Marianne and the Rebels

CHAPTER ONE Florentine Spring

Gazing at Florence, spread out in the sun in its nest of soft grey-green hills, Marianne asked herself why it was that this city drew her and yet irritated her at the same time. From where she stood, she could see only a part of it, framed between the dark spire of a cypress and the rose-coloured bank of laurels, but this fragment of the city hoarded beauty as a miser hoards gold: provided only there was enough of it.

Beyond the long gold streak of the Arno, spanned by the bridges that seemed almost on the point of collapsing under their burden of medieval shops, was a huddle of old-rose tiles tossed at random on a background of warm ochre-coloured, pale grey or milky-white walls. Here and there a special jewel emerged: the Duomo, a coral bubble poised on a guttering, inlaid ground; a half-open lily, frozen for ever in silvery stone on the old Palazzo della Signoria, plain, square towers blossoming into crenellations like so many butterflies, and campaniles gay as Easter candles in many-coloured marbles. More often than not, this beauty soared in a random way out of some dark and twisted alley, between the blank wall of a palazzo, double-locked like a strong-box, and a peeling, malodorous slum. And sometimes the stonework was breached by a scented riot pouring from an overgrown garden which no one had had sufficient bad taste to prune.

Florence lay warming its old gold and tarnished embroideries in the sun, basking under a sky of indigo in which a single small white cloud floated aimlessly, as if the future had no meaning for it and it had forgotten the inexorable passage of time; content only to feed its dreams upon the past.

It may have been something of this aspect of Florence that caught an element of Marianne's own nature on the raw. To her the past was important only in so far as it affected the present, and in the ominous shadow it cast over her future, that vague, almost impenetrable future towards which she was straining with her whole being.

True, she could have wished to share this moment, lulled by the beauty of the garden all around her, to share this fleeting moment with the man she loved. What woman would not? But two long months were yet to pass before she could meet Jason Beaufort in Venice, where his ship was to cast anchor in the lagoon, according to the promise made between them on that strangest and most tragic of all Christmas nights. Always supposing that they would ever meet again, for between Marianne and that meeting of her life stood the dread shadow of her unseen husband, Prince Corrado Sant'Anna, and the unavoidable, possibly even dangerous explanation which she owed him, and which she would have to cope with before long.

In a few hours' time, she must leave Florence and the comparative safety it had offered her and continue her journey to the white palazzo whose gentle, singing fountains had no power to exorcise its evil ghosts.

What would happen then? What compensation would the masked prince exact from one who had failed in her part of the bargain, to bring him the child of the imperial blood, the hope of which had prompted the marriage? What compensation… or what punishment?

For it was true, wasn't it, that for several generations the Sant'Anna princesses had come to evil ends?

In the hope of making sure of the best possible counsel for her defence, the most understanding and also the best informed, she had written, immediately on arrival in Florence, to her godfather, Gauthier de Chazay, Cardinal San Lorenzo with an urgent appeal for help, and dispatched it by a messenger. Gauthier was the man who had married her to the Prince in such strange circumstances, thinking to ensure a more than enviable life for her and for her child, while at the same time obtaining for a wretched, self-condemned hermit the heirs he either could not or would not produce for himself. It seemed to Marianne that the little cardinal was the best person to unravel a situation which had become worse than tragic and to find some acceptable solution.

But after several days' wait, the messenger had returned empty-handed. He had not found it easy to make contact with the restricted entourage of the Pope, whom Napoleon's men hardly allowed out of their sight, and the news he brought back was disappointing: Cardinal San Lorenzo was not at Savona and no one knew where he could be found.

Marianne had been disappointed, naturally, but not otherwise surprised. Ever since she had been old enough to understand, she had known that her godfather spent most of his time travelling mysteriously in the service of the Church, one of whose most active secret agents he appeared to be, or else for the exiled King Louis XVIII. He might now be at the ends of the earth, with nothing further from his mind than the fresh troubles besetting his goddaughter. She must get used to the idea that this hope had failed her.

The days to come, then, were not without their promise of clouds, Marianne reflected with a sigh: far from it. Yet she had long known that the generous gifts which fate had bestowed on her birth – beauty, charm, intelligence, courage – were not given for nothing, but were weapons with whose aid she might yet succeed in winning happiness. It remained to be seen if the price would be too heavy to pay…

'What have you decided, my lady?' The well-bred, courteous voice held an impatience ill-concealed.

Roused from her wistful reverie, Marianne shifted the pink sunshade that was supposed to protect her delicate complexion from the heat of the sun and lifted to Lieutenant Benielli an abstracted gaze which yet held a disquieting green glint of anger.

God what a bore the man was! In the six weeks since she had left Paris with the military escort under his command, Angelo Benielli had dogged her footsteps unmercifully.

He was a Corsican: stubborn, vindictive, jealous of the least bit of his authority, and possessed, besides, of a most unamiable character. Lieutenant Benielli admired only three people in the world: the Emperor, of course (and all the more so because they were compatriots); General Horace Sebastiani, because he hailed from the same village; and a third soldier, also a native of the Beautiful Isle, the General the Duke of Padua, Jean-Thomas Arrighi de Canova, because they were cousins and also because he was a genuine hero. Apart from these three, Benielli had scant regard for any of the great names of the imperial armies, even for Ney, Murat, Davout, Berthier or Poniatowski. The basis of this indifference was the fact that none of these marshals had the honour to be Corsicans, an unfortunate but, in Benielli's view, disqualifying fault.

It went without saying, in the circumstances, that the duty of acting escort to a woman, even a princess ravishingly lovely and honoured with the especial regard of his Majesty the Emperor and King, was to Benielli nothing more than a tiresome chore.

With the fine frankness which constituted the most delightful side of his character, he had let her understand as much before they reached the Corbeil stage, and from that moment the Princess Sant'Anna had begun seriously to wonder if she were an ambassadress or a prisoner. Angelo Benielli watched her like a law officer pursuing a pickpocket, arranged everything, decided everything from the length of the stages to the room she occupied at the inns (there was a soldier on guard outside her door each night), and might almost have required to be consulted on her choice of dress.

This state of affairs had not failed to provoke the antagonism of Arcadius de Jolival, who was not remarkable for patience at the best of times. The evenings on the early part of the journey had been punctuated by a series of verbal duels between the Vicomte and the officer. But Jolival's best arguments only came up against the single principle on which Benielli took his stand: it was his duty to watch over the Princess Sant'Anna until a certain date fixed in advance by the Emperor himself, and to do so in such a way that not the slightest accident of any kind should befall her. To this end he meant to take all necessary precautions. Beyond that there was nothing to be got out of him.

From initial irritation Marianne became at last resigned to having the lieutenant as her shadow and she even soothed Jolival. It had occurred to her that this surveillance, however irksome at present, might have its very real advantages when, flanked by her dragoons, she came to cross the threshold of the Villa Sant'Anna for the interview which lay ahead. If Prince Corrado Sant'Anna was contemplating any vengeance on Marianne, the obstinate bulldog Napoleon had fastened to his friend's heels might well guarantee her life. Nevertheless, it was extremely trying…

Half-annoyed and half-amused, she looked at him for a moment. It was a pity the lad should carry about with him that angry cat-like glare, because he had it in him to attract a woman, even one not easy to please. He was not tall but strongly built, with a stubborn face, tight-lipped and given an added arrogance by the jutting beak of a nose which projected from the shadow of his helmet. He blushed with a readiness surprising in one of his dark ivory complexion, but the eyes revealed beneath the bushy black brows and the lashes which rivalled Marianne's in length were, curiously, of an attractive light grey, flecked with gold in the sunshine.

Partly, perhaps, out of a very feminine desire for conquest, Marianne had amused herself on the journey by making occasional idle attempts to win him, but Benielli had remained as impervious to her charming smiles as to the flash of her green eyes.

One evening, when the inn they were dining at was less than usually grimy, she had offered him the bait of a white gown cut low enough to have done credit to Fortunée Hamelin, with the result that throughout the meal the lieutenant had performed a succession of astonishing ocular gymnastics. He had looked everywhere, from the strings of onions hanging from the beams, to the great black andirons in the hearth, or concentrated his attention on his plate or on endless pellets of bread rolled on the doth, but he never once regarded the golden curves revealed by her gown.

On the following night, more vexed and angry than she cared to admit, Marianne had dined alone in her room, wearing a dress whose frilled muslin collar came up almost to her ears, to the unspoken delight of Jolival who was deriving intense amusement from his friend's performance.

For the present, Benielli's attention was directed to a snail which had ventured out from beneath the friendly shade of a bay tree and was crossing the stone desert of the balustrade on which Marianne was leaning.

'Decided, Lieutenant? What should I have decided?' she asked at last.

The note of irony in her voice could not have escaped Benielli, who promptly flushed beetroot-coloured.

'But – what we are to do, Princess! Her Imperial Highness the Grand Duchess Elisa is leaving Florence tomorrow for her villa at Marlia. Do we go with her?'

'I don't see what else we can do, Lieutenant. Do you expect me to remain here alone? By alone, of course, I mean in your own delightful company…' As she spoke she snapped shut her sunshade and pointed with it in the direction of the imposing frontage of the Pitti Palace.

Benielli shrugged. It was evident that this cavalier reference to what was in effect an imperial residence had shocked him. A great respecter of persons, he had an inbred reverence for all things connected with Napoleon, even his houses. But he prudently held his peace, knowing that this strange Princess Sant'Anna could, when so inclined, make herself as disagreeable as he.

'We are leaving, then?'

'We are leaving. Besides, the Sant'Anna estates, to which you are to escort me, are quite close to her Imperial Highness's villa. Naturally I shall go with her.'

For the first time since Paris, Marianne saw on her bodyguard's face something which might, at a pinch, have been described as a smile. Her news had given him pleasure. At once, however, he clicked his heels, very correctly, and gave a military salute.

Then with your permission, Princess, I'll make the necessary arrangements and inform his Grace the Duke of Padua that we shall be leaving tomorrow.'

Before Marianne could open her mouth, he had swung on his heel and was heading for the palace, apparently in no way discommoded by the sabre banging against his legs.

'The Duke of Padua?' Marianne murmured in astonishment. 'Whatever has he to do with it?'

She could find no possible connection between her own affairs and this admittedly remarkable man, who had arrived in Florence two days previously. Until yesterday, she had never met him in her life, although Benielli, who regarded him as one of his three household gods, had been visibly delighted by his appearance.

A relative of the Emperor and also inspector general of cavalry, Arrighi had arrived at the Grand Duchess's court with no more than a single squadron of the fourth Colonne Mobile, destined for the service of the Viceroy of Italy, Prince Eugene. His real business was to enforce the laws concerning recruitment and to hunt down deserters and those avoiding military service. Ostensibly, his journey into Tuscany had been undertaken for no more serious purpose than to visit his cousin Elisa and renew old ties with the Corsican members of his family, whom he had not seen for years but who were now to make the journey expressly to meet him. No one at the court of Tuscany had the faintest inkling of the deeper reason underlying this family reunion in the midst of military duties.

The Grand Duchess, who had accorded a most gracious welcome to the Princess Sant'Anna, the ambassadress charged with the news of the birth of the little King of Rome, now welcomed Arrighi with enthusiasm, being almost as enamoured as Benielli of heroes and glory and Napoleon. At the grand ball held the previous night in honour of the Duke of Padua, Marianne had found her hand being bowed over by this distinguished, grim-faced person – a man who was still one of the finest horsemen in the world, despite the countless serious wounds received in the Emperor's service, almost any single one of which in another man might well have proved fatal.

Drawing on information gleaned from Elisa and from Angelo Benielli, Marianne had stared with a very natural interest at this man who had had his skull cracked open by a scimitar blow at the battle of Salalieh in Egypt, his external carotid artery severed by a shot before Acre, and suffered a terrible wound in the neck from a sabre at Wertigen, not to mention innumerable 'minor scratches', the man who, when half-decapitated by shrapnel, had still risen from his bed to charge at the head of his dragoons – only to return to it more shattered than before. In the interim, though, he had been a lion, saving countless lives and swimming unnumbered rivers – including recently the torrents of Spain.

Marianne had experienced a curious shock as their eyes met. She had the extraordinary impression, fleeting but real, that she was face to face with the Emperor himself. In Arrighi's eyes there was the same steely glint which seemed able to pierce through her like a knife. But her new acquaintance's voice broke the spell: it was low and hoarse, broken perhaps from yelling orders above the heat of charging cavalry, and utterly different from Napoleon's clipped accents, and Marianne had felt strangely relieved. An encounter with such a faithful image of the Emperor was certainly the last thing she wanted now, at the very moment when she was preparing to disregard his orders and flee from France, far away with Jason.

That first meeting with Arrighi had gone no further than an exchange of polite commonplaces which gave no hint that the general might be in any way concerned in Marianne's affairs. Consequently Benielli's oracular remark left her somewhat at a loss. Why on earth did he have to go and tell the Duke of Padua that she was leaving?

Too much put out to feel any inclination to await the return of her impetuous bodyguard, Marianne left her vantage point and began to descend the terraced slopes towards the palace, intending to go to her own rooms and give her orders to her maid, Agathe, regarding the morrow's departure. As she reached the Artichoke Fountain, she repressed a gesture of irritation. Benielli was coming back. But he was not alone. A few paces in front of him walked a man in the blue and gold uniform of a general, wearing an enormous cocked hat decked with white plumes. The Duke of Padua himself was coming hurriedly to meet her.

A meeting was unavoidable. Marianne paused, waiting, feeling vaguely uneasy and yet at the same time curious to know what the Emperor's cousin might have to say to her.

As he came within reach, Arrighi pulled off his cocked hat and bowed correctly, but his grey eyes were already boring inexorably into Marianne's. He spoke, without turning.

'You may leave us, Benielli.'

The lieutenant clicked his heels, about-turned and disappeared as though by magic, leaving the general and the Princess alone.

Not best pleased at finding her way thus effectively blocked, Marianne coolly folded her sunshade and setting the point to the ground, leaned both hands on its ivory handle as though she meant to consolidate her position. Then, with a little frown, she prepared to move in to the attack. Arrighi was before her.

'From your expression, madame, I deduce that this meeting is not to your liking. I must ask you to forgive me if I've interrupted your walk.'

'I had finished my walk, General. I was just about to go in. As to my pleasure or otherwise, I shall be able to tell you that when you have told me what you wish to say. You have something to say to me, have you not?'

'Certainly. But… may I ask you to take a turn with me in these magnificent gardens. They appear to be quite deserted, whereas the palace is thrown into confusion by preparations for departure – and this court rings like a bell!'

He bowed courteously, offering his arm. The injuries to his neck, concealed by the black stock and high gold-embroidered collar, prevented him from bending his head, but this stiffness suited his large frame.

He continued to watch her closely and Marianne found herself blushing under his regard, without quite knowing why. It might have been because it was hard to know what was going on behind those eyes.

With dignity, therefore, she accepted the proffered arm and as she laid her gloved hand on his braided sleeve she was suddenly aware of contact with something about as solid as a ship's rail. The man must be made of granite!

They walked on a little way in silence, avoiding the lawns and pavements of the big amphitheatre and making instead for the peace of a long avenue of oaks and cypresses where the glaring sunlight was diffused into single shafts.

Marianne sighed.

'I collect you don't wish to be overheard? Is our conversation of such importance?'

'The Emperor's commands are always important.'

'Ah… commands! I thought the Emperor had given me all his commands at our last meeting.'

'So it is not your orders but mine I wish to discuss. It is only natural that you should be informed since they concern yourself.'

This approach made Marianne uneasy. She knew Napoleon too well not to feel some alarm at the idea of orders concerning herself and given to no less a person than the Duke of Padua. This was unusual. Still dwelling on what the Emperor of the French might have in store for her now, she merely remarked 'Indeed?' in a tone so preoccupied that Arrighi stopped dead in the centre of the avenue, obliging her to do the same.

'Princess,' he said concisely, 'I am aware that you find this interview tiresome and would ask you to believe that I should greatly prefer to engage you in idle talk. A stroll in your company and in such pleasant surroundings would be most enjoyable. However, I regret that I must request you to give me your full attention.'

Why, thought Marianne, more amused than embarrassed, the man is angry! What a hot-tempered race these Corsicans are, to be sure!

But because she knew that she had been less than polite, she bestowed on him a mollifying smile of such brilliance that the soldier's stern face flushed.

