Marianne and the Rebels

Theodoros glared at her from under his bushy brows, like a dog about to bite. She expected for a moment to see him bare his teeth, but he only growled:

'I have a duty to my country.'

'Then do it quietly. Did you notice the motto carved over the entrance as we came in? Sustine vel Abstine.'

'I don't know Latin.'

'Roughly speaking, it means: Stay the course or stay out. It's what I have been doing myself and I'd advise you to do the same. You are forever grumbling. Well, fate's not a matter of choice; it's something you put up with. Think yourself lucky if it offers you something worth fighting for.'

Theodoros flushed darkly and his eyes flashed.

'I've known that long enough,' he boomed, 'and no woman is going to teach me how to act!'

Under the shocked gaze of Athanasius, who clearly could not believe that anyone could be so rude to a lady, he rushed from the room, slamming the door thunderously behind him. The little steward shook his head and made his own way to the door but, before going out, he turned and bowed and there was a smile in his eyes.

'Your highness will agree with me that servants nowadays are not what they were.'

***

Marianne had been half afraid that Athanasius would come back with a monkish habit, but when he returned he brought a cloth-wrapped package, with the compliments of the Mother Superior, containing a pretty Greek dress made of a natural woven stuff embroidered in multicoloured silks by the nuns. With it, there was a kind of shawl to go over the head, and several pairs of sandals of various sizes.

It was all very different from Leroy's elegant creations, packed away in Marianne's trunks and now sailing somewhere in the hold of the American brig, destined to be sold for the benefit of John Leighton, along with the ancestral jewels of the Sant'Annas, but by the time she was washed, brushed and dressed, Marianne felt much more like her real self.

Furthermore, she felt almost well. The sickness which had made her suffer so horribly on board the Sea Witch had virtually disappeared and, but for the pangs of hunger which consumed her almost incessantly, she might almost have been able to forget that she was expecting a child and that time was not on her side. For, unless she got rid of it very soon, it would soon become impossible to do so without grave risk to her own life.

The room was afire with the glow of the setting sun. Down below, the harbour had come to life again. Boats were putting out for the night's fishing, and others returning, their decks armoured in shining scales. But they were all only fishing boats. There was no 'great ship worthy to carry an ambassadress', and as she leaned on the stone mullion, Marianne was conscious of a growing impatience, like that which devoured Theodoros. Him she had not set eyes on since his tempestuous exit a little while before, and she guessed that he was down by the waterfront, mingling with the people of the island – the island on which Theseus had abandoned Ariadne – scanning the horizon for the masts and yards of a big merchant vessel.

Would it ever come, this ship which a white pigeon had sped away to summon for her, to carry her to that almost legendary city where waited the golden-haired Sultana, on whom, unconsciously, she had begun to fasten all her hopes?

A hundred times over, since her reawakening to life and awareness in Melina's house, Marianne had told herself what she would do when she got there. She would go at once to the embassy and see Comte de Latour- Maubourg, and through him obtain an audience with the Sultana. Failing that, she would, if necessary, batter down the doors to carry her complaint to someone with the decency and power to scour the Mediterranean for the pirate's brig. The people of the Barbary coast were, she knew, great seamen; their swift-sailing xebecs and their means of communication were almost as efficient as anything possessed by Napoleon's highly-valued Monsieur Chappe. If they acted quickly, Leighton might find himself arrested off any port on the Mediterranean coast of Africa, hemmed in by a pack of hunters who would make him sorry he was ever born, while his unwilling passengers might yet be saved – if only there was still time.

Marianne's eyes grew moist at the remembrance of Arcadius, Agathe and Gracchus. She could not think of them without a deep sense of loss. She had never realized, when they were with her every day, how fond of them she had become. As for Jason, whenever he came into her mind – which was all too often – she exerted every ounce of will-power she possessed to drive him out again. How could she think of him without giving way to grief and despair, with all the torments of regret tearing at her heart? She no longer blamed him for his cruelty to her, or for the hurt that he had done her, admitting loyally that she had brought it on herself. If she had only trusted him more, if she had not been so terribly afraid of losing his love, if she had dared to tell him the truth about her abduction from Florence, if only – if only she had just a little bit more courage! If 'ifs' and 'ans' were pots and pans…

She ran her slender fingers caressingly over the warm stone, as though it could bring her some comfort. It must have seen so much, this old house with its austere device proclaiming the acceptance of suffering. How many times must the setting sun, going down flaming into a sea splashed all over with its golden spume, have shone on this same window; on what faces, what smiles and what tears? The solitude about her was peopled suddenly with faceless shadows, with insubstantial forms wreathing in the amber dust raised by the evening breeze, as though to comfort her. The departed voices of all the women who had lived, loved and suffered between those venerable walls whose glory had now crumbled into ashes whispered to her that this was not the end, here in an ancient palace perched like a melancholy heron on the rim of an island, a palace which had wakened for a moment but would soon fall back into the nothingness of sleep.

For her there were days yet to come when Love might have its say.

'Love? Who was the first to call it Love? Better to have named it Agony…'

Marianne remembered hearing those lines somewhere once and they had made her smile. That was a long time ago, in the first flush of her seventeen years, when she had thought herself in love with Francis Cranmere. Whose were they? Her memory, usually so reliable, failed that night to give her the answer, but it was someone who knew…

'If your highness would be good enough to step downstairs, his lordship will do himself the honour of dining with you.'

Athanasius had not spoken loudly but Marianne started as though at the sound of the Last Trump. Brought abruptly back to earth, she smiled at him vaguely.

'I'll come… I'll come at once.'

She left the room, while Athanasius remained to close the window and shut out demoralizing fantasies behind thick wooden shutters. He caught up with her at the head of the stairs, when her hand was already poised on the white marble balusters polished by years of contact with innumerable human hands.

'If I may warn your highness, do not be surprised at anything you may see or hear during dinner,' he murmured. 'The Count is very old and it is long now since anyone came here. He is sensible of the honour done him tonight but – but he lives with his memories. He has done so for so long now that – that they are to some extent a part of himself. They are with him always. Your highness may have noticed his use of the plural form… I don't know if I make myself clar…'

'You need not worry, Athanasius,' Marianne said gently. 'Nowadays I am not easily surprised.'

'But your highness is so young—'

'Young? Yes… perhaps. But older than I look, I daresay. Don't worry. I shan't hurt your old master – or drive away his familiar spirits.'

Yet, for all that, the meal left her with a curious feeling of unreality. This was due not so much to the old- fashioned suit of green satin which her host had donned in her honour, and which he must have worn long before at the doge's court in Venice, as to the fact that he spoke hardly a word to her.

He greeted her gravely at the door of a large room where suits of rusty armour stood guard round the walls beneath the flaking frescoes, and led her down the whole length of an endless table set with old silver, to a seat placed on the right hand of the chair of state at its head, where he took his own place.

Another place was set at the foot of the table, before a chair identical to that of the master of the house. Only there a half-opened fan of painted silk and mother of pearl lay on the plate of old blue Rhodian ware, and