Marianne and the Lords of the East

Chapter 1 Audience by Night

DRIVEN by the strong arms of its four and twenty rowers, the gilded caïque was literally flying over the smooth waters of the Golden Horn. Other vessels scattered like frightened chickens before it for fear of impeding the royal barge.

Seated beneath the red silk canopy in the stern, the Princess Sant'Anna watched the dark walls of the seraglio draw nearer through the slow dusk that was beginning to fall over Constantinople. In another moment they, too, would be enveloped in the shadows which had already fallen on the narrow streets and close-packed houses of Stamboul.

The number of other boats around them dwindled as they advanced because the crossing of the Golden Horn was forbidden after the firing of the sunset gun. But this was a law which naturally did not apply to vessels from the palace.

Marianne was perspiring in the court dress of leaf-green satin which she had donned more or less at random with a view to the audience before her. These first days of September retained all the heat and humidity of high summer. For a week past, the city had been steeped in an atmosphere like a Turkish bath which had wreathed the monuments in a yellow fog and made the wearing of even the lightest clothing a penance, much less untold yards of heavy Lyons silk with long kid gloves reaching well above the elbow and almost touching the short, puffed sleeves of the dress.

But in only a short while now, perhaps no more than a few minutes, she was going to find herself face to face at last with the royal lady she had come so far, and at such pains, to seek. At Napoleon's command she had crossed the whole of Europe for this meeting. What would be the outcome of her mission? The burden of it seemed to press more heavily on her shoulders with every stroke of the oars: to ensure the continuance of the war which had been dragging on for years between Russia and the Sublime Porte for the possession of the Rumanian principalities, and so to keep a large section of the Russian army engaged on the Balkan front while the emperor crossed the borders of the Tsarist Empire and marched on Moscow. Now that she was here, it seemed a frighteningly impossible task, made worse by the fact—which had become all too clear since her arrival in Constantinople—that things were going very badly indeed for the Turkish army on the Danube. It seemed to Marianne that the audience ahead, however comfortingly disguised as a mere cousinly courtesy, was going to be a singularly tricky one.

How would the sultana react to the discovery that this distant cousin, traveling for pleasure in the Levant and so eager to make her acquaintance, was actually the bearer of credentials from the emperor and had come to talk politics? Or had she known it all along? Too many people knew about this journey, for all its intended secrecy. First and foremost the English had found out, God alone knew how, all about Napoleon's unofficial ambassadress. But no one, thank heaven, could possibly know the real object of her mission!

For a fortnight now Marianne had waited for an audience which no one seemed in any great hurry to grant her. It was a fortnight since, escaping from the English frigate on board which she had been held pending return to the land of her childhood as a hostage of war, she had arrived at the French embassy quite unconscious, draped like a sack of flour over the shoulder of a notorious Greek rebel. That rebel, who had snatched her out of English hands and literally saved her from despair, was now her firm friend.

Marianne had spent those two weeks incarcerated in the embassy buildings, prowling up and down like a caged beast in spite of all her friend Jolival's pleas for her to be patient. The ambassador, the Comte de Latour-Maubourg, had been reluctant to let her stir beyond that small patch of French territory, for his countrymen had become unpopular with the Ottoman since the unfortunate matter of Napoleon's divorce.

The Sultan Mahmoud and his mother, that Creole cousin of the Empress Josephine who had been captured by Barbary pirates and carried by her beauty to the supreme height of Haseki Sultan, were now inclined to favor England, in which they were encouraged by the British envoy, the charming Mr. Stratford Canning, who would stick at nothing to further his country's interests.

"Until you have been presented to the sultan's mother," Latour-Maubourg had insisted, "you had better avoid any unnecessary risks. Canning will do anything to forestall an audience. He has already shown that he knows how much he has to fear you. Are you not Her Highness's kinswoman?"

"A very distant one!"

"A kinswoman, nonetheless, and as such we hope to see you received. Take my advice and stay indoors until your audience is granted. This house is watched, I know, but Canning will not dare to try anything while you remain inside it. Whereas he is quite capable of having you abducted if you step outside."

It was good advice, energetically supported by Jolival, who was too glad to have his adopted daughter restored to him to run the risk of losing her again almost at once, and Marianne yielded. Hour after hour she paced her bedchamber off the embassy garden, waiting for the longed for summons. The house itself was one of the oldest in Pera, having been built in the sixteenth century as a Franciscan convent, and it possessed a charming cloister which had been made into a garden. Latour-Maubourg, a diplomat of the old school with a rigorous Breton upbringing behind him, had not judged it proper to bring wife and children to that infidel land, yet even without a woman's touch the ambassador had given to his garden and to the old house itself an elegance that was wholly French. Marianne recognized it, and it lightened the burden of her enforced captivity.

As well as Arcadius de Jolival, she found there her coachman, Gracchus-Hannibal Pioche, the onetime errand boy from the rue Montorgueil. At the sight of his mistress safe and sound when he had thought her at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, the poor fellow had burst into tears and, child of the atheistical revolution though he was, had gone down on his knees and thanked heaven as fervently as any Chouan. His subsequent celebrations, undertaken in the company of the ambassador's cook and various bottles of raki, had very nearly been the death of him.

One person Marianne had not found. Her maid, Agathe Pinsart, was gone—but not very far away, nor was there anything at all tragic about her going. Against all expectation, the poor girl had not only survived the barbarous and inhuman treatment she had suffered at the hands of Leighton and his mutineers aboard the Sea Witch but had made a conquest of the Turkish captain who had captured the brig and released the prisoners with her caustic charms. And since Agathe, on her side, had been greatly impressed by the young reis, with his dashing presence, his silken garments and his splendid mustaches, their voyage to Constantinople had assumed all the appearance of an amorous idyll, culminating in a proposal of marriage from Achmet to his new sweetheart. Agathe, convinced that she had seen the last of Marianne and strongly tempted by the luxurious life of a Turkish lady, had offered only a token resistance designed merely to enhance the value of her consent, and not many days before her mistress's arrival she had embraced both Achmet and Islam with an equal enthusiasm. She was now officially installed in her husband's handsome house at Eyub, not far from the great mosque recently rebuilt by Mahmoud II to shelter the footprint of the Prophet.

Marianne would have liked to visit her former abigail, partly to see her in her new status and partly to reassure the girl about her own fate, but this too was considered unwise. So she could only wait, interminably, even though the waiting became more of a torture with every day that passed. Yet the ordeal had an end at last.

The imperial summons had reached the embassy just as the ambassador and his guests were finishing dinner. They were about to go into the drawing room when the royal envoys were announced. They consisted of the Aga of the Janissaries and one of the Black Eunuchs belonging to the harem. Both were magnificently dressed. Despite the heat, the officer was clad in a sable-lined dolman, laced boots and a broad belt made of linked silver plates with a whip thrust into it. His tall felt hat was swathed in a kind of bubble of silver gauze, forming an extraordinary kind of turban. The Black Eunuch's dress consisted of a long white robe lined with fox fur, and on his head was a snowy turban set with a golden clasp.

They both bowed ceremoniously and presented a letter bearing the tughra, the imperial seal. The audience which the Frankish princess had craved was granted and would take place within the hour. She was allowed only a few minutes to change her dress and prepare to go with the sultana's messengers.

In fact, while Marianne hastened to her room, Latour-Maubourg knew a moment's hesitation, fearing the consequences of allowing the emperor's personal friend to go, unattended and at night, into the seraglio. He feared that the flowery terms of the invitation might conceal a trap. On the other hand, since Marianne's object was to enter the harem, it was scarcely possible for the French ambassador to request the favor of accompanying her, nor did the presence of the Aga of the Janissaries leave much room for argument. In any case the command, on a second reading, was unequivocal: the Princess Sant'Anna was to go to the seraglio alone. A closed litter was already waiting at the door. With a caïque and another litter, it would carry the princess to the place of the Sultan Valideh's choice and bring her back again by the same route when the audience was concluded.

And so, when Marianne came down again some minutes later dressed for her audience, the ambassador said merely that he trusted they would not keep her all night, since he and Jolival proposed to wait up for her, whiling the time away with a game of chess.

"And may God go with you!" he added in a lower tone, like a good Breton.

As the caïque rounded the seraglio point, Marianne was thinking to herself that divine inspiration was precisely what she needed most. During the days of waiting she had gone over in her mind a hundred times the things she meant to say and had tried to picture the questions she would be asked and the answers she must make. But now that the time had come her brain felt curiously empty and she could not remember any of the speeches she had prepared so carefully.

In the end, she gave up and concentrated instead on trying to calm her nerves by filling her lungs with the sea air, cooled by the evening freshness, and her eyes with the magical vision of the fabulous city before her. With the coming of night, the voices of the muezzins had fallen silent in the minarets of the great mosques, but the evening shadows, through which there still gleamed here and there the gold of a cupola or the rich molding of a palace, were pierced little by little by a multitude of tiny lights from the oiled paper lanterns which every citizen was bound to carry with him when he went out. The effect of all these little gilded lamps was charming and gave to the Ottoman capital the fairylike appearance of a vast colony of glowworms.

They were on the Bosporus now, and the vast bulk of the seraglio's formidable walls loomed over the glittering waters. The black points of cypress trees showed where they enclosed a world of gardens, kiosks, palaces, stables, prisons, barracks, workshops and kitchens, providing occupation for some twenty thousand people: In a moment they would be landing at the old Byzantine jetty of worn marble that led by a flight of shallow steps up to the two medieval gates in the walls between the palace gardens and the shore. This was not the main entrance, for the Princess Sant'Anna, despite the ties of kinship which lay between her and the Queen Mother, was deemed to be on a private visit and so would not enter by the Sublime Porte in the usual way of ambassadors and other important persons. This was a private visit and the lateness of the hour, like the mode of entry, stressed its unofficial nature.

But while the Black Eunuch involved himself in a host of explanations designed to convey this to the Frankish princess without undue offense to her pride, Marianne was thinking that really it did not matter to her in the least and that in fact she infinitely preferred it so. She had never wanted to be burdened with an official diplomatic mission, the emperor himself had stressed the private character of the undertaking and she had no conceivable wish to tread on Latour-Maubourg's toes, being only too well aware of the difficulties he was up against.

The oars were shipped and the caïque drifted up to the jetty. Marianne was ushered from her awning into a kind of flat-bottomed egg-shaped container, hung with brocaded curtains and smelling strongly of sandalwood.

Borne on the shoulders of half a dozen black slaves, the litter passed through the guard of janissaries, armed to the teeth, outside the gates and entered the scented, humid atmosphere of the gardens. Here were roses and jasmine in abundance. The salty sea smell was lost in that of thousands of flowers, and the slap of the waters was drowned in the music of the fountains and streams that cascaded over steps of porphyry and pink marble.

Marianne stared about her, abandoning herself to the rhythm of the bearers. Very soon a fragile building appeared at the far end of an alley. It was surmounted by a translucent dome that shone like a huge, multicolored lantern in the darkness. This was a kiosk, one of the delicate, precious little pavilions with which the sultans loved to dot their gardens, each bringing to them something of his own life and tastes. This one, standing at the highest point of the gardens, was silhouetted against the dark background of the Asian shore and seemed to tremble on the brink of the Bosporus as if it feared to lean too far and fall to meet its reflection in the water. Around it was a little secret garden planted with tall cypresses and a carpet of pale blue hyacinths which the Bostanji Bashi, the head gardener whose dominion extended over all the gardens of the empire, kept in flower all the year round because they were the Sultan-Mother's favorite flowers.

The delightful retreat, set apart from the somewhat forbidding mass of the seraglio as a whole, had a private, festive air with the rose-colored lanterns hung about it. Fragrant shrubs that looked as if they were covered with snow crowded up against its slender columns, and the exotic, turbanned shadows of the eunuchs of the guard passed to and fro against the blue-green and violet-tinted glass of the windows.

As the slaves set down the litter a gigantic figure surged forward from between the pillars and bowed low to the visitor. Marianne beheld a round, smiling face, as black and shiny as if it had been well polished, under a tall, snow-white headdress in which gleamed a brooch of blood-red rubies. A magnificent robe, sable lined and covered with silver embroideries, fell majestically to his feet, covering a royal stomach which did honor to the palace kitchens.

Speaking in a soft voice, in impeccable French, this imposing person introduced himself as the Khislar Aga, chief of the Black Eunuchs, at the visitor's service. Then he informed her with another bow that he had the honor to present the "noble lady come from Frankish lands to Her Highness and Sultan Valideh, most revered mother of the Omnipotent Padishah."

Marianne thanked him briefly and with a little kick sent the long train of the green satin dress shimmering behind her like a changeable river of crystal and pearls. Instinctively she lifted her head, suddenly conscious that she was at that moment the representative of the greatest empire in the world. Then, gripping the slender sticks of her matching fan between nervous fingers to give herself confidence, she stepped forward onto the great blue silken carpet which flowed down into the gardens.

In another moment she had paused, holding her breath to listen to the strains of a guitar, light and melancholy as they came to her, the strains of a guitar playing:

Nous n'irons plus aux bois,

Les lauriers sont coupés;

La belle que voilà

Ira les ramasser…

Marianne felt the tears prick her eyelids, and there was something sticking in her throat, something that might have been pity. Here, in this eastern palace, the simple song sung by children at play in France had the plaintive sound of a lament. And she wondered suddenly what kind of woman this was who lived here guarded by an ageless ritual. What was she going to find within those translucent walls? A fat woman, stuffed with sweets and self-pity? A little dried-up old woman cut off from the world? The sultana was roughly of an age with her cousin Josephine and so must be nearing fifty, which seemed a great age to the nineteen-year-old Marianne. Or a creature of exaggeratedly girlish ways, a superannuated school girl? No one had been able to give her even the faintest picture of the Creole girl who had risen to such a fabulous position, because not one of the people who had described her had ever set eyes on her. A woman might have told her more, but no European woman, to her knowledge, had passed the threshold of the seraglio since the death of Fanny Sebastiani. And all at once Marianne was afraid of what she was going to find, dearly though she had longed for this moment.

The delicate notes of the song floated on the air. The Khislar Aga had paused, realizing that he was not being followed, and was waiting.

"Our mistress likes to listen to the songs of her own land," he said pleasantly, "but she does not like to be kept waiting."

The spell was broken. Thus recalled, Marianne smiled in apology.

"Forgive me. It was so unexpected and so charming."

"The songs of their native land are always charming to those who journey far from it. Do not apologize."

They went forward again and the sounds of the guitar grew stronger, together with the scent of flowers which surrounded Marianne as soon as she entered the carved cedarwood doorway set with a multitude of tiny mirrors. Then, without warning, the vast form of the Khislar Aga which had blocked her view had stepped aside and she found herself on the threshold of a blue world…

Marianne felt as if she were stepping inside the heart of a great turquoise. Everything was blue, from the huge carpets on the floor to the flowered tiles on the walls, and including the fountain that played in the center of the room, the countless gold and silver embroidered cushions strewn about it and the dresses of the women sitting looking at her.

Blue also, of a luminous intensity, were the eyes of the woman squatting in the Oriental fashion with a guitar in her lap among the cushions of a broad golden throne raised up on two steps, and which, owing to the gilded rail that enclosed it, had about it something at once of the divan, the throne and the veranda. And Marianne thought that she had never seen a more beautiful woman.