'Forgive me, General. I did not mean to offend you, but I was deep in thought. It always makes me anxious, you know, when the Emperor goes to the trouble of giving special orders which concern me. His Majesty's… er… solicitude is apt to be somewhat demanding.'

As abruptly as his earlier move to anger, Arrighi now gave a bark of laughter and, repossessing himself of Marianne's hand, he carried it to his lips before tucking it back within his own.

'I quite agree,' he said cheerfully. 'It is always unnerving. But if we are friends?'

Marianne smiled again. 'We are friends.'

'Then, if we are friends, listen to me for a moment. My orders are to escort you personally to the Sant'Anna palace and, once within your husband's domain, not to let you out of my sight. The Emperor told me that you had some private matter to settle with the Prince, but one in which he too should have a say. He wants me, therefore, to be present at the interview with your husband.'

'Did the Emperor tell you that it is highly unlikely that you, any more than I myself, will be privileged to see Prince Sant'Anna with your own eyes?'

'Yes. He told me. Nevertheless, he wants me to hear at least what the Prince says to you, and what he wants of you.'

'He may,' Marianne said hesitantly, 'he may simply want me to stay with him?' This was her deepest and most dreadful fear, for she did not see how the Emperor's protection could prevent the Prince from keeping his wife at home.

'Then that's precisely where I come in. The Emperor wishes me to convey to the Prince his express wish that your meeting today shall be a brief one – a few hours at most. It is designed merely to show him that the Emperor accedes to his request and to allow you both to reach some agreement about the future. For the present—'

He paused and taking a large white handkerchief from his pocket mopped his brow with it. Even under the green roof of trees the heat made itself felt and in the heavy uniform, made heavier still by its weight of gold braid, it must have been very nearly intolerable. But Marianne pressed him to go on. She was beginning to find their conversation more and more interesting.

'For the present?'

'The present, madame, belongs neither to the Prince nor to yourself. The Emperor has need of you.'

'Has need of me? But what for?'

'I think this will explain.'

A letter sealed with the imperial cipher had appeared, as if by magic, between Arrighi's fingers. Marianne regarded it for a moment before taking it with an expression of such deep distrust that the general smiled.

'Don't be afraid. It won't explode.'

'I'm not so sure.'

Marianne took the letter to an old stone seat at the foot of an oak tree and sat down, her dress of rose-pink lawn spread like a graceful corolla around her. She slid nervous fingers under the seal of wax, unfolded the letter, and began to read. Like most of Napoleon's letters, it was brief.

'Marianne,' the Emperor had written, 'it occurs to me that the best way to protect you from your husband's resentment is to enlist you in the service of the Empire. You left Paris under cover of a somewhat vague diplomatic mission, now you have a real one, of great importance to France. The Duke of Padua, who is under orders to see that nothing occurs to interfere with your departure, will convey to you my detailed instructions concerning your mission. I look to you to prove yourself worthy of my trust and that of all Frenchmen. I shall know how to reward you. N.'

'His trust? The trust of all Frenchmen? What does it all mean?' Marianne managed to ask.

There was a world of bewilderment in the eyes she lifted to Arrighi's. She was half inclined to think Napoleon must have gone mad. To make sure, she re-read the letter carefully, word by word, under her breath, but this second perusal only confirmed her in the same dismal conclusion, which her companion had no difficulty in interpreting from her expressive face.

'No,' he said coolly, seating himself beside her. 'The Emperor is not mad. He is merely trying to gain time for you, once your husband has made his intentions clear to you. The only way to do that was to enroll you in his own diplomatic service, which is what he has done.'

'Me, a diplomat? But this is absurd! What government would listen to a woman?'

'The government of another woman, perhaps. In any case, there's no question of making you an official plenipotentiary. The service his Majesty requires of you is of a more… secret nature, such as he reserves for those most in his confidence and for his closest friends…'

'I dare say,' Marianne broke in, fanning herself irritably with the imperial letter. 'I have heard a good deal about the "immense" services which the Emperor's sisters have rendered him in the past, in a sphere which I find less than attractive. So let us come to the point, if you please. Just what is the Emperor asking me to do? And, more important, where is he sending me?'

'To Constantinople.'

If the great oak under which she sat had fallen on her, Marianne could not have been more astonished. She stared up at her companion's expressionless face, as though searching for some reflection of the brain fever to which, she was persuaded, Napoleon must have succumbed. But not only did Arrighi appear perfectly composed and self-possessed, he was also taking her hand in a grasp that was as firm as it was understanding.

'Hear me calmly for a moment and you will see the Emperor's idea is not so foolish after all. I might even go so far as to say that it's the best thing for you and for his policies in the present circumstances.'

Patiently, he outlined for his young hearer's benefit the European situation in that spring of 1811, and in particular the relations between France and Russia. Relations with the Tsar were deteriorating rapidly, despite the great maritime reunions at Tilsit. The barque of understanding was adrift. Although Alexander I had practically refused his sister Anna to his 'brother' Napoleon, he nevertheless regarded the Austrian marriage askance, nor had his view been improved by the French annexation of his brother-in-law's grand duchy of Oldenburg and of the Hanseatic towns. He had expressed his displeasure by reopening his ports to English shipping and by slapping heavy duties on goods imported from France, and prohibitive dues on the ships which carried them.

Napeoleon had countered by taking notice at last of the precise activities in which the handsome colonel Sasha Chernychev was indulging at his court, maintaining a satisfying spy network through the agency of various pretty women. The police had descended without warning on his Paris house. Even so, they were too late. The bird had flown. Warned in time, Sasha had elected to disappear, without hope of return, but the papers found there had told their own tale.

These circumstances, combined with the lust for power of two autocratic rulers, made war appear inevitable to attentive observers. Russia, however, had already been at war, since 1809, with the Ottoman Empire over the Danube forts: a war of attrition but one which, thanks to the strength of the Turkish forces, was keeping Alexander and his army fully occupied.

'That war must go on,' Arrighi said forcefully. 'It will keep a large part of the Russian forces busy on the Black Sea while we march on Moscow. The Emperor does not mean to wait until the Cossacks are on our doorstep. This is where you come in.'

Marianne had listened with considerable relish to the tale of her old enemy Chernychev's present troubles, aware that his barbarous treatment of herself had probably played its part in bringing those troubles upon him, but this was not enough to make her bow to the imperial commands without further question.

'Do you mean that I'm to persuade the Sultan to continue the war? But you must have thought that—'

The general interrupted her with some impatience.

'We have thought of everything. Including the fact that you are a woman and that, as a good Muslim, the Sultan Mahmud regards women in general as inferior creatures with whom it is not proper to negotiate. Consequently, it is not to him you go but to the Haseki Sultan. The Empress Mother is a Frenchwoman, a Creole from Martinique and own cousin to the Empress Josephine, with whom she was for some time brought up. There was a great bond of affection between them as children, a bond which the sultana has never forgotten. Aimée Dubucq de Rivery, whom the Turks call Nakshidil, is not only a woman of great beauty but also an extremely active and intelligent one. She has a long memory too, and has never accepted the Emperor's repudiation of her cousin and his remarriage. Since she has great influence over her son Mahmud, who worships her, this has led to a distinct chill in our relations. Our ambassador, Monsieur Latour-Maubourg, is at his wits' end and crying out for help. He can no longer even obtain an audience at the Seraglio.'

'And you think the doors will open more readily to me?'

'The Emperor is sure of it. He has not forgotten that you are in some degree related to our erstwhile Empress, which makes you kin to the Sultana also. It is on those grounds that you will seek and obtain audience. In addition, you will have in your possession a letter from General Sebastiani, who defended Constantinople against the English fleet when he was our ambassador there. His wife, Françoise de Franquetot de Coigny, who died in the city in 1807, was the Sultana's close friend. You will be armed with the best possible introductions and I don't think you'll have any difficulty in gaining admittance. You can mourn with Nakshidil over the fate of Josephine as much as you like; you may even blame Napoleon since you will not be there in an official capacity… but never lose sight of French interests. Your own charm and skill will do the rest. But Kaminski's Russians must remain on the Danube. Are you beginning to understand?'

'I think so. But forgive me if I seem slow – all this is so new to me, and so very strange… this woman of whom I have never heard, yet who is a Sultana! Can't you tell me anything about her? How did she get where she is?'

Marianne's chief object in getting Arrighi talking was to gain time for herself. This thing she was being asked to do was very serious for her since, although it had the advantage that it offered a way of avoiding Prince Corrado's vengeance, for the time being at least, it was also more than likely to make her miss her appointed meeting with Jason. This she would not, could not do at any price.

She had waited too long and with such agonizing impatience for the moment when she would be in his arms at last and could set out with him for the land and the future which fate and her own stupidity had so far denied her. With all her heart, she desired to help the man she had once loved and whom she would always love in a way… but if it meant the loss of her true love and the destruction of a happiness she felt that she had earned…

At the same time, she was listening, with half an ear, to the story of the little fair-haired, blue-eyed Creole girl who had been captured at sea by Barbary pirates, as the culmination of an extraordinary series of adventures, and taken to Algiers, from where she had been sent by the dey of that city as a gift to the Grand Signior at Constantinople. She heard how Aimée had charmed the last days of the old sultan Abdul Hamid I, and had a son by him, and had then gone on to win the love of Selim, the heir to the throne. By means of this love, which for her had gone as far as the supreme sacrifice, and that of her son Mahmud, the little Creole had become a queen.

In Arrighi's colourful phrases, the narrative took on such an irresistible vividness that Marianne found herself longing to know this woman, to meet her and perhaps to win her friendship. The extraordinary life that she had led seemed to Marianne more exciting than anything she had read of in the novels she had devoured in the schoolroom – stranger even than her own history. Even so, who could outweigh Jason in her thoughts?

Cautious as ever and determined to make quite sure of what Napoleon had in store for her, she asked, after the slightest of hesitations:

'Have I… any choice?'

'No,' Arrighi told her bluntly. 'You have not. The Emperor gives no one any choice where the good of the Empire is concerned. He commands – myself, as well as you. I am to escort you – to be present at your – encounter with the Prince and to make sure the outcome is in accordance with the Emperor's wishes. You'll be obliged to put up with my presence and act in all things as I shall direct. I've had a copy of his Majesty's detailed instructions regarding your mission left in your room so that you may study them tonight. You would do well to learn them by heart and then destroy them. With them is Sebastiani's letter of introduction.'

'And… when I leave the Villa Sant'Anna? Do you go with me to Constantinople? I understood that you have business here?'

Arrighi did not answer immediately. Instead, he studied Marianne's averted face. As always when she was unable to betray her real thoughts, she preferred not to meet his eye, and because of this she missed the smile which flickered across his face.

'By no means,' he said at last, in an oddly detached tone. 'I am merely to escort you to Venice.'

'To—?' Marianne could scarcely believe her ears.

'Venice,' Arrighi repeated blandly. 'It is the most convenient port, being both the nearest and at the same time the most likely. Besides, it is just the place to attract a young and lovely woman who is bored.'

'That's as may be. Yet it seems odd to me that the Emperor should want me to take ship from an Austrian port—'

'Austrian? What gave you that idea?'

'But I thought – that is, I have always understood that Bonaparte gave Venice back to Austria by the treaty of – what was it?'

'Campo Formio,' Arrighi supplied. 'But Austerlitz and Pressburg have happened since then. There is the marriage with Vienna, true, but Venice is ours. Otherwise how could the Emperor have called his daughter, if he had one, the Princess of Venice?'

It seemed obvious enough, and yet something was not quite right. Even Jason, the sea-rover who generally knew what he was talking about, had given her to understand that Venice was Austrian, and Arcadius, that universal fount of information, had not corrected him… Marianne did not have to wait long for the explanation.

'I dare say you were misled', the Duke of Padua was saying, 'by the strong rumours that Venice was to be returned to Austria at the time of the marriage. In any case, the city charter is still rather special. In practical if not in political terms it enjoys a kind of extraterritorial status. That is why there has been no official replacement yet for General Menou, who died recently. He was an odd fellow, by the way, a convert to Islam. The city is altogether much more cosmopolitan than French. You'll find it much easier there to play the part of a rich lady with nothing to do and desirous of travelling than in the stricter atmosphere of other ports. You can wait quietly for a passage on a neutral vessel bound for the east – many such put in to Venice.'

'A – a neutral vessel?' Marianne said faintly, feeling her heart thud as her eyes, this time, sought those of her companion. But Arrighi appeared to have developed a sudden interest in a butterfly which was hovering conveniently at hand.

'Yes… American, perhaps… The Emperor has heard that they are known to anchor in the lagoon.'

This time Marianne had no answer. Surprise had left her speechless. Speechless, but not without the power of thought.

Reaching her own apartments, a few minutes later, she made praiseworthy efforts to recover the shreds of her dignity. She was well aware that this had suffered greatly as, oblivious of time, place, and even the most elementary decorum due to her position, it had finally sunk home what was meant by the junction of those three words: Venice and American vessel. She had quite simply flung her arms round the Duke of Padua's august neck and planted two smacking kisses on his clean-shaven cheeks.

To tell the truth, Arrighi had not shown any undue surprise at this startlingly familiar assault. He had laughed heartily and then as, blushing furiously, she had attempted to stammer some kind of apology, had hugged her back and kissed her in a most fatherly way, saying:

'The Emperor warned me you would be pleased but I hadn't hoped to find my mission so pleasantly rewarded. All the same, one final word: you must realize the gravity of your mission. It is very real and important. His Majesty is counting on you.'

'His Majesty is perfectly right, Duke. As always, surely? For my own part, I would rather die than disappoint the Emperor when he not only takes such pains for my welfare but even concerns himself for my future happiness.'

Sweeping him a final curtsey, she had left Arrighi to enjoy the delightful shades of the Boboli Gardens on his own. She was overflowing with gratitude and sped back towards the palace, her feet in their pink satin slippers barely touching the sanded paths.

With three words Arrighi had ripped apart the storm clouds, banished her nightmares and opened a great shining passage through the looming mists which hid the future, enabling her to step out confidently towards it. Everything had become wonderfully simple.

With General Arrighi to protect her, she need have nothing to fear from her strange husband and, more to the point, she could stop worrying about how to get rid of the tiresome Benielli.

She was to be delivered practically into Jason's arms, and Jason, she knew, would not refuse to help her carry out a mission laid on her by the man to whom they both owed so much. They would have such a wonderful voyage together, on that great ship which she had watched with such an aching heart as it vanished into the mist off the coast of Brittany. But now the Sea Witch would soon be heading for the scented shores of the east, bearing its cargo of lovers lightly over the blue waves, through days of burning sun and nights ablaze with stars. How good it must be to make love underneath the stars!

Lost in her shining dream, her imagination already slipping its cable, Marianne did not pause to wonder how Napoleon could have come to know of her most secret thoughts, a plan whispered hastily into her ear in that last passionate embrace with her lover.

She was quite used to his habit of knowing everything without having to be told. He was a man endowed with superhuman powers of reading what lay in men's hearts. And yet…? Was it possible, after all, that this miracle too was the work of François Vidocq? The ex-convict turned policeman seemed possessed of a remarkably acute hearing, when he took the trouble to use it.

Wholly wrapped up in themselves and in the grief of this fresh separation, neither Jason nor Marianne had thought to notice whether Vidocq had been within earshot. Well, true or not, this betrayal, if betrayal it were, was the source of too much happiness for Marianne to feel anything but heartfelt gratitude.

She reached the palace still bubbling with happiness and floated up the great stone staircase without paying the slightest attention to the activity going on all around her. Footmen and waiting-women hurried up and down, bearing everything from leather travelling cases and carpet-bags to curtains and articles of furniture. The staircase echoed to the din and clatter of a removal on a princely scale.

The Grand Duchess would not return to Florence before the winter and in addition to an extensive wardrobe she liked to carry with her all the familiar objects of her everyday life. Only the guards on the doors maintained their accustomed rigidity, in hilarious contrast to the domestic upheaval going on around them.

Marianne was almost running by the time she came to the three rooms which had been assigned to her on the second floor. She could not wait to find Jolival and tell him of her happiness. She could scarcely breathe for excitement and she had to share it with someone. But she looked for him in vain. Both the Vicomte's own room and the little sitting-room they shared were empty.

