Marianne and the Lords of the East

by Жюльетта Бенцони

  She was so much the image of the mater dolorosa that Jolival knew at once that something catastrophic had occurred. Very softly, hardly daring to breathe, he went up to the trembling girl.

  "Marianne," he whispered gently, as if he feared that the sound of his voice might exacerbate her pain. "My child, what is it?"

  Without answering, she held out the paper she was clutching in her hand with the stiff movement of an automaton.

  "Read it," she said simply, while the tears continued to flow uninterruptedly.

  Jolival smoothed the paper mechanically and, glancing down, saw that it was a letter.

  "Madame," Prince Sant'Anna had written, "as I was on the point of telling you this evening when we were interrupted, it is with the deepest gratitude that I acknowledge the magnificent way in which you have fulfilled your part in the contract between us. Never shall I be able adequately to express my indebtedness to you. Now it is my turn to keep my promise to you.

  "As I have said already, you are free—perfectly free—and you will be altogether so whenever it may please you to travel to Florence, where my legal representatives, Messers Lombardi and Fosco Grazelli, will be provided with the necessary instructions for all to be settled in accordance with your wishes.

  "I am removing my son this very evening rather than continue to inflict upon you a presence which, as I have been told, is even more painful to you than I had feared. When he and I are far removed you will recover more speedily and, I can only trust, will soon forget what with the passing of time will become no more than a disagreeable incident, the memory of which will gradually fade into insignificance.

  "Should it be otherwise, however, and should you one day feel a wish to see the person to whom you have given birth, be sure that nothing can ever take away the fact that you are his mother, a mother whose memory he will be taught to cherish. Even when you bear another name, you will still remain Princess Sant'Anna to your child, as you are to one who will ever remain your friend, your husband in the sight of God and your most faithful servant, Corrado Sant'Anna."

  Jolival finished reading and glanced up at Marianne. She was still standing where she had been, still with the same grief-stricken, somnambulistic air. Seeing her fixed in such stony misery, he had thought at first that Jason's departure was the cause of her grief, and now, behold, the thing he had hoped for and feared at once had come to pass and mother-love had wakened in her and was demanding its rights. It was not her lover's absence which was the cause of those tears but the removal of the child whom only yesterday she had hated, yet who, in the space of a few seconds, had carved for himself the lion's share in his mother's heart.

  As ill luck would have it, no one could have told the prince of what had taken place in that room and in the heart of Marianne and, believing her still irrevocably set against the infant, he had done what he must always have intended and taken the child away to some unknown destination, unconscious of the despair he left behind him.

  For Marianne's sake, however, Jolival forced himself to speak calmly.

  "Well, what are you crying for, my dear?" he said, folding the letter and laying it aside. "There is nothing here but what you yourself have agreed to and desired."

  She turned her great green eyes on him, filled with an immense surprise.

  "But, Arcadius," she said in a small voice, "don't you understand? He has gone… they have all gone… and my son with them."

  She was trembling like a leaf in the wind. He went to her and took her gently by the arm to lead her back to bed. Her skin was icy cold.

  "But, my dear," he reproached her tenderly, "isn't that what you wanted? Think back. You wanted to go to Jason, to become his wife and begin a new life with him, have other children…"

  She passed her hand across her forehead as though waking from a dream.

  "Perhaps… yes, I think I did want that, and even nothing else. But that was before."

  He made no attempt to elicit a fuller explanation. Indeed, that was before. Before she had held a tiny body in her arms, a little thing that was soft and tender with a tiny fist that had closed imperiously on her finger as though to take possession.

  "The prince cannot have gone far," he ventured, helpless in the face of such unhappiness. "Would you like us to try and catch him? Osman—"

  "Osman doesn't know where his master has gone. I sent for him when they gave me that dreadful letter after I woke. He knows nothing of his intentions and never asks questions. Turhan Bey is absent frequently and often for long periods. To please me, he promised to go to the harbor and see what he could discover, but I have no great hopes. The prince may be already far out to sea."

  "In this weather, with a newborn babe? Nothing of the sort!"

  "Then he is hiding and it is a waste of time to look for him. He told me himself that after the birth he would vanish with the child. He has kept his word and I have no right to blame him."

  "Did no one tell him last night that you had taken to the child after all? I gather from this letter that you did not see him again after we left?"

  "No. Oh, Arcadius, I was so wretched that I didn't think I wanted to see anyone, not even Donna Lavinia. I must have cried half the night."

  She was shivering more and more, from a combination of cold and nerves. Jolival went quickly to a chair and fetched her favorite big red cashmere shawl and wrapped it around her. Then he hunted for slippers for her bare feet. Bending to put them on, he saw that the thing which he had taken for a small glittering snake, lying like the serpent's head beneath the foot of the Virgin, was in fact a magnificent emerald and diamond necklace. He took it up and let it hang for a moment between his fingers.

  Guessing that it was the final princely gift from her husband, he would have forborne to question her about it, but Marianne moved suddenly and snatched it from him with a sudden blaze of anger and hurled it under a chest.

  "Let it lie! It's my payment! I don't want it."

  "Are you mad? I'm very sure the prince had no such idea."