The years seemed scarcely to have touched the woman who had once been the Creole girl, Aimée Dubucq de Rivery, from Martinique, educated in the Convent of the Ladies of the Visitation at Nantes and who, as she was on her way home to her native isle, had been seized in the Bay of Biscay by the pirates of Baba Mohammed ben Osman, the aged master of Algiers. Her grace and charm were as vivid as ever.

Dressed in a long azure gown cut low over her breast, she was so covered by pearls that she seemed like a very creature of the sea. The sequestered life of the harem had preserved the pearly transparency of her skin, and her long silken hair, its silvery locks threaded with pearls, framed a youthful face that still dimpled when she smiled. A tiny pillbox hat tipped saucily to one side was perched on her head, and set in this minuscule headgear was a single rose diamond of immense size cut to the shape of a heart and glittering with all the colors of the rainbow.

With Marianne's entrance a silence fell. The birdlike chatter of the women died away and the strains of the guitar were silenced by the swift pressure of their mistress's hand on the strings. Conscious that she was the focus of at least a dozen pairs of eyes and more impressed than she cared to admit, Marianne stepped across the threshold and sank at once into a deep curtsy. Rising, she advanced the statutory three paces and curtsied again; three more paces and she dropped into the third curtsy, which brought her to the foot of the throne while the measured voice of the Khislar Aga was still declaiming her various names and titles in Turkish. This took some time, but before he could finish Nakshidil was laughing.

"Very impressive," she said, "and I knew, of course, that you were a very great lady, my dear, but to me, if you will, you are my cousin and as such I am pleased to receive you. Come and sit here by me."

She put down the guitar and moved to one side, holding out a small hand sparkling with diamonds to draw her visitor onto the cushions at her side.

"Your Highness," Marianne said, taken aback by this simple, unceremonious welcome, "you are too kind. I hardly like—"

The delicate laugh trilled out again.

"You hardly like to obey? Come here, I say, so that I may see you better. My eyes, alas, are not what they were, and since I refuse to wear those horrid spectacles you will have to come very close to me so that I can see your face clearly. There, that's better!" she added, as Marianne nerved herself to sit down timidly just inside the gilded balustrade. "I want to have a good look at you. I can make out your figure well enough. When you came in in that blue dress, I thought a wave of my beloved sea had remembered me and come to visit me. Now I can see it again in your eyes. I was told that you were beautiful, my dear, but indeed the word does not do you justice."

The warmth and gaiety of her smile were quickly putting Marianne at her ease. She smiled back, still with a touch of nervousness, "It is Your Majesty who is—oh, infinitely beautiful! And I beg you will forgive me if I seem bewildered. It is not often one meets a legendary ruler. And then to find how much the reality surpasses what one has imagined!"

"Well, well! The Orient has nothing to teach you in the matter of courtesy, Princess! But we have much to say to one another. Let us begin by securing ourselves a little privacy."

A word or two was enough to scatter the women who sat about the throne devouring the visitor with their eyes. Without a word they rose and, bowing silently, they hurried out in a flurry of blue veils, but their disappointment showed clearly in their faces.

The Khislar Aga brought up the rear, as grave as ever, shepherding them with his silver staff. At the same time, black slaves entered by another door, dressed in silvery robes and bearing gold trays set with diamonds on which was the traditional coffee and the no less traditional conserve of roses which they offered to the two women.

In spite of herself, Marianne could not help staring as she took the cup from the kneeling woman before her. Accustomed to the comfort of wealthy English homes, to the luxury of the French imperial court and the refinements practiced by such men as Talleyrand, even she was not prepared for what confronted her now. Not merely the trays, but every single item of this fabulous service was made of solid gold, encrusted with such masses of diamonds that the metal itself was almost invisible. The little spoon with which she stirred her coffee was alone worth a fortune.

The two women drank in silence while, over the rims of their glittering cups, the green eyes and the blue met and studied one another discreetly. For behind the spontaneous friendliness of her welcome, Marianne was conscious of an alertness in her hostess. The coffee-drinking ritual allowed them both a precious moment's respite before continuing an interview whose outcome neither could predict.

Marianne politely swallowed a spoonful of rose jam. She was not particularly fond of this Turkish national delicacy, disliking its rather scented sweetness. It made her feel slightly sick and gave her the feeling that she was eating some of her friend Fortunée Hamelin's cosmetics, for the Creole girl had attar of roses put into everything that went on her skin. But she drank the coffee with enjoyment. It was scalding hot and fragrant, and not too sweet. It was certainly the best that she had ever tasted.

Nakshidil was regarding her with amused curiosity.

"You seem to like coffee?" she said.

"There's nothing I like better—especially when it is as good as this. It's both a luxury and the friendliest of comforts."

"Perhaps you would not say as much about the rose jam?" the sultana said mischievously. "I don't think you care for it."

Marianne reddened like a child caught out.

"Forgive me, Your Highness, but—you are right. I do not like it very much."

"And I hate it!" Nakshidil cried, laughing. "I've never been able to get used to it. Give me a nice strawberry jam now, or rhubarb, as they used to make it in my convent at Nantes. But try some of this halva with almonds and sesame seeds, or the baklava with nuts, which is something of a national dish with us," she added, pointing out these items on the dish of sweetmeats. The first looked like a rather solid kind of blancmange of a fine cherry red color, while the second was a cake layered with nuts.

Marianne was not in the least hungry but she forced herself to taste the things her royal hostess offered. More cups of coffee were brought.

Setting down the precious cup, she saw that the other woman was looking at her intently and realized that the difficult moment had arrived. She knew that she must prove herself worthy of the high trust reposed in her and she was eager now to enter the lists. But protocol demanded that she wait to be questioned. The question was not long in coming.

The sultana's slender fingers strayed to the mouthpiece of a blue enameled nargileh and she took a few reflective puffs before remarking in a light, conversational tone: "It would seem that your journey here was a great deal more eventful and considerably less pleasant than you might have wished. Everyone has been talking about the great lady from France on whose account the English sent a squadron out off Corfu and who vanished in the Greek islands."

The voice was amused but Marianne's quick ear had detected a faint but disturbing shade of disdain. God alone knew what tales the English had put about to damage her reputation. However, she decided to go carefully.

"You Highness seems to be remarkably well informed in such small matters."

"News travels fast in the Mediterranean. Nor do these matters seem to me so small. English ships are not generally sent out of their way for persons of no importance—such as a lady traveling for pleasure. But the thing becomes much less astonishing if the lady in question should be also… an envoy of the Emperor Napoleon?"

Instantly, with the mere mention of that name, the cozy intimacy of the blue salon was blown away like a whiff of perfume on the wind. It was as though the Corsican himself had swept into the room in his usual tempestuous fashion, with booted feet and flashing eyes and all the commanding strength of his powerful personality. Marianne felt that he was there, watching her and waiting…

Slowly she drew from the pocket fashioned in the long skirts of her dress the letter given her by Sebastiani and presented it, bowing gracefully. Nakshidil eyed her questioningly.

"Is this a letter from the emperor?"

"No, Your Highness. It is from an old friend, General Horace Sebastiani, who begs to be remembered to you. The English were quite wrong to put themselves out over my journey, for I have no official mission."

"Yet if you carry no word from Napoleon, you know his mind, do you not?"

Marianne merely bowed without answering, and then, while the sultana was swiftly perusing the letter, she calmly finished her cup of coffee, cold by this time, and forced herself to swallow the last morsel of baklava in order not to offend her hostess, who had recommended it. It did not go down easily.

"I see that you are much valued in high places, my dear. Sebastiani tells me you are a personal friend of the emperor's and that you are also held in real affection by the former empress, that unhappy Josephine who will always be Rose to me. Very well, tell me what it is that the French emperor wants of us."

There was a brief silence while Marianne chose her words carefully. She was beginning to feel slightly sick and it was necessary to concentrate.

She began: "I must beg Your Highness to listen carefully to what I am about to say because it is very important and involves the revelation of the emperor's most secret and cherished plans."

"Let us hear them."

Slowly and quietly, making herself as clear as she could, Marianne told her companion of the imminent invasion of Russia by the Grande Armée and of Napoleon's desire to defeat Alexander, whom he accused of the direst duplicity, on his own ground. She pointed out how helpful it would be to the invader if the military operations taking place on the Danube could be prolonged until at least the following summer, the date fixed for the French invasion of Russia, so as to keep General Kamenski and his troops and the Cossack regiments engaged well away from the Vistula and from the vicinity of Moscow. She hinted further that Napoleon could be relied upon to show his gratitude for this undeclared assistance as soon as the Russians had been beaten by granting to the Sublime Porte all the territory being lost, and more besides.

"If Your Highness's forces could hold out until next July or August," she concluded, "it would be enough."

"But that is almost a year!" the sultana exclaimed. "It is a great deal for an exhausted army whose strength is melting like butter in the sun. And I don't think—" She broke off as she caught sight of the change in her visitor's face, which had turned as green as her dress.

"Are you unwell, Princess?" she asked. "You look very pale all of a sudden—"

Marianne hardly dared to move. The sweetmeats had been very good in themselves, no doubt, but, added to the hearty dinner she had already eaten at the embassy, their sugary sweetness in her overloaded stomach was making her feel very ill indeed and giving her a somewhat brutal reminder that she was, after all, nearly four months pregnant. At that moment the wretched unofficial ambassadress would gladly have sunk through the cushioned throne.

When she made no answer, the sultana, startled by her sudden pallor, asked again: "Is there something wrong? Please do not feel obliged to conceal it if you feel unwell—"

Marianne cast her a helpless glance and tried to smile.

"Your Highness is right—I don't feel very—oooh—!" In one bound, Marianne was off the throne and through the salon like a flash of green lightning. She brushed past the eunuchs at the door and, making for the convenient shadow of the nearest cypress, which was luckily quite close at hand, set about restoring the unwanted contents of her stomach to the earth which had yielded them. The time this took was brief enough but it seemed to her endless, and while it was going on she was far too preoccupied to consider the shock that her precipitate departure must have caused. When at last she straightened, holding tight to the friendly tree for support, she was still in a cold sweat, but the nausea was passing. She managed to gulp down a deep breath of the scented night air, cooled by the fountains, and felt better. Her strength was beginning to come back.

Not until then did it dawn on her what she had done. She had turned her back on an empress and dashed from the room like a thief in the middle of a diplomatic talk. The scandal it would cause! Enough to make poor Latour-Maubourg faint with horror! She stood for a moment under the cypress tree, unable to move, considering the probable consequences of her sickness, convinced that when she went back to the kiosk she would find a whole troop of eunuchs with drawn swords waiting to arrest her.

She was still hesitating there when a soft voice reached her.

"Princess, where are you? I hope you are not still feeling ill?"

Marianne breathed again.

"No, Your Highness. I am here."

Stepping out of the shadow of the trees, she found Nakshidil standing in the doorway of the little kiosk. She must have sent everyone else away, for she was quite alone, and Marianne, feeling very much in the wrong and also something of a fool, was grateful to her.

After this unlikely start to a delicate negotiation she felt that some apology was called for, and the Princess Sant'Anna was just sinking into her best curtsy when she was promptly interrupted.

"No, please! Are you sure you are quite better? Take my arm and let us go inside—unless you'd rather stroll a little in the gardens? It is cooler now and we might go as far as the terrace there, overlooking the Bosporus. It is a favorite place of mine."

"With pleasure, but I do not like to ask Your Highness to put yourself out for me."

"Who, me? My dear girl, I like nothing better than to take exercise, whether walking or riding on horseback. Unfortunately it can be a little awkward here. In our palaces in Asia it is easier. Are you coming?"

Arm in arm, they made their way slowly toward the selected spot. Marianne was surprised to find that the sultana was as tall as she was and her slim figure was quite faultless. For that to be so at her age it was clear that the fair-skinned Creole could not have resigned herself to the lazy, cloistered existence of most women in the harem. She could only have kept that lithe, girlish figure by an addiction to the athletic sports so dear to the English. Nakshidil's interest, on the other hand, was all for her companion and while they walked she was asking with a deceptive casualness: "Do you suffer often from these turns ? Yet you look to be in high bloom ?"

"No, Your Highness. Not very often. I believe the blame for this must go to the cook at the embassy. There is a certain heaviness about his dishes—"

"And what I offered you was not of the lightest, either! Oddly enough, though, your sickness put me strongly in mind of what I suffered myself when I was expecting my son. I used to drink pots and pots of coffee and I couldn't stand halva or baklava—much less gulrecheli, the rose jam. The name and the color are very poetic, to be sure, but I could never abide it."

Marianne felt her cheeks grow hot and blessed the darkness which hid her untimely blushes. Even so, she could not control the slight stiffening of her arm which told her companion all she needed to know. Nakshidil understood at once that she had touched on the truth and also that it was a point on which her guest was peculiarly sensitive.

When the two of them reached the little terrace built of white marble, she indicated a curving bench plentifully furnished with cushions and evidently a much favored spot.

"Shall we sit here for a little?" she said. "We can talk much more comfortably than in my apartments because there is no one to overhear us. Inside the palace, there are listening ears behind every door and every curtain. Here, we need fear nothing of the kind. See—where we are is like a kind of balcony overhanging the battlements and the lower gardens." She glanced at Marianne's bare shoulders. "But you are quite sure you won't be cold?"

"No, indeed, Your Highness. I feel perfectly well now."

Nakshidil nodded and turned to look across the arm of the sea to where the clouds were piling up over the hills of Scutari.

"Summer is nearly over," she observed with a touch of sadness. "The weather is changing and we shall probably have rain tomorrow. It will be good for the crops because the land is parched but after that will be the winter. It can be bitterly cold here and I dread it… But we will forget all that now. Tell me about yourself."

"Me? But there is nothing interesting about me, Your Highness, except insofar as I am the mouthpiece of Napoleon."

The sultana put up her hand with a gesture of impatience.

"Let's leave your emperor for the present. His turn will come, although I cannot see what is to be said about him. Whatever you may think, I find you much more interesting than the great Napoleon. And so I want to know all about you. Tell me of your life."

"My—my life?"

"Yes, the whole of your life! As though I were your mother."

"But, Your Highness, it is a long story—"

"Never mind. We have the night before us. But I want to know—everything! There are so many stories about you already and I like to get at the truth. Besides, I am your cousin and would like to be your friend. Don't you need a friend who has some power?"

The sultana's silky little hand was laid on Marianne's, but she was already responding impulsively: "Oh, yes!" It was spoken with such feeling that her companion smiled and was confirmed in her initial conviction that this young and ravishingly lovely creature stood in desperate need of help. Accustomed by the perilous life she had been forced to lead in this palace before becoming the mistress of it, to watch the slightest change of expression in the faces of others with a closeness on which her very life might depend, Nakshidil had been struck from Marianne's first appearance by the drawn look on her lovely face and by the unconscious pathos of her great green eyes. Napoleon's envoy was very far from anything she had expected.

The rumors which had been going around the Mediterranean in the past weeks had created a fantastic picture of a bold courtesan, a kind of boudoir Messalina, decked out by the emperor her lover in a princess's crown, hardened in every kind of trickery and cunning and ready to stop at nothing, however flagrant, to ensure the success of her mission. Face to face with the reality, it had not taken the sultana long to realize that this picture was a complete fantasy, a mere caricature concocted by the Foreign Office which had nothing to do with reality.

It was a caricature, moreover, which had been causing her a good deal of secret annoyance. The Princess Sant'Anna was a kinswoman, if a distant one, and it was tiresome to have such unpleasant things said about a member of her own family. Consequently, a wish to form her own opinion had played no small part in her decision to grant the accused an audience. Now she wanted to hear all about this strange, beautiful young woman who seemed to bear a burden too heavy for her, yet bore it with pride.