She was both irritated and downcast when a servant informed her that 'Monsieur le Vicomte was at the museum'. She knew what that meant. In all probability, Arcadius would not be back until very late and she would have to keep her glad news to herself for hours.

Ever since their arrival in Florence, Jolival had been spending a great deal of his time officially visiting the Uffizi Palace and, unofficially, frequently a certain house in the via Tornabuoni where the play was high and the company exclusive. The Vicomte had been introduced into this circle by a friend on a previous visit and had retained nostalgic memories, stimulated to some extent by the intermittent smiles of Fortune, but rather more by recollections of the languishing and extremely romantic charms of the hostess, a violet-eyed countess with a claim to Medici blood in her veins.

All in all, Marianne could not in justice blame her old friend for paying a final visit to his enchantress. After all, he was to leave Florence with Marianne in the morning.

Postponing her confidences, therefore, until later, Marianne went into her own room, where she found her maid, Agathe, up to her neck in a sea of satins, laces, gauzes, lawns, taffetas and fripperies of all kinds which she was stowing away methodically in big trunks lined with pink toile de Jouy.

Flushed with exertion, her cap askew, Agathe nevertheless put down the pile of linen she was carrying to hand her mistress the two letters which were waiting. One was a formidable, official-looking document sealed with the Emperor's personal cipher, the other a much smaller affair, artistically folded and adorned with a frivolous seal of green wax impressed with a dove. Since she had a very good idea of what to expect from the big letter, Marianne turned first to the little one.

'Do you know who brought this?' she asked her maid.

'A footman belonging to Baroness Cenami. He came soon after your highness went out. He made a great thing of its being urgent.'

Marianne nodded and went to the window to peruse her new friend's letter. Zoe Cenami was, in fact, the only friend she had made since coming into Italy. She had been given a letter of introduction to her by Fortunée Hamelin before leaving Paris.

The young Baroness was a fellow-Creole and before entering the Princess Elisa's household, where she met her future husband, had been a frequent visitor at the house of Madame Campan, where Fortunée's daughter Leontine was receiving her education. A common origin had created a bond of friendship between Madame Hamelin and Mademoiselle Guilbaud, a friendship continued by letter after Zoe's departure for Italy. Not long after her arrival there, she had married the charming Baron Cenami, brother of the Princess's favourite chamberlain and one of the best placed men at court by virtue of his elder's attractions. Zoe's own wit and elegance had soon won her Elisa's regard and she had been entrusted with the upbringing of the Princess's daughter, the boisterous Napoléone-Elisa, whose tomboyish ways put a severe strain on the young Creole's patience.

Marianne, aided by her friend's good offices, had found herself naturally drawn to the charming woman who became her guide through Florence and had introduced her to the pleasant circle of friends who met most afternoons in the pretty drawing-room in the Lungarno Accaiuoli.

There the Princess Sant'Anna had been welcomed in a simple and comfortable way which, little by little, made her feel at home there. It was strange that Zoe should have bothered to write, since she was expecting her as usual that evening.

The note was short but disturbing. Zoe seemed a prey to some strong anxiety.

'My dear Princess,' she had written in a scratchy, nervous hand, 'I must see you, but not at my house. For the sake of my own peace of mind and perhaps of the life of one dear to me. I shall be in the church of Or San Michele at five o'clock, in the right aisle, which is the one with the Gothic tabernacle. Wear a veil so that you will not be recognized. You are the only person who can save your unhappy Z.'

Marianne re-read the letter carefully in a good deal of bewilderment. Then, crossing to the hearth where owing to the prevailing dampness of the palace a fire still burned even at that late season, she tossed Zoe's missive into the flames. It was gone in a moment but Marianne continued to watch it until the last white ashes had fallen apart. She was thinking hard.

Zoe must be in dire trouble to have called on her for help like this, for she was noted for her shyness and discreet behaviour, as well as for her talent for making friends. There were many of these of far longer standing than Marianne, so why call on her? Because she inspired more confidence? Because they were both French? Because she was a friend of that indefatigable help in trouble, Fortunée Hamelin…?

Whatever the answer, Marianne, glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece, saw that it was not far off five already and called to Agathe to come and dress her.

'Give me my olive-green dress with the black velvet trimmings, my black straw hat and a Chantilly-lace veil to go with it.'

Agathe's top half emerged slowly backwards out of the trunk which had all but swallowed her and she stared at her mistress blankly.

'Wherever is your highness going in that gloomy get-up? Not to Madame Cenami's, surely?'

Agathe enjoyed all the devoted servant's freedom of speech, and normally Marianne was ready to indulge her. Today, however, was an exception. Marianne's temper was sharpened by her anxiety for Zoe.

'Since when has it been any business of yours where I go?' she snapped. 'Do as I ask, that is all.'

'But if Monsieur le Vicomte should return and ask for you?'

'Then you will tell him all you know: that I have gone out. And ask him to wait for me. I don't know when I shall be back.'

Agathe said no more but went in search of the required garments, leaving Marianne to slip hastily out of the rose-pink lawn which she felt was rather too conspicuous for a discreet assignation in a church, especially since Zoe had asked her to come veiled.

Helping her mistress on with the plain dress, Agathe, still bridling from her set-down, inquired through pursed lips whether she was to order Gracchus to bring the carriage.

'No. I'll walk. The exercise will do me good and it is only on foot that Florence is to be seen to the best advantage.'

'Very well, my lady, if you don't mind going up to your ankles in mud…'

'Never mind. It will be worth it.'

A few minutes later, Marianne was dressed and making her way out of the palace. The full lace veil placed a delicate screen of leaves and flowers between her and the sparkling daylight as, walking quickly, with her skirts lifted a little to keep them from the dirt of the streets, where patches of wet mud still lingered here and there in the shade, left over from the last shower of rain, Marianne made her way in the direction of the Ponte Vecchio. She crossed it without a glance at the jewellers' shops ranged in picturesque clusters on either hand.

In her gloved hands she held a fat morocco-bound missal with gilt corners. Agathe had seen her take it, eyes bulging with curiosity but her lips discreetly sealed. Thus armed, Marianne had the perfect air of a well-bred lady going to evening service. It had the added advantage of preserving her from the unwanted gallantries which every Italian male worth the name felt in honour bound to address to any personable woman: and the streets, at that hour, were always full of men.

A few minutes' brisk walk brought Marianne within sight of the old church of Or San Michele, formerly the property of the rich Florentine guilds, which had adorned it with the priceless statuary standing in its Gothic niches. She was hot in her enveloping black lace and heavy cloth. There was sweat on her forehead and trickling down her spine. It seemed a sin to be muffled up like this when the weather was so warm and the sky a canopy of exquisite and ever-changing hues. Florence seemed to be floating in a huge and iridescent soap-bubble lifting to the whim of the setting sun.

The city, so shuttered and secretive in the heat of the day, opened its doors and spilled out into the streets and squares a throng of chattering humanity, while the thin sound of convent bells called to prayer those men and women whose conversation was henceforth dedicated to God.

The church struck surprisingly chill, but its coolness did her good: it was a reviving coolness. It was so dark inside, with only the dim light that filtered through the windows, that Marianne had to pause for a moment by the holy-water stoup until her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom.

Soon, however, she was able to make out the double nave and, in the right-hand aisle, Orcagna's masterpiece, the splendid medieval tabernacle aglow with soft dull gold in the trembling flames of three altar candles. But no figure, male or female, prayed before it. The church appeared empty and the only sound which echoed beneath its great roof was the shuffling footsteps of the verger making his way back to his sacristy.

The emptiness and silence made Marianne uneasy. She had come with a strange reluctance, torn between her real wish to help her charming friend in her trouble and a vague foreboding. Moreover she knew that she was on time and Zoe was the soul of punctuality. It was odd and disquieting: so much so that Marianne had half a mind to turn round and go home. It was thoroughly unnatural, this meeting in a dimly-lighted church…

Without thinking, almost, she took a step or two towards the door but then the words of the letter recurred to her:

'… for the sake of my own peace of mind and perhaps the safety of one dear to me…'

No, she could not leave that call for help unanswered. Zoe, who had given her this extraordinary proof of confidence, would never understand, and Marianne would blame herself for the rest of her life if a tragedy occurred which she had not done everything in her power to prevent.

Fortunée Hamelin would never have known that impulse to retreat, that moment of distrust: she was always ready to leap into the fire for a friend, or throw herself into the water to save a cat. The church was empty. Very well. All that meant was that something had happened to delay Zoe…

Thinking that the least she could do was to wait for a few minutes, Marianne advanced slowly towards the appointed meeting place. She gazed at the tabernacle for a moment before sinking to her knees in fervent prayer. She had too much to thank heaven for to neglect so excellent an opportunity. It was, in any case, the best way of passing the time.

Deep in her prayers, she failed to notice the approach of a man draped from chin to calves in a black cloak with triple shoulder-capes, and she started suddenly when a hand was laid on her shoulder and an urgent voice whispered in her ear.

'Come, madame, come quickly! Your friend has sent me to find you. She implores you to come to her…'

Marianne had risen swiftly and was studying the man before her. His face was strange to her. It was the kind of face, moreover, which gives nothing away, broad, placid and unremarkable, but imprinted now with desperate anxiety.

'What's happened? Why does she not come herself?'

'Something terrible. Only come with me, madame, I beg of you! Every moment counts…'

But Marianne stayed where she was, struggling to understand first this strange meeting and now this stranger… It was all so unlike the tranquil Zoe.

'Who are you?' she asked.

The man bowed with all the marks of respect.

'A servant, Excellenza, that's all… but my family have always served the Baron's and my lady honours me with her confidence. Must I tell her that your highness will not come?'

Quickly, Marianne put out her hand and detained the messenger, who seemed on the point of withdrawal.

'No, please don't go! I'm coming.'

The man bowed again but in silence and followed her through the shadowy church to the door.

'I have a carriage close by,' he said when they had emerged into the light and air again. 'It will be quicker.'

'Have we far to go? The palace is very near.'

'To the villa at Settignano. Now, if you will forgive me, that is all I am allowed to tell you. I'm only a servant, you understand…'

'A devoted servant, I'm sure. Very well. Let us go.'

The carriage which was waiting a little farther on proved to be an elegant brougham with no crest visible on the panels. It was standing underneath the archway connecting the church with the half-ruined Palazzo dell'Arte della Lana. The steps were already down and a man dressed in black stood by the door. The driver, on his box, seemed to be dozing, but Marianne was no sooner inside than he cracked his whip and the horses moved off at a brisk trot.

The devoted servant had taken the seat beside Marianne. She frowned a little at this familiarity but said nothing, attributing the solecism to his evident distress.

They left Florence by the Porte San Francesco. Marianne had not spoken since leaving Or San Michele, but cast about anxiously in her mind for the explanation of this sudden disaster which had befallen Zoe Cenami. She could hit on only one. Zoe was attractive and she was courted ardently by many men, some of them of great charm. Was it possible that one of them had succeeded in winning her favours and that some indiscretion, or malice, had made Cenami aware of his misfortune? If that were so, then Marianne did not see what help she could give her friend, except perhaps in calming the outraged husband. Certainly, Cenami had a high opinion of the Princess Sant'Anna. It was not a theory very flattering to Zoe's virtue, but what else could justify a cry for help so urgent and so fraught with extraordinary precautions?

It was as hot as an oven inside the closed carriage and Marianne was driven to lift her veil. She leaned forward to lower the window, but her companion held her back.

'Better not, madame. Besides, we're already there.'

It was true. The carriage had left the main road and was jolting along a narrow way between the ivy-clad ruins of what appeared to have been a convent. Below, at the end of the track, the Arno shone like brass in the setting sun.

'But – this is not Settignano!' Marianne exclaimed. 'What does this mean? Where are we?'

She turned to her companion, fear struggling with anger in her face, but the man only answered with impassive calm:

'Where I was ordered to take your highness. A comfortable travelling coach is waiting. You will be quite comfortable. Necessarily so, since we shall travel through the night.'

'A travelling coach? Travelling… where to?'

'To where your highness is awaited with impatience. You will see…'

The carriage stopped amid the ruins. Instinctively, Marianne clutched at the door with both hands, as though clinging to her last refuge. She was frightened now, horribly frightened of this man with his smooth, over-polite manners and his eyes which she now saw to be both shifty and cruel.

'Who awaits me? And whose orders? You are not a servant of the Cenami?'

'Correct. I take my orders from his Serene Highness, Prince Corrado Sant'Anna.'

CHAPTER TWO The Ravisher

With a little scream, Marianne shrank back into the carriage, staring with eyes of horror at the peaceful, romantic scene, all bathed in the glorious sunset light which was framed in the open door. To her it might have been a prison.

Her companion got out and stood beside the man who had lowered the steps, bowing respectfully as he offered his hand.

'If your highness will descend…'

Hypnotized by the two black-clad figures who seemed to her suddenly like the ambassadors of fate, Marianne got out, moving like an automaton, knowing that it was useless to struggle. She was alone in an isolated spot with three men whose power was all the greater because they represented one whose authority she was not entitled to ignore. Her husband's rights were paramount and she now had every reason to fear the worst. If it were not so, Sant'Anna would never have dared to have her abducted like this by his servants, right in the middle of Florence and almost under the nose of the Grand Duchess herself.

Beneath the ruined arch of a ghostly cloister, which in any other circumstances would have charmed her, Marianne saw that a large travelling berlin was in fact standing ready waiting. A man was standing at the horse's heads. The berlin itself, while not new, was well-made and evidently designed to spare its occupants as much as possible the discomforts of the road.

And yet, like Dante at the gate of hell, she seemed to see written above it the words: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. She had thought to cheat the man who had trusted her, only to find she had been cheated in turn. Too late she realized that Zoe Cenami had never written that letter, that she did not need her help and must be quietly occupied at that very moment in welcoming the usual company of friends to her house. As long as Marianne could rely on the powerful protection of Napoleon, she had turned to it as to a cliff-girt isle against which the most terrifying waves must break in vain. And finally she had believed that her love for Jason made her somehow invulnerable and could only end in triumph. She had gambled and she had lost.

The unseen husband had claimed his rights. Deceived, he had a brutal way of making himself felt, and when the fugitive found herself face to face with him at last, even if what she faced were still a blank mirror, and she would stand alone, with her hands tied and her soul defenceless. There would be no Duke of Padua, with his powerful form and voice accustomed to command, to stand as a bulwark, proclaiming the inalienable rights of the Emperor.

Suddenly a faint glimmer of light penetrated Marianne's despair. Her disappearance would be noticed. Arcadius, Arrighi, even Benielli would look for her. One of them might guess the truth. Then they would go straight to Lucca to check, at least, that the Prince had no part in her abduction, and Marianne knew them well enough to be sure that they would not readily abandon hope. Jolival, for one, was perfectly capable of taking the Villa dei Cavalli apart, stone by stone, to find her.

Nothing on earth could have made her betray her fears to the servants, whom she saw as nothing more than tools, so she sat with apparent calm, concealing the raging anxiety in her heart, watching the preparations for this new departure as if it did not concern her. She watched the man who held the horses hand them over to the coachman, before setting off at a tranquil pace with the brougham, back in the direction of Florence. Then the berlin itself moved off slowly, driving back up the track between the ruins to the road. It was this road which had dragged Marianne out of her state of apathy.

Instead of heading straight for the red disc of the setting sun, now about to sink behind the city's campaniles, so as to skirt the town and come out on the Lucca road, the heavy coach was continuing eastward in the same direction as that taken by the brougham a little earlier. They were making for the Adriatic, in quite the opposite direction from Lucca. It might, of course, be a ruse intended to throw pursuers off the scent, but Marianne could not help risking an oblique question.

'If you are my husband's people,' she observed coldly, 'you must be taking me to him. Yet you are taking the wrong road.'

Without deviating from a politeness which, however necessary, Marianne was beginning to find overdone, the black man answered in the same oily voice:

'Many roads lead to the master, Excellent. One has only to know which way to choose. His highness does not always reside at the Villa dei Cavalli. We are going to another of his estates, so please your ladyship.'

Marianne was chilled by the irony in the last words. It did not please her in the slightest, but what choice had she? A cold sweat prickled unpleasantly at the roots of her hair and she felt the colour drain from her face. Her slender hope that Jolival and Arrighi would find her evaporated. She had known, of course, from Donna Lavinia, that her husband did not live at Lucca all the time but was sometimes found at his other properties. To which was she now being taken? And how could her friends discover her there when she herself did not know the first thing about these places?