  "What else? To him I am only a foolish woman to be bought. From there it is only a step to thinking that a handful of jewels will easily compensate me for the loss of my child. Oh, I hate him, I hate him! I hate all men! All they know how to do is follow their own blind, senseless desires and fight and make idiotic wars which they all rush to join in as if they were glorious treats, without a thought for those they leave behind them! Why do they have to have sons only to bring them up the same way?"

  "Marianne, calm yourself! You can't change the world and you will only make yourself ill…"

  "What does it matter? What does it matter even if I die? Who would care—except you, perhaps? Jason is no better than the rest. He has bullied and misused me to make me forget my duty and my country, he has treated me worse than one of the slaves on his family's plantation and now he leaves me here, abandons me to go running off to a war that is not even declared yet and may never take place. Do you think he cares for my tears and my unhappiness, or even for the simple fact of how I am to accomplish the immense journey across half the world to join him? Who is to say that the ship that carries us won't fall into the hands of pirates like the Kouloughis? But all that is nothing to Jason Beaufort compared to his beloved battles! At this very minute he is sailing off to America without a care in his heart—"

  Jolival seized on this as his opportunity to shake Marianne out of her despairing mood. He knew the ups and downs of her volatile temperament in which the French and Italian elements predominated over the English, too well not to be sure that Jason's present danger would sweep away all her anger against him in an instant. For even if the privateer had taken second place in her memory just then to the newer attractions of the baby, Marianne's true feelings could not have undergone a change in that short time. She loved him still and even her immediate anger was only another proof of it.

  "I'd not be too sure of that," he said. "Indeed, to be quite honest he's not sailing toward America at all. Quite the opposite, in fa
ct."

  As he had expected, Marianne's rage collapsed at once, like the sails of a ship in dead calm. In its place there came the old, anxious look which was certainly by far her most familiar sensation when she thought of her difficult love. But Jolival embarked at once on an account of what had taken place by the Tower of the Maiden, giving her no time to ask questions.

  Almost before he had finished, Marianne had rushed from the room, forgetting her weak state and the fact that she was not supposed to be out of her bed yet, and was hurrying in the direction of the tandour, without even pausing to try her strength.

  She did not get very far. Out in the covered way she was forcibly reminded of her weakness. She swayed and would have fallen but for Jolival, who had hastened after and was there to catch her.

  "Don't be silly. Let me take you back to your room."

  Her eyes flashed dangerously.

  "If you don't take me to the tandour this instant, Jolival, I will never set eyes on you again as long as I live."

  He was obliged to do as she asked. Half-supporting and half-carrying her, the wretched Arcadius succeeded in getting Marianne as far as her favorite lookout place, where they were just in time to see the Sea Witch, light as a seagull, driving under full sail past the gilded lattices of the palace where they stood.

  "Oh, God," Marianne groaned, "if they open fire now it will be murder! Look at the towers of Rumeli Hissar! They are crowded with janissaries!"

  "If only—" Jolival began. But before he could finish, as if Jason had divined the thought in his mind, the impudent stars were descending swiftly from the masthead. A moment later another flag was creeping up to take their place. With unspeakable relief Marianne and Jolival recognized the lion and the flaming T which had protected the Sea Witch while she lay in harbor.

  "Thank God!" Marianne breathed, sinking back onto the cushions. "He had the sense to pocket his pride and do the one thing that could save him from the Turkish guns."

  The guns fired nonetheless, but it was only a friendly salute to a vessel of Turhan Bey's. The tiny puffs of white smoke bloomed above the ancient ramparts of Mehmet the Conqueror like waving handkerchiefs held in friendly hands.

  The Sea Witch passed on and dwindled. Soon she had vanished into the mist and Admiral Maxwell's squadron hove into sight. But the pursuit seemed to have lost its enthusiasm. With a sigh of relief, Jolival crossed to a small table on which stood coffee things and a pair of decanters. He poured himself a full glass of raki and swallowed it at a gulp.

  "Well," he said at last, "that seaman of Jason's was right when he said that last night was a night fit for the devil. The morning has been exciting enough, I must say. What shall we do now? I hope you are going to consent to go to bed and rest at last. I'll call for your women to come and help you back to your room."

  But Marianne was already snuggling down among the cushions where she had spent so many hours. She drew the embroidered coverlet up over her legs.

  "I can't possibly go back to that room where I can't see anything. I'm staying here, Jolival. As to what we are going to do now, I will tell you. We are going to wait. Sooner or later Jason will have to pass by here again to reach his own country, won't he?"

  "He may pass by night—in fact, he almost certainly will. At night and with the ship in darkness."

  "It's possible. But one thing I am certain of, and that is that he won't pass by without stopping. There is no need for us to look for a ship, my friend. The Sea Witch herself shall take us to America! Jason will do as he said he would. He'll lie up somewhere and then come back and fetch us."

  There was a silence during which Jolival studied his young friend. She was becoming more herself again with every minute. Her eyes were shining, there was color in her cheeks and she seemed to have forgotten all about the despair which had overwhelmed her at daybreak. He dared not tell her his own thoughts upon the likelihood of Jason's stopping but he privately resolved to ask Osman to see that a constant watch was kept on the narrows.