Marianne began, a little shyly and reticently, to give a brief, superficial sketch of her past life but yielded little by little to her companion's very evident sympathy and understanding. Strange as the events of her own life had been so far, Nakshidil's far outdid them, for it was a much longer road from a convent in Nantes to the harem of the Grand Signior and a position of absolute power than from Selton Hall to the Palazzo Sant'Anna, even by the way of Napoleon's bed.

When she fell silent at last, she found that she had described it all down to the smallest detail and that it must be very late because the silence that lay all about the little terrace where the two women sat was much deeper than it had been. The noises of the city had died away and from the sea there came only the gentle slap of the waves and the measured tread of the guards at the seraglio gates.

The sultana, for her part, had not moved. She sat so still in fact that Marianne had the sudden, unnerving thought that she had fallen asleep. But she was only lost in thought, for a moment later Marianne heard her sigh.

"You've done a great many more stupid things than I ever did, for I only went where my fate directed, but I can't see that anyone could possibly blame you. When I think about it, love is to blame. It is love that has brought you both great suffering and great exaltation, set you on the strange road which has brought you to me."

"Your Highness!" Marianne said, stammering a little. "I beg you will not judge me too harshly—"

Nakshidil sighed again; then suddenly she laughed.

"Judge you? My poor child! Say rather that I envy you."

"Envy me?"

"Why, yes! You have beauty, nobility, a famous name, you have wits and courage and you have that most precious and fragile of all gifts: youth. And more than that, you have love. I know, you are going to tell me that love has brought you little joy and that just at this moment you could well do without it, but even so it is there, driving you on and filling your life, coursing with the youth in your veins. And then you are free, you have the right to do what you will with your own life, even to destroy yourself if you like, in pursuit of this love of yours. The whole world is open to you. Yes, I envy you. You can never know how much I envy you."

"Your Highness!" Marianne said, startled by the depth of sadness and regret in the soft voice, schooled to years of whispers.

But Nakshidil did not hear her. The story told her by her visitor had carved a breach in the wall in which her spirit was imprisoned, and all her regrets, her aching desires, came pouring through it like the pounding seas through a broken dike.

"Do you know what it means," she went on, more softly still, "do you know what it means to be twenty years old and to learn about love in an old man's arms? To dream of wide open spaces, of sailing the seas and galloping with the morning breeze on your face, of nights under huge, free skies, listening to the singing of the blacks and breathing in the scents of the islands—only to wake and find yourself in a cage among scheming eunuchs and an army of stupid, vindictive women with the souls of slaves? Do you know what it is to be always longing for a young man's love, for a young man's arms about you, strong and eager, as you lie on your silken cushions in the lonely room whence they take you from time to time to the bed of a man too old to make the contrast anything but bitter… And all this, year after mortal year—the years that might have been the richest and warmest of your life?"

"Do you—do you mean that you have never known—love?" Marianne murmured, at once stricken and incredulous.

The fair head stirred and the movement, slight as it was, drew a flash from the huge rose diamond that adorned it.

"I have known the love of Selim. He was the son of my husband, old Abdul Hamid. He was young, certainly—and he loved me with such passion that he chose to die to save me, me and my son, when the usurper Mustapha and the janissaries swept through the palace. There was much warmth in his love and I was very fond of him, but as for the burning passion I might have known with—with another who filled my dreams when I was fifteen, the fever of love, the need to give and to take, no—those are things I have never known. So, little girl, forget your sufferings, forget all that you have endured because you still have the chance and the right to fight for your happiness. I will help you."

"Your Highness is very good, but it is not right for me to think only of the man I love. You forget that I am to bear a child, a child who would raise an impassable barrier between us, even if I could ever find him again."

"That is true. I was forgetting that terrible experience of yours and its consequences. We must find a remedy for those as well. You don't want to keep the child, do you? If I understood you rightly—"

"I hate it, Your Highness, just as I hated the man who fathered it. It is like a monstrous, loathsome thing inside me, feeding on my flesh and blood."

"I understand. But at this late stage abortion would be dangerous. Your best course would be to retire to one of my houses and live there in seclusion until the child is born. I will take charge of it after that, and I promise you that you will never hear of it again. I will have it brought up by people of my own."

But Marianne shook her head. She was not prepared to spend the next few months in waiting for an event which both frightened and disgusted her. As for the dangers the sultana had mentioned, she was well aware of them but feared them much less than the thought of living for five months cut off from all possibility of finding Jason again.

"I will have them begin the search for this American privateer of yours first thing in the morning," Nakshidil said after a moment, reading her young kinswoman's thoughts like an open book. "It is bound to take some time in any case. Are you still set on risking your life?"

"Yes. I'm only sorry to have waited so long, simply because I did not know of anyone who could help me. But now I must take the risk. If this child lives, even if I never see it, even if the whole world lies between us, there will still be an invisible tie, a living witness to all that I suffered at the hands of that abominable creature."

There was a note of strain and fierce denial in the younger woman's voice and her companion recognized it. Remembering how she herself had felt on learning that the seed of the aged sultan was germinating in the mysterious depths of her own body, and the kind of revulsion which not even the triumphant prospect before her could altogether extinguish, she could guess at Marianne's frantic urge to tear out of her womb the thing that had been planted there in a fashion so horrible that she could not even bear to think of it as a child but only as a kind of monstrous growth, a cancer devouring her life and all her hopes of happiness. Once again she put out her hand and pressed Marianne's, but without speaking, and her silence added to the girl's unhappiness.

"I—I disgust you, don't I?" she murmured.

"Disgust me? My poor child! You don't know what you're saying. The truth is that I am afraid for you. In the passion of your love and your longing for your lover, you are prepared to embark on a perilous course—and I fear you have not properly estimated the dangers and difficulties of it. Abortion is rare here, because our country can never have too many men. Only—forgive me, but I must speak plainly—only prostitutes regularly resort to it, and I will spare you the details of how they go about it. Why can't you bring yourself to accept my offer? I should never forgive myself if any harm should come to you. And you must see that it would be foolish to lose your life over this, for then you could never be with your lover again in this world. Is that what you want?"

"Of course not! I want to live; but if, with God's help, I were ever to meet him again, he would turn from me in disgust—indeed, he has already done so. He would not believe a word of what I tried to tell him. And so rather than endure his scorn, I would face death, yes, a thousand times over! I feel as though once I'm rid of it, I shall be somehow cleansed, as if I'll have recovered from an infectious illness. But if the child were living—anywhere in the world—I could not feel that. It must never be anything more than a disease, faceless and formless, of which I have been cured, and then I shall feel clean and whole again."

"Or else you will be dead." The Sultan Valideh sighed. "Very well, since you are so set on it there is nothing I can do except—"

"The thing I ask?"

"Yes. But there is only one person here capable of carrying out this… operation with less than a fifty percent chance of killing you."

"I'll take that chance. Fifty percent is pretty good."

"No. It's very bad, but there's no other way. Listen. There is a woman living in the district of Kassim Pasha on the other side of the Golden Horn, between the old synagogue and the Nightingale River. She is a Jewess called Rebecca, the daughter of a skilled physician, Judah ben Nathan. She plies the trade of midwife, and with some skill by all accounts. No dockside whores or street harlots from the arsenal are admitted to her house, but I know that she has lent her services from time to time, at a price, to the adulterous wife of some man in high position, thereby saving her from certain death. She is known also to the rich Europeans of Pera and to the Phanariot Greek nobility, but her secret is well kept and Rebecca knows that silence is the key to her continued prosperity. She will not take you without a strong recommendation."

Marianne's hopes faded once again.

"Money?" she faltered. "Does she want very much? Everything I had was stolen from me on board Jason Beaufort's ship—"

"Don't worry about that. If I send you to Rebecca, then it is my affair. One of my women shall come to you tomorrow after dark with a closed carriage. She will take you to the Jewess, who will already have received her payment and her instructions. My woman will remain with you there for as long as necessary and then bring you by water to a house belonging to me in the vicinity of the Eyub cemetery where you may rest for a few days. Your ambassador will know only that you have gone with me on a brief visit to my palace at Scutari, where I shall be going the day after tomorrow."

As she spoke, the weight began to lift from Marianne's heart, to be replaced by a sense of profound gratitude. By the time the soft, lisping voice had ceased, her eyes were full of tears. She slid to her knees and, lifting the hand that still rested on her own, she raised it to her lips.

"Your Highness," she murmured, "how can I thank you—"

"Why, by saying nothing. You will embarrass me if you insist on thanking me so much. This is a very small thing I do for you—and it is long since I had to do with an affair of the heart. You can't think how much I am enjoying it. Now, come—" She rose and shook out her pale-colored draperies, as though in haste now to shake off the burden of her confidences.

"It grows cold," she said, "and must be shockingly late besides. Your Monsieur de Latour-Maubourg must be wondering what has become of you. Your Breton is capable of imagining anything! He probably thinks I've had you sewn into a sack and dropped into the Bosporus with a stone tied round your neck. Or else that Mr. Canning has somehow spirited you away—" She laughed, relieved perhaps to have dealt with an awkward situation, and possibly also by the chance to unburden herself of some of the accumulated bitterness of her years. She chattered like a schoolgirl as she settled her muslin veils about her with all the care of a woman whose habit it is never to appear looking less than her best.

Marianne rose automatically and followed her. They made their way quickly back to the kiosk, where the file of eunuchs was still gravely waiting, and Marianne, hearing her companion giving orders for her return to the embassy with a doubled escort on account of the lateness of the hour, was appalled to realize that she had spent the best part of the night at the palace and still the mission entrusted to her by Napoleon remained unfulfilled. With a graciousness that was not perhaps entirely disinterested, the sultana had encouraged her to talk about herself, turning what had begun as a diplomatic audience into a purely family occasion in which the emperor and his concerns were out of place, and putting under a strong obligation of gratitude one who ordinarily should have been thinking of nothing but the success of her mission.

When, therefore, Nakshidil led her guest back into the pavilion and proposed a final cup of coffee while they waited for the arrival of the litter, Marianne was quick to accept, even if one more dose of that comforting beverage meant that she would not get a wink of sleep that night, or what was left of it.

She spoke seriously, striving to banish a trace of compunction at bringing the sultana back to what was evidently unwelcome ground.

"Your Highness has been so very kind to me tonight that you have made me forget the real reason for my coming here. I am ashamed to think that I have talked of almost nothing but myself when there are so many more important matters at stake. May I know how Your Highness is disposed to regard those things I have said in confidence and whether you will consider mentioning them to His Highness the sultan?"

"Talk to him? Well, I might, but"—and here she sighed—"I am afraid he will not listen to me. It is true that my son's love for me is complete and unchanging, but my influence is no longer what it was and neither is his admiration for your emperor."

"But why not? Is it the divorce?"

"No. Rather it is because of certain clauses in the Treaty of Tilsit, of which he was informed by Mr. Canning, who had them from what source I do not know. It seems there was a letter from Napoleon to the tsar, dated February 2, 1808, in which the emperor put forward a proposal for the partition of the Ottoman Empire. Russia was to have the Balkans and Turkey in Asia; Austria, Serbia and Bosnia; France, Egypt and Syria, which would be a magnificent base for Napoleon to attack the British power in the Indies. So you see, we have small cause to love the emperor."

Marianne felt as if the ground were shifting under her feet and mentally cursed Napoleon's epistolary indiscretions. What made him write such dangerous letters to a man he was not wholly sure of? Was he so delighted with Alexander as to forget even the most elementary rules of caution? What could she say now to rid the Turks of their very reasonable belief that the French emperor was prepared to sell them to the highest bidder? Should she deny it? There was small chance that she would be believed, and in any case it was becoming increasingly unlikely that she could persuade them to go on getting themselves killed to facilitate Napoleon's invasion of Russia.

However, she was determined to do her duty to the end, and so she went in gallantly to attack the English position.

"Your Highness is quite sure that the letter is genuine? The Foreign Office has never balked at forgery where its interests were concerned, nor do I see how secret clauses of the Treaty of Tilsit, how a letter addressed to the tsar in person—" She broke off, realizing that she had lost her audience. The two women had remained standing in the center of the room, but now the sultana was engaged in prowling slowly around and around her visitor. It was evident that she had quite lost interest in a political discussion to which she felt she had already given a sufficient answer, and she was subjecting Marianne's dress to the detailed scrutiny which any woman, be she empress or no, reserves for matters of such vital importance.

Nakshidil extended a cautious finger and stroked one of the full green satin sleeves with its frosting of crystal beads. She sighed.

"That dress is truly ravishing. I have never liked these long sheaths that Rose has made so fashionable. I preferred the hoops and frills of my youth. But this is enchanting. I wonder what I should look like in such a dress…"

Marianne was aware of a moment's hesitation while she adjusted herself to the ease with which the sultana passed from matters of state to feminine frivolities. Should she lend herself to the game? Was it simply an attempt to evade the subject, or had this woman who had risen to such dizzy heights still kept something of her incurable Creole frivolity? It did not take her long to decide. Smiling as if no word of politics had ever passed her lips, she said: "I hardly dare to ask if Your Highness would care to try it on—"

Nakshidil's face was transformed instantly.

"Really? Would you let me?"

Even before Marianne could answer, a brief command had summoned the women whose duty it was to help their mistress to undress, another brought forth a tall, gold-framed mirror in which it was possible to see oneself from head to foot, and a third sealed the entrance to the pavilion.

A moment later Marianne found herself standing in her under-petticoat of fine lawn watching as Nakshidil stripped off sky-blue muslins faster than her women could assist her without snagging them. But the discarded veils were cast aside as contemptuously as if they had been a heap of old rags while one of the women proffered the dress which she had been helping Marianne to remove.

Divested of her clothes, the fair Creole stood up for a moment as naked as a fish and as coolly unconcerned about it as any woman long accustomed to the communal bathing and beauty care of the harem. And her young cousin saw to her amazement that her body was as smooth and faultless as that of a woman of thirty. There was no trace of slackness or of sagging flesh, not a discolored vein to be seen, and Marianne was reminded sadly of the lament she had heard so short a time before.

That form, with its voluptuous curves, recalled to her another daughter of those distant islands, Fortunée Hamelin. It was so obviously made for love, a perfect instrument designed to bend and vibrate to the fierce tempest of sensual passion which it had never truly known. Nor had the single pregnancy left the slightest trace. This beauty had the pointless, lonely splendor of a museum piece.

A feeling of profound pity swept over Marianne as Nakshidil emerged, as excited as a small girl, from the shimmering folds of the sea-green dress and let its heavy folds drape themselves about her. The dress was too long, its rightful owner being somewhat the taller of the two, but apart from that it fitted perfectly, so perfectly indeed that the sultana clapped her hands delightedly.

"Oh," she cried, "how I should love to own this dress!"

Marianne had a mental vision of herself returning to the embassy in her petticoat, since there was really nothing she could do but make a present of the dress. But, equal to anything that might help to save her mission and install her firmly in the sultana's good graces, she did not hesitate, but spoke up cheerfully: "If Your Highness will lend me a cloak or something so that I may not shock people when I go back to the embassy, I shall be happy to present you with the dress since you like it so much."

The blue eyes sparkled and gazed eagerly at Marianne.

"You would give me your dress?" Nakshidil said. "Even though we do not resume our former relations with Napoleon?"

