Marianne and the Lords of the East

The sight of the sea, though, had become like a drug to her, and it was almost more than she could do to drag herself away from it. The nights, when she was forced to leave her divan to go to bed, seemed endless, in spite of the soothing drafts administered by her doctor, who was becoming alarmed at her increasing tension.

With her hands lying idle on the embroidery that she would probably never finish or on a book she did not read, she would lie there from the boom of the morning gun that marked the beginning of the day until the evening one that ended it, enclosed in her glassed-in birdcage resembling the after cabin of a ship, watching the vessels slipping past the palace and the little landing stage with the marble steps going down into the leaden water, always looking for one who never came.

The year 1811 had gone out silently and already the first month of the new year had passed away. Yet still Jason had not come. And every new day ate a little more cruelly into Marianne's hopes, until she had almost come to despair of ever seeing him again. If it had not been for the Sea Witch, she could even have believed that he had abandoned her forever and his love for her was dead. The brig, still riding at her moorings in Phanar under Turhan Bey's colors, was her one hope, and she clung to it with all her strength. He could not ignore the ship he loved even if the woman whose face she bore on her prow was nothing to him anymore.

Weak and ill, with a weight of misery in her heart, Marianne blamed herself for what she privately thought of as her cowardice. The old Marianne of Selton, who had put a sword through her husband on her wedding night to avenge her honor, would have turned her back on any man who treated her as he had. But that had been two hundred years ago and the frail, unhappy woman who lay huddled like a sick cat among her cushions had strength only for the one thought that still kept her going: the longing to see him again.

One of Turhan Bey's merchantmen, on a regular run from Monemvasia with a cargo of Molvoisie wine, had brought news that the American had left the Morea for Athens early in December, but no one seemed to know what had become of him after that. Once arrived in the ancient capital of learning, he appeared to have vanished into thin air.

A hundred times over Marianne had made Jolival repeat to her what the fishermen had told the messenger sent by Turhan Bey with instructions to bring Jason back with him if he so wished. The stranger had read the letter that had been given him, together with a sum of money, according to instructions, as soon as he was fully recovered. Then he had simply put it in his pocket and begun making inquiries about a boat for Athens. After warmly thanking those who had nursed him with such kindness, he had pressed on them half the money he had been given and, early one morning, had embarked on a small vessel trading along the coast as far as Piraeus. By the time Turhan Bey's men arrived, he had been gone for a fortnight.

What had he been seeking in Athens? The tracks of the man who had deceived him, broken him, robbed him and abandoned him to the cruel sea, stripped of everything he cared for in the world: his love, his ship and his illusions? Or the means to reach Constantinople? Or had he done with Europe and its people and simply sought a ship to carry him to Gibraltar and the vast Atlantic?

Alas, as time went on Marianne leaned more and more toward the latter theory. She was never going to see Jason again in this world but perhaps God would have mercy on her and take her life in exchange for that of the child about to be born.

Every evening at the same hour, just as the first lights were shining from the Asian shore, Prince Corrado would come to see how she was doing. He would appear in the doorway of the pavilion which had been set aside for her use and which was divided from his own by the whole width of the garden. For the palace of Humayunabad, in the rambling way of eighteenth-century Turkish buildings, was an amazing collection of pointed roofs, grottoes, swags and moldings, extravagantly decorated kiosks jutting out over the water or the gardens like huge gilded cages, with pools and pavilions for every conceivable purpose, from baths to every other aspect of everyday life, and all adorned with the same painted columns.

The ritual was always the same. As though making clear his determination to avoid the smallest intimacy with his unlikely wife, the prince would arrive in company with Arcadius, having collected him from the library where the vicomte spent most of his days surrounded by a thick cloud of smoke, dividing his time between his favorite Greek authors and the study of Persian. The door of the pavilion would be opened to them by Gracchus, who conducted them with all the dignity of a real butler to the salon where Donna Lavinia watched unobtrusively over the mother-to-be. There, he handed them over to the housekeeper and returned to his post in the vestibule where he had nothing to do but yawn and play cup and ball with himself and keep the door.