  "Upon my word," he said aloud, "anyone would think you were not displeased at Jason's misadventure, eh?"

  "And they would be right, my friend. I'm not only not displeased, I'm actually grateful to Admiral Maxwell. In blocking Jason's way he may have been only the instrument of fate, but he has done me a tremendous service."

  PART III

  The Governor of Odessa

  Chapter 8

  The Woman with the Diamond

  THE woman who descended on a morning in July onto the wooden jetty at Odessa bore only the very faintest resemblance to the one who four months earlier had settled down to an endless wait in a gilded cage suspended over the waters of the Bosporus. Enforced rest, coupled with the admirable nourishment which Osman, Turhan Bey's steward, had provided for a guest concerning whom he had received the strictest orders, had worked wonders. In addition, as she grew stronger there had been the beneficial effects of daily walks in the gardens of Humayunabad. The beauties of the Turkish spring as they were unfolded to her day by day on Jolival's arm had wrought their own soothing medicine on her overtried spirit, while motherhood had given a fresh bloom of perfection to her natural grace.

  Marianne's figure had recovered its youthful slenderness but with none of the painful emaciation which had so alarmed Jolival and terrified Jason Beaufort. She had become a woman, sure of herself and armed to the teeth for the only war that fitted her, the war of love. Hence, the traveler's curiosity and interest in the motley crowd swarming about the harbor was fully reciprocated. The local inhabitants made no secret of their admiration for the lovely stranger, so exquisitely dressed in white sprigged muslin flounced about the hem, and with huge emerald eyes sparkling from beneath the soft shade of an Italian straw bonnet with a high poke front lined with the same stuff.

  After her came Arcadius de Jolival, clad in spotless white against the heat but spruce and fashionable as ever. An elegant straw hat and long green sunshade tucked under his arm completed an outfit which was also not without its effect on the natives. They were followed by a number of porters carrying their baggage.

  The two friends presented the serene and leisurely appearance of tourists enjoying the experience of a new country, but this was all on the surface. Inwardly both were wondering uneasily what awaited them in this, the chief Russian port on the Black Sea.

  Odessa was a strange city, beautiful in its way but with a temporary look about it. The place was full of scaffolding and still too new to have acquired a distinct personality of its own. For it was less than twenty years since a decree signed by the Tsarina Catherine II had raised the village of Tatar fishermen, newly wrested from the Turk, to the status of a Russian port. The name of the village and its Turkish castle had been Khadjibey. Catherine had rechristened it Odessa, in memory of the Greek colony of Odessos which had once stood on the site.

  The village's elevation was no mere imperial whim. Situated in a rocky bay between the estuaries of the two great rivers, Dnieper and Dniester, it provided an outstanding strategic position and at the same time an outlet to the Mediterranean for the vast wheat-lands of the Ukraine.

  It was wheat, in fact, which seemed to hold a peaceful dominion over this naval port. As Marianne and Jolival walked up to the one respectable hotel in the town, preceded by an urchin who had graciously appointed himself their guide in the hope of a tip, they saw dozens of wagons piled high with bursting sacks converging on the warehouses to be stored ready for loading in the holds of the waiting ships, some of which, as Marianne noted with a pang, were English. But she knew that she was in enemy territory now.

  It was a full three weeks since Napoleon's Grand Army had crossed the Niemen to challenge Alexander on his own ground.

  Marianne's eyes searched the huge harbor, big enough to shelter three hundred ships, hoping to catch sight of the familiar outline of the Sea Witch. But most of the vessels were European and the Russian fleet contained nothing like the antiquated Ottoman ships, so there was little chance of distinguishing
the brig's masts among that forest of spars.

  The town, tumbling down a steep cliff to the sea in a froth of luxuriant vegetation, was like a link between two spaces of infinite blue; but midway between the busy harbor and the fashionable part at the top, the old Turkish citadel, now strengthened and restored, added a grimmer note. Marianne found her eyes drawn to it irresistibly. Was it there that Jason had been incarcerated all these months?

  She had waited for so long, hope dwindling with every new day, that she could hardly believe he was so near to her now. News traveled slowly in the Black Sea, where no one saw the need for hurry and anything was possible. Had the American privateer fallen victim to one of the sudden fierce storms that could blow up in those waters? Or been taken by one of the pirate fleets of polyglot origin which still infested that inland sea? The tsar's navy was powerless against these vermin who would descend without warning out of darkness or mist, attack like a swarm of wasps and vanish again as suddenly and completely as if the wind had carried them away.

  And then, at the beginning of June when the Ottoman Empire, weary of fighting, was making peace with Russia, Osman had come back from the harbor with news which, disquieting as it was, was nothing like as tragic as they had feared. The brig had been captured by the Russians and taken to Odessa, where it was now in custody. Of the crew, there was no news at all.

  The probability was that they were the prisoners of the formidable governor of the Crimea, that French émigré who, in spite of his name, had apparently made himself more Russian than the Russians and was now by all accounts devoting his considerable talents to developing the wealth of southern Russia and making Odessa into a real city: in a word, the Duc de Richelieu.