Marianne controlled herself sufficiently to give no sign. Her smile lost none of its warmth or sweetness and she managed to sustain a dignity and unconcern which came none too easily when dressed only in one's petticoat.

"Friendship is one thing," she said quietly, "and politics are quite another, very different as it seems to me. This is a gift from the heart—and I am only conscious of how unworthy it is. I wish I had something more precious to offer to Your Highness in token of my gratitude—"

The sultana's laugh held real amusement.

"I begin to think your emperor would be well advised to put you in Latour-Maubourg's place! You're a much better diplomat than he is—"

Then, picking up the skirts that were too long for her, she went to her visitor and hugged her with true Creole warmth.

Still with her arms around her, she went on with sudden seriousness: "I can do nothing for your emperor, my child. Believe me, it is not from ill will. I don't even bear him any grudge over Rose's divorce or that notorious letter. There are such things as political necessities, I know that, and, as you say, these have nothing to do with human feelings. Those who serve them must forget that they have hearts—and sometimes consciences also. But things are going very badly for us on the Danube. My son, the sultan, yearns for a well-trained, modern army, but he has to meet the Russians with an undisciplined horde which, though gallant, is eaten with corruption. Its fighting methods are medieval and it is dominated by the janissaries, with their outdated ideas and vendettas. No wonder it suffers heavy losses. Our grand vizier is shut up in Rustchuk asking for assistance and calling for an armistice—"

"You would consider—making peace?" Marianne gasped with a sudden pang.

"Short of a miracle—and I don't believe in miracles when dealing with an empire that would gladly rob us of the Dardanelles—we shall have to make peace before the winter is out. Khaled, the grand vizier, makes no secret of his desire to treat with Kutuzov because he is under continual attack by Ataman Platov's cossacks and running short of men."

"But you must hold out, Your Highness!" Marianne implored her. "The emperor does not ask for your continued resistance without reason. Very soon now—"

"Nearly a year—"

"Sooner, perhaps. I can tell you that Marshal Davoust and your cousin, Prince Eugene, are gathering an immense army in Germany. If you can only hold out, the tsar will soon be forced to relieve you of Kutuzov. Your war is lost now, but Napoleon can turn the tables for you and give you victory—and the Danube principalities."

Nakshidil, who had continued to hold Marianne within the warm circle of her arms, let her go and shrugged. The sadness of her smile was tinged with irony.

"Don't try to make me believe, Princess, that Napoleon is about to attack Alexander purely for the sake of helping us. I've told you, we ceased to have any illusions regarding his intentions toward us a long time ago. If he wants us to go on holding out there is one thing he can do—send us troops, a few regiments out of that immense army of his. Then perhaps the grand vizier might hold out, with more than the fifteen thousand men he has at present! Otherwise, it's impossible."

"Will Mr. Canning bring you any better help?"

"Not in a military sense, no. But diplomatically, yes. When it comes to negotiating the peace, he is pledged to help us and to obtain the best possible terms from the tsar."

"Oh, Your Highness," Marianne said reproachfully, "has the sultan so far forgotten his mother's country? Have you yourself forgotten it?"

"I have forgotten nothing," Nakshidil said with a sigh. "Unfortunately, my son has been taught to look on his mother's country with some distrust. Do you think Mahmoud can forget that one of his greatest enemies is French?"

"French? Who is that?"

"The governor of Odessa. For years now, that man has been building up a powerful city on the shores of the Black Sea, and, more important, a harbor for the ships that come out to attack us at the very mouth of the Bosporus. I am speaking of the Duc de Richelieu, the tsar's friend and more Russian than the Russians. Napoleon had better reckon with that irreconcilable émigré because he has the Tatar hordes at his beck."

"But as Your Highness says, he is an émigré, one of the emperor's own enemies!"

"A Frenchman nonetheless. And that, in my son's eyes, is all that matters. You cannot ask him to let his people die to help a selfish ruler who never thinks of us unless he needs us."

There was a silence in which Marianne saw the success of her mission slowly foundering. She had too much honesty not to understand the sultan's reasons and those of his mother, for they were sound and respectable. Moreover, she had learned long ago to her cost to measure the depths of Napoleon's egoism. As Nakshidil had said, short of a miracle the Turks would soon be seeking an armistice, and this was something that Paris must know as soon as possible.

Aware that it would be clumsy, even ill mannered to persist after the kindness already shown her, Marianne abandoned the argument, for that night at least. She would have to report to the accredited ambassador but just now she felt very tired.

"If I might ask Your Highness's permission to retire," she murmured.

"But of course! But not like that!"

All the sultana's gaiety had returned and she was issuing a fresh stream of orders. In another moment Marianne found herself transformed into an Ottoman princess—by virtue of a gorgeous yellow robe, thickly embroidered with gold, to which the sultana, with princely generosity, had added a girdle, necklace and earrings set with rubies and pearls—and was sinking, not without difficulty, into her farewell curtsy, watched by the Kizlar Aga and the court ladies who had miraculously reappeared.

"We shall meet again very soon," Nakshidil assured her with an encouraging smile as she offered Marianne her hand to kiss. "And don't forget, you will be expected tomorrow night at the place I told you of. For the rest—trust me. I do not think you will be disappointed."

Without elaborating further on these last words, which Marianne could not help feeling were a trifle enigmatic, the Sultan Valideh vanished into the recesses of the pavilion with her ladies following in a cloud of blue, leaving her visitor to be escorted slowly back to her litter by the tall Black Eunuch.

As she was borne back through the gardens toward the seashore at the easy, swinging pace of her bearers, Marianne tried to sort out her ideas and sum up the evening's events. She did not find it easy, for her mind was torn between such contradictory feelings as gratitude, disappointment and uneasiness. On the political plane she had failed, undoubtedly, and failed so completely that she hardly dared to ask herself how Napoleon would take the news. But she experienced no sense of guilt or regret, knowing that she had done her duty to the utmost and that as things stood no one could have done any more. At the same time, she agreed with the Valideh that Napoleon might have given a thought to Turkey before her army was at its last gasp. The promise of an expeditionary force would undoubtedly have carried far more weight than the urgings of a mere inexperienced young woman.

She turned her thoughts resolutely away from the political situation and began to consider her own immediate prospects. In spite of the very real danger she would have to face during the coming night, Marianne was beginning to glimpse light at the end of the tunnel through which she had been struggling for so many weeks, and she could not help seeing it as a happy omen for the future. Once this nightmare was over…

She became aware that thinking was growing more and more difficult as the swaying motion of the litter combined with the emotional exhaustion brought on by her sleepless night.

Away to the east, beyond the Scutari hills, the sky was growing lighter, turning from black to gray. Day was not far off. Marianne shivered in the cool, damp air that rose from the gardens. It had been so hot when she came, but now she was really quite cold and was thankful for the silken veils in which they had swathed her. Hugging them tightly around her, she snuggled down among the cushions and abandoned the struggle. Her eyes closed.

When she opened them, the litter was already passing through the gothic gateway of the embassy and she realized that she had slept the whole way home. But her brief nap had only made her long for more. As her escort of janissaries wended its way downhill again to the Galata landing, she turned to enter the house under the disapproving eye of a butler who was visibly more shocked than impressed by the magnificence of her Turkish costume.

He informed her, somewhat distantly, that His Excellency and Monsieur the Vicomte had passed the night in the salon awaiting Her Highness's return and were there still.

Marianne, longing for her bed, was tempted to leave them there and postpone what she foresaw would be a lengthy interview, but she told herself that, after all, they had been sitting up on her account. Not to go to them would be ungrateful. And so she sighed and made her way to the salon.

But the sight that met her eyes as she opened the door made her smile. Jolival and the ambassador were seated in deep, cushioned armchairs on either side of a small table on which was set out a magnificent set of cut crystal chessmen. Both were blissfully asleep—the ambassador sunk deep in his chair with his chin buried in the folds of his cravat and his spectacles on the end of his nose, Jolival with his cheek resting on his hand and the ends of his mustache lifting gently with his breathing—and both of them were snoring lustily, albeit in different keys. They seemed so dedicatedly asleep that Marianne had not the heart to disturb them.

She closed the door very gently and, with a word to the butler to let the gentlemen sleep on, she went away on tiptoe to her own room, promising herself a long rest before she had to face the ordeal of the coming night.

Yet before that she would have to repeat to the ambassador every single thing that the sultana had said so that he could send a detailed report of it to Paris. If Napoleon was really set on winning Ottoman support, he might even decide to send the military aid which alone could combat the English influence. But Marianne had no faith in that and she was quite sure that Latour-Maubourg was under no more illusions than she.

Well, we shall see, she told herself by way of consolation.

Chapter 2 The Nightingale River

THE vehicle which entered the French embassy courtyard as darkness fell was a small, brightly painted araba curtained in green velvet such as might have been owned by the wife of any wealthy Galata merchant. It was drawn by a sturdy mule with gay red pompons on its harness and the driver was a crinkly-haired black boy whose dark face gleamed softly in the light of the lamp that was fastened to the front of the carriage.

The apparition that descended from this equipage looked more like a ghost than a woman. She was wrapped from head to foot in a long ferej of dark green cloth and her face was covered by the thick veil without which no Turkish lady would have dared to stir abroad.

Marianne was waiting in the hall dressed in the same fashion, except that her ferej was of a deep violet blue and she was not wearing the veil. With Jolival beside her, she walked down to the carriage where the other woman stood waiting for her. When she saw that there was a man, and a European, with the one she had come to seek, the woman did not speak but only bowed and held out a scroll of paper, tied and sealed with blue. Then she straightened and stood quietly waiting for the contents to be read.

"What's this?" the vicomte said crossly, taking a lantern from the hands of an attendant. "Does it need all these papers for what you are about to do?"

Jolival had been in the worst of tempers all day long. He loathed everything about this expedition of Marianne's but most of all it made him horribly afraid for her. The thought that the young friend who was almost a daughter to him was about to put her health and perhaps even her life in the hands of probably incompetent foreigners horrified him. He had made no attempt to hide his dislike of the project or the alarm it caused him.

"What you are doing is madness," he protested. "I was ready to help you in Corfu, when this damned pregnancy was barely started, but now I'm wholly against it. Not as a matter of principle, which is beside the point, but simply because it is dangerous!"

Nothing could budge him from this position and Marianne had wasted her time and her persuasions. Arcadius was almost ready to go to any lengths to stop her going to Rebecca. It had even crossed his mind to tell Latour-Maubourg everything and have the embassy put into something like a state of siege, or else to lock Marianne up in her bedchamber with guards below the windows. But the ambassador would probably have thought that he was mad, and in any case it would be cruel to upset the unfortunate diplomat yet again.

Certainly the ambassador had not been particularly overjoyed to learn that the Porte was considering an armistice, but the news had not really surprised him. He had, on the other hand, been sure that the spontaneous friendship which had sprung up between the Sultan Valideh and the Princess Sant'Anna augured most favorably for his own future relations with the court, especially since this friendship had shown itself in an invitation to spend several days with the sultana at her villa at Scutari.

Compelled to abandon his violent projects, the poor vicomte had next endeavored to persuade Marianne to let him go with her, and here again she had found it extremely difficult to convince him that it would not do. She had to tell him over and over again that one of the Valideh's most trusted confidantes was to accompany her and guard against any possible accident, while the presence of another European might lead Rebecca to refuse her services altogether and so ruin all. What was more, she said, the house of a midwife was no place for a man.

Defeated but not convinced, Jolival had muttered irritably all day, his temper growing noticeably worse with the approach of evening.

Marianne, meanwhile, had been scanning the thick parchment scroll. It was an official document, inscribed in Arabic characters and sealed with the imperial tughra, which she naturally did not understand. But attached to it was a smaller letter, written on silky vellum in a delicate, flowing hand which spoke of the long hours spent at a convent desk acquiring it. The faint scent of hyacinths that came from it recalled to the reader the blue pavilion of the previous night.

Writing in a charmingly old-world style reminiscent of Versailles and powdered heads, Nakshidil disclosed to her "dearly beloved cousin" the contents of the larger document, which was nothing more nor less than the title of ownership to the Sea Witch.

The Valideh had purchased the American brig from the reis Achmet, and she was now the sole property of the Princess Sant'Anna. More than that, she was to be transferred to the naval dockyard of Kassim Pasha, where she would be thoroughly overhauled under the personal supervision of the Ottoman admiral, the Kapodan Pasha, before being handed over to her new owner.

"Our own naval carpenters being unaccustomed to the ways of your great western ships," the Valideh had written, not without a touch of humor, "we have begged Mr. Canning to procure for us the services of some of the English carpenters employed on repairs to vessels putting in to our harbors to give our men the necessary instruction in order to restore this ship of ours to her former condition…"

This admirable example of officialdom at work succeeded in dissipating Jolival's ill humor. He began to laugh and Marianne found herself laughing with him.

"If there was ever any doubt that this imperial kinswoman of yours is still a Frenchwoman at heart, this would be enough to do away with it," the vicomte said at last. "Only someone born of the same country as Voltaire and Surcouf could have thought of anything so ingenious as getting the English ambassador to refit an enemy vessel, and force him to foot the bill. For Mr. Canning can scarcely be so curmudgeonly as to send in his account. Really, it's too good! Long live the sultan's royal mother! She's a credit to her family."

Marianne said nothing. She was glad to see him looking happy again. She herself was deeply touched by Nakshidil's gesture, for with her wholly feminine instinct the Creole had put her finger unerringly on the very thing that meant most to her young cousin: Jason's ship, the thing he loved as much and maybe even more than the woman whose image she bore.

By making this gift with such delicacy and such truly royal generosity, and at the very moment when Marianne was on the point of facing fresh dangers for the sake of her lover, the Valideh had made it a symbol of her sanction, a sign of encouragement and moral support. It was a wonderful way of telling her: "You are going to suffer but in the midst of your suffering you will remember this ship, because while you have her you will hold the key to the future and to all your hopes in the palm of your hand. Death cannot touch one so powerfully armed…"

Marianne closed her eyes, seeing herself already on board the restored Sea Witch, putting out from Constantinople with all sails flying and scouring every port in the world in search of her one true captain. Suddenly, the outlook was much wider and brighter. When the sun rose tomorrow there would be great plans for the future crowding around her bed to help her back to health, but already, mistress of the American brig and strong in the backing of her powerful kinswoman, Marianne was beginning to feel that the world was hers.

She opened her eyes and bestowed on Jolival a smile so radiant that he had not the heart to utter another word of protest.

"I must go," she said. "We've wasted too much time already. Keep these precious papers for me. I know they will be safe with you and I can't take them with me where I'm going. Kiss me goodbye now—"

With a warm rush of affection, he put his arms around her and kissed her on both cheeks. Suddenly, he was feeling happier. The fear that had been gnawing at his stomach all day was fading. Miraculously, the letter had set him thinking, like Marianne herself, that nothing really dreadful could happen to a woman with such forces to protect her.

"Take care of yourself," he said simply. "We'll see if God will still listen to the prayers of an unbeliever that all may go well."

A calm voice spoke suddenly from behind the white veil that hid the Turkish woman's face.

"All will be well," it said. "The Jewess knows that she will be beaten to death if there should be any accident, so do not worry." In another moment, Marianne was seated in the cushioned araba and leaving the onetime Franciscan convent. The mule began pulling strongly up the steep, roughly cobbled street. A chill wind whistled down the narrow thoroughfare, parting the curtains of the vehicle. Marianne's companion snatched up a white muslin veil and hurriedly covered the girl's face with it.