By not listening to the reading of the marriage contract on her wedding night, she had lost a good opportunity of learning… but that was only one of so many opportunities already lost in the course of her short life. The best and greatest of all had been at Selton Hall when Jason had asked her to fly with him; the second in Paris when she had refused once more to go with him.

At the thought of Jason, grief threatened to overwhelm her and she became a prey to bitter depression. This time fate was against her, and nothing and nobody was going to come and put a spoke in its wheel on her behalf.

Her husband's was to be the last word. The little hope that remained to her now was all in her own charm and intelligence, in the kindness of Donna Lavinia who was always near the Prince and who at least would plead for her, and perhaps in the occurrence of some chance to escape. If such a chance did present itself, Marianne was, of course, fully determined to grasp it and to use it, to the best of her ability. It would not be the first escape she had contrived!

She recalled with some pleasure and no little pride her escape from Morvan the Wrecker, and, more recently, from the barn at Mortefontaine. Luck had been with her both times, but even so she had not managed so badly!

Her need to find Jason, a deep, visceral longing which came from the inmost parts of her being to fill her heart and brain, would act as a stimulant, supposing any were needed beyond her own passionate desire for freedom.

Besides… she might be wrong: there might be no need to torment herself about Sant'Anna's plans for her. All her fears stemmed from Eleonora Sullivan's hair-raising confidences and from the drama surrounding this abduction, but she had to admit that she had left her invisible husband little alternative. Perhaps, after all, he would be merciful, understanding…

To boost her courage, Marianne went over in her mind the moment when Corrado Sant'Anna had rescued her from Matteo Damiani, on that dreadful night in the little temple. She had almost died of fright when she saw him burst from the shadows, a dark, ghostly figure masked in pale leather and mounted on the plunging white shape of his horse, Ilderim. And yet this terrifying apparition had brought rescue and life.

Afterwards, too, he had tended her with a solicitude that might easily have suggested love. Suppose he did love her… No, better not to think of that, but make her mind a blank and so try to recover a little calm, a little peace.

Yet, in spite of herself, her thoughts would keep turning to the enigmatic figure of her unknown husband, caught between fear and a queer uncontrollable curiosity. Perhaps this time she would penetrate the secret of the white mask…

The coach was still travelling into the oncoming dark. Soon enveloping darkness lay all around, and the coach pressed on through the mountains, from stage to stage, on its journey to the end of the night.

Marianne slept at last, exhausted, after refusing the food offered her by Giuseppe – for this she learned was her kidnapper's name. She was in too much anguish of mind to swallow a bite.

Daylight woke her, and the sudden jolt as the berlin pulled up for fresh horses outside a small hostelry smothered in vines and climbing plants. They were on a hillside at the top of which a little red-walled town clustered round a squat castle, its towers almost hidden behind the red roofs. The sun revealed a landscape of neat rectangular fields, intersected by irrigation ditches on the banks of which a variety of fruit trees served to support great swags of vines, while far in the distance, beyond a broad band of darker green, a sheet of silvery blue spread to the horizon. The sea.

Giuseppe, who had got out when the coach stopped, now poked his head in the door.

'If your ladyship cares to descend for refreshment, I should be happy to be your escort.'

'Escort me? It does not occur to you, I suppose, that I might prefer to be alone? I wish, yes, I wish to restore my appearance a little. Surely you must see that I am covered with dust?'

'There is a room in the house where your ladyship may retire for that purpose. I shall be satisfied to remain outside. The window is very small.'

'In other words, I am a prisoner! Hadn't you better admit it openly?'

Giuseppe bowed with exaggerated courtesy.

'A prisoner? There's a nice word for a lady in the care of a devoted servant! My duty is merely to see that you reach your destination safely, and it's for that reason only that I have orders not to leave you for any cause whatsoever.'

'Suppose I shout and scream?' Marianne exclaimed with exasperation. 'What will you do then, master gaoler?'

'I should not advise it, Excellenza. In the event of any shouts and screams my orders are clear… and far from pleasant.'

Marianne was outraged to see the black muzzle of a pistol gleaming in her so-called servant's plump hand.

Giuseppe gave her a moment to ponder this before tucking the weapon back unconcernedly in his waistband.

'In any case,' he went on, 'screaming will do no good. This place belongs to his highness. The people would not understand why the Princess should be calling for help against the Prince.'

Giuseppe's face was as bland as ever but Marianne knew from the cruel glint in his eye that he would not hesitate to kill her in cold blood in the event of a struggle.

Beaten, if not resigned, she decided that for the present her best course was to submit. For all the undoubted comfort of the coach, her body ached from the bad roads and she was longing to stretch her legs.

With Giuseppe, in his role of faithful family servant, close behind her, Marianne went inside the house. A peasant girl in a red petticoat and bright blue kerchief made her best curtsy, and later, when Marianne had withdrawn for a moment to the room he had mentioned, to wash and comb her hair, the girl brought her brown bread, cheese, olives and onions, and sheep's milk, on all of which the traveller fell hungrily. Her refusal of food the night before had been largely a gesture of bravado, mixed with sheer temper, but had been foolish because she needed all her strength. Now, in the fresh morning air, she discovered that she was famished.

Meanwhile fresh horses had been harnessed, and as soon as the Princess declared herself ready the coach resumed its way down to a low, level plain which seemed to go on for ever.

Strengthened and refreshed, Marianne elected to wrap herself once more in lofty silence, despite the questions which burned on her lips. In any case, she had no doubt that she would soon arrive at her destination, when her questions would be answered. They were heading straight towards the sea, without turning aside to right or left, so that the place they were making for must be on the coast.

At about midday they came to a large fishing village, its low houses clustered along the banks of a sandy watercourse. After the cool shade of the thick belt of pines through which they had just passed, with its tall dark wide-spreading trees, the heat seemed much greater than it really was and the village more forsaken.

Here was a realm of sand. As far as the eye could see, the shore was a vast sandy beach, patched here and there with clumps of marram grass, while the village itself, with its crumbling watch-tower and occasional fragments of Roman wall, might have emerged directly from the encroaching sands.

Alongside the houses, great nets hung drying on poles in the still air, like giant dragonflies, and a handful of boats lay at anchor in the canal which served as a harbour. The largest and smartest of these was a slender tartane. A sailor in a stocking cap was busy setting the red and black sails.

The berlin drew up on the edge of the water and the fisherman beckoned with a sweep of his arm. Once again, Giuseppe invited Marianne to descend.

'Have we arrived?' she asked.

'We have reached the port, Excellenza, but not the end of our journey. The second stage is by sea.'

Amazement, alarm and anger were stronger than Marianne's pride.

'By sea?' she cried. 'Where are we going? Do your orders include keeping me in ignorance?'

'By no means, Excellenza, by no means,' Giuseppe responded, bowing. 'We are going to Venice. This way the journey involves less discomfort.'

'To Ve—'

In other circumstances Marianne might well have laughed at the way the jewel of the Adriatic seemed to have the lodestone drawing all and sundry. It was certainly important to Napoleon that she should take ship from Venice, even if his reason had been partly kindness, and now here was the Prince, her husband, also selecting Venice as the place in which to make his wishes known to her! But for the nameless dread which hung over her, it would have been funny…

She got out and took a few turns beside the water to calm herself. The little sand-locked harbour was lapped in a profound peace. In the absence of a wind, nothing stirred, and everything in the village seemed asleep except for the sound of the cicadas. Apart from the fisherman who had jumped ashore to meet the travellers, there was not another human being in sight.

'They are having a siesta and waiting for a wind,' Giuseppe remarked. 'They will come out in the evening. All the same, we shall go aboard at once to allow your highness to settle in.'

He preceded Marianne across the plank joining ship to shore and helped her over the swaying bridge with all the respect of the perfect servant, while the coachman and the other servant bowed and turned back to the coach, which soon vanished with them into the pines.

To any casual observer, the Princess Sant'Anna would have presented the total appearance of a great lady travelling peacefully. The casual observer, however, would not have known that the devoted servant carried a large pistol in his belt, and that this pistol was not intended for possible highway robbers but for his mistress, should she take it into her head to resist.

For the moment, though, the only observer was the fisherman. Yet Marianne caught his eye as she stepped aboard, and the look of admiration it held. He was standing by the gangway, watching her come aboard with the wondering expression usually associated with supernatural visions, and he was still in his daze a good minute later.

Marianne studied him in her turn without appearing to, and her examination led her to some interesting conclusions. Although not tall, the fisherman was a fine figure of a man, with the head of a Raphael painting on the body of the Farnese Hercules. His yellow canvas shirt was open to the waist, revealing muscles which seemed carved in bronze. His lips were full, his eyes dark and brilliant, and the hair that curled thickly from under his tilted red stocking cap was black as jet.

Appraising him, Marianne caught herself thinking that Giuseppe's plump and oily person would be no match for such a man in a fight.

As she settled herself in the cubby-hole prepared for her in the stern of the boat, Marianne's imagination was busy picturing the advantages which, with a little ingenuity, might be gained from the handsome fisherman. It should not be hard to twist him round her finger. Then he might be persuaded to overpower Giuseppe and afterwards land Marianne herself at some point on the coast whence she might seek a hiding place and get a message to Jolival, or make her way back to Florence. Besides, if he too was in the Prince's service, it ought to be possible to win his allegiance by using her status as the Prince's wife.

It certainly looked as though Giuseppe was taking a vast deal of trouble to preserve appearances. The fisherman must be aware that his lovely passenger was nothing more nor less than a prisoner on her way to judgement… and looking forward to it with less and less enthusiasm.

The truth was that if her natural honesty and courage urged her to a confrontation and a final settling of accounts, her pride could not brook the thought of being dragged to it by force and appearing before Sant'Anna in this humiliating state.

The tartane was not built to carry passengers, especially women, but a kind of berth had been fitted up for Marianne, where she could be comfortable enough. There was a straw mattress and a few crude toilet articles of rough earthenware. The handsome fisherman brought her a rug and she smiled at him, well aware of the devastating effects of that smile. This time it was instantaneous. The tanned face seemed to light up from within and the young man stood stock still, clutching the blanket to his chest, quite forgetting to give it to her.

Encouraged by this success, she asked softly:

'What is your name?'

'Jacopo, Excellenza,' Giuseppe broke in quickly. 'But you will find it a waste of time to talk to him. The poor fellow is deaf and almost dumb. It takes practice to make oneself understood, but if your highness desires speech with him I will interpret for you…'

'I thank you, no,' Marianne said quickly. Then she added, more softly, and this time perfectly sincerely:

'Poor boy. What a shame…'

Compassion came to her aid and helped to hide the disappointment she felt. She understood now the odious Giuseppe's apparent carelessness in embarking alone with his prisoner on board a ship whose single crewman seemed to be so susceptible to feminine charms. In fact, if he was the only person able to communicate with Jacopo, then it was exceedingly well contrived. But the man had not done speaking.

'You need not pity him too much, Excellenza. He has a house, a boat and is affianced to a pretty girl… and he has the sea. He would not exchange these for any more risky adventures.'

The warning was clear and told Marianne that her winsome smile had not gone unnoticed. It was better not to try anything risky, which would certainly be doomed to failure. Another round to the enemy.

Angry, tired and on the verge of tears, the unwilling passenger sat down on her mattress and tried to make her mind a blank. No point in brooding over one defeat: better to get some rest and then look for some other way of escaping from a husband who, she could not help fearing, had no intention of letting her go so soon – always supposing he had no worse punishment in mind for her.

She closed her eyes, obliging Giuseppe to withdraw. A slight breeze had sprung up and through her half-closed lids she saw him telling Jacopo, with a wide range of gestures, to hoist sail. The boat slipped down the canal and slowly out to sea.

Except for a slight squall which got up during the night, the crossing was uneventful, but late the following afternoon, as a pink line appeared, hovering capriciously, like a lacy scarf flung around the neck of the sea, on the bluish horizon, Jacopo began taking in sail.

As they advanced, the mirage seemed to fade and gave place to a long, low island, beyond which it looked as if there were nothing but a green desert. It was a dismal enough isle, bare but for a few trees, and made up for the most part of a long fringe of sand. The boat drew nearer, sailed along the shore for a little way and then, as the beach seemed to turn inland in a kind of channel, hove to and dropped anchor.

Marianne leaned on the rail, striving to recapture the mirage of a moment past. The island was hiding it from her, she knew. Their anchoring had taken her by surprise.

'Why have we stopped?' she asked. 'What are we doing here?'

'By your leave,' Giuseppe said, 'we shall wait until nightfall before we enter harbour. The Venetians are an inquisitive race and his highness wishes your arrival to be as private as possible. We shall cross the Lido channel as soon as it grows dark. Luckily moon-rise is late tonight.'

'My husband wishes my arrival to be private? Don't you mean secret, perhaps?'

'Surely they are the same thing?'

'Not to me! I dislike secrets between husband and wife! My husband seems very fond of them.'

She was frightened now and trying to hide it. The terror she had felt when she realized that she was in the Prince's power returned, irresistibly, despite all her efforts to fight it off during the journey. Giuseppe's words, his ingratiating, would-be reassuring smile, even the reasons he gave her, all added to her fears. Why all these precautions? Why this furtive arrival, if all that awaited her was a simple calling to account, unless she were condemned in advance? She could no longer fight off the thought that what she was to find at the end of this watery journey was a death sentence, summary execution in the depths of some cellar – those Venetian cellars which must have such easy access to the water. If that were so, then who would ever know? Who would even find her body? She had heard often enough that the Sant'Annas held the lives of their womenfolk cheaply!

All at once, unreasoning panic swept over Marianne, naked, primitive and old as death. To perish here, in this city which had figured in her dreams for so many months as the magical place where her happiness was to begin, to die in Venice, where love was said to reign supreme! What a grim jest of Fate! When Jason's ship entered the lagoon, he might sail, all unwittingly, over the very place where her body lay disintegrating slowly…

Appalled by this hideous vision, she flung herself forward in an almost convulsive movement, intending to jump overboard from the prow. This fishing boat carried her death, she knew that, she could feel it! All she wanted was to get away from it.

Even as she was about to plunge over the side, she was caught and held roughly by an irresistible force. Arms were round her body and she found herself held fast, in total impotence, against the broad chest of the fisherman, Jacopo.

'Tut, tut!' said Giuseppe's voice softly. 'How very childish! Does your ladyship seek to leave us? Where would you go? There is nothing here but grass and sand and water… whereas a luxurious palace awaits you…'

'Let me go!' she moaned, struggling with all her strength, her jaws grimly clenched to keep her teeth from chattering. 'Why should you care? You can say I hurled myself into the water – that I am dead! Only let me off this boat! I'll give you anything you want! I am rich—'

'But not so rich as his highness… and much less powerful. My life is a poor thing, Excellenza, but important to me. I do not want to lose it. And I am bound to answer with my life for your ladyship's safe arrival!'

'This is absurd! We are not living in the Middle Ages!'

'Here, in certain houses, we are,' Giuseppe said, suddenly grave. 'I know, your ladyship is going to mention the Emperor Napoleon. I was warned of that. But this is Venice, and the Emperor's power is exercised lightly and with discretion. So, be sensible…'

Marianne was sobbing now, still held fast in Jacopo's arms, her spirit broken and her resistance at an end. She was not even conscious of the absurdity of crying in the arms of a perfect stranger: she merely leaned against him as she might have done a wall, with one thought only in her mind: everything was finished. Now nothing could prevent the Prince from wreaking what vengeance he liked on her. She had only herself to rely on, and that was little enough.

Yet at the same time, she was aware of something odd happening. Jacopo's arms were little by little tightening round her and his breath was growing shorter. The young man's body, pressed against her, was beginning to tremble. She felt one hand move surreptitiously upwards from her waist, seeking the curve of her breast…

Suddenly it was borne in on her that the fisherman was trying to take advantage of the situation, while Giuseppe had moved a yard or two away and was waiting, with an air of boredom, for her to dry her tears.

The fisherman's caress acted on her like a tonic, restoring her courage. If this man's desire for her was strong enough to make him take such an insane risk right underneath Giuseppe's nose, then he might be prepared to take still more risks for the promise of another reward.

