Жюльетта Бенцони - Marianne and the Lords of the East

"No. Oh, Arcadius, I was so wretched that I didn't think I wanted to see anyone, not even Donna Lavinia. I must have cried half the night."

She was shivering more and more, from a combination of cold and nerves. Jolival went quickly to a chair and fetched her favorite big red cashmere shawl and wrapped it around her. Then he hunted for slippers for her bare feet. Bending to put them on, he saw that the thing which he had taken for a small glittering snake, lying like the serpent's head beneath the foot of the Virgin, was in fact a magnificent emerald and diamond necklace. He took it up and let it hang for a moment between his fingers.

Guessing that it was the final princely gift from her husband, he would have forborne to question her about it, but Marianne moved suddenly and snatched it from him with a sudden blaze of anger and hurled it under a chest.

"Let it lie! It's my payment! I don't want it."

"Are you mad? I'm very sure the prince had no such idea."

"What else? To him I am only a foolish woman to be bought. From there it is only a step to thinking that a handful of jewels will easily compensate me for the loss of my child. Oh, I hate him, I hate him! I hate all men! All they know how to do is follow their own blind, senseless desires and fight and make idiotic wars which they all rush to join in as if they were glorious treats, without a thought for those they leave behind them! Why do they have to have sons only to bring them up the same way?"

"Marianne, calm yourself! You can't change the world and you will only make yourself ill…"

"What does it matter? What does it matter even if I die? Who would care—except you, perhaps? Jason is no better than the rest. He has bullied and misused me to make me forget my duty and my country, he has treated me worse than one of the slaves on his family's plantation and now he leaves me here, abandons me to go running off to a war that is not even declared yet and may never take place. Do you think he cares for my tears and my unhappiness, or even for the simple fact of how I am to accomplish the immense journey across half the world to join him? Who is to say that the ship that carries us won't fall into the hands of pirates like the Kouloughis? But all that is nothing to Jason Beaufort compared to his beloved battles! At this very minute he is sailing off to America without a care in his heart—"

Jolival seized on this as his opportunity to shake Marianne out of her despairing mood. He knew the ups and downs of her volatile temperament in which the French and Italian elements predominated over the English, too well not to be sure that Jason's present danger would sweep away all her anger against him in an instant. For even if the privateer had taken second place in her memory just then to the newer attractions of the baby, Marianne's true feelings could not have undergone a change in that short time. She loved him still and even her immediate anger was only another proof of it.

"I'd not be too sure of that," he said. "Indeed, to be quite honest he's not sailing toward America at all. Quite the opposite, in fact."

As he had expected, Marianne's rage collapsed at once, like the sails of a ship in dead calm. In its place there came the old, anxious look which was certainly by far her most familiar sensation when she thought of her difficult love. But Jolival embarked at once on an account of what had taken place by the Tower of the Maiden, giving her no time to ask questions.

Almost before he had finished, Marianne had rushed from the room, forgetting her weak state and the fact that she was not supposed to be out of her bed yet, and was hurrying in the direction of the tandour, without even pausing to try her strength.

She did not get very far. Out in the covered way she was forcibly reminded of her weakness. She swayed and would have fallen but for Jolival, who had hastened after and was there to catch her.

"Don't be silly. Let me take you back to your room."

Her eyes flashed dangerously.

"If you don't take me to the tandour this instant, Jolival, I will never set eyes on you again as long as I live."

He was obliged to do as she asked. Half-supporting and half-carrying her, the wretched Arcadius succeeded in getting Marianne as far as her favorite lookout place, where they were just in time to see the Sea Witch, light as a seagull, driving under full sail past the gilded lattices of the palace where they stood.

"Oh, God," Marianne groaned, "if they open fire now it will be murder! Look at the towers of Rumeli Hissar! They are crowded with janissaries!"