"It's better so," she said as the other put up a cautious hand to her face. "Our customs can be very useful when one wishes to escape notice or recognition."

"No one knows me here. I have little to fear—"

"Look—there is the night watchman beginning his rounds. He has only to catch sight of an unveiled woman in an araba to set a whole host of unlikely rumors afoot."

A tall, thin man in a rough linen caftan with a broad belt and a brimless red felt hat with a piece of dirty muslin tied around it had just come around a corner. He had a lantern in one hand and with the other he was tapping the pavement at regular intervals with a long metal-tipped staff. As he passed, he glanced idly through the curtains, which were still blowing in the wind, at the occupants of the araba. Marianne needed no telling to hold the veil close across her face. She shivered.

"It's cold tonight, and yesterday it was stifling—"

The other woman shrugged indifferently.

"It is the meltemi, the cold wind off the Caucasian snows. When it blows the whole city freezes, but the weather here changes very swiftly. And now, let me introduce myself. My name is Bulut, which means cloud."

Marianne smiled, liking this cloud. The ferej could not disguise the fact that she was plump and comfortable, and her bright eyes twinkled merrily above her white veil and did not avoid one's gaze.

"I know nothing of your country's manners. How ought I to address you?"

"I am called Bulut Hanum. Hanum signifies 'madam' and is used in conjunction with the first name. With Your Highness's permission, I shall address you in the same way to avoid attracting attention. Rebecca must not know who it is that she has in her care tonight."

"So I am to be Marianne Hanum?" Marianne said with a smile. "It makes a pretty name."

This small excursion into local customs had broken the ice. Madam Cloud began chattering like a magpie, visibly delighted with a task that made a striking change from the monotony of her usual existence. She could not have been as young as her eager, girlish voice suggested, for she disclosed that she was an old friend of the Valideh, whom she had known since her first arrival in the harem as a little fair-haired slave girl, terrified by her capture in mid-Atlantic, her stay in the pirate city of Algiers and her voyage to Constantinople aboard the Barbary xebec. At that time Bulut herself had been a member of the harem and had attained the rank of Ikbal,[1] having twice enjoyed the favors of the imperial bed. But after the death of the old sultan she had been one of those "pensioned off" by the new master and bestowed as a convenient gift on various senior court officials. Bulut had been married off to one Halil Mustapha Pasha who held the onerous but enviable position of Defterdar, or minister of finance.

This change in her situation had in no way displeased Bulut, now rejoicing in the title of Bulut Hanum, for she had never minded being included among the harem's expendable property. Her marriage had procured her a lofty social station and a mild, easygoing husband whom she ruled with the carefully concealed firmness that any Turkish wife worthy of the name brought to the management of her husband. According to his wife, Mustapha Pasha was a perfect kibilik, the very model of a henpecked husband, and one who had adopted as his private motto the Kurdish proverb which said that he who did not fear his wife was less than a man.

Alas, this model husband had been gathered to Allah in paradise some years since and Bulut Hanum, being left a widow, had entered the household of the Queen Mother, with whom she had remained on the friendliest terms, as mistress of the robes. It was to this friendship that she owed her familiarity with the "Frankish tongue," which she spoke easily—and with breathtaking rapidity.

While Bulut chattered on, the araba pursued its way through the steep streets of Pera, crowded with vines, Christian religious houses, European embassies and the houses of rich merchants, preceded by a man with a lantern who gave vent from time to time to a nasal shout of "Dikka-a-at," like a muezzin with a bad cold. The tiny cafes lining the main street, which were run by Venetians and Provençaux, were all shut by now, since except during the nights of Ramadan, which had ended some three weeks earlier, few people stirred out of doors after sunset in the Ottoman capital. The districts of Pera and Galata, where the law was less severe, were something of an exception to this rule, but even here it was necessary to carry a lantern or pay the penalty. Thus it was that those few pedestrians who were about all carried the swinging lanterns made of pleated paper in a metal frame which gave to the city its air of being permanently en fête.

The carriage made a sudden right turn along the side of a building whose immense walls were surmounted by cupolas and a minaret that gleamed in the light of the rising moon. The talkative Bulut was silent for a moment, listening. The thin notes of a flute came trickling from the building like a tiny mountain spring.

"What is it?" Marianne asked in a whisper. "Where is the music coming from?"

"From within. It is the tekke—the home of the Mevlani Dervishes. It means that they are beginning their prayers and they will whirl and whirl all night, like planets around the sun."

"How sad the music sounds. Like a lament."

" 'Listen to the reed flute,' was the teaching of Mevlana the mystic, 'for it says: from the time that I was first cut from the reeds of the marshes, men and women have lamented in my voice… All things that have been severed from their roots look to the time when they shall be joined again.' "

Madam Cloud's voice had grown remote, and for a moment Marianne was carried away by the poetry of her words which found a strange echo in her own heart that was aptly underlined by the music of the flute. But then she noticed that the araba had stopped at a sign from her companion and that Bulut Hanum, who had glanced backward several times in the past few minutes, was turning around again to peep through a gap in the curtains.

"Why have we stopped?"

"I want to make sure of something. I think we're being followed. When I gave the order to stop, I saw a figure slip behind one of the buttresses of the tekke wall. Someone who didn't want to be seen, because they were not carrying a lantern. Well, we'll see."

She tapped the driver briefly on the shoulder as a signal to move on and the araba resumed its progress down the sloping street. At that precise moment Marianne, who was also peering through the gap, distinctly saw a shadow detach itself from the deeper darkness of the wall and follow at a respectful distance.

"Who can it be?" Bulut muttered. "It's a bold man who would dare to follow a lady of the court, and bolder still to walk abroad without a light. I hope it's not an enemy."

There was a quiver of alarm in her voice, but Marianne was not afraid. The darkness inside the carriage hid her smile. She was very nearly certain that she knew their mysterious follower. It must be either Jolival or Gracchus-Hannibal—if not both, for she had a strong impression that there were two shadows.

"I can't think who could be interested in us," she said, so calmly that an involuntary sigh of relief broke from her companion's ample bosom. "Is it far now to where we are going?"

"Ten minutes or so. The Nightingale River runs along the bottom of this valley into which we are descending now, beyond that line of cypresses. Beyond that again you have the buildings of the Arsenal and the whole of the Golden Horn as far as the sweet waters of Europe."

The view from below the tekke was certainly a magical one, taking in all the area of the harbor which shone like quicksilver in the moonlight, pricked out with the black needles which were the masts of ships. But the beauty of the scene had no power to captivate Marianne, for she was in a hurry to reach her destination and get it over with. Delay now made her vaguely uneasy. After all, she had no proof that the shadowy forms were Jolival and Gracchus… Latour-Maubourg had not concealed the fact that the embassy was watched, and the British ambassador might still be hoping to lay hands on Napoleon's envoy. His spies were so well organized that he could not fail to be aware of the length of the previous night's audience. So it was with a trace of nervousness that she asked: "When we reach this woman's house—will we be safe there?"

"Absolutely. The guard of janissaries responsible for the protection of the Arsenal and the naval dockyards is within easy reach of the synagogue and can watch that also. The slightest disturbance in the neighborhood will bring them in a moment. We shall be as easy in Rebecca's house as inside the walls of the seraglio. But the main thing is to get there… Hurry, driver! Faster!"

She repeated the order in Turkish and the mule went like the wind. Fortunately, the way, which had been steep at first, had leveled out a good deal and the uneven cobblestones had given way to beaten earth. In a short while they were traveling along a narrow lane that ran along the valley bottom beside the stream.

Seen at close hand, this was infinitely less poetic than from the heights of Pera and gave no hint of deserving its romantic name. It was full of rubbish and gave off a nasty smell compounded mainly of ooze and rotting fish. Indeed the whole district, huddled up against the walls of the Arsenal, which lay between it and the sea, reeked of poverty. The wooden houses, their walls eaten by the salt winds, crowded about an ancient, half-ruined synagogue, their flat roofs and gutters etched against the slate-blue of the sky. Many of them had their ground floors given over to shops, shuttered at this hour, and here and there was a low door of a warehouse or the heavily barred windows of a moneylender with the star of David displayed above the lintel.

But although the houses were old and decaying, the strange thing was that the doors were all stout enough and the locks shone with care. Banks and warehouses were guarded by massive locks and iron bars that showed no trace of rust.

"This," said Bulut Hanum, "is Kassim Pasha, and Rebecca's house lies over there."

She pointed to a garden wall that made a kind of bulge which adjoined the synagogue. The black spires of three cypress trees showed above it and the summit of the gray wall itself was softened by snowy drifts of jasmine.

"Is this the ghetto of Constantinople?" Marianne asked, struck by the cheerless desolation of the houses.

"There are no ghettos in the Ottoman Empire," Bulut answered gently. "On the contrary, when the Jews were driven out of Spain by the Inquisition they found a welcome here where they could be free and even respected, for racial prejudice is a thing unknown to us, as it has always been. Black, yellow or brown, Arab or Jew, it is all one to us as long as they contribute to the prosperity of our empire. The Jews live where they will and gather of their own free will about their synagogues, of which there are now some forty in the city. The greatest number are to be found in the adjoining district, but this community is not to be despised."

"But even if they are not forced to live here, surely they must be very poor, if not actually in want?"

Bulut laughed. "Don't be taken in by the impoverished look of the houses hereabouts. They are very different inside, as you will see for yourself. The children of Israel are a prudent race, for although they get on well enough with us Turks they are like cat and dog with the rich Greeks of Phanar, who hate them because of their all too often successful rivalry in trade. For this reason they prefer to keep their wealth hidden away from prying eyes and not to provoke their enemies by the splendor of their homes."

Yet in spite of her companion's reassurances Marianne could not overcome a feeling of inexplicable discomfort and uneasiness. It might have been due to the two shadowy forms which, whether they were there or not, had now become discreetly invisible, or to the valley itself, which might have been charming in spite of its tumbledown hovels if it had not been built up against the forbidding walls of the Arsenal, scarcely more cheerful than a prison with the warlike figures of the janissaries mounting guard on the battlements, the lighted matches for their muskets in their hands. But there the Arsenal was, solid and menacing, like a dike built to stand between this wretched district and the sea. Even the little river vanished beneath its walls, as though it, too, were flowing into captivity through the low arched opening guarded with thick iron bars.

But when she tried to explain this gloomy impression of hers, remarking that it was sad to see the Nightingale River ending in a cage, her companion only laughed again.

"We aren't mad!" she exclaimed. "Of course we've sealed the valley off from the Golden Horn! None of our sultans wants to see another invader repeating Mehmet the Great's exploit."

And she described with pride how, in the spring of 1433, the Sultan Mehmet II, in his determination to reduce the city of Byzantium by sea as well as by land, had had his fleet carried over the hill of Pera with the aid of a slipway made of planks of wood greased with mutton fat and lard. Having been hauled up to the head of the valley by a system of rollers and pulleys, the ships had gone swooping down through Kassim Pasha and into the Golden Horn, to the terror of the besieged.

"We have been careful to take precautions," Bulut finished. "It never does to give one's enemies ideas."

In the meanwhile, the araba had come to a halt before a carved cedarwood door opening into a garden wall. Underneath a thick coat of dust could be seen a lot of rather primitive designs of flowers and leaves, above which hung a small bronze doorknocker which Bulut Hanum was already working with an impatient hand. The door was opened almost at once.

A servant girl in a saffron robe stood there bowing deeply. The many scents of the garden leaped to meet them, filling their nostrils as though they had each been handed a bouquet of flowers. The sharp tang of the cypress trees mingled with the sweetness of the jasmine, and the fragrance of fruiting orange trees with that of dying roses and clove pinks, and there were other, less easily identifiable scents.

It was a garden full of contrasts. The rampant jungle growth of the roses contrasted with the neat, well-ordered beds, marked out with box, which were the domain of the medicinal plants. Herbs both beneficent and deadly grew there thickly, around a semicircular pool into which a trickle of water splashed endlessly from between the worn jaws of an antique stone lion.

The maidservant, still bowing obsequiously, trotted before them toward the house which, although somewhat less dilapidated than its neighbors, forfeited all this slight advantage by an architecture so improbable that Marianne could not restrain a grimace of distaste. The thought of spending as much as twenty-four hours in this nightmare of wood and stone depressed her unutterably. It was made up of a weird juxtaposition of brick and carved wood, interspersed with panels of Brusa tiles decorated with fabulous monsters, the whole surmounted by an astonishing assortment of turrets, balconies and onion domes. Bulut Hanum, however, was evidently well accustomed to the oddness of it, for without abating one jot of the dignity due to a friend of the Valideh she directed her well-rounded person to a brassbound door beneath a flattened arch and passed inside.

Marianne followed her through a tiny entrance hall and found herself on the threshold of a large room, dimly lighted by a bronze lantern hung on long chains from the ceiling, from which came a number of little, flickering flames. Below it stood a tall woman who bowed as they entered but did not speak. Nor was there the smallest hint of obsequiousness in her bow. She bowed and that was all. Marianne stared at her in amazement.

Without quite knowing why, she had been expecting a short, fat, oily creature, not unlike the secondhand clothes dealers who were to be seen about the Temple in Paris. The woman who stood calmly and silently observing her could not have been more different.

Rebecca's face, framed in the gold-embroidered headdress worn by Jewish women, was the color of ivory and set in it was a pair of large, black and singularly penetrating eyes. A hooked nose and a mouth rather too heavy could not rob her of a degree of beauty which was derived chiefly from the very real intelligence of her expression.

Marianne's uneasiness increased as she took her seat automatically on the low divan that Rebecca waved her to. She felt a fluttering inside her that presaged the onset of an inexplicable sense of panic. She felt that she was threatened by some danger against which there was no possible defense and she forced herself to fight it while Bulut Hanum made the first move in the conversation, for it was surely ridiculous. What had she to fear from this quiet and all in all rather distinguished-looking woman, when she had come here prepared to submit to the dubious practices of some dirty, evil-smelling crone? Where was her courage and her will to be done with the intolerable burden within her?

But the more she tried to reason herself out of it, the more insistent grew her fear. There was a buzzing in her ears, preventing her from hearing what Bulut was saying, and a mist before her eyes, blurring the outlines of the shelves of books and of pots and bottles of every size and shape which alternated with the panels of stamped leather on the walls. She gripped her icy hands together as hard as she could to fight off the nausea that was creeping over her and at the same time, paradoxically, a wild urge to run away…

A firm, warm hand slipped something between her cold fingers and she sensed that it was a glass.

"You are sick," said a voice, and the deep musical tone of it surprised her, "but more than that, you are afraid. Drink and you will feel better. It is sage wine…"

Marianne put the cordial to her lips. It was sweet, strong and mild at once. She took a few cautious sips and then emptied the glass and handed it back with a grateful smile. Her surroundings had become clear again but so too, unfortunately, had Bulut's voice as she chattered on incessantly with expressions of sympathy and compassion for the French princess's obviously exhausted nerves.

Rebecca stood beside her, studying Marianne. Suddenly she smiled.

"The noble lady is right. You had better rest for a while before I make my first examination. Lie back on those cushions and relax. We will go into the next room for a moment while we decide what is to be done. Meanwhile, try and tell yourself that no one here wishes you harm, quite the reverse. You have only friends here—more friends than you know. Trust us, and rest."

