where they treat black people as slaves and use them as beasts of burden—"

  "Not everywhere. You must not generalize. Nor, as far as I know, have the Beauforts ever been known as slave drivers. But I'll agree that his upbringing might prejudice his answer. But ask any man you meet—ask me, even."

  "You, Arcadius?"

  "Yes, me! I've never liked my wife, but supposing I had taken it into my head to give her a child and she had made me a present of a coal black bundle—for I dare say the prince was a few shades darker on arrival than he is now—why, upon my honor, I do believe I might have throttled Septimanie myself. And taken good care to hide the babe away."