[Marianne 5] - Marianne and the Lords of the East

by Juliette Benzoni

  "Is it some bad news?" she asked.

  Lavinia hesitated. She might have said that the news had been for Corrado's ear alone, but she was incapable of resisting her young mistress's soft voice and melancholy look. So she merely replied as evasively as she could: "Yes and no. There has been an attempt to steal one of the ships in the harbor, but the thief has been caught and brought here."

  "To steal one of the ships?" Marianne repeated vaguely. "Do you know which one?"

  Before Donna Lavinia could answer, the heavy velvet curtain covering the entrance to the tandour was put aside by the prince's own hand. His blue eyes scanned each of the faces raised to his in turn and came to rest on Marianne. He was evidently under the stress of some strong emotion.

  "Madame," he said, using very nearly the same words as Donna Lavinia a moment earlier, "there has been an attempt to steal your ship. My people seized the thief and have brought him here, with three or four of the men he employed to assist him. Do you want to see him?"

  "To see him? Why should I? Why don't you see him yourself?" she said in sudden alarm.

  "I have no wish to see him. I merely caught a glimpse of him in the hands of my men. And I still think it is for you and no one else to interview him. My presence would only complicate matters and I would rather leave you. He will be here at any moment."

  Then Marianne knew why it was that her heart had beat faster and why she was suddenly nervous. She knew now who the thief was. And she felt magically alive again. The will to live revived in her wasted body. She was herself again and no longer simply the receptacle for an alien existence that was consuming her.

  And yet there was a flaw in the happiness that flooded her being. The man she was about to see had been taken in the act of trying to take possession of the brig. What if he had succeeded? He was unlikely to have left her anchored secretly in some quiet bay while he returned to Constantinople in search of the woman waiting for him there. It was not easy to hide a vessel of that size. He would undoubtedly have taken to the open sea to escape pursuit and Marianne was afraid of finding out that, to a seaman, his ship could mean more than the woman he loved. It was this fear which made her strive to stifle the small voice within that threatened to spoil her wonderful moment.

  She stretched out both her hands to Jolival in an instinctive gesture to seek his support, and he came to her where she lay on the divan and gripped them in his own. They were icy cold and she was trembling in every limb, but the eyes she lifted to Corrado were full of stars.

  "Thank you," she said softly. "Thank you… from the bottom of my heart."

  She put out her hand to him but he seemed not to see it. His face as he bowed and left her was closed and set. But Marianne was too happy to consider what he might be thinking at that moment. With the unconscious selfishness of all people in love, she was thinking only of the one who was coming.

  She turned to Jolival with a look of alarm.

  "I want a mirror," she said. "I must look dreadful—shockingly ugly!"

  "Ugly, no. You could never be that—but shocking, certainly. I dare say you're sorry now that you didn't listen to your Uncle Arcadius and try to eat a little more. All the same, it's no bad thing that you should look a trifle peaky. But you must try to be calm. Do you want me to go?"

  "No, no! Don't go! Only remember how we parted. Who knows if his long illness has made him think differently about me? I might need you. So don't leave me, my friend, I implore you—besides, it is too late."

  Quick footsteps rang out in the next room. A voice spoke sharply, and the sound of it made Marianne's senses swim. It was answered by Donna Lavinia's infinitely gentler tones. Then the curtain was lifted once more. The housekeeper in her black dress appeared and curtsied deeply.

  "If it please Your Serene Highness, Mr. Jason Beaufort."

  As he strode through the door, the small room seemed to shrink. He was so tall that Marianne thought he must surely have grown since she had seen him last. But otherwise he was unchanged. There was still the same masterful face, the same tanned complexion and dark blue eyes, the same unruly black hair. Neither time nor illness, it seemed, had any power over Jason Beaufort. He had returned from the edge of the grave as much himself as if nothing had happened.

  Marianne gazed at him wonderingly, forgetting in an instant all that he had made her suffer, as Mary Magdalen must have looked at the risen Christ, with eyes bright with tears and light.

