Marianne and the Lords of the East

Arcadius's bow was the epitome of politeness.

'I shall be very happy to do so. For you must know, Prince, that I rarely leave the princess, who is pleased to consider me as something between a mentor and a favorite uncle.'

'The part suits you to perfection, never fear. Unfortunately, you will be obliged to live as quietly as the princess herself because if Canning guesses that she would never have flown without you he is bound to have you followed as soon as you show your nose in the city. Happily, I can offer you the use of an excellent library, some very good cigars and a cellar I am sure will meet with your approval, to say nothing of a beautiful garden, well hidden from prying eyes.'

'That will suit me very well,' Jolival assured him. 'I have always dreamed of retiring to a monastery. Yours sounds just right.'

'Good. Then you will begin your retreat tomorrow evening. Your best way to Bebek will be to go to the French embassy while it is still daylight, as you sometimes do, for a game of chess with Monsieur de Latour- Maubourg. You are in the habit of staying the night there, because no boats are allowed to cross the Golden Horn after sunset except those belonging to the sultan.'

'That's true.'

'This time you will leave again after dark. I'll come for you myself at midnight. I'll be waiting in the street. You only have to make up some excuse. Say that you are spending the night with friends in Pera or something of the sort. The main thing is to have you out of Stamboul before curfew.'

'One more detail—if I may call Princess Morousi detail,' Jolival said.

'Once you are both gone, she will make the biggest fuss she can—which is saying a good deal—lamenting your ingratitude in quitting her house in such cavalier fashion without taking the trouble even to inform her where you were going. No, don't worry, she will know all about it. In fact, she will be the only person besides myself and you to do so. I know that I can trust her absolutely.'

'I'm quite sure of it,' Marianne said. 'But do you think Canning will be taken in by her outcry?'

'It doesn't matter whether he is or not. What does matter is that he does not know where you are. After a few days he is bound to think that you have taken fright and run away, and he will stop looking for you.'

'I expect you are right. But there is still one thing to be thought of. What about the ship?'

'The Sea Witch! She will stay where she is until further developments. It was a mistake for the sultana to have our crest flown from the masthead. Very kind and thoughtful, certainly, but a mistake all the same. For tonight that flag must disappear. I'll replace it with the one flown by all my own ships.'

'The one flown by your ships? Have you ships?'

'I told you I was known here as a rich merchant. In fact, that is precisely what I am. My ships fly a red pennant bearing a lion with a T-shaped torch in its paw. If you are willing for the brig to fly that flag, it will be thought in high places that you have sold her to me in order to obtain the money for your flight. And it will not stand in the way of Mr. Beaufort's recovering his property.'

Marianne found herself at a loss for an answer. She was finding out that there was still a great deal she did not know about this amazing man whose name she bore. She had noticed a good many ships, xebecs and polaccas flying that curious flag with the flaming T on it in the harbor of Stamboul, but it had never occurred to her that they could belong to her husband. She began to think that it would be interesting to live for a time with such a man, quite apart from the promise of security it offered and the joy of finding Donna Lavinia again.

As they talked, the three of them had completed the circuit of the garden and found themselves back on the vine-covered terrace outside the drawing room. Autumn had turned it to a wine-red canopy which glowed redder still in the light of the lamps that were now being lit all over the house. But a pervasive odor of roast meat and frying onions emanating from the kitchens robbed the moment of its poetical effect and brought it down to earth. It was dinner time, and Marianne was hungry as always.

An ancient servingman with long white hair came into the drawing room bent under the weight of a lighted candelabrum almost taller than himself. The prince bowed, touching his forehead, lips and breast in the eastern fashion.

'I'll bid you good night,' he said, as though concluding an ordinary call, 'and shall hope to see you very soon.'

Marianne swept him a little curtsy.

'Very soon, indeed, Turhan Bey, if I have my way. Good night to you also.'

The aged retainer made haste to open the door and the prince followed him quickly, but he turned in the doorway to deliver one parting counsel.

'If I may be allowed one piece of advice—On no account have any further communication with the lady in question. She is a great deal too intelligent and she has everything to gain from frightening you. Such people make perilous friends.'

The following evening, enveloped in a black ferej and veil of the same color, Marianne left the Morousi palace. Behind her, like a shadow, went a tall Albanian with a dagger like a small cutlass stuck in his belt. His drooping black mustache gave him a strong resemblance to Attila the Hun and he glared around him with a fierce black eye that defied anyone to cross him. But there were plenty more Albanians like him on the waterfronts of Stamboul and his gaudy clothes were in harmony with the multicolored crowds that swarmed there from dawn to dusk. He also possessed the added advantage that he was dumb.

With him to protect her, Marianne reached the unremarkable little perama waiting among a hundred others like it at the jetty of Aykapani. In another moment she was gliding over the gray waters of the harbor under a fine, persistent rain which, although unpleasant, was almost as impenetrable as a fog, toward her new home.

Chapter 5 Arcadius Is Angry

RAIN! It had begun just after Christmas, which had been unusually mild, and since then it had not stopped, a thin, persistent drizzle soaking everything in sight. The fishing village of Kandilli, across the Bosporus on the Asian side, showed only as a vague blur with the inevitable minaret standing up like a quill pen. The bright colors of the boats and the houses, painted pink, blue, green and yellow, dissolved in the watery mist to form a kind of grisaille in which even the spires of the cypress trees merged into the general gray. The Bosporus was cheerless, a broad salt river heaving sullenly day after day with seabirds shrieking overhead.

These days were mostly spent by Marianne in the tandour, whose windows, covered with gilded grilles, overhung the gray waters. This was a small circular apartment furnished with a number of divans, their feet converging in the center on a large, tiled stove covered with a brilliantly embroidered woolen blanket, the edges of which could be lifted by the occupants of the divans to cover their feet to help ward off the cold and damp.

The palace of Humayunabad, built by Ibrahim Pasha in the previous century and now by favor of Mahmoud II the property of Turhan Bey, possessed a number of such comfortable chambers, but Marianne had chosen this one on account of its oriel windows overlooking the Bosporus from which she could watch the shipping pass back and forth each day.

The view was much livelier than looking at the dripping gardens which, for all their splendor, were enclosed by high, defensive walls that made them almost as depressing as the fortress of Rumeli Hisar, whose battlemented walls and three round towers rose out of the water guarding the narrows with their guns. So huge and lofty were its walls that they remained visible even through the chill sea mists that rolled in from the Black Sea beyond and smothered the place where two worlds met.

Except for an occasional short stroll in the gardens whenever the rain stopped for long enough to allow it, Marianne would spend hours and hours in this room, resisting all attempts on the part of Jolival and the Persian physicians whom the prince had procured for her in place of Dr. Meryon to persuade her to take more exercise. She was nearing her time now and she felt heavy and sluggish. She could hardly bear to look in the mirror and see her figure, now swollen beyond all possibility of concealment, and her sunken face, entirely dominated by a pair of great green eyes.