Rebecca's voice had a strangely persuasive power and Marianne, soothed as by a miracle, did not even try to resist. She stretched herself out meekly on the silken cushions, from which came a scent of ambergris, and let comfort steal over her. Her body no longer felt heavy, and her fears of a moment ago had fled so far away that she could hardly believe they had been real. She watched Bulut Hanum's green ferej and the Jewess's gleaming headdress melt into the shadows at the far end of the room and spared the sultana a grateful thought for sending her to Rebecca…

Before going out, Rebecca had opened the three small windows which lighted the big room during the day—no doubt just as feebly as the bronze lamp was doing now. But they let in the scents of the garden, and Marianne breathed them in with deep delight. They spoke to her of the earth, of life and all the quiet happiness that she had been seeking for and never found. Could it be that this frightful house was after all the harbor and refuge where all her troubles would melt away and the chains fall from her at last? When she left it again she would be free, freer than she had ever been, relieved of all her fears and the threats hanging over her.

In place of the hanging lamp, extinguished by Rebecca so that her patient could rest more easily, a small oil lamp had been set on a low table at the foot of the divan. Marianne found herself fascinated by its tiny flame and the night-flying insects that were already being attracted to it. She looked kindly at the brave little flame, fighting gallantly against the surrounding darkness and driving it back.

The scents of the garden, the darkness and the slim, bright flame moving above the brass bowl of the lamp came together in Marianne's mind to form a symbolic portrait of her own life. But the flame especially seemed to her the embodiment of her own tenacious love and it held her eyes while the rest of her body melted formlessly into the insidious softness of the cushions. It was a long time, months even, since she had felt so comfortable.

Then, little by little, the wonderful feeling of well-being became a great languor. The eyes that watched the lamp closed very slowly—and then, just as she was on the point of sinking into sleep, Marianne saw a white shadow detach itself gradually from the darkness filling the greater part of the room.

It was like a ghost, draped in snowy white or veiled in smoke, which grew and grew until it filled all her vision—something huge and terrifying.

Marianne tried to cry out. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. It was as though she were already in the grip of a nightmare. She fought desperately to keep her eyelids open against the weight that was on them. And still the phantom went on growing. It was bending over her… She made a frantic effort to escape from the power of the drug that paralyzed her and to tear herself from her couch, but the deep cushions held her as if she had been welded to them. Then, softly, the shadow began to speak.

"Don't be afraid," it said. "I mean you no harm. Far from it. I am your friend and you have nothing to fear from me."

The voice was low and toneless and infinitely sad, yet even through the mists that enveloped her Marianne seemed to remember, through some tenacious thread of memory in her brain, another voice, very like it, heard once from behind a tarnished mirror, the voice of a man without a face, a shadow like this. Could it be the same? Could the ghost of the husband who had died in his tragic loneliness have followed her here, to the very edge of Asia?

Then the power of thought, like that of movement, deserted her. Marianne's eyes closed and she sank into a curious, almost trancelike sleep that left her not wholly unconscious of her surroundings. Voices were speaking hurriedly nearby in some foreign tongue and she thought she recognized Bulut Hanum's high-pitched tones, sounding very much alarmed, and the Jewess's lower ones, alternating with the deep voice of the phantom. Then she felt arms around her, lifting her strongly and surely without even a jolt. There was a pleasant smell in her nostrils of the Turkish tobacco called latakia mingled unexpectedly with the fresher smell of lavender, and her cheek was pressed against some fine, soft, woolen material. Half-consciously, Marianne understood that she was being carried away…

Once again there was the fragrance of the garden, the cool night about her, and then a slight dipping motion as the arms which held her set her down on some kind of mattress. By the sort of violent effort of will that a sleeper will make in an unconscious effort to escape from the grip of a nightmare, she managed to open the dragging curtain of her eyelids and saw a man holding a long pole that could have been an oar silhouetted against a starry sky. But then the dark mouth of a tunnel loomed up ahead, with the points of a raised grille hanging down like monstrous teeth, and the smell of the willow trees gave way to a stench of mud and refuse. A bird trilled briefly from a tree nearby but the faint, mocking sound was lost at once, smothered by the sheer weight of the walls that imprisoned the Nightingale River, on whose bosom Marianne was now being borne away, a captive like itself. The stream was no longer free to run beneath the open sky since men had decreed it so, the stream…

In the thick blackness enveloping her on all sides, Marianne gave up the struggle at last and let herself slide down into the abyss of sleep.

She awoke from it as suddenly as a cork popping out of a bottle to find herself in a strange room filled with sunshine. It was a magnificent bedchamber decorated with flowered silks in tones of blue and mauve, and but for the flood of sunlight, which took away any suggestion of the mysterious, might easily have been mistaken for a chapel, from the collection of gold and silver icons covering the whole of one wall.

Candles, a petrified forest of them, were burning before the holy images, their flames swamped by the brightness of the room, and standing in their midst, engaged in replacing the burned-out stumps with fresh ones, was a figure dressed in black.

Marianne took it for a priest at first, but then she saw by the long hair coiled beautifully under a lace veil that the figure was that of a woman, and a remarkably impressive one.

This was due less to her height, although she was tall and slim and very upright despite the years that showed in her gray hair and lined face, than to the erectness of her carriage and the strong, autocratic features which, for all the determined set of the chin, were entirely Hellenic in form.

When the last candle had been renewed and the old stumps put away in a leather bag, the unknown woman took up the gold-headed cane which had been propped against one of the candlesticks, crossed herself rapidly in the orthodox fashion from left to right, and then, turning her back on the shining icons, came toward the bed, her gait making light of what was evidently a pronounced limp. A yard or two away from it she stopped and, leaning both hands on her cane, studied Marianne gravely.

"In what language would you like to converse?" she asked in a lilting but otherwise faultless Italian.

"This one will suit me very well," Marianne replied in her best Tuscan, "that is, unless you would prefer to speak in French, English, German or Spanish?"

If she had been hoping to impress the other woman with her accomplishments she was quickly disappointed. The stranger only chuckled.

"Not bad," she conceded, in French this time. "I speak all those, and six or seven others besides, including Russian, Walachian, Serbo-Croat, Chinese and Turanian."

"I congratulate you," Marianne retorted. Not for anything in the world would she have shown that she was impressed. "But now that that is settled, would you think me very stupid, Madame, if I asked you who you are and where I am?"

The old lady came closer so that Marianne could smell the scents of incense and ambergris and gave another of her sardonic chuckles.

"You are in my house," she said. "In my house in Phanar.[2] And I am Princess Morousi, widow of the late hospodar [3] of Walachia. I am happy to welcome you as my guest."

"Thank you. It is very kind of you to make me welcome, Princess, but I should like to know how I come to be here at all. Last night, I went with a Turkish lady, a friend of the Sultan Valideh, to—"

"I know," the princess interrupted her. "But I also know that there are places to which no woman has the right to go without her husband's permission. You are here, therefore, because he brought you here."

"My husband? But there must be some mistake! My husband is dead. I am a widow!"

The old princess gave a compassionate sigh and struck the ground with her stick to give emphasis to her words.

"I think, my dear, that the mistake is yours. Unless you are not the Princess Sant'Anna, wife of Prince Corrado?"

"That is who I am, but—"

"Then we are not at cross purposes and I tell you again that it was Corrado Sant'Anna himself brought you here, to this house, last night."

"But that's impossible!" Marianne cried out, on the verge of tears. "Unless—"

A dreadful thought had crossed her mind, but so fantastically improbable had been the whole course of her life since the burning down of Selton Hall that not even this could surprise her very much. If she had really come to this strange place in her dead husband's company, then it must be that she herself had died and both this unaccustomed room and this woman with her ability to speak every known language must exist in the next world. The Jewess, Rebecca, had simply poisoned her, and she had gone to sleep on earth never to wake again except in this rather luxurious kind of purgatory, watched over by a distinctly unconventional angel. But then how could anyone possibly know what the life after death was going to be like?

In her bewilderment she was half expecting the door to open and admit a patriarch or some other long-dead person, or perhaps even her own father or mother, when her companion went over to the icons and fetched a candle which she brought to Marianne.

"Feel the flame," she told her. "When it burns you, you will know that you are just as much alive as I am. Nor, unless I'm much mistaken, are you in the least ill. I trust that you slept well?"

"Yes, thank you," Marianne acknowledged, putting her finger unhesitatingly into the flame and withdrawing it at once. "Indeed, I feel better than I have for a long time. But I still can't understand what you mean by saying my husband is alive—and here, in this house. Does that mean that you know him—that you have seen him?"

"When he has never permitted you to do so?" the princess agreed tranquilly. "That is quite true." She drew a chair, a curious, X-shaped thing with a goatskin seat, up to the bed and continued: "My child—my age allows me to call you so, for you are not really very old, you know—it is natural for you to be full of questions regarding your peculiar situation. I think I may be able to answer some of them, but not all. I have known the Sant'Anna family for a long time, you see. Don Sebastiano, your husband's grandfather, was a frequent guest of my parents when I was a child. He was a great friend of ours and that friendship has been passed on to his descendants. After the tragedy that struck his family, young Corrado spent much time away from Italy, where he could not live a normal life, and naturally found his way back to us, sure of finding a welcome and understanding in his dreadful plight."

Curiosity, abruptly reawakened, drove out every other feeling in Marianne, including all the fears she had experienced since waking. Surely this woman held the key to the mystery surrounding her invisible husband, and at the least she wanted to possess that key herself. Unable to control herself any longer, Marianne broke in on her hostess.

"So you know?"

"What do I know?"

"The reason why my husband shuts himself away like a hermit in his ancestral home? The reason why I know him only as a voice in a mirror, a hand in a white glove parting a black curtain, a horseman in a white mask glimpsed from afar? The reason why he married me, a stranger, already pregnant by another man, because that other was the emperor, instead of getting an heir of his own body?"

Princess Morousi inclined her head gravely.

"All these I know. In each case, the reason is the same."

"Then, tell me! I want to know. I have a right to know."

"That is so. But it is not for me to tell you, for you have asked me the one question which my conscience will not allow me to answer. All I can tell you is that, in spite of what that devil Damiani told you, Corrado is not dead. I think that at the last moment something stronger than himself stayed the wretch's hand. He missed his stroke and Corrado was only wounded. Then he dared not strike again but chained him in a dungeon, deep under the old Soranzo Palace in Venice, expecting him to die there. But the prince did not die. He recovered from his wound and escaped—"

Suddenly Marianne saw again the wide hall of the Venetian palazzo in which she, too, had been imprisoned. She saw the black servants lying dead and Damiani's huge body sprawled across the marble staircase, still clad in its golden robe, with the blood oozing slowly from it and a pair of iron fetters and a length of chain upon its breast. She had pushed all these mysteries to the back of her mind because of the hideous memories with which they were bound up, but now they rushed out again in a new light.

"So it was he—" she said slowly, as though still trying to grasp what she was saying. "So it was he who killed Damiani and his slaves that terrible night in Venice?"

"It was he. But it was not done for revenge, but simply out of the most elementary justice. He held Damiani's life forfeit for all the crimes that he had planned and executed. It was both his right and his duty."

"I am not the one to deny it. But then, why did he run away? Why not come to me and tell me what happened? I, too, was a prisoner in that palace. He must have told you that?"

"He did," the princess agreed.

"Instead of which he opened my prison door and then vanished without waiting to wake me even! Yet he was in his own house and no one could touch him. We could have got rid of the bodies and waited for the officers together—oh, I don't know… He set me free and then by his very flight put me in danger. I could have been arrested."

"No, because you, too, were in your own house. As for him, he was obliged to remain in hiding since he could no more show his face in Venice than in Lucca. Had he done so, no one would have believed him. The military governor's men would have taken him for an impostor, and he would have been taken and put to death for sure. Believe me, he could not have stayed."

Here again was the same tiresome riddle that Marianne came up against every time. She wondered if she would ever meet anyone who would be prepared to treat her as a grown-up person, a woman in her own right, and reveal to her a secret which was already shared by a good many other people. True that most of those were dead…

Still trying instinctively to penetrate the heart of the mystery, Marianne said casually: "How is it, then, that he cannot appear in public as the Prince Sant'Anna in Italy and yet is able to do so here?"

"What makes you think he uses his real name here? Matters are scarcely less difficult here than they are in Tuscany. Only I and my younger brother, John Karaja, who is a dragoman[4] to the Porte, know the real identity of the man who calls himself Turhan Bey."

"Turhan Bey?" Marianne said, stunned. "Do you mean to say that the Prince Sant'Anna has turned—Muslim!"

At that the old lady laughed heartily. Her laughter was frank and full-throated and its character so very individual that Marianne might have imagined herself in a dovecot full of cooing doves.

"By no means!" the princess cried at last, her laughter subsiding into a fit of cavernous coughing. "If that were so, your marriage would be invalid and I cannot see a prince of the Church lending himself to such a cruel jest. It was your godfather who arranged your marriage, was it not?"

"Yes," Marianne said, grasping at a new hope. "Do you know him as well?"

"No, but I know of him. To return to Turhan Bey: he owes his position here to the gratitude of Sultan Mahmoud for having saved his royal life from the attack of a pair of snakes while hunting in Cappadocia. His Highness honors with his friendship a man whose real name he does not know, whom he believes to be a rich foreign merchant attracted by the beauty of his imperial city and the life that men lead here."

Marianne bit back a sigh of disappointment. Obviously, it was impossible to persuade the old lady to divulge what she evidently regarded as another person's secret. And yet the more that she discovered about the strange man she had married, the more she wanted to know.

"Madame," she said at last, "I must beg you to say no more—or else to tell me everything. I can't bear to be obsessed by so many questions which no one will ever answer for me."

Princess Morousi placed both hands on the knob of her stick and got to her feet with a visible effort. At the same time she favored the younger woman with an utterly unexpected smile: unexpected because it was so wholly young and mischievous.

"No one? Not a bit of it! Someone is coming in a moment who will answer all your questions. And I mean all—every single one!"

"Someone? But who?"

"Why, your husband! What happened last night has forced him out of his silence at last. Besides, he wants to enlighten you a little and do away with some of the misapprehensions under which you have been laboring."

Marianne felt as if she had received an electric shock. She sat bolt upright in her unfamiliar bed and made as if to throw back the covers, which were, in any case, very much too hot.

"He is here?" she asked, lowering her voice instinctively.

"No. But he will be coming very soon, in an hour I expect. You will have time to prepare yourself to meet him. I will send a woman to you."

The old princess turned toward the door, walking with a step that was slow, almost pathetic, so earnestly did she strive to overcome her lameness. She grasped the long bellpull of lilac silk which hung on the wall and rang twice. She was already in the doorway when she swung around suddenly and Marianne, who was already half out of bed, stopped short, startled by the pain and grief imprinted on that face which, lined as it was, had not lost all its beauty.

"There is one more thing I should like to say." The old woman spoke in a hesitant tone which clearly did not come easily to her.

"Of course. What is it?"

"When you meet Corrado face to face, it will be something of a shock. You may feel some horror or revulsion. Oh, don't be afraid," she added quickly, seeing her involuntary guest's green eyes widen, "he is not a monster. But I do not know you well enough, indeed, I do not know you at all, and so I cannot tell how you may react to the sight of his face. I would beg you only to remember that he is first and foremost a victim, who has suffered long and deeply—and that you have the dangerous power to hurt him much more in the space of a few minutes than life, with its cruel ironies, has done already. Remember also that the outward form which you will see, although unusual for an Italian prince, conceals a heart which is noble and deeply generous and as free from all meanness as it is from malice. Remember, finally, that he gave you his name at a time when others might have scorned to do so."