  Unhappily, the object of her gaze was not endowed with the same divine serenity. He stopped dead in the doorway, the anger which had driven him into the room cut off short. He had been told that he was going to meet the "owner" of his beloved brig and had been prepared to tell the thief exactly what he thought of him. But the sight of the two faces before him left him wholly thunderstruck. And since Marianne's voice had suddenly deserted her, it was left to Jolival to break the silence. Releasing the girl's hands, which were quieter now and not so cold, he rose and went to meet the privateer.

  "Come in, Beaufort. I'm not sure that you are welcome, but you have certainly been expected."

  The vicomte's voice was noticeably lacking in warmth. Jolival was the last man on earth to bear a grudge but it was clear that he had not forgotten the time that he had spent in irons aboard the Sea Witch, along with poor Gracchus, or the sufferings endured by Marianne. It was these that Jolival could not forgive. If he had not known how deeply his young friend loved this man, if he had not seen her pining for him all these weeks, it would have given him a very real pleasure to have thrown him out of the door, and the more so because, although he had said nothing, he, too, had been shocked by the attempted theft. His state of mind was reflected in his greeting. Consciously or unconsciously, he was spoiling for a fight.

  But Jason's anger had fallen from him as swiftly as the curtain fell into place behind him. He had been staring at Marianne as though at a ghost but now his eyes left her and swung to Jolival, losing none of their astonishment as they took in the diminutive figure drawn up to its full height before him.

  "Monsieur de Jolival," he said at last. "What are you doing here? I thought you were dead."

  "Very kind of you, I'm sure," snapped the vicomte. "I don't know who put that idea into your head. That you should picture me working a treadmill for some fat slave owner, that I could understand—but from there to burying me! It if interests you, I am in excellent health."

  A faint smile touched Beaufort's lips. "I'm sorry. I ought not to have said that. But all this is so incredible. Try and see it from my point of view. I arrive here, recognize my ship and make a bid to win back my own with the help of a handful of men picked up on the waterfront, whereupon I am fallen on by a gang of screaming ruffians and hauled off to the so-called owner, only to find myself face to face with the two of you—"

  His eyes, as though drawn by a magnet, had returned to Marianne, a white figure curled up amid a pile of silken cushions in every shade of green. He stepped around the stove and came to the divan, while she watched him in an agony of apprehension. What was he going to do? He was smiling with what looked like real joy, but his reactions were so unpredictable. Had he forgotten all that had passed aboard his ship, or was the memory of that last, terrible scene between them still with him, ready to stand between them once again?

  That had been on board the Sea Witch. Jason had been standing on the quarter deck, watching while Caleb suffered punishment for having tried to kill Dr. Leighton, and Marianne had turned on him, wild with rage, and had snatched the bloody whip from the bosun's hands. She saw again the figure of the pretended Ethiopian hanging by the wrists from the mainmast, limp and unconscious. She heard Jason's voice saying coldly: "What is that woman doing? Take her back to her cabin!"

  They had faced one another before the whole ship's company. She had hurled defiance at the man who stood there with a face of stone and madness in his eyes, a man, she knew now, who was even then in the power of a deadly drug. But what memories had the drug left in his mind?

/>   None, perhaps. For in the look that Jason bent on her face she saw all the old fire which she had thought never to see again. A wave of happiness swept over her. Was it possible that the memory of the horrible events off the island of Cythera could have faded like a dream? If no trace of them remained in Jason's mind, how gladly would Marianne erase them from her own.

  Jason approached until he could rest one knee on the next divan and, bending, offered her his hand as though in earnest of peace.

  "Marianne," he said softly. "They told me you were here and that I should find you but I never thought that it would be so soon. I think I must be dreaming. How is it possible?"

  She raised herself from her cushions, her hands, her arms, her whole being reaching out to him with unthinking gladness.

  "I'll tell you everything! But you are here! At last! That is what is so wonderful! Come and sit by me. Here, at my side."