Marianne's youthful coachman had left the French embassy on the same night as Jolival and with the same extravagant precautions. Jolival had explained to him as concisely as possible how the Ethiopian Caleb had become transformed into Turhan Bey, and with amazing self-control, Gracchus had refrained from asking any questions or showing the smallest astonishment. Nor, bored though he might have been since his arrival at the palace at Bebek, would he have quitted the door he had been told to guard against the machinations of Mr. Canning for anything in the world.

Gracchus had never cared much for the English. As a good child of the revolution, he hated anything to do with the dreaded 'Pitt and Coburg' of his boyhood. He had never approved of his mistress's acquaintance with that same Pitt's niece, but Mr. Canning he had regarded as a creature of the devil and his servants as so many demons. The news that they had dared to threaten his dear princess had sent him nearly frantic. As a result, he was guarding the graceful doors of painted cedarwood entrusted to him like a janissary defending the sultan's treasury. It was all he could do to refrain from subjecting the prince and Jolival to a thorough search every evening, such was his fear that Canningue might have disguised himself as one or other of them the better to reach his victim.

Donna Lavinia, in turn, would lead the two men to the tandour and then she, too, would withdraw to resume her needlework and her vigil, ready to answer her young mistress's call. Her presence, indeed, was among the very few that Marianne could endure, even in her tormented state, and she would often beg her to sit with her. For the silent Lavinia knew better than anyone how to be quiet.

The reunion between the two women had taken place without an unnecessary word. They had embraced like mother and daughter after a long absence, and then Donna Lavinia had resumed her services to the younger woman as though she had never left off. Since then she had surrounded her with every care called for by her condition, but she had never made the slightest allusion to the expected child, nor had she betrayed any of the ill- timed jubilation that anyone else could not have failed to betray. She knew too well what the longed-for heir was costing the young Princess Sant'Anna.

And so she was the only person Marianne would have near her. She bathed her and helped her to dress, did her hair and brought her meals, and slept at night in an adjoining chamber with the door left open, ready to answer the least call.

Sunk in her mental apathy, Marianne was aware of this unspoken solicitude. She allowed herself to be nursed like a child but, as her time drew nearer, she would call for Lavinia more and more often, as though she felt the need to reassure herself that when the time came she would be there to help her through the ordeal.

As for the prince, his visits invariably followed the same pattern. He would come in, inquire after her health and try gently to rouse her from her melancholy with news of the outside world and the day's gossip from the Ottoman capital. From time to time he would bring her a present of a new book, a few flowers, a jewel or some unusual or amusing trinket. The one thing he never brought was scent for which, from the sixth month, Marianne had developed an aversion. Even Jolival would change his clothes completely on emerging from his bouts of smoking in the library so as not to offend her with the smell of Turkish tobacco on his person.

At the end of a quarter of an hour Corrado would rise and bow and bid her good night, leaving Jolival to keep her company. Donna Lavinia would hold back the velvet curtains and his tall, graceful figure would vanish through them to be seen no more until the following night.

'He reminds me of Aladdin's genie,' Marianne confided to Jolival one day when she was feeling a little more cheerful than usual. 'I always feel that I have only to rub one of the lamps and he will appear before me in a pillar of smoke.'

'I shouldn't be surprised. The prince is undoubtedly a most remarkable man,' was all the vicomte said. ' And I don't mean in his appearance only. He's a person of very high intelligence and a most cultivated, even artistic turn of mind…' But his panegyric had ended there, for Marianne had turned her head away and relapsed again into her depression. And the good Jolival could not help privately wishing Jason Beaufort to the devil. Just then he would have given a lot to be able to root him out of the girl's sick mind.

Her longing for the handsome privateer was killing her slowly and Jolival, helpless in the face of that