Therefore, instead of slapping Jacopo's face, as she would have liked to do, she pressed herself more closely against him. Then, making sure that Giuseppe was not looking, reached up on tiptoe and brushed the boy's lips swiftly with her own. It was only an instant, then she pushed him away, at the same time gazing into his eyes with an expression of earnest entreaty.

As she moved away he watched her with a kind of desperation, evidently struggling to understand what it was she wanted of him, but Marianne had no means of expressing her wish. How could she convey to him by gestures that she wanted him to knock Giuseppe down and tie him up securely, when Giuseppe was at that moment moving towards them? A hundred times in the course of the last twenty-four hours she had hoped to find some implement on the boat which might have enabled her to do the thing herself. After that, to reduce Jacopo to a state of total obedience would no doubt have been child's play. But the servant was no fool and took care of himself. Nothing was left lying about on board that might have served as a weapon, and he scarcely ever let Marianne out of his sight. He had not closed his eyes all night.

Now was there anything within reach that could be used to write with? It was not even possible to scratch a message to the fisherman on the side of the boat, asking for help. Besides, he probably could not read.

Daylight faded and still Marianne had found no way of communicating with her unusual admirer. For an hour or more, Giuseppe sat on a heap of ropes between the two of them, turning his pistol round and round in his hands, as though he guessed the threat which hung over him. Any attempt would certainly have proved fatal to both.

With a sinking heart, Marianne watched as the anchor was hauled up and the tartane slipped out into the channel in the dusk. In spite of the terror which gripped her, she could not help a gasp of wonder, for the skyline had been transformed into a fantastic fresco of blue and violet colours, intermingled with lingering traces of red gold. It was like a fantastically ornamented crown lying on the sea, but a crown already fading into the dark.

Night fell quickly and by the time the tartane had rounded the Isola di San Giorgio and entered the Canale della Giudecca the darkness was almost complete. She sailed close-reefed, feeling her way, seeking perhaps to attract as little attention as possible. Marianne held her breath. She felt Venice closing round her like a clenching hand, and gazed with painful longing at the tall ships which, once past the white columns and gilded Fortune of the Dogana di Mare, rode sleepily with riding lights aglow, off the airy domes and alabaster volutes of la Salute, awaiting for tomorrows of salt winds to carry them far from this perilous siren of water and stones.

The little vessel tied up away from the quay, beside a group of fishing boats, and when Giuseppe momentarily turned his back at last to lean over the side, Marianne seized the opportunity to move quickly to where Jacopo was furling the sails and lay her hand on his arm. He trembled and looked at her then, dropping the sails, made as if to draw her to him.

She shook her head gently and with a fierce movement of her arm towards Giuseppe's back, endeavoured to make him understand that she wanted to be rid of him… at once!

She saw Jacopo stiffen and glance first at the man whom he no doubt considered his master, then at the woman tempting him. He hesitated, clearly torn between conscience and desire… His hesitation lasted a moment too long, for already Giuseppe had turned and was making his way back to Marianne.

'If your ladyship pleases,' he murmured, 'the gondola waits and we should not delay.'

There were two more heads visible now over the side of the boat. The gondola must be close alongside the tartane and it was too late: Giuseppe had allies.

With a scornful shrug, Marianne turned her back on the young sailor. She had completely lost interest in him now, although a moment before she had been ready to give herself to him as the price of her freedom, with no more hesitation than St Mary the Egyptian to the boatmen she had need of.

A slim black gondola lay waiting alongside. Escorted by Giuseppe, and without a single backward glance at the tartane, Marianne took her place in the felze, a kind of curtained black box in which the passengers sat on something like a low, broad sofa. Then, sped by long oars, the gondola slid over the black waters. It nosed its way into a narrow canal beside the church of la Salute, whose golden cross still watched silently over the health of Venice as it had done ever since the great plague in the seventeenth century.

Giuseppe bent forward as though to draw the black leather curtain.

'What are you afraid of?' Marianne asked with contempt. 'I do not know this city and no one here knows me. Let me look, at least!'

Giuseppe hesitated for a moment before sighing resignedly and resuming his seat beside her, leaving the curtains as they were.

The gondola turned into the Grand Canal and now Marianne saw that the splendid ghost was indeed a living city. Lights shone in palace windows, driving back the darkness here and there and making the water sparkle with reflections of spangled gold. Sounds of voices and music floated out of open windows, filling the soft May night. A tall gothic palace was ashimmer with light, and a waltz tune sounded above a garden which dripped luxuriant greenery into the canal. A cluster of moored gondolas danced to the rhythm of the violins below the steps of a noble stair which seemed to rise from the very depths of the waves.

Huddlled in her dark retreat, Giuseppe's prisoner saw women in brilliant gowns and well-dressed men mingling with uniforms of every colour, the white of Austria prominent among them. She could almost smell the scents and hear the bursts of laughter. A party!… Life, joy… Then, suddenly, all was gone again and there was only the darkness and a vaguely musty smell. The gondola had turned aside abruptly into a little cut walled in by blind house walls.

As in a bad dream, Marianne glimpsed barred windows, emblazoned doorways, and now and then walls with crumbling plasterwork, as well as graceful arched bridges under which the gondola glided like a ghost.

At last they came to a small landing-stage below a red wall topped with black ivy, in which was the ornately carved lintel of a little stone doorway framed by a pair of barbaric wrought-iron lanterns.

The fragile craft came to a halt and Marianne knew that this time it was really the end of the journey, and her heart missed a beat. She had come again to the house of the Prince Sant'Anna.

But on this occasion no servant waited on the green-stained steps leading down to the water, or in the slip of a garden where plants sprang thickly round the ancient carved-stone well, as though out of the very stones. Nor was there anyone on the handsome stairway which led up to the slender pillars of a gothic gallery, at the back of which the red and blue glass of a lighted window shone like jewels. But for that light, the palace might have been deserted.

Yet, as she climbed the stone steps, Marianne found all her courage and fighting spirit come flooding back. As always with her, the imminent prospect of danger galvanized her and restored the equilibrium which waiting and uncertainty invariably drained away. She knew, could feel, with an almost animal instinct she had, that danger lurked behind the delicate old-world graces of that building, even if it were no more than the horrible memory of Lucinda the Witch, whose house this might once have been. For, if Marianne's recollections were correct, this must be the Palazzo Soranzo, the birthplace of that terrible princess. She nerved herself for the fight.

The vestibule which opened before her was so sumptuous as to take her breath away. Great gilded lanterns of exquisite workmanship, which must have originated in some ancient galley, threw moving patterns on the many-coloured marble floors, flowery as a Persian garden, and on the gilding of a ceiling with long, painted beams. The walls were covered with a succession of vast portraits and lined with imposing armorial benches, alternating with porphyry chests where miniature caravels spread their sails. The portraits were all of men and women dressed with unbelievable magnificence. There were even two of doges in full dress, the corno d'oro on their heads, pride in their faces.

The seafaring associations of the gallery were plain and Marianne was surprised to catch herself thinking that Jason or Surcouf might have liked this house, so dedicated to the sea. Alas, it was as silent as a tomb.

There was not a sound to be heard except the newcomers' own footsteps. In a little while this had become so ominous that even Giuseppe seemed aware of it. He coughed, as though to reassure himself, and then, going to a double door about halfway along the gallery, he whispered, as though in church:

'My mission ends here, Excellenza. May I hope that your ladyship will not think too hardly of me?'

'And of this charming journey? Rest assured, my friend, that I shall dwell on it with the greatest of pleasure – supposing I have the time to dwell on anything, that is!' Marianne spoke with bitter irony.

Giuseppe bowed without answering and withdrew. Yet the double doors were opening, creaking a little but to all appearances without human aid.

Beyond lay a room of impressive dimensions, in the centre of which was a table laid for a meal, with an almost unbelievable magnificence. It was like a field of gold: plates and dishes of chased gold, enamelled goblets, jewelled flagons, the whole adorned with wonderful purplish roses, and tall branched candlesticks spreading their burden of lighted candles gracefully over this almost barbaric splendour, while outside the ring of light the walls hung with antique tapestries and the priceless carved chimneypiece lay in deep shadow.

It was a table set for a banquet, and yet Marianne shivered as she saw that it was set with only two places. So… the Prince had decided to show himself at last? What else could be the meaning of those two places? Was she to see him, at last, as he was, hideous as that reality might be? Or would he still wear his white mask when he came to take his seat here?

Despite herself, she felt fear clawing at her heart. She knew now that however much her natural curiosity might urge her to penetrate the mystery with which her strange husband surrounded himself, since that night of magic she had always feared, instinctively, to find herself alone and face to face with him. Yet surely that table, with its flowers, could not portend anything so very terrible! It was a table laid to please, almost a table for lovers.

The double doors through which Marianne had entered closed with the same creaking. At the same time another door, a little, low one at the side of the hearth, opened slowly, very slowly, as though at some well-timed dramatic highlight in the theatre.

Marianne stood rooted to the spot, her eyes wide and her fingers tensed, sweat starting on her brow, watching it as it swung on its hinges, so much as she might have stared at the door of a tomb about to deliver up its dead.

A glittering figure appeared in silhouette, too far from the table to be seen clearly. Lit only from behind, by the light in the next room, it was the figure of a stockily-built man dressed in a long robe of cloth of gold. But Marianne saw at once that it was not the slender figure of the man who had mastered Ilderim. This man was shorter, heavier, less noble. He came forward into the huge dining-room and then, with anger and disbelief, Marianne saw Matteo Damiani, dressed like a doge, step forward into the pool of light surrounding the table. He was smiling…

CHAPTER THREE Slaves of the Devil

Prince Sant'Anna's steward and trusted agent advanced with measured tread, hands folded in the wide sleeves of his dalmatic, and coming to one of the tall, red chairs drawn up to the table laid one beringed hand on its back while with the other he made what was intended as a gracious gesture towards the remaining place. The smile was like a mask affixed to his face.

'Be seated, I beg, and let us eat. You must be tired after the long journey.'

For a moment it seemed to Marianne that her eyes and ears must be deceiving her but it was not long before she knew that this was no evil dream.

The man who stood before her was indeed Matteo Damiani, the dangerous and untrustworthy servant who, on one night of horror, had almost been her murderer.

She had not seen him since that dreadful moment when he came towards her, hands outstretched, like a man in a trance, with murder in his eyes from which all human feeling had gone. But for the appearance of Ilderim and his tragic rider—

But at that fearful recollection, Marianne's fear very nearly became panic. She had to make a superhuman effort to fight it off and even to succeed in concealing what she felt. With such a man, whose frightening past history she knew, her one chance of escape lay precisely in not letting him see her terror of him. If he once knew she feared him, her instinct told her, she was lost.

Even now she still did not understand what had happened, or by what species of magic Damiani was able to parade himself like this, dressed up as a doge (she had seen the same costume on one of the portraits in the hall), in a Venetian palace where he gave himself all the airs of being master, but this was no time to indulge in speculation.

Instinctively, she attacked.

Folding her arms coolly, she eyed him with unconcealed scorn. Her eyes narrowed to glittering green slits between the long lashes.

'Does carnival in Venice continue into May?' she asked bluntly. 'Or are you going to a masquerade?'

Taken unawares, perhaps, by the sarcastic tone, Damiani gave a short laugh but, unprepared for an attack in this direction, he glanced uncertainly, almost with a shade of embarrassment, at his costume.

'Oh, the gown? I donned it in your honour, madame, just as I had this table set for your pleasure, to make your arrival in this house a celebration. I thought—'

'I?' Marianne broke in. 'I do not think I can have heard you correctly, or you so far forget yourself as to put yourself in your master's place. Recollect yourself, my friend. And tell me where is the Prince? And how comes it that Dona Lavinia is not here to welcome me?'

The steward drew out the chair before him and sank into it so heavily that it groaned under his weight. He had put on flesh since that terrible night when, maddened by his occult practices, he had attempted in his rage to kill Marianne. The Roman mask, which had then lent his face a certain distinction, was now melted into fat, and his hair, once so thick, was thinning alarmingly, while the fingers loaded with such vulgar profusion of rings had become like bloated sausages. But there was nothing in the least laughable or absurd about the pale, impudent eyes in that fat, ageing body.

'Eyes like a snake,' Marianne thought with a shiver of revulsion at the cold cruelty they revealed.

The smile had faded, as if Matteo no longer considered it worth while to maintain the fiction. Marianne knew that the man before her was her implacable enemy, and it came as no surprise to her to hear him say:

'That fool Lavinia! Pray for her, if you like. Myself, I had enough of her lectures and her pious airs – I—'

'You killed her?' Marianne exclaimed furiously, conscious of both outrage and a wave of grief as bitter as it was unexpected. She had not known that she had allowed the quiet housekeeper become so dear to her. 'You were base enough to murder that good woman who never did anyone any harm? And the Prince did not shoot you dead like the mad dog you are?'

'He might have done so,' Damiani growled, 'had he been in a position to.' He started to his feet with a violence that set the heavily laden table rocking and the golden vessels clinking. 'I did away with him first. It was time,' he added, thumping the table with his fist to emphasize his words, 'high time I took my rightful place as head of the family!'

This time, the blow went home, with such force that Marianne reeled as though she had been struck, and uttered a moan of horror.

Dead! Her strange husband was dead! The prince in the white mask, dead! Dead, the man who on that stormy night had taken her trembling hand in his, dead, the wonderful horseman whom even from the depths of her fear and uncertainty, she had admired! It was not possible! Fate could not deal her such a scurvy trick.

'You're lying,' she said in a voice that was firm, though drained of all expression.

'Why should I? Because he was the master and I the slave? Because he forced on me a life of humiliation, servile and unworthy of me? Can you tell me any good reason why I should not have done away with the puppet? I did not hesitate to kill his father because he slew the woman I loved! Why should I spare him who was the prime cause of that deed? Until I was ready, I let him live, so long as he did not get in my way. Then, a little while ago, he did get in my way.'

A dreadful feeling of horror and revulsion, mingled with a sense of disappointment and, strangely, with pity and grief also, was creeping over Marianne. It was absurd, grotesque and profoundly unfair. The man who had voluntarily offered his name to a stranger pregnant by another man, whether emperor or no, the man who had made her welcome, heaped riches and jewels on her, and even saved her life – he did not deserve to die at the hands of a sadistic madman.

For a moment she saw again, clear in the unfailing record of her memory, the shapes of the great white stallion and his silent rider flying through the shadowy park. Whatever the man's secret shame, at that moment he and the animal had made an extraordinarily beautiful picture, a combination of power and grace which had remained graven in her mind. The thought that this unforgettable picture had been destroyed for ever by a creature so sunk in evil and depravity seemed to her so intolerable that her hand went out instinctively to feel for a weapon with which to deal justice on the murderer then and there. She owed it to one who had perhaps loved her and from whom, she knew now, she had never had anything to fear. Who could tell whether he had not paid with his life for his intervention that night?

But the dainty gold knives that gleamed on the table offered no help. For the present, the Princess Sant'Anna had nothing but words with which to flay the villain, and words could have little power over such as he. Yet a time would come. To that Marianne swore a solemn oath in her heart. She would avenge her husband.

'Murderer!' she spat at him at last, with utter distaste. 'You dared to slay the man who trusted you, one who placed himself so unreservedly in your hands, your own master!'

'I am the only master here now!' Damiani cried in a curiously falsetto voice. 'Justice has come full circle, because I had far more right to the title than that pitiable dreamer! You poor fool, you do not know, let that excuse you,' he added, with a complacency that added the last straw to Marianne's indignation, 'but I too am a Sant'Anna! I am—'

'I know everything! And the fact that my husband's grandfather got a child on a poor, half-mad creature who could not fight for her honour is not enough to make you a Sant'Anna! You need a heart, a soul, class! You, you are a low thing unworthy even of the knife that will kill you, a stinking animal—'

'Enough!'

The word was roared out in a paroxysm of rage and the man's congested face had turned white with evil marks of venom, but the blow had gone home, as Marianne saw with satisfaction.

He was breathing hard, as though he had been running, and when he spoke again it was in a low, muffled tone, like one suffocating.

'Enough,' he repeated. 'Who told you this? How – how do you know?'

'That is my business! It is enough that I know.'

'No! You will tell me – one day, you will have to tell me. I shall make you talk – because you will obey me now. Me, do you hear?'

'You are out of your mind. Why should I obey you?'