"Madame!" protested Marianne, stung by this last reminder and the tone in which it was uttered. "Do you think it is wise to insult me when you seem to be anxious above all that I should do nothing to upset the prince?"

"I am not insulting you. The truth is never an insult and there are times when it should be spoken in full even though it may not be pleasant to hear. Don't you agree? I should be disappointed if you did not."

"Yes, I do," Marianne said, unpleasantly conscious of having lost once more. "But, please, won't you answer one more question, only one, and which concerns no one but yourself?"

"What is it?"

"You love the Prince Sant'Anna very much, don't you?"

The old woman stiffened and her free hand went to the great golden cross which she wore on her breast, as though to bear witness to the truth of her words.

"Yes," she said. "I love him very much. I love him—as I might have loved the son I never had. That is why I do not want you to hurt him."

She went out quickly, shutting the door sharply behind her.

Chapter 3 Turhan Bey

AN hour later Marianne was pacing up and down a vast room on the ground floor with a roof like a cathedral and big, arched windows opening on to a garden planted with cypress trees and huge banks of roses whose dying flowers made a brave pretense of spring.

Dominating this austere apartment and the stiff, thronelike ebony chairs with which it was furnished was a huge portrait of a splendidly mustachioed gentleman in a frogged hussar's jacket and a shako with an enormous plume like a firework display, with a jeweled dagger stuck in his silken sash. This was the late Hospodar Morousi, the princess's husband. But Marianne had barely glanced at him as she entered. The room seemed much too large for a private interview and she felt nervous and ill at ease.

The prospect of this meeting, coming so suddenly and unexpectedly after she had looked forward to it for so long and then put it out of her mind as a thing impossible, had left her thoughts in a turmoil.

From the day of their marriage she had regarded Corrado Sant'Anna as an enigma, half-irritating, half to be pitied. It had wounded her that he should not trust her enough to show her his face. At the same time, she had longed with all her generous heart to help him, to bring some comfort into what she guessed was a cruel lot, endured by a man of outstanding nobility and generosity of spirit, one who gave so much and asked so little.

She had been genuinely distressed to learn, as she thought, of his tragic death at the hands of a murderer in whom he had trusted too much. She had wanted to see the guilty man punished, and when Matteo Damiani had boasted of his crime before her face she had felt herself Princess Sant'Anna indeed and as much his wife as if they had lived together for many years.

And now, suddenly, here she was faced with one fantastic piece of news after another: the mysterious prince was not dead, he was coming to her here, and she was going to see, perhaps even to touch him, here within the four walls of this very room which, suddenly, for all its size, now seemed to her too small for such an event. The phantom horseman, the rider of Ilderim the Magnificent, the man who went out only at night and in a mask of white leather, was coming here… It was almost unbelievable.

Would he still be wearing the mask that she had glimpsed that one eventful night? Marianne wished that she had thought to ask her hostess. But it was too late now. Princess Morousi had vanished.

A little while before, as Marianne had dressed herself with the help of a skillful abigail, a servant with a flowing beard had come to her with a request that she go downstairs. She had expected to see her hostess again, but the manservant had shown her into the drawing room and then retired, closing the door behind him. Marianne had realized that she must face what might well prove to be the most momentous encounter of her life alone.

The sleep which had begun in the house of Rebecca the Jewess must have lasted for a long time because the sun, which she had taken for morning when she woke, was setting now behind the long, black spindles of the cypress trees. Its light reddened the stone walls of the ancient building whose foundations must have gone back to the ill-judged crusade of the blind doge, Enrico Dandolo, and set the tiny motes of dust dancing before the gloved hands of the late hospodar.

The sounds from the garden were growing muted, while those of the great city scarcely penetrated the walls of this ancient palace. In a little while they would cease altogether, as the voices of the muezzins called the faithful to their evening prayers.

Marianne gripped her hands together and gnawed her lip. Her nerves were at full stretch. Her visitor, more feared than longed for, was late. She had paused in front of the portrait and was regarding it with unconscious severity when, before she could resume her fevered pacing, the door opened again to admit the bearded servant who stood aside, bowing deeply, as a tall white figure appeared in the doorway. Marianne's heart missed a beat.

Her eyes widened and her lips parted soundlessly as the newcomer stepped into the sunlight and bowed in his turn, without speaking. But even while she was stunned into silence, Marianne knew that she was not dreaming. She was looking, between the pale caftan and white muslin turban, straight into the dark face and bright blue eyes of Caleb!

Time seemed to stand still. The silence stretched out between these two united by the bonds of matrimony and yet divided by so much else. Conscious of the rudeness of her stare, Marianne pulled herself together while an odd sense of relief overwhelmed her.

Despite everything her godfather and Donna Lavinia had said to her, she had been expecting the worst. Prepared for a being so hideously deformed that she could scarcely bear to look at him, she found that the reality, however strange, was anything but frightening. Recalling her first meeting with Caleb on the deck of the Sea Witch, Marianne was again struck almost with pleasure at the sight of that strong and splendid face. By whatever name, this man was beyond doubt the handsomest she had ever set eyes on.

On the other hand, the fact of his being who he was raised a whole new set of problems just as difficult as the last, and chief of them: what was Prince Sant'Anna, not to mention Turhan Bey, doing on the forecastle of Jason's ship masquerading as an Ethiopian slave? Moreover, now that she saw him again, she realized that she had always wondered a little about that claim to be Ethiopian, for although the man called Caleb was certainly dark-skinned, he was nothing like as dark as the deep black common to the inhabitants of that country.

Seeing that she was too busy gazing at him to speak first, Corrado Sant'Anna nerved himself to break the silence. He did it very gently, speaking as softly as though he feared to shatter something precious, for the look on the young woman's face was not the one he had feared to see there. No, the great green eyes regarding him held neither fear nor revulsion but only an infinite astonishment.

"Do you understand now?" he asked.

Without taking her eyes from his, Marianne shook her head.

"No. Less than ever, I think. There is nothing repulsive about you—far from it. I'd say, even, that you—you are very handsome. But you must surely know that. So why the mask? Why the seclusion? Why all this mystery?"

The bronze lips smiled bleakly, showing a flash of white teeth.

"I thought a woman of your quality would have understood the reasons. I carry the burden of a sin not my own, nor my mother's, either, although it cost her her life. You know, do you not, that my father strangled my mother at my birth, never dreaming for an instant that he and he alone had passed on the black blood which darkened my skin."

"How can that be?"

"Do you know anything about the laws of heredity? I thought not. I made a study of them when I was old enough to understand. A learned Cantonese physician explained to me one day how it is that the offspring of a black person and a white may exhibit no negroid characteristics at all and yet may, in his turn, produce a black child. But how was my father to guess that his mother, the she-devil who brought disgrace to our family, had conceived him of her black slave, Hassan, and not her husband, Prince Sebastiano? Obsessed by Lucinda and her satanic legend, he believed that my poor mother, too, was sunk in dishonor—and he killed her."

"I know that dreadful story," Marianne said quickly. "Léonora Franchi—Mrs. Crawfurd, I mean—told it to me. How cruel, and how stupid!"

The prince shrugged. "Any man might have done the same. Your own father, perhaps, if such a thing had happened to him. I have no right to blame mine—especially since he spared my life. Not that it has been much of a blessing to me. I'd rather he had let my mother live and done away with me—the blot on his escutcheon."

There was so much bitterness in the deep serious voice of the last of the Sant'Annas that Marianne felt strangely stirred. It occurred to her suddenly that there was something ridiculous in the two of them confronting one another like that, in the middle of the vast, empty room, and she pointed to a pair of cushioned stone seats set in one of the window embrasures, at the same time managing a smile.

"Wouldn't you rather sit down, Prince? We could talk more easily—and we have so much to say. It might take a long time."

"You think so? I do not mean to inflict my presence on you for longer than necessary. Believe me when I say that if matters had stood otherwise I should never have dreamed of revealing myself to you. You thought me dead and it was probably better so, for you have suffered much through me, although I never willed it. God knows that when I married you I hoped with all my heart that you would find, if not happiness, at least tranquillity and peace of mind."

This time Marianne's smile was without constraint, and as the prince had not moved she took a step toward him.

"I know that," she said quietly. "But do please come and sit down! As you have just said—we are married."

"Barely!"

"Do you believe that? God, who joined us together, counts for something. We might be friends, at least. Didn't you save my life that night by the little ruined temple, when Matteo Damiani was going to kill me? Didn't you kill him in Venice and set me free?"

"Didn't you repay me by saving me from being flogged to death by John Leighton?" he retorted. But he abandoned his resistance and let her lead him to the window bay, which was still flooded with evening sunshine.

Now that she was closer to him, Marianne recognized the smell of lavender and latakia that she remembered from the previous night and it was enough to recall the strange events of that night, pushed to the back of her mind by the surprise she had just had. Before she could stop herself she had asked the question which sprang to her lips.

"It was you, wasn't it, who carried me off from Rebecca's house last night? Princess Morousi told me—"

"It's no secret. Yes, it was I."

"Why?"

"That is one of the matters I was alluding to a moment ago, but for which you might have continued to believe me dead. In a word—the child."

"The child!"

He smiled again, the same bleak smile that lent such charm to his almost too perfect features. Now that she was able to see him close to and in full sunlight Marianne was surprised to feel again exactly the same jolt of spontaneous admiration that she had felt seeing him on board the Sea Witch. A bronze god, she had thought then, a splendid animal. But the god had feet of clay and the wild animal was wounded.

"Have you forgotten the reason for our marriage? When my old friend Gauthier de Chazay spoke to me of his goddaughter she was with child by Napoleon. In making her my wife I was gaining an heir worthy to continue our ancient line, the child I had ceased to hope for and had always refused to beget for fear of handing on the curse that lay on us. That child you lost as a result of the fire at the Austrian embassy a little over a year ago. But now you are carrying another."

Marianne's face flushed and she sprang up as if she had been stung. She saw it all now, she saw a great deal too much, things it frightened her to see.

"You don't mean that you want—"

"Yes. I want you to keep this child. I have had a watch kept on the Jewess's house from the moment I arrived here. There is no one else you could have gone to for a service of that kind without grave risk to your life. And I was not going to have it. You see, as soon as I realized that you were going to have a child again, I saw fresh hope—"

Marianne stiffened angrily. "Hope? You can call it that? But surely you know—when you seem to know so much—who fathered it?"

Prince Sant'Anna merely bowed his head in answer but showed no other hint of emotion. In the face of that impassive countenance, Marianne's anger blazed up uncontrollably.

"You know!" she cried. "You know that that—that lackey Damiani raped me, that he forced himself on me—on me, your wife—again and again, week after week until I thought I should go mad, and you dare to tell me that my ordeal gave you hope? Don't you see that it's out of the question?"

"No," came the cold retort, "I don't. Damiani has paid for what he did to you. For what he did to you, I killed him and I killed his three witches also—"

"For what he did to me or for what he did to you? Was it my shame you were avenging, or the death of poor Donna Lavinia?"

"For you and you alone, and that you may believe since for my part I am still very much alive and so, for that matter, is dear old Lavinia. She had the good sense to feign death when Damiani attacked her and he thought in good faith that he had killed her. But she is still alive and so far as I know is at this moment governing our house at Lucca. But to return to Matteo. It is still a fact that, criminal wretch though he was, he comes of the same blood as I myself. A bastard maybe, but far more of a Sant'Anna than Napoleon's son could ever have been."

Marianne's anger had given way for a moment at the good news that Donna Lavinia was still alive but it flared up again at the injury contained in this last remark.

"Well, I loathe even the memory of the man!" she cried. "And it sickens me, this thing inside me that I will not even call a child! I do not want it, do you hear? I won't have it! Not for anything in the world!"

"Be sensible! Whether you like it or not, this thing, as you call it, is still a human being, already there, at this moment, and it is your own flesh and blood that is going to the making of him. He is a part of you, made of the same substance—"

"No! No!" Marianne was protesting like a child arguing in the face of all the evidence. " It's not possible! It can't be! I won't have it—"

"Come now. You know that isn't true. You wouldn't be fighting it so desperately if your heart were not engaged, if—if Jason Beaufort had never entered your life. It's because of him, and him alone, that you want to be rid of this child."

It was not said as a reproach, simply as a quiet statement of fact, but in the eyes that were fixed on hers Marianne could read such sadness and resignation that, on the point of proclaiming aloud the power of her love and her right to live it, she remembered just in time that Jason had once condemned this man, whose name she bore, to die under the lash. A little ashamed, she let her eyes fall.

"How did you know?"

He made a vague movement with one hand and shrugged again.

"I know a great many things about you. From your godfather, firstly, for whom I have a great love, for he is kindness and understanding itself. And surely it was natural for me to feel some interest in your life? No," he added quickly, seeing her movement of protest, "I have not had you spied on—or not directly, at any rate. To have done so would have been to demean us both. But someone else did, against my orders and indeed without telling me everything. But most of my information comes from the emperor himself."

"The emperor!"

"Why, yes. Considering the circumstances of our marriage, it was common courtesy for me to inform him of it personally and to give him certain assurances concerning you, since I was to give my name to his son. I wrote to him and he wrote back—more than once."

There was a pause while Marianne thought over what she had just heard. It was not hard to guess who it was who had set spies on her. Matteo Damiani, of course. But that there had been correspondence between Napoleon and the prince came as something of a surprise to her, although when the emperor had told her after François Vidocq had brought her back from Normandy that he wished her to return to her husband, he had mentioned a letter from Sant'Anna. She was not sure whether to interpret this as a sign of affection or of distrust and decided it was best to probe no further for the moment. There were too many other points on which she desired enlightenment.

Corrado, respecting her silence, had been looking out at the gathering darkness in the garden. The sun had sunk behind the trees, outlining them dramatically against long streaks of purple and gold. A faint chill was creeping into the room and the air was vibrant with the muezzins' high-pitched calls.

Marianne hitched up the green silk shawl which had slipped from her shoulders.

"And was it the emperor who told you that Jason Beaufort would be in Venice?" she asked at last, with a little hesitation.

"No. By that time I was in no position to discover anything at all. I learned of the trap which had been laid for you—and of what followed, from Matteo himself. In the end, I think, his ambition had driven him mad. I was chained and helpless and he had great satisfaction in describing it all to me. Thinking about it later, it seemed to me that it was for the pleasure of that he kept me alive."

"Then how did you come to be aboard the Sea Witch?"

Again, that faint, bleak smile.

"That was pure luck. When first I managed to escape my one idea was to see justice done and set you free without your seeing me. Damiani had told me that you thought I was dead and at that time I saw no reason why you should ever learn otherwise."

"But he had told you he wanted me to give him the Sant'Anna heir he needed?"

"Yes, but I could see that he was sick, drugged, practically insane. I did not think that he could do it. So I struck out and fled to escape any awkward questions on the part of the authorities. I wanted to get to Lucca, the only place where I could show myself with any safety. I'd found money in Matteo's room—enough to pay a boatman to take me to Chioggia. And it was there that luck took a hand. I caught sight of the American brig—and the figure on the prow. I'd known for long enough whose ship she was, but your face on that figurehead told me I was not mistaken and I wanted to find out if she had come for you. I think you know the rest… And I want to ask you pardon."

"My pardon? What have I to forgive?"