"If only—" Jolival began. But before he could finish, as if Jason had divined the thought in his mind, the impudent stars were descending swiftly from the masthead. A moment later another flag was creeping up to take their place. With unspeakable relief Marianne and Jolival recognized the lion and the flaming T which had protected the Sea Witch while she lay in harbor.

"Thank God!" Marianne breathed, sinking back onto the cushions. "He had the sense to pocket his pride and do the one thing that could save him from the Turkish guns."

The guns fired nonetheless, but it was only a friendly salute to a vessel of Turhan Bey's. The tiny puffs of white smoke bloomed above the ancient ramparts of Mehmet the Conqueror like waving handkerchiefs held in friendly hands.

The Sea Witch passed on and dwindled. Soon she had vanished into the mist and Admiral Maxwell's squadron hove into sight. But the pursuit seemed to have lost its enthusiasm. With a sigh of relief, Jolival crossed to a small table on which stood coffee things and a pair of decanters. He poured himself a full glass of raki and swallowed it at a gulp.

"Well," he said at last, "that seaman of Jason's was right when he said that last night was a night fit for the devil. The morning has been exciting enough, I must say. What shall we do now? I hope you are going to consent to go to bed and rest at last. I'll call for your women to come and help you back to your room."

But Marianne was already snuggling down among the cushions where she had spent so many hours. She drew the embroidered coverlet up over her legs.

"I can't possibly go back to that room where I can't see anything. I'm staying here, Jolival. As to what we are going to do now, I will tell you. We are going to wait. Sooner or later Jason will have to pass by here again to reach his own country, won't he?"

"He may pass by night—in fact, he almost certainly will. At night and with the ship in darkness."

"It's possible. But one thing I am certain of, and that is that he won't pass by without stopping. There is no need for us to look for a ship, my friend. The Sea Witch herself shall take us to America! Jason will do as he said he would. He'll lie up somewhere and then come back and fetch us."

There was a silence during which Jolival studied his young friend. She was becoming more herself again with every minute. Her eyes were shining, there was color in her cheeks and she seemed to have forgotten all about the despair which had overwhelmed her at daybreak. He dared not tell her his own thoughts upon the likelihood of Jason's stopping but he privately resolved to ask Osman to see that a constant watch was kept on the narrows.

"Upon my word," he said aloud, "anyone would think you were not displeased at Jason's misadventure, eh?"

"And they would be right, my friend. I'm not only not displeased, I'm actually grateful to Admiral Maxwell. In blocking Jason's way he may have been only the instrument of fate, but he has done me a tremendous service."

THE woman who descended on a morning in July onto the wooden jetty at Odessa bore only the very faintest resemblance to the one who four months earlier had settled down to an endless wait in a gilded cage suspended over the waters of the Bosporus. Enforced rest, coupled with the admirable nourishment which Osman, Turhan Bey's steward, had provided for a guest concerning whom he had received the strictest orders, had worked wonders. In addition, as she grew stronger there had been the beneficial effects of daily walks in the gardens of Humayunabad. The beauties of the Turkish spring as they were unfolded to her day by day on Jolival's arm had wrought their own soothing medicine on her overtried spirit, while motherhood had given a fresh bloom of perfection to her natural grace.

Marianne's figure had recovered its youthful slenderness but with none of the painful emaciation which had so alarmed Jolival and terrified Jason Beaufort. She had become a woman, sure of herself and armed to the teeth for the only war that fitted her, the war of love. Hence, the traveler's curiosity and interest in the motley crowd swarming about the harbor was fully reciprocated. The local inhabitants made no secret of their admiration for the lovely stranger, so exquisitely dressed in white sprigged muslin flounced about the hem, and with huge emerald eyes sparkling from beneath the soft shade of an Italian straw bonnet with a high poke front lined with the same stuff.

After her came Arcadius de Jolival, clad in spotless white against the heat but spruce and fashionable as ever. An elegant straw hat and long green sunshade tucked under his arm completed an outfit which was also not without its effect on the natives. They were followed by a number of porters carrying their baggage.