An ugly smile slid, like a slick of oil, across the ravaged features. Marianne braced herself for a foul answer. But Matteo Damiani's anger evaporated as suddenly as it had come. His voice resumed its normal tone and sounded neutral to the point of indifference as he went on:

'I beg your pardon. I lost my temper. But there are things I do not care to speak of.'

'I dare say, but that does not tell me what I am doing here. If I have understood you correctly, then it would seem that I am a – a free woman, and I'd be glad if you would conclude this pointless interview and arrange for me to leave this house.'

'By no means. You don't think I took all that trouble to bring you here, which cost me a great deal of money, besides all the business of bribing agents, even among your own friends, simply for the doubtful pleasure of informing you that your husband was no more?'

'Why not? I can't exactly see you writing me a letter telling me you'd murdered the Prince. For that is what you did, isn't it?'

Damiani did not answer. He plucked a rose from the centre vase and began twisting it nervously between his fingers, as though seeking inspiration. Abruptly, he spoke.

'Let us understand one another, Princess,' he said in the dry voice of a lawyer addressing a client. 'You are here to fulfil a contract. The same contract that you made with Corrado Sant'Anna.'

'What contract? If the Prince is dead, then the only contract which existed, that concerning my marriage, is null and void, surely?'

'No. You were married in exchange for a child, an heir to the name and fortunes of the Sant'Annas.'

'I lost the child, accidentally!' Marianne cried, with a sharp pang of anxiety beyond her control, for the subject was still a painful one.

'I am not disputing the accident and I am sure it was no fault of yours. All Europe knows of the tragedy of the Austrian ambassador's ball, but as regards the Sant'Anna heir, your obligations remain. You must give birth to a child who may, officially, carry on the line.'

'You might have thought of that before you killed the Prince.'

'Why? He was useless in that line; your own marriage is the best proof of that. Unfortunately I am not myself in a position to assume publicly the name which is mine by right. Therefore, I need a Sant'Anna, an heir…'

Marianne seethed with anger, hearing him speak with such cynical detachment of the master he had killed, while at the same time she was becoming aware of an indefinable fear. Perhaps because she was afraid to let herself understand, she fell back on sarcasm.

'There is only one thing you have forgotten. The child was the Emperor's. I don't suppose you'd go so far as to kidnap his majesty and bring him to me, bound hand and foot…'

Damiani shook his head and began to move towards her. Marianne stepped back.

'No. We must do without the imperial blood which meant so much to the Prince. We'll make do with the family blood for this child – a child I'll bring up as I please and whose lands I'll administer gladly for many long years – a child who will be all the more dear to me because he'll be my own!'

'What!'

'Don't look so surprised. You understand well enough. You called me a low thing just now, madame, but no insults can wipe out, or even humble such blood as mine. Like it or not, I am the old Prince's son, and uncle to the poor fool you married. And so, Princess, it is I, your steward, who will give you a child.'

Choked by such effrontery, it was a moment or two before Marianne was able to speak. She had been wrong in her first estimate. This man was nothing but a dangerous lunatic. It was enough to see his fat fingers working, and the way he licked his lips with the tip of his tongue, like a cat. He was a madman, ready to commit any crime to slake his overweening pride and ambition, and to satisfy his baser instincts!

She was suddenly very conscious that she was alone with this man. He was stronger than she and must no doubt have accomplices hidden somewhere about this too-silent house, if only the loathsome Giuseppe. She was in his power. He could force her. Her one chance might be to frighten him.

'If you think for a moment, you will see that you could never carry out this insane plan. I have come back to Italy under the Emperor's especial protection for a purpose which I may not disclose to you. But you may be quite sure that there are people looking for me, concerned about me at this very moment. Soon the Emperor will be told. Do you think you can fool him if I vanish for several months and then turn up with an unaccountable baby? It is plain you do not know him, and if I were you I should think twice before making such an enemy.'

'Far be it from me to underestimate the power of Napoleon. But it will all be very much simpler than you seem to think. In a little while the Emperor will receive a letter from the Prince Sant'Anna thanking him warmly for restoring to him a wife who is now infinitely dear to his heart and announcing their imminent departure together to spend a delightful and long-deferred honeymoon on distant estates of his.'

'And you expect him to swallow that? He knows all about the strange circumstances attending my marriage. Be sure he will have inquiries made, and, however remote our supposed destination, the Emperor will get at the truth. He had his suspicions about what awaited me here—'

'Maybe, but he will be obliged to rest content with what he is told, especially as there will be a note, expressed, naturally, in glowing terms, assuring him of your happiness and begging forgiveness. I have paid, among other things, for the services of a very competent forger. Venice is seething with artists, most of them starving. Believe me, the Emperor will understand. You are lovely enough to explain away any folly, even my own at this moment. The simplest thing, of course, would be simply to kill you and then, in a few months' time, produce a new-born infant, claiming that the mother died in childbed. With a little care, that should go off without a hitch. But I have desired you, ever since the day that old dodderer of a cardinal brought you to the villa, desired you as I have never desired anyone before. That night, you may recall, I concealed myself in your closet while you undressed… your body holds no secrets from my eyes, but my hands are still strangers to its curves. Ever since you went away I have lived in expectation of the moment which would bring you here—at my mercy. I shall get the child I want on your fair flesh… It will be worth a little risk, eh? Even the risk of displeasing your Emperor. Before he finds you, if he ever does find you, I shall have known you tens of times and shall see my child growing in you!… Then shall I be happy indeed!'

Slowly, he had resumed his advance towards her. His bejewelled hands reached out, quivering, towards the girl's slender form. Revolted by the mere thought of their touch, she moved back into the shadows of the room, seeking desperately for some way of escape. But there was none: only the two doors already mentioned.

All the same, she made an effort to reach the one by which she had entered. It was just possible that it might not be locked, that if she moved fast she might be able to get out, even if she had to throw herself into the black waters of the cut. But her enemy had guessed her thought. He was laughing.

'The doors? They open only at my command! Do not count on them. You would break your pretty nails for nothing… Come, lovely Marianne, use your common sense! Isn't it wiser to accept what you can't avoid, especially when you have everything to gain? Who is to say that by yielding to my desires you will not make of me your most devoted slave… and Dona Lucinda once did? I know love – know it in all its ways, and it was she who taught me. If you cannot have happiness, you shall have pleasure—'

'Stay where you are! Don't touch me!'

She was frightened now, really frightened. The man was beside himself, past listening, or even hearing. He was coming for her mindlessly, inexorably, and there was something appalling in the machine-like tread and gleaming eyes.

Marianne retreated behind the table for shelter and her eye fell on a heavy gold salt-cellar standing near the centre-piece. It was a piece like a single carved gem, representing two nymphs embracing a statue of the god Pan: a genuine work of art and probably from the hand of the matchless Benvenuto Cellini. But to Marianne, at that moment, it had only one quality: it must be extremely heavy. She thrust out her hand and grabbed it and hurled it at her attacker.

He side-stepped in time and the salt-cellar flew past his ear and crashed on the black marble floor. The shot had missed but, giving her enemy no time to recover, Marianne had already got both hands round one of the heavy candlesticks, regardless of the pain as the hot wax spilled over her fingers.

'One step nearer and I'll hit you,' she threatened through clenched teeth.

He stood still as she commanded, but it was not from fear. He was not afraid of her; so much was clear from his salacious smile and quivering nostrils. On the contrary, he appeared to be enjoying the moment of violence as if it were a prelude to some voluptuous satisfaction. But he did not speak.

Instead, he raised his arms, the long sleeves slipping down to reveal broad golden armlets fit to have adorned a Carolingian prince, and clapped three times clearly, while Marianne stood speechless, still holding the candlestick ready to bring it down on him.

What followed happened very quickly. The candlestick was wrested from her hands and something black and stifling came down over her head while a hand forced her irresistibly backwards. Then she felt herself lifted by her feet and shoulders and borne away like a parcel.

It was not far, but to Marianne, carried up and down several times, half-suffocated, it seemed interminable. The cloth in which she was enveloped had a peculiar smell, of incense and jasmine combined with another, more exotic odour. She tried to struggle free of it but whoever was carrying her seemed to be unusually strong and her efforts only made them tighten the grip on her ankles painfully.

She felt them climb one more flight of steps and walk forward a little way. A door creaked. Finally, came the feel of soft cushions underneath her and almost at the same moment the light returned. Not before time: the stuff in which she had been muffled must have been remarkably thick, since no air had penetrated it.

She took a few deep breaths before sitting up and looking round to see who had brought her here. The sight that met her eyes was strange enough to make her wonder for a moment if she were dreaming. Three women stood a little way from the bed, eyeing her curiously, but three such women as Marianne had never seen before.

They were all very tall and dressed identically in dark blue draperies with a silver stripe and a multiplicity of bangles, and they were all three black as ebony and so alike that Marianne thought exhaustion must be making her eyes play tricks.

Then one woman moved away from the group and gliding like a ghost towards the open door vanished through it. Her bare feet made no sound on the black marble floor and, but for the silvery tinkle that accompanied her movements, Marianne might have believed her an apparition.

The other two, taking no further notice of her, began lighting a number of tall candles made of yellow wax which were set in large iron candle-holders ranged about the floor. Slowly, the details of the room began to emerge.

It was a very large room, and at the same time sumptuous and sinister. The tapestries hung from the stone walls were picked out in gold, yet the scenes they portrayed were of an almost unbearable violence and carnage. The furniture comprised an enormous oak chest, massively locked, and a selection of ebony chairs covered in red velvet, all suggesting a positively medieval degree of discomfort. A heavy lantern made of gilded bronze and red crystals hung from the beamed ceiling, but was unlighted.

The couch on which Marianne herself was lying was nothing less than an immense four-poster bed, big enough for a whole family and draped all round with heavy curtains of black velvet lined with red taffetas, to match the gold-fringed counterpane. The hems of the curtains were lost in the black bearskin rugs that covered the two steps on which the bed stood raised up, like an altar dedicated to some savage divinity.

To shake off the dread which was creeping over her, Marianne tried to speak.

'Who are you?' she asked. 'Why have you brought me here?'

But her voice seemed to her to come from a long way off, faint and distant as in the worse nightmares. Nor did either of the negresses make the slightest sign to show that they had heard. By now, all the candles were alight, reflecting bunches of flames in the black tiles that shone like a lake beneath the moon. Another candlestick on the chest was also alight.

In a little while, the third woman returned bearing a heavily laden tray which she set down on the chest. But when she approached the bed, gesturing to the others to follow, Marianne saw that the resemblance between the three came largely from their being all much of a height and size and from their dress, for the third was by far the most beautiful. In her the negroid characteristics so marked in the other two were refined and stylized. Her eyes were cold and steely blue, almond-shaped, and despite the almost animal sensuality of her thick lips, the profile might have belonged to some ancient Egyptian queen. Certainly the girl had all a queen's proud grace and scornful assurance. Seen in the melancholy light of the candles, she and her companions made a strange group, but there was no doubt as to who was mistress: the other two were clearly there only to obey her.

At a sign from her, they seized hold of Marianne again and pulled her upright. The beautiful negress, ignoring her feeble attempts at resistance, which were quickly overcome, began to unfasten the girl's crumpled dress. When it was off, she also removed the undergarments and stockings.

Naked, Marianne was borne away by her captors, who seemed possessed of phenomenal strength, to a sunken bath. She was deposited on a stool in the middle and the negress proceeded to wash her with a sponge and scented soap, still without uttering a word. Marianne's attempts to break the silence had no effect whatever.

Suspecting that the women were as dumb as the handsome Jacopo, Marianne submitted without further protest. The journey had been a tiring one and she felt weary and dirty. The bath was invigorating and when, after energetic towelling, the woman began to massage her body with hands which were suddenly amazingly gentle, rubbing in a strangely pungent oil which soothed all the tiredness out of her muscles, Marianne felt much better. After that her hair was brushed and brushed again until it crackled.

Finally, washed and brushed, she was carried back to the bed, which had been turned down, revealing purple-red silk sheets. The chief of the women brought the tray and set it down on a small table by the bed, then, ranged in a line at the foot of the bed, the three strange waiting-women bowed slowly in unison, turned and filed out of the door.

Marianne had been too much astonished to make the slightest move, and it was not until the last one had disappeared that she became aware that they had taken her clothes with them, leaving her alone in the room with no other covering than her own long hair, except, of course, for the covers of the bed on which they had placed her.

The purpose for which she had been left lying naked on the turned-down bed was self-evident, and all Marianne's sense of physical well-being evaporated swiftly in a single furious gust of anger. She had been made ready, stretched on the sacrificial altar as an offering to the lusts of the man who called himself her master, like the virgins and the white heifers once offered up to the old pagan gods. All she needed now was a crown of flowers on her head!

The three negresses must be slaves, bought by Damiani from some African trader, but it was not hard to guess what relations the creature enjoyed with the most beautiful one. Gentle her hands might be, but her eyes, as she bestowed her skilled attentions on the person of the newcomer, betrayed her feelings unmistakably: that woman hated her, probably seeing her as a new favourite and a dangerous rival.

Marianne felt herself colouring with shame and anger at the word. Seizing one of the red sheets, she hauled it off the bed and swathed it round her, like the wrappings of a mummy. She felt better then, and much more confident. How could she retain any dignity before her enemy if she were obliged to face him naked as a slave in a slave market?

Thus swaddled, she set out to explore the room in search of a way out, a crack through which to slip to freedom. But apart from the door, which was low and forbidding, a real prison door sunk in walls more than a yard thick, there were only two narrow pillared windows giving on to a blind inner courtyard, and these were blocked on the outside by a kind of cage of criss-cross iron bars.

There was no escape in that direction, short of prising out the bars and risking a nasty fall to the paved bottom of the well, from which there might be no other exit. It smelled unpleasantly damp and mildewy.

Yet there must be some means of access down there, a door or a window perhaps, because she could see a leaf fluttering in a draught of some kind. But that was mere guesswork and in any case how could she possibly escape, stark naked, from a house which could only be reached by water? She could hardly swim in a sheet, but neither could she imagine herself rising like Venus from the waves of the Grand Canal to go knocking coolly on someone's front door.

So the motive in removing her clothes had been twofold: to deliver her, helpless, into Damiani's arms, and at the same time make it impossible for her to escape.

With a heavy heart, Marianne made her way back to the bed and sat down on it dejectedly, trying to collect her thoughts and overcome her fears. It was no easy task. Then her eye fell on the tray which had been left for her. Without thinking, she lifted the gilded cover from one of the two plates set on the lace cloth alongside a golden-brown roll and wine in a speckled carafe of Murano glass, slender and graceful as a swan's neck.

A savoury smell rose from the dish which contained a stew of some kind that made Marianne's mouth water. She realized suddenly that she was ravenously hungry and, seizing the golden spoon, plunged it eagerly into the luscious-looking caramel-coloured gravy. Then, with the spoon half-way to her lips, she paused, struck by an unpleasant thought: suppose this delicious-smelling dish contained a drug which would send her to sleep and leave her a defenceless prey to her enemy, like a fly in a spider's web?

Fear was stronger than hunger. Marianne put down the spoon and turned instead to the other cover. The second dish contained rice but that too was served with such unfamiliar sauce that the prisoner renounced it also. She was already feeling quite sufficiently alarmed about that inevitable moment when, overcome with fatigue, she would be bound to fall asleep at last. There was no need to meet the danger half-way.

With a sigh, she nibbled at the roll, which alone looked really harmless, but it was not nearly enough to satisfy her hunger. The carafe of wine was rejected also, after a tentative sniff, and, sighing again, Marianne got out of bed, trailing festoons of red sheet, and drank from the big silver ewer which the black woman had used for her bath.

The water was warm with a disagreeably musty after-taste but it went some way towards quenching a thirst which was growing every moment more intolerable. The heat which had hung over Venice all day had not abated with nightfall. On the contrary, it seemed to have grown still more oppressive and not even the thick walls of the room could keep it out. The dark red silk of the sheet clung to Marianne's skin, and for a second she was tempted to take it off and lie down naked on the tiles which felt so cool to the soles of her feet. But that sheet was her only protection, her last refuge, and so, reluctantly, she resigned herself to returning to the sumptuous bed, which made her nearly as uneasy as the food on the tray.

She had scarcely got in before the beautiful negress was back and gliding towards the bed with her lithe tread, like some half-tamed jungle cat.

