the one to rouse the fugitives and urge them to leave at once, at the risk of his master's being obliged to face some awkward questions from the odabassy. Even so, Marianne simply could not believe in such turpitude on the part of a man who, still, after twenty years, could have tears in his eyes as he watched his master conversing with a ghost.
Possibly the people of Hydra were not as trustworthy as they were thought to be – or, perhaps, after all, it was all nothing but a tragic mistake.
Seeing the great ship come in, Athanasius might quite genuinely have thought her the one they were expecting. The Count himself had told Marianne that sea-going ships rarely put in at Naxos. He could have got in touch with the pirates without having the faintest idea who they were, while they, sensing a profit to be made, would have played their parts well and taken care not to undeceive him. But that was only one possibility among the many churning in the head of their involuntary passenger, and she forced herself not to think of any of them. This was not the moment to ponder whys and wherefores. Now, faced with this new, terrible and wholly unexpected peril, Marianne made herself concentrate her whole mind on the one single idea of escape.
A ray of light fell across the deck and swung round to illuminate the foot of the ladder. The men were on their way back, having stowed their prisoner in a safe place. They were all talking at once, perhaps estimating the profit to be made from Theodoros who, Marianne was now beginning to realize, was a person of considerably more importance than she had imagined, although she did not even know his proper name.
In their midst, as the light from the lantern fell on him, she recognized their chief.
Deciding to strike the first blow, she got up and planted herself at the foot of the ladder, barring the way, and prayed inwardly that the difference of language would not prove an insurmountable obstacle.
It seemed to her that, whether or not it would do any good, this was the moment to make use of the French Emperor's name, which appeared to mean something in these barbarous latitudes. It might be only a slender chance, but it was worth trying. It was therefore in French that she addressed the renegade.
'Don't you think, monsieur, that you owe me some explanation?'
Her clear voice rang out like a clarion. The men fell silent at once, their eyes on the slim figure in the light- coloured dress who stood facing them with a pride that could not fail to strike them, even if they did not understand the meaning of what she said. As for Nicolaos Kouloughis himself, his eyes narrowed and he emitted a low whistle that might have been as much admiration as malevolence.
Then, to Marianne's surprise, he answered her, with a villainous accent, it was true, but nevertheless in the language of Voltaire.
'Ha! The French lady? I didn't believe it was true.'
'What was not true?'
'This business of a French lady. When we took the carrier pigeon, I thought it was a cover for something else, more interesting. Otherwise why go to so much trouble for a thing as trifling as a woman, even a French one? And we were right because we've caught the biggest rebel of them all, the one they never catch, the one the Grand Signior would give his treasure for – Theodoras Lagos himself! It's the best prize of my life. A king's ransom on his head!'
'I may be only a woman,' retorted Marianne, to whom the name meant nothing at all, 'but my head is not altogether worthless. I am the Princess Sant'Anna, a personal friend of the Emperor Napoleon, and his ambassadress to my cousin Nakshidil, Sultan Haseki of the Ottoman Empire.'
This broadside of impressive titles seemed to make some effect on the pirate, but only for a moment. Just as Marianne was beginning to think that her gamble had paid, he uttered a strident shout of laughter, which was instantly echoed in a sycophantic way by the men around him. The only result of this was to get them sent back to their work with a few sharp commands. When they were gone, Kouloughis laughed again.
'I was not aware that I had said anything funny,' Marianne said frostily. 'I do not imagine that the Emperor, my master, would appreciate your sense of humour. Nor am I accustomed to be laughed at.'
'Oh, but I'm not mocking, believe me. I admire you! You have a part to play and you're playing it to perfection. You almost took me in.'
'You mean that you do not believe I am who I say I am?'
'No, I don't! If you were an envoy of the great Napoleon, and a friend of his into the bargain, you'd not be roaming the seas dressed as a Greek woman, in the company of a notorious rebel and looking for a ship to carry you to Constantinople for your felonious purposes. You'd be on a fine frigate flying French colours and—'
'I was wrecked,' Marianne said indifferently. 'It happens not infrequently in these waters, as I understand.'
'It happens, as you say, frequently. Especially when the meltemi, our dangerous summer wind, blows, but either there are no survivors – or else rather more than two. Your story won't stand up.'
'Well, believe it or not, that's how it was.'
'I don't believe it.'
Without pausing for breath he went on to address her in Greek, a brief and violent speech of which she naturally understood not one word. She heard him out without a blink and even permitted herself the luxury of a contemptuous smile.
'You are wasting your breath,' she told him. 'I have no idea what you are saying.'
Silence. Nicolaos Kouloughis contemplated the woman before him with a scowl that brought his long nose and jutting chin dangerously close to one another. It was evident that she had disconcerted him. What woman could listen without flinching, even with a smile, to that stream of calculated insult, accompanied as it was by a detailed description of the subtle tortures in store for her to make her speak? It really did look as if this girl had not understood anything of what he had said. However, Kouloughis was not a man to hesitate for long, and he shrugged the doubt away, irritably, like a man getting rid of a tiresome burden.
'Well, you may be a foreigner, after all – that or you have a nerve of iron! Either way it makes no differences. Your friend Theodoros will be handed over to the pasha of Candia, who'll pay well for him. As for you, you look as though you'd be worth keeping until Tunis. The bey might prove generous if you take his fancy. Come, I'll take you where you'll be more comfortable. Damaged goods lose their value.'
He had grasped her by the arm and was dragging her towards the ladder, ignoring her resistance. Not even for the sake of an improvement in her own material surroundings, was she willing to be taken too far away from her companion who, she now found, had acquired a certain value in her eyes. Whatever else he might be, he was a brave man and the victim of the same involuntary betrayal on the part of the little winged messenger. She felt at one with him. But the renegade's sinewy fingers were clamped tightly round her slender arm, giving her as much pain as if they had been made of iron.
As she had feared, it was to the sterncastle that he was taking her. Guessing that he was making for his own quarters, she was preparing to put up an energetic fight, for who could tell whether the pirate would not decide to test his captive personally before putting her on the market? It must happen often enough.
The door he opened and closed carefully behind her was, in fact, that of his own cabin, but the cabin itself was the very opposite of what might have been expected of a Mediterranean pirate. Imagination might have predicted a combination of luxury and untidiness, mixed with a kind of oriental squalor.
In fact, with its dark mahogany and brass nautical instruments, the room had the brand of austere and sober elegance that would not have disgraced a British admiral. It was, furthermore, meticulously clean. It was not empty.
As Kouloughis thrust her inside, Marianne beheld a youth reclining on the bunk, amid the purple cushions which provided the single note of colour in the room. His appearance was sufficiently arresting to have attracted the most casual eye. In his way, he was undoubtedly a work of art, but of a somewhat perverse kind.
He was dressed, with calculation, in full trousers of pale blue silk with a kind of matching dolman decorated with immense silken frogs. Thick black curls flowed from under a cap with a long golden tassel, and he stared up languorously out of doe eyes rimmed with kohl and further enlarged by dashing pencil strokes. The rose-bud lips that pouted in a face of milky whiteness also quite clearly owed the better part of their bloom to diligent applications of rouge.
This androgynous creature, undeniably beautiful but with a beauty that was wholly feminine, was occupied in cleaning a statuette of a faun, his long, supple fingers polishing the thing, which was of a quite remarkable obscenity, as lovingly as a mother. Here, presumably, was the fastidious housewife responsible for this unexpectedly neat domain.