"For yielding to the impulse which took me aboard that vessel. I had sworn that I would never stand in your way but that day I could not help myself. I had to see this Beaufort, know what kind of man he was. It was something stronger than myself…"

For the first time since he had come into the room, Marianne really smiled. The surge of indignation which had taken possession of her a moment ago was still quivering inside, but she could not help feeling a sudden liking for this strange, unhappy man.

"Don't be sorry. But for you, I don't know what would have become of us on that hellish voyage—and by now my old friend Jolival would be a slave or worse! As for Captain Beaufort, it was not within your power to save him from—from disaster!" Her voice broke and she said no more, knowing that she could not trust herself not to break down. The mere mention of Jason's name was enough to overwhelm her, even though she knew that such emotion was out of place here and that for all the unusual nature of the contrast between them it could not be pleasant for Prince Sant'Anna to be obliged to discuss his wife's lover.

In fact he had risen with some abruptness and was pacing the room with his back to her. As before, on the deck of the Sea Witch, Marianne was struck by his lithe, easy bearing and by the impression of controlled strength about him, but she was discovering that even with his face uncovered, even without the leather mask whose whiteness now was self-explanatory, this man remained an enigma, not easily to be understood.

She was too much a woman not to wonder how he felt toward her. The shattering announcement he had just made, the fact that he could say in so many words that he wanted her to have the child conceived under such appalling circumstances, was almost insulting. It suggested that the prince cared nothing for her feelings and that, to use a favorite expression of Napoleon's, she was in his eyes nothing more or less than a womb!

And yet, when he could have gone quietly back to his Tuscan estates after killing Damiani, he had deliberately chosen a perilous adventure in order to go after a wife who, when all was said and done, had not been much good to him. What was it he had said? "I could not help myself… It was stronger than I was…"Or was his real interest in Jason? Curiosity, after all, was not an exclusively female prerogative. Perhaps it was only natural that he should want to meet the man his wife loved. But it was a very great risk to take for such a meager satisfaction because, in going aboard the Witch, Corrado Sant'Anna had been cutting himself off from all his usual roots. All he would have found at the end of the voyage as originally planned was the vast, unknown American continent, lying on the other side of the ocean—and the lifetime of slavery to which he almost certainly would have been condemned by the color of his skin.

Unable to find an answer to any of these questions, Marianne gazed helplessly at the tall white figure. Their conversation had reached such an extremely difficult stage that she was at a loss how to go on. But it was the prince who broke the silence.

Standing before the portrait of the hospodar which he was studying with remarkable concentration, he said without turning around: "Man has a very great need to perpetuate himself. That one up there tried all his life to do it but without success. I am an aberration in my family tree which will pass and be forgotten, but only if there is an heir—one who is normal and free from the taint I bear—to come after me. You are my one chance of that. Will you give me my heir?"

Marianne knew that the moment she dreaded had arrived and she screwed up her courage for the battle ahead. When she spoke, her voice was gentle but firm.

"No," she said. "I can't. Nor have you any right to ask it of me, knowing my horror of this child."

Still, he did not look at her but he said: "That evening, in the chapel of our house, you swore to honor—and obey."

There was no mistaking his meaning and Marianne shuddered, overcome by a bitter sense of shame because this unexpected husband of hers, whom she had thought to keep quite apart from her private life, had known better than anyone in what light she had regarded her marriage vows. What had seemed to her then a mere formality had become all too serious now.

"It is in your power to compel me," she said in a low voice. "You have already done so, indeed, by bringing me here. But you will never obtain my consent willingly."

He came toward her slowly and Marianne stepped back instinctively. There was no trace of sadness now in that dark, handsome face, nor yet of gentleness. The blue eyes were chips of ice and where she had expected to see disappointment she read only cold contempt.

"Then you will be taken back to the house of the Jewess tonight," he said," and by this time tomorrow nothing will remain of the thing that so disgusts you. For myself, it only remains for me to bid you goodbye, Madame."

"Goodbye! When we have only just met?"

He bowed curtly. "This is where we part. You had better forget that you have ever seen my face. I can trust you to keep my secret, I hope. You may inform me of what you have decided through Princess Morousi when you see fit to do so."

"But I haven't decided anything! This is all so sudden, so—"

"You cannot live openly with another man and yet continue to bear my name. These new laws of Napoleon's will make it possible for you to obtain a divorce as you could not have done before. Make use of them. My men of business will see to it that you have no cause for complaint. After that, you will be able to carry out your original intention as it was before your plans were so rudely interrupted at Venice and follow Beaufort to America. I will take it upon myself to inform the emperor, and your godfather when I see him."

Stung by his contemptuous tone, Marianne gave a little shrug.

"Follow Jason?" she said bitterly. "You may well say that when you know it is impossible! We don't know where he is or even if he is still alive…"

It was these words which finally succeeded in shattering the prince's iron control. Abruptly, his anger exploded.

"And that's the only thing you care for in the whole world, isn't it?" he snarled. "That slave trader behaved to you like a swine, he's treated you like a wench out of the gutter! Have you forgotten that he would have given you to the lowest man on board his ship? To the runaway slave he picked up off the dock at Chioggia, whom his friend Leighton thought to sell at a good profit at the first opportunity? And still you want to lick his boots and crawl after him on your belly like a bitch in heat! Well, you will find him, never fear, and then you may go on destroying yourself for his pleasure."

"How do you know?"

"I'm telling you he's alive! The fishermen of Monemvasia who found him wounded and unconscious when his precious Leighton cast him off like unwanted baggage, when he could get no more use of him, have cared for him and are doing so still. Moreover, gold has been given them and their orders are clear. When the American is quite recovered he will be handed a letter telling him that you are in Constantinople, and so, too, is his ship. For after all," he added with a scornful laugh, "we cannot be sure that your presence alone would be enough to bring him here! So you have only to wait and your hero will come to you. Farewell, Madame!"

He bowed briefly and before Marianne, stunned by his outburst, could make a single move, he was gone.

In the middle of the darkening room, Marianne stood for a moment as though turned to stone, listening to the angry footsteps dying away along the stone floor of the wide hall. She was a prey to the strangest feeling of loneliness and desolation. The brief meeting, a first encounter which looked very much as if it would also be the last, had left her oddly drained. She felt unhappy and miserably conscious of having in some way, by her own doing, stepped down from a pedestal.

Now that she knew what her extraordinary husband was really like, things had begun to assume very different proportions and she could no longer afford the same detachment and mental freedom in relation to everything concerning him which had been hers hitherto. Things were very different now, and if the prince's anger—of which she was very well aware—sprang largely from disappointment, that in turn might be less for the child denied him than for the woman who denied it.

At that moment Marianne was so overburdened with shame and remorse that even the joy of knowing Jason was still alive could not bring more than a glimmer of light.

By guarding the life of the man who had used him so cruelly, by having him tended and cared for and providing him with the means to be reunited with all that he loved best in the world, the pretended Caleb had given both of them, Marianne and Jason alike, a lesson in magnanimity it would have been hard to equal.

Feeling rather ashamed of the not very admirable part she had elected to play and in the belief that it was her right, Marianne wanted to run after the prince and stop him, but by the time she had managed to pull herself together the front door had slammed behind him. To chase him then would have done no good and only made her look ridiculous, so she went out into the garden instead, drawn by the coolness and the quiet. Hugging the shawl around her shoulders, she stepped out through the stone bay and began to stroll along a little blue mosaic path that wound its way between the rose trees and the beds of glowing dahlias which blossomed like colorful set pieces on either hand.

To go into the garden had always been a natural reaction with her whenever she wanted time to think or to recover her temper. As a little girl at Selton, she would run and hide herself in the farthest corner of the park, where the shade of the great trees was densest, whenever she was suffering from one of the childish tragedies that seem so trivial to grown-up persons. In Paris, too, the little walled garden in the rue de Lille had often been the scene of solitary, anxious meditations as Marianne sought there, if not comfort or counsel, at least a brief respite from her troubles.

She plunged into this unfamiliar garden as though into a soothing bath, but its solitude, as she very soon discovered, was by no means absolute, for she was approaching a seat half-hidden in an arbor of clematis when she saw the figure of a man rise to its feet. This time the man wore European dress and she had no difficulty in recognizing her old friend Arcadius de Jolival. She came upon him so suddenly that she had no time to be alarmed, while her capacity for astonishment had been somewhat blunted by the revelations of the past two hours.

Therefore she said nothing more than: "Oh, are you here? How did you get here?"

"As fast as I could," Jolival said crossly. "We were at our wit's end at the embassy, having had no word of you since last evening. So when a message came to say that you were at the house of Princess Morousi and I was cordially invited to join you there, I lost no time about it, I can tell you, but packed a bag and came. As for our friend Latour-Maubourg, while he hasn't the least idea how you come to be staying in Phanar with the widow of the hospodar of Walachia when you set out to go to Scutari with the sultana, he's so delighted to find you moving in circles so close to the Ottoman throne that he's lighting candles to every saint in the calendar remotely connected with diplomacy. He's going to be very disappointed to see you back again. He won't understand it in the least."

"See me back again?"

"Good God! If you're going back to that angel-maker of yours tonight, you'll hardly be coming here afterwards to convalesce, will you?"

Marianne looked hard at her old friend, but he sustained her regard unflinchingly.

"You heard what passed—in there?" she demanded, indicating the room behind her. Jolival bowed.

"Every word. And don't ask me what miracle brought that about, because I'll only repeat that I heard. You see, I'm like your cousin Adelaide. I've never managed to believe that it's a cardinal sin to listen at keyholes. It seems to me a useful talent, first because it's easier than you'd think, and secondly because it helps to avoid a great many mistakes, as well as saving lengthy explanations which are always tiresome and often embarrassing. So you need not tell me what passed between you and Prince Sant'Anna, because I know."

"So that you also know who he is?"

"As a matter of fact, I knew that before you did because it was the prince himself who came to the embassy. I may say that he did so under the name of Turhan Bey but, in return for my word of honor, he consented to raise that white mask of his."

"What did you think when you learned the truth? You must have been surprised at least to find that the slave Caleb was really Prince Sant'Anna?"

The Vicomte de Jolival twirled the thin, black mustache which, in conjunction with his large ears, gave him such a startling resemblance to a mouse, then shook his head and sighed.

"Well, not altogether," he confessed. "In fact, I don't think I was surprised at all, really. There was too much about Caleb that did not fit, so many peculiarities to suggest that the character of the runaway slave was a cover for someone a great deal more distinguished than we guessed. I believe I even said something of the sort to you at one time. Of course, it never occurred to me to identify him with the mystery man you had been married to, but the fact explained a good deal. So much so that when I met him face to face it was like finding a satisfying answer to an irritating riddle." He gave her a little smile. "And now," he added, "I'd like to hear your own impressions. What were your feelings, Marianne, when you saw your dark-skinned husband?"

"Honestly, Arcadius, I don't know. It was a surprise, of course, but all in all not such a horrid surprise as I'd feared. Indeed, I confess that I don't really understand his behavior, all this mystery he surrounds himself with—"

"I know. I said so to him. You don't understand because you are a woman, and because, in spite of the color of his skin, or maybe even because of it, he is an exceptionally handsome fellow. His Negro blood has brought a new vitality, I might almost say a new virility, into a line which, if not actually decadent, had undoubtedly reached such a stage of inbreeding as to be verging on it. But you may believe me when I tell you there is not a gentleman in the world, not a man at all, indeed, who could fail to understand him or to understand the terrible way his father reacted on being presented with a black baby. I suggest you try asking our friend Beaufort the same question—"

"Jason comes from a country where they treat black people as slaves and use them as beasts of burden—"

"Not everywhere. You must not generalize. Nor, as far as I know, have the Beauforts ever been known as slave drivers. But I'll agree that his upbringing might prejudice his answer. But ask any man you meet—ask me, even."

"You, Arcadius?"

"Yes, me! I've never liked my wife, but supposing I had taken it into my head to give her a child and she had made me a present of a coal black bundle—for I dare say the prince was a few shades darker on arrival than he is now—why, upon my honor, I do believe I might have throttled Septimanie myself. And taken good care to hide the babe away."

"A man may have a dark skin and still be a person of consequence. Othello was a Moor and he became a great man in Venice."

That made Jolival laugh. He inserted two fingers in the pocket of his brocaded waistcoat and helped himself delicately to a pinch of snuff.

"The trouble with you, Marianne," he said, "is that you read too much Shakespeare and too many novels as a child. Othello, supposing that there ever was such a person, was a warrior of genius, and your truly great men can get away with almost anything. But do you think that if Napoleon had been born with a skin the color of bronze, like that handsome husband of yours, that he would be on the throne of France today? Not a bit of it. And where the prince is concerned, I think that the secluded life he chose, his hermitlike existence, was also a kind of tribute to his mother. It was for her and for her reputation that he imposed that penance on himself and cut himself off from love… I have the greatest respect for the man, Marianne, and for his most moving desire to see the continuation of his family, at the expense of his own justifiable aspirations and even of his own normal emotional and physical needs."

During the course of this speech, the vicomte's voice had taken on a depth of seriousness which went straight to Marianne's heart.

"You think I'm wrong, don't you? You think I ought to have agreed to have this child?"

"It is not for me to think one way or the other, my dear. Nor have I the right to judge you. You are entirely your own mistress, as regards both your future and your person. You have bought that right dearly enough."

She gazed at him intently but was unable to discover the least hint of blame or disappointment in that friendly face, and yet she sensed that had he loved her less her old friend might perhaps have judged her more severely.

"I can admit it to you, Jolival. I am ashamed of myself. He has never been anything but good to me. He risked everything for my sake, to protect me—and his care has even extended to Jason, whom he has no cause to love. I am sure it gives him no pleasure to know that that vile Damiani was the father of this child, and yet he longs for it as the greatest blessing heaven has to offer. That, too, I find hard to understand."

"Hasn't it occurred to you that he could have wiped Damiani out of his mind and be thinking of this child simply as yours, Marianne?"

Marianne gave a tiny shrug.

"That would suggest he feels a great deal more strongly than I can believe possible. No, Jolival, the prince sees this child simply as a Sant'Anna. On the wrong side of the blanket, maybe, but a Sant'Anna for all that."

"What does it matter to you what Prince Corrado's feelings are, seeing that you will not do it. Because your answer is still the same… isn't it, Marianne?"

Marianne did not answer. She moved a few steps away, as though trying to lose herself in the shadows of the darkened garden. She wanted to shut out every influence but those of her own inner voices. The inward struggle was almost won, but she needed time to acknowledge it. She knew already that she was beaten but the thought brought no bitterness. It was almost a relief and mingled with it was a kind of joyful pride, for the thing that she was about to give was something that no one else could. Moreover, the joy it would bring to that self-condemned recluse would be bound up with and somehow magnified by the revulsion she had overcome and by the physical ordeal that she was facing for him. It might even have some power to influence fate and constitute the first step to a happiness which was forever out of reach as long as it was founded on another's pain.

A seabird's cry came from somewhere close by. A gull, surely, like the many that had swooped and dived so often in the Sea Witch's wake. It brought with it the call of the open sea, of the wide open spaces beyond which the sun set on Europe and rose again on other lands unknown. She had to make herself worthy of all that…

Marianne turned suddenly. By the stone seat, Jolival's black figure had not moved but was standing quite still, as though waiting for something. She walked back slowly and, when she was close beside him, she spoke, very softly.

"Jolival? I suppose you know where Prince Sant'Anna lives?"

He nodded and she saw his eyes gleam in the darkness.

"Will you send word to him that I agree? I will give him the child he wants…"