Marianne recoiled instinctively, shrinking into her pillows, but the woman ignored the movement, perhaps interpreting it as one of fear or dislike, and raised the covers from the two plates. Her eyes gleamed mockingly under their blue-painted lids and, picking up the spoon, she began to eat as calmly as if she were alone.

In a few minutes both plates and carafe were empty. A sigh of repletion greeted the end of the meal and Marianne could not help finding this quiet demonstration infinitely more mortifying than any quantity of reproaches, since it carried overtones of both mockery and contempt. The woman seemed positively to enjoy making her caution look like cowardice.

Stung, and seeing moreover no reason to go on starving herself voluntarily, Marianne said shortly:

'I do not care for those foreign dishes. Bring me some fruit.'

Considerably to her surprise, the negress acquiesced with a flicker of her eyelids and clapped her hands at once. When one of her companions appeared, she said something to her in a guttural foreign language. It was the first time Marianne had heard her voice: it was strangely deep and almost without inflexion, and went well with her enigmatic character. One thing, however, was quite certain. The woman might not speak Italian but she understood Marianne's. The fruit duly arrived in a very few minutes. And at least the woman could speak.

Encouraged by this success, Marianne selected a peach and then, in a perfectly normal tone, asked for her clothes, or at the least for a nightgown. But this time the negress shook her head.

'No,' she said simply. 'The master forbids.'

'The master?' Marianne took her up at once. 'That man is not master here. He is my servant and nothing in this house is his. It belongs to my husband.'

'I belong to him.'

It was said on the surface, quite calmly but with a curious throb of passion underlying the simplicity of the words. Marianne was not greatly surprised. From the first moment of seeing the beautiful negress, she had sensed that there was something between her and Damiani. She was both his slave and his mistress, ministering to his vices and ruling him, no doubt, through the sensual power of her beauty. There could be no other explanation for the presence of the three strange black women in the Venetian palace.

However, the prisoner had no time to ask the questions on the tip of her tongue, for at that moment the door opened to admit Matteo Damiani himself, still decked in his gold dalmatic, but terrifyingly drunk.

Lurching, he started to cross the shining expanse of tiles, one hand stretched out before him in search of support. He found it in one of the columns of the bed and clung there, gripping it with all his strength.

Marianne watched with disgust the nearer approach of that dark, mottled face, its once not ignoble features now dissolved in fat. The eyes which she remembered clear, insolent, even ruthless, were bloodshot and wandering like candle flames in a draught.

He was panting as if he had just run a long way, and the smell of his breath, heavy and sour, sickened her. He spoke thickly.

'Well, then, my beauties? Been – getting to know each other, have you?'

Her mind torn between disgust, fear and sheer astonishment, Marianne tried vainly to understand how the man had come to this. He had been strange, even frightening, but he had possessed a certain dignity and an overweening vanity. How could that devil, whom Leonora had painted in all the colours of the subtlest evil, and whom Marianne herself had seen practising the rites of black magic, have become this lump of lard soused in drink? Was it the ghost of his unhappy and too-trusting master haunting the faithless servant who had murdered him? Always supposing Matteo Damiani was capable of remorse.

Casting himself bodily on to the bed, he was clutching with trembling fingers at the red silken sheet which covered the cowering Marianne.

Take this off, Ishtar!… It's too hot… and anyway, I told you I would not have you leave her any clothes! She… she's a slave and s-shlaves go naked in that heathenish land of yours. S-shlaves and c-cattle! An' she's the brood mare on whom I'll get the princely foal I need.'

'You're drunk!' the black woman told him with contempt. 'If you go on soaking yourself this way you'll never get your foal – unless another does it for you. Look at you, sprawling there! You're in no fit state to make love!'

The man gave a drunken laugh which ended in a hiccup.

'Give me some of your potion, Ishtar, an' I'll be s-shtronger 'n' a bull! Bring me a drink to heat my blood, my lovely witch! An' be sure you give her some as well… make her pull like a she-cat on heat… But first, help me to get this off her! Let me once see her body and I'll be strong again! I've dreamed of it… night after night!'

He scrabbled at the sheet with clumsy, drunken hands, itemizing her charms with a madman's concentration, while the girl shrank away from him in horror. Within an ace of retching, she sought desperately for some way of fending off the drunkard and his black helper. Terror lent her unexpected strength. Snatching the silky fabric out of the fat man's hands, she jerked herself with a swift twist of her body sideways out of bed and across the room, securing the sheet tightly under her arms as she ran. As she had done earlier downstairs, she grasped the iron candelabra on the coffer with both hands and held it poised, with its load of lighted candles. Burning hot wax fell on her arms and on her naked shoulders, but anger and fright redoubled her strength and made her insensible to pain. In the uncertain light, her green eyes glittered like those of a panther brought to bay.

'This is for the first of you that tries to touch me!' she hissed through clenched teeth.

Ishtar, who was looking at her with awakened interest, shrugged.

'Don't waste your strength. He'll not touch you tonight. The moon is not at the full and the stars are contrary. You would not conceive… and he is quite incapable!'

'He shan't touch me, tonight or ever!'

The dark face hardened into an expression of such implacable rigidity that for a moment it looked like a statue carved of ebony.

'You are here to bear a child,' the woman said harshly, 'and you shall do it. Remember what I said: I belong to him and when the time comes I shall help him.'

'How can you belong to him?' Marianne cried. 'Look at him! He is vile, loathsome – a lump of lard steeped in wine!'

Indeed, Damiani was slumped on the bed in his crumpled gold doth, as though the matter had ceased to concern him. He was breathing heavily and so obviously sunk in a drunken stupor that Marianne began to take heart. The man was a confirmed toper and all Ishtar's efforts to restrain him had evidently failed. It might be a long time yet before the stars were 'favourable', and before then some way of escape from this madhouse might present itself, even if she had to jump stark naked into the cut and swim ashore in broad daylight in the middle of Venice. She would probably be arrested but at least she would escape from this nightmare.

Her arm muscles were trembling with the strain of holding up the candelabra and, slowly, she relaxed. She had no strength left and perhaps, after all, it was not really necessary. Across the room, Ishtar had grasped Matteo round the body and was hoisting him over her shoulder as if he were nothing more than a sack of meal. Not even bending under his weight, she bore him to the door.

'Get back to bed,' was her contemptuous advice to Marianne. 'For tonight, you may sleep in peace.'

'And – other nights?'

'You'll see. At all events, don't flatter yourself he'll drink as much in future. I'll see to that. Tonight, perhaps, he… overdid the celebrations. He has been waiting a long time for this. Good night.'

The strange creature vanished with her burden and Marianne found herself alone again with the prospect of long hours ahead. The nightmare feeling lingered, even in her tired brain which no longer seemed to be working very well, so that it could not grasp the idea of her mysterious husband's death, or the incredible alteration in circumstances which followed from it.

In spite of the heat, she found that she was shivering, but with excitement, and she knew that, exhausted as she was, she would not be able to sleep. All she wanted was to escape, as soon as possible! The absurd and revolting scene which had just taken place had left her in a kind of daze from which only the sheer animal instinct of self-preservation had roused her briefly when she made her dash for the candelabra.

She knew that she must break out of this deathly fog and rid herself of the paralysing fear which held her. She had to get a grip on herself. After all, this was not the first time she had been a prisoner, and so far she had always managed to escape, however desperate her situation. Why should luck and courage desert her now? Her captor was half-mad and her gaolers half savages. With wit and patience she ought to be able to find a way out.

Comforted a little by these reflections, Marianne made a further bid to regain her self-possession by washing her face and then drinking a little water and eating some fruit. The fresh, fragrant scent of it did her good. Then, because its voluminousness still draped about her got in the way, she tore the sheet in half and knotted one of the pieces firmly round her chest. For all the thinness of the covering, the sensation of being more or less dressed was reassuring.

Thus prepared, she repeated the tour of her room with minute care, in the vague hope of finding something passed over during her first examination. She stood for a long time at the door, studying the complicated play of the lock, only to reach the dispiriting conclusion that it was impossible to open it without the key. The sinister chamber was as securely fastened as any strong box.

Next, the captive returned to the window and studied the bars. They were thick but not very close together, and Marianne was slim. If she could only get one out she might be able to slip through the gap and, with the help of her sheets, climb down into the little inner court from which there must surely be some way out. But how to shift the bars? And what with? The mortar welding them into the stone was old and might crumble easily enough if attacked with a strong tool. The difficulty lay in finding such a tool.

There was the tray, but the cutlery on it was made of fragile silver-gilt, quite unequal to the task. That was no use.

But Marianne, thirsting for freedom, was not to be so easily discouraged. What she wanted was a piece of iron and she continued her obstinate search for it in every nook and cranny, studying the walls and furniture attentively in the hope of finding some answer, some object she could use.

Her perseverance was rewarded when she came to the big coffer and saw that the lock was ornamented with dainty but thoroughly medieval volutes of wrought iron ending in sharp points. A quick reconnaissance with eager, careful fingers produced a gasp of joy, quickly stifled. One of them was loose, its nails rusted through. It might come off.

Trembling with excitement, Marianne took the cloth off the tray to save her fingers and sitting down on the floor by the chest began working at the iron to loosen the grip of the nails in the antique wood. It was harder than she had first thought. The nails were long and the wood sound. In fact, it was painful and tiring work, made no easier by the heat, but with her whole mind concentrated on her goal, Marianne was unaware of it, any more than of the bites of the mosquitoes which tormented her continually, attracted by the light of the candles at her side.

By the time the piece of metal she wanted dropped into her hand, the night was far advanced and Marianne was exhausted and perspiring. She looked for a moment at the heavy piece of ironwork in her hand and then, getting to her feet with an effort, went to have another look at the seating of the window bars. She sighed. There were several more hours' work there and it would be daylight long before she had finished.

As though in corroboration, a clock somewhere nearby struck four. It was too late. There was nothing more she could do that night. Besides, she was feeling so tired and so cramped from her long time crouching over the lock that it was doubtful if she could have managed the descent by the sheet. Prudence dictated waiting until the next night and praying that nothing disastrous happened in the intervening day. Meanwhile, she must sleep, sleep as much as she could to recoup her strength.

Having made her decision, Marianne calmly returned the piece of iron to its original position and replaced the nails which held it. Then, with a murmured prayer, she went and lay down on the big bed and, pulling the covers over her, for the chill mist of dawn was stealing into the room, fell sound asleep.

She slept for a long time, waking only when a hand touched her shoulder. Opening her eyes, she saw Ishtar, draped in a flowing black and white striped tunic with big gold rings in her ears, seated on the edge of her bed gazing at her.

'It is sunset,' she said simply, 'but I let you sleep on for you were weary, and there was little else for you to do. Now it is time for your bath.'

The other two women were already waiting in the centre of the room, surrounded by all the same preparations as on the previous night. But instead of rising, Marianne curled further down among the bedclothes and stared at Ishtar sullenly.

'I don't want to get up. I'm hungry. I can have my bath afterwards.'

'I think not. Food shall be brought to you afterwards. But if you are still too tired to rise, my sisters will help you.'

There was a threat, sardonic but unmistakable, in the soft voice. Remembering how easily the tall black woman had hoisted Matteo's huge bulk over her shoulder, Marianne realized that it was useless to resist; and rather than waste the strength which she foresaw might be desperately needed, she got up and submitted herself, with no more argument, to the ministrations of her strange attendants.

The ritual ablutions of the previous night were repeated with, if anything, still greater care. Instead of the oil, they anointed her body with some heavy scent which soon began to make her head swim unbearably.

'Don't use any more of that scent,' she protested, seeing one of the women pour another hefty dollop into the palm of her hand. 'I don't like it!'

'Your likes or dislikes are of no importance,' Ishtar retorted coolly. 'This is the perfume of love. No man, even on his deathbed, can resist one who wears it.'

Marianne's heart missed a beat. She understood now: tonight, this very night, she was to be delivered up to Damiani. The stars, it seemed, must be favourable… A wave of terror swept over her, mingled with rage and disappointment, and she made a desperate attempt to escape from the hateful ministrations which made her feel suddenly sick. Instantly, six granite hands came down on her and held her fast.

'Be still!' Ishtar adjured her roughly. 'You are behaving like a child, or like a lunatic! You must be one or the other to fight against what can't be helped!'

That might be true but Marianne could not resign herself to being offered up, bathed and scented like an odalisque for her first night with the sultan, to the revolting creature who desired her. Tears of rage filled her eyes as, her anointing completed, they dressed her this time in a flowing tunic of black muslin, wholly transparent but scattered here and there with strange geometric figures in silver thread. Her hair was dressed in innumerable tiny plaits, like black snakes, and on it Ishtar placed a silver circlet at the front of which was a coiled viper with emerald eyes. Then, taking a pot of kohl, she set about exaggerating the girl's eyes enormously while Marianne, momentarily accepting defeat, let her have her way.

This done, Ishtar stepped back a pace or two to review her handiwork.

'You are beautiful,' she said flatly. 'Not Cleopatra or the mother-goddess Isis herself was ever more so. The master will be pleased. Come, now, eat…'

Cleopatra? Isis? Marianne shook her head, as though to rouse herself from some bad dream. What had ancient Egypt to do with it? This was the nineteenth century and they were in a city full of ordinary people, under the protection of her own country's army! Napoleon was master of the better part of Europe! How dared the old gods raise their heads?

She felt the breath of madness touch her cheek. In an effort to bring herself back to earth, she tried the food which was brought her and drank a little of the wine, but the dishes seemed tasteless and the wine without flavour. It was like food eaten in a dream, tasting of nothing…

She was embarking, without relish, on the fruit when it happened. The room began to revolve slowly about her, it tilted unnaturally and everything in it seemed suddenly withdrawn to an immense distance, as though she had been sucked into a long tunnel. Her sense of hearing and of touch became infinitely detached… Before she was borne away on the great blue wave which rose up suddenly before her, Marianne had just time to understand in a lightning flash what had happened: this time, her food had been drugged.

Yet she was conscious of neither anger nor alarm. Her body seemed to have broken all its earthly moorings, including all capacity for fear, suffering or even disgust, and to be floating weightlessly, marvellously airborne amid a brilliantly coloured universe made up of all the glowing hues of dawn. The walls had fallen away. She was no longer in prison: a vast, shimmering world, shot through with all the colours of Venetian glass, opened up before her, full of rippling light and movement, and in a kind of trance, Marianne sped towards it. She seemed to find herself all at once on a tall ship… perhaps the very ship whose coming had for so long figured in her dreams, steered by a green siren? High up on the prow, she sailed towards strange shores where fantastically-shaped houses shone like metal, where the plants were blue and the sea purple. The sails sang and the ship drove on over a richly-coloured Persian carpet, while the sea air carried the scent of incense, and Marianne, breathing it in, was no longer astonished at the strange sense of animal well-being which spread through every fibre of her being.

It was a weird sensation, a joy which tingled in the minutest nerve-endings, even to her fingertips. It was a little like the moment after love when the body, satisfied, wrought to the ultimate pitch of sensation, wavers on the very verge of oblivion. It was a kind of oblivion. For all at once everything changed, darkness was everywhere. The fabulous landscape melted into thick night and the soft, scented warmth gave way to an air cool and damp. Yet still Marianne floated on in the same tranquil happiness.

The darkness through which she moved was gentle and familiar. She could feel it all about her like a caress: the darkness of the prison, squalid but wonderful, where for that one, only time in her life, she had given herself to Jason. Time rolled back. Once again, Marianne could feel the rough boards of their nuptial couch beneath her bare back, their harshness an apt counterpoint to the touch of her lover's hands.

She could feel that touch now. It slid over her body, lapping her in a web of fire beneath which her own flesh flamed and opened like some hothouse flower. Pressing her eyes shut, Marianne held her breath in the effort to hold on to the miraculous sensation which was yet only a prelude to the supreme delight to come… She felt her throat swell with unuttered moans and cries of pleasure but they died unvoiced as the dream changed again and plunged into the absurd.

Far off at first, but growing nearer, moment by moment, there was the sound of a drum beating slowly, terribly slowly, like some dreadful knell. It quickened gradually until it was like the pulse-beat of some gigantic heart, throbbing faster as it came nearer, beating faster and faster, louder and louder.

For a moment, it seemed to Marianne that it was Jason's heart she heard, but then, as the sound grew clearer, so the amorous darkness thinned and melted like a fog and became tinged with a red light. And suddenly she was hurled from the heights of her dream of love into the very midst of the nightmare from which she had seemed to have escaped.