  With an eagerness that she had not shown for many weeks, she tossed aside the cloth that covered the stove and made room for him among the cushions, her condition quite forgotten. She remembered it too late as she saw Jason draw away from her quickly, white-faced, when the gesture revealed her shape all too clearly.

  "So that at least was no dream?" he said bitterly. "That was no nightmare brought about by Leighton's infernal drugs. You are with child—"

  The light died out of Marianne's eyes, and Jolival saw that once again all was about to be lost and that she was to be made to suffer yet again. He lost his temper.

  "Oh, no!" he said fiercely. "Not again! Beaufort, I've had more than enough of your tantrums, your tragedy airs and your insufferable pride! You no sooner arrive than you begin to set yourself up as judge and jury! You come here out of the blue, in the unedifying character of one who has been caught trying to take what no longer belongs to him—"

  "What gives you the idea that my ship no longer belongs to me?" Jason demanded haughtily.

  "The law of the sea. Your ship, my good sir, was captured by the Turks and brought here as a prize by one Achmet Reis, the man who had taken her. She was bought from him by the Valideh Sultan, given a complete refit, which she badly needed after a spell in your friend Leighton's hands, and presented by Her Highness to her kinswoman, Marianne. In other words, having permitted that damned doctor of yours to rob Marianne and do his best to murder her in the most hideous manner, you now come here to deprive her of everything she has and dare to get up on your high horse into the bargain when you find her in a condition that does not meet with your approval! Oh, no, my friend, it won't do! It won't do at all!"

  Jason shrugged. "I don't understand a word you're saying. Leighton acted like a brigand to me but I had not thought that you had cause for complaint—"

  "Oh, hadn't you? You did not know that on the night after Caleb's flogging, while you were snoring in your bed sodden with rum and drugs, he stripped this poor child of all she possessed and set her adrift in an open boat with nothing more than a nightshift and a pair of oars, leaving her wretched maid, Agathe, to be raped by half the crew? If the boat had not been found by a man fishing out of Santorini, Marianne would be dead long ago of thirst, exposure and sunstroke. She was saved in the nick of time. And no thanks to you, as far as I am aware. So kindly moderate your transports and spare us your niceties of conscience. Yes, she is with child. In fact she will be brought to bed at any moment. But although you refused to listen to the facts on board your confounded ship, I swear to God that you shall hear them now, in full, if I have to ask Turhan Bey to have you put in chains!"

  "Arcadius," Marianne implored him, alarmed by her friend's fury, "please! Calm yourself!"

  "Calm myself! Not until I've forced this blockhead here to see the truth. Just you listen to me, Jason Beaufort. You'll not leave here until you have heard the truth, the whole truth about the nightmare Marianne has lived through this past year, and which you in your stupidity have only made worse. You had better sit down because it will take some time."

  Scarlet to the roots of his receding hair, Jolival faced up to Jason like a small fighting cock, his clenched fists itching to punch the stern face before him. He could not remember ever having been so angry, except perhaps once, when he was ten years old and a young cousin of his, out of pure spite, had killed his favorite dog before his eyes. The crucified look on Marianne's face as Jason uttered the words "You are with child!" in a voice thick with contempt, had taken him back to that other horrible moment and had unleashed forces that had slumbered in him for years, and Jolival found that, beneath the cynical, cultivated man of the world, there was still the same small Arcadius who could be roused to a primitive and savage rage by an act of wanton cruelty and injustice. Then he had hurled himself on his big cousin and bitten him to the bone like a small wild animal, clinging so fiercely to the murderer's hand that they had had to haul him off bodily. Now Jolival was once more in the mood to bite.

  Instinct told Jason he had gone too far and was near to making a deadly enemy of a man who, until now, had been a loyal friend. He gave in and sat down obediently, crossing one long booted leg over the other.

  "I'm listening," he said with a sigh. "Indeed, I am beginning to think there must be a great deal I don't know."

  He had deliberately refrained from looking at Marianne again, restrained by a kind of embarrassment, and she seized the opportunity to extricate herself from her nest of cushions.

  "Jolival, will you call Donna Lavinia, please? I should like to go to bed, now."

  Jason protested instantly. "Why must you go? If I have wronged you, I ask only to acknowledge it freely for—for I too have suffered. Please. I'm asking you to stay."

  She shook her head, although she saw what this admission of his own unhappiness had cost his pride.

  "No. What Jolival is going to tell you would only recall memories that are too painful for me. And I would rather not be here. You will feel less constrained and see things more clearly in my absence. I don't want to influence you."

  "You won't influence me. Stay, I implore you! I have so much to tell you also—"

  "Then you may tell me another time—if you still want to. If not… you will be free to go away again this very evening and we will never meet again. After all, that is what would have happened, isn't it, if you had succeeded in taking the Sea Witch tonight? You knew that I was here in the city. You had been told—and a hard struggle I had to get here! Yet you would have set sail without even trying to see me—"

  "No! I swear to you! I don't know what I meant to do really, but I'd not have gone right away. You see, when I saw my ship tied up amid all that other riffraff of vessels, I think I somehow lost my reason. I had only one idea, to get her back and take her out of there. I felt as if she were trapped in a dreadful swamp… So I got hold of some men I found idling on the waterfront who looked as though they might be useful and set out with them to make the attempt. I didn't think it would prove so very difficult. The watch looked casual enough. I was wrong. But I swear to you that I would never have left these shores without seeing you, without at least learning what had become of you. I could not have done it."

  "What would you have done?"

  "The coast hereabouts is very rocky. It ought to have been possible to find some secret anchorage—but I tell you, I simply had not thought. I acted on an impulse stronger than myself, and a similar impulse would probably have brought me back to look for you."

  He was on his feet now, regarding her anxiously, alarmed by the dull resignation of her tone and the defeat it betrayed. He saw how frail and ill she looked. He saw little in this woman, heavy with child, of the proud, indomitable creature who had known so well how to drive him to distraction with passion or with fury. But he discovered also, for all the revulsion her condition inspired in him, a new feeling, born of an instinctive urge to protect and defend her against the burden of a fate too heavy for her fragile shoulders, to rescue her from the ridiculous pass to which ill luck and her own hotheadedness had brought her.

 
Watching her as she struggled with painful slowness to rise from her divan, clinging to the arm of Lavinia, who had come at once to help her, he experienced a sudden wild desire to snatch her up in his arms and carry her away from this palace whose Oriental splendors were as shocking to his austere taste as to his native puritanism. He even made a move toward her but she halted him with a look.

  "No," she said fiercely. "What you feel now is pity. And I do not want your pity."

  "Don't be a fool! Pity? What gave you that idea? I swear to you—"

  "Oh, no! Do not swear! When you came in just now I was ready to forget all that passed on board your ship. I believe I had forgotten—but you reminded me! I won't listen to any more. You shall listen, instead, to Jolival! Afterwards, as I said, you will be free to decide."

  "To decide what?"

  "If you want us to remain—friends. When you know the facts, you will know whether you can still hold me in any esteem. Your feelings are a matter for your own heart."

  "Stay," Jason begged her. "I know my own mind."

  "You are fortunate. I cannot say the same for myself. I was happy a moment ago, but now I do not know… And so I would rather go."

  "Let her go," Jolival said. "She is tired and ill. She needs rest. What she does not need is the ordeal which the telling of this tale would be for her. There are things it does no good to recall. And I shall feel freer to say what is in my mind. Donna Lavinia," he added in a much warmer tone, "would you add to all your kindness by asking them to send us in some coffee? A great deal of coffee. I think we shall both be needing it."

  "You shall have all the coffee you want, Monsieur le Vicomte, and something more substantial to go with it. I daresay this gentleman could do with something to eat."

  Jason had opened his mouth as though to refuse when Marianne forestalled him.