She seemed in some strange way to have become two people, for she could see herself stretched out in her transparent black draperies which lay like a dark veil over her nakedness. She was lying on a low table made of stone, like an altar, beyond which rose a brazen serpent with a golden crown.

The place itself was a grim, windowless cavern, with moisture dripping from the low, vaulted roof and slimy, pitted walls lit by great black wax candles which gave off a greenish light and an acrid smoke. Below the altar sat two of the black women in their sombre draperies, holding small round drums between their knees, on which they were beating rhythmically. Only their hands moved: everything else remaining perfectly still, even their lips which yet emitted a kind of musical humming, a strange, wordless melody. To this weird music, Ishtar was dancing.

She was quite naked, except for a slim, golden snake which was coiled about her loins, and the candlelight shone blue-black on her gleaming skin. Eyes closed, head flung back and arms upraised, stressing the curve of her heavy, pointed breasts, she was turning in circles on the spot, whirling faster and faster, like a top…

Abruptly, Marianne's wandering spirit which had been floating in a kind of limbo of detachment above this extraordinary scene, re-entered her prostrate body. And with the return came fear and dread, but when she tried to move, spring up and run away, she found that she could not stir. Nothing bound her to the stone table, no bonds that could be seen or felt, yet her head and limbs refused to obey her, as though she were in a trance.

The sensation was so terrifying that she tried to cry out but no sound came. Beside her, Ishtar was now whirling madly. Sweat ran in shining trickles down her black skin and her overheated body gave off an almost unbearable wild beast odour.

Marianne was unable even to turn away her face.

Then she saw Matteo Damiani loom up out of a dark corner of the cavern and she wished that she could die. He came towards her slowly, his eyes wide open and staring blankly, bearing in both hands a silver cup containing some bubbling liquid. He was dressed in a long, black gown, not unlike the one Marianne had seen him wearing on the dreadful night at the Villa Sant'Anna when she had snatched Agathe from his devilish rites, but this one was patterned with long snakes in green and silver thread and was open down the front to reveal a fat, grey, hairy chest, breasted almost like a woman's.

At his approach, Ishtar ceased her frantic dance abruptly. She dropped, panting, to the ground, pressing her lips to the man's bare feet. Matteo continued to advance as though he had felt nothing, pushing the woman aside with the toe of his black sandal.

Reaching Marianne, he stretched out a hand to grasp the muslin tunic, and ripped it off in a single movement. Then, taking a small tray from the floor, he placed it on her stomach and set the silver cup upon it. After this, he dropped on to his knees and began chanting strange verses in some foreign tongue.

From the depths of her paralysing trance, Marianne realized with sick horror that he was going to perform on her the same satanic rites which she had witnessed in the ruins of the little temple, only this time she was at the very centre of the black magic. It was her own body which was to be made the altar for this sacrilege.

Ishtar had risen and was kneeling beside Matteo, playing the role of acolyte in the infernal ceremony, chanting the responses in the same unknown language.

As her master seized the cup and drained it to the last drop, she uttered a wild shriek blending into an incantation, as if she were invoking for him the protection of some dark and terrible deity, probably the gold-crowned serpent whose emerald eyes seemed to glitter with ominous life.

Matteo had begun to shake. He seemed to be possessed by some kind of religious mania. His eyes were dilated and rolled in their sockets and there was foam on his lips. He was making a low rumbling sound in his chest, like a volcano about to erupt. At this point, Ishtar handed him a black cockerel and he severed its neck at a stroke with a great knife. The blood flowed, splashing over the girl's naked body.

At that, the horror that welled up in Marianne broke through the paralysing power of the drug that held her in thrall. She found her voice in the utterance of one fearful, inhuman shriek which seemed to tear itself from her rigid throat. It was as if her vocal cords had come to life of themselves and in this feeble effort had used up all her strength, for scarcely had the echoes of that dreadful cry died away in the cavern than Marianne mercifully lost consciousness.

She did not see Matteo, at the height of his madness, cast off his robe and lean over her with outstretched hands. She did not feel him throw himself with all his weight upon her bloodstained body, possessing her with all a madman's fury. She was far away in a world without colour or sound where nothing could reach her.

There was no way of knowing how long she remained unconscious like this, but when she surfaced at last in the real world again she was lying in the great pillared bed and she felt deathly ill.

Possibly, in order to subdue her resistance, they had given her a dose of the drug too strong for her constitution, or perhaps the mosquitoes which, as soon as night fell and the candles were lighted, filled Venice with their whining hum had already injected their stagnant fever into her veins, but she was tormented by agonies of thirst and stabs of pain drilled through her temples.

She felt too ill to be very much aware of what was going on around her. What little thought remained was concentrated on the single, fixed and obstinate idea of flight. She had to get away… as far away as possible, out of the reach of these devils!

In fact, her brain had cleared sufficiently for her to realize that her long dream, which had foundered at the end so catastrophically in the worst practices of black magic, had not been entirely a dream but, in its last stages at least, a horrible reality. With the help of his black sorceress, Damiani had succeeded in violating her without the least resistance.

The thought was at the same time revolting and destructive for Marianne knew now, beyond all doubt, that short of starving herself to death there was nothing she could do to escape from the degradation forced upon her by Damiani. There was nothing and no one to prevent her captors, whenever they chose, from employing the mysterious drug which rendered her powerless to resist the steward's lust.

Marianne's thoughts chased one another round and round, increasing her fever and with it her thirst. She had never known such thirst. It was as though her tongue had grown to twice its normal size, filling her mouth with its swelling.

With a painful effort, she managed to raise herself on her pillows, trying to measure the distance between herself and the water jug. The movement brought fresh stabs of pain to her head and she uttered an involuntary groan. At once a black hand put a cup to her lips.

'Drink,' said Ishtar's quiet voice. 'You are burning hot.'

This was true, but the presence of the black witch produced a shudder of revulsion in Marianne. She raised one hand to push away the cup but Ishtar did not move.

'Drink!' she commanded. 'It is only a tisane. It will bring down your fever.'

Slipping one arm underneath the pillows to lift the girl, she brought the vessel once more to the parched lips, which this time took in the tepid fluid instinctively. Marianne had no more strength to resist. Besides, it smelled pleasantly of good, familiar things, of woodland plants, mint and verbena. There was nothing suspicious there and when at last Ishtar laid her back on the pillows, Marianne had drunk it all to the last drop.

'You will sleep again now,' she was told, 'but it will be a good sleep and you will feel better when you wake.'

'I don't want to sleep! I don't ever want to sleep again!' Marianne burst out tearfully, seized by a fresh terror of dreams which began beautifully only to end in ugliness.

'Why ever not? Sleep is the best medicine. And you are too tired to resist it…'

'What about… him? That – that beast?'

'The master is asleep also,' Ishtar responded placidly. 'He is glad because he came to you at a propitious hour and he trusts the gods will accept his sacrifice and give you a fine son.'

At this tranquil evocation of the ghastly scene in which she had played a principal role, Marianne was overcome by a violent spasm of nausea which left her gasping and sweating on her pillows. She was suddenly aware of the violation of her body and recoiled from it in disgust. A kindly providence had taken away her senses at the crucial moment but the shame and humiliation remained, and with it the loathing of her own flesh possessed by the other.

How, after this, could she ever look Jason in the face, supposing that God ever allowed her to see him again? The American sea captain was everything that was open, clean-cut and straightforward in mind, in no way given to superstition. Could he accept the evil conspiracy to which Marianne had fallen victim? He was jealous, and in his jealousy violent and unbridled. He had accepted, though not easily, the knowledge that Marianne had been Napoleon's mistress. He would never bear to think of her subject to Damiani. He might even kill her… he would undoubtedly leave her, overcome with revulsion, and never return.

These thoughts jostled and battered in Marianne's aching head with a frenzy that brought an increase of suffering and despair. Her shattered nerves broke suddenly in a burst of convulsive sobbing to which the big black woman, seated silent and motionless a little way from the bed, listened with a little frown.

Her knowledge of potions was powerless in the face of such despair and in the end she could only shrug and tiptoe from the room, leaving her prisoner to weep her heart out, with the reflection that she must ultimately cry herself to sleep.

In this she was right. By the time Marianne had reduced herself to the last stages of nervous exhaustion she ceased to struggle against the beneficent effects of the tisane and fell asleep with her face buried in the tear-soaked red silk of her sheets, and the last dismal thought in her head that she could always kill herself if Jason rejected her.

Thanks to three more cups administered by Ishtar at regular intervals, the fever had subsided by the morning and Marianne found herself still weak but clear-headed and very much awake, unhappily, to the desperate nature of her situation.

However, the despair which had overtaken her at the height of her fever had dissipated itself like a breaking wave and Marianne was herself again, with all her old zest for battle in her heart. The greater the power and wickedness of her enemies, the greater was her own determination to triumph at any cost.

Forcing herself to begin by considering her problem calmly from all angles, Marianne attempted to get up and try her strength. The piece of metal which she had succeeded in detaching from the lock of the antique chest seemed to shine brighter than the rest and drew her like a magnet. But when she sat up in bed she saw that she had a nurse: one of the negresses was seated on the steps of the bed, with her blue tunic spread out over the bearskins.

She was not doing anything, but simply squatting with her arms about her knees which were drawn up almost to her chin. In her dark draperies she had the air of some strange brooding bird.

Hearing a movement, she merely turned to look at the girl and, seeing that she was awake, clapped her hands. Her companion, so like her that she might have been her shadow, entered with a tray which she set down on the bed and then seated herself, in exactly the same attitude, in the place of her sister, who bowed and went out.

For hours the woman sat there, as though rooted to the ground, uttering no word and appearing not to hear any that were addressed to her.

You cannot be left alone,' Ishtar said later when Marianne complained of the guard mounted at the foot of her bed. 'We cannot have you giving us the slip.'

'Give you the slip? From here?' Marianne cried, disappointment at finding herself thus closely guarded whipping up her anger.

'How could I? The walls are thick and there are bars at my windows – and besides, I have no clothes!'

'There are other ways of escaping from a prison, even when the body is secured.'

Then Marianne understood the real reason for the watch kept on her. Damiani was afraid that in her humiliation and despair she might take her own life.

'I shall not kill myself,' she said. 'I am a Christian and Christians believe that suicide is both a coward's way out and a sin.'

'Perhaps. But I do not think you one to balk at flouting the gods. In any case, we can leave nothing to chance. You are too precious to us now.'

Ignoring the implications of this, Marianne let the matter drop. Let the future take care of itself! For the present, she was well aware that it was useless to insist on the removal of her watchdog, but it cost her an effort to conceal her chagrin. The woman's presence made things much more difficult. How could she make the smallest attempt to escape under that brooding black eye? Unless she could ensure that she was helpless, by stunning her first.

The idea worked away quietly in Marianne's brain and she, who a moment before had been proclaiming herself a Christian, now coolly considered the possibility of killing her guard in order to escape. It all depended, of course, on whether she had the strength to do it and the turn of speed to surprise a creature with the reflexes of a wild cat…

In this way, the day passed, monotonously but not without interest, in concocting any number of plans, some more practicable than others, for getting rid of her gaoler. But when night fell, Marianne knew that she had little chance of carrying out any of them, for after supper Matteo returned, walking into the room with a candlestick in his hand: a Matteo so altered from the one she had seen hitherto that for a second Marianne forgot her anger.

It was not simply that the mad sorcerer of the other night had vanished as if he had never been, or that the man no longer showed the slightest hint of drunkenness. He had also bestowed an unaccustomed degree of care on his appearance. He was shaved, brushed, pomaded, his nails gleamed like agate and he wore a dressing-gown of heavy dark-blue silk over a dazzling white shirt. There floated about him such a powerful smell of eau-de-Cologne that for a moment Marianne was reminded of Napoleon. He, too, was in the habit of drenching himself in eau-de-Cologne like that when—

Her brain recoiled from the horrid comparison which suggested itself. Yet Matteo certainly looked just like any rustic bridegroom on his wedding night – only without the inevitable look of embarrassment, for his face bore a triumphant smirk and he seemed highly pleased with himself.

Marianne drew her brows together, suddenly on her guard. When she saw him set his candle down on the bedside table she uttered an indignant protest.

'Take that candle away, and yourself too! How dare you come to me like this! What do you think you're doing?'

'Why… I've come to sleep with you! After all, you are, in some degree, my wife now, Marianne, aren't you?'

'Your—'

Words failed Marianne but only for an instant. Then the torrent of her rage burst forth in a stream of abuse in several languages, borrowed indiscriminately from the stable oaths of old Dobs, her groom, and the vocabulary of Surcouf's seamen. She even succeeded in astonishing herself, and the steward fell back stupified before the storm.

'Out!' Marianne commanded. 'Get out of here at once, you murderous brute! You miserable, sneaking cur! You're nothing but a lackey, the swinish offspring of a sow and a he-goat! Even your weapons are a lackey's weapons! The snare and the knife in the back! That's how you killed your master, isn't it? Cowardly, from behind? Or did you cut his throat while you were shaving him? Or was it a drug, like the one you used on me to get me in your power? And do you think, now, that your mumbo-jumbo has made me like yourself? Do you imagine I enjoyed the things you did to me? And do you think I must be so enamoured of your charms I'll share my bed with you, like any tradesman's wife! Take a look at yourself – and look at me! I'm no milkmaid to be tumbled in the hay, Matteo Damiani, I'm—'

'I know what you are!' Matteo cried, his patience at an end. 'You have told me often enough! Princess Sant'Anna! Well, like it or not, I'm a Sant'Anna, too, and my blood—'

'That is not proved, and you have yet to convince me! Easy enough to claim a great lord as your father when he is no longer there to confirm it. And, so far, the way you go about things tells against you. From what I know of the Sant'Annas, they at least killed openly. Theirs may have been a cruel and merciless kind of justice, but I do not think that they would ever have recourse to an African sorceress to help them get the better of a helpless woman—'

'Any means are fair with such a woman as you! Your own marriage was a cheat. Where is the child you pledged yourself to give your husband? Where is it, the one thing he married you for, you emperor's whore?'

'Miserable flunkey! One of these days, before I see you hanged, I'll have you flogged until you scream for mercy, until you wish you'd never dared to raise your hand against me – or your master!'

The room re-echoed with their rage as they confronted one another, face to face, both gripped by an equal fury, if not of an equal quality.

Marianne, white-faced, her green eyes flashing, poured scorn on the apoplectic Damiani who, with bloodshot eyes and heavy, congested features quivering with rage, was clearly in a mood to kill, but she was past caring. Her anger was beyond all control now, and she spat out her hatred and disgust without even pausing to ask herself why this strange urge had come upon her to avenge a husband who, not so long ago, had inspired her with nothing but fear.

Matteo, beside himself, was on the point of hurling himself at Marianne to throttle her, but even as his hands went for her throat, Ishtar sprang between them.

'Are you mad?' she cried. 'You are the master and whatever she may say, she is yours! Why should you kill her? Have you forgotten what she means to you?'

Her words acted on Damiani like a douche of cold water. He stood for a moment, breathing heavily, striving to take hold of himself, and then, with unexpected gentleness, he put the negress aside and turned again to Marianne.

'She – she is right,' he gasped. 'Flunkey I may be, Princess, but this flunkey has got you with child, I doubt not, and when the child is born—'

'It is not born yet and you have no means of knowing whether your base treachery has borne fruit. And if it is true I am to bear your child, then you will have to kill me to keep me silent, for no power on earth shall prevent me delivering you into the Emperor's hands!'

'Then I shall kill you, lady. Why not, when you have done your part? In the meantime…'

'What in the meantime?'

For answer, Matteo set about removing his dressing-gown, which he laid over a chair, and then returned to the bed with the evident intention of getting in. But before he could so much as lay a finger on the sheets, Marianne had sprung out and, regardless of her unclothed state, had made a lightning dash for the curtains where she clung.

'If you dare to set foot in that bed, Matteo Damiani, then you will sleep in it alone. Nothing shall make me share it with such a creature as you!'

As calmly as though she had not spoken, Matteo got into bed, plumped up the pillows and settled himself against them with obvious enjoyment.

'Like it or not, my lady, we shall be bedfellows for as long as I choose. What you said just now was very true. The best-laid plans can go astray and it may be that you are not yet breeding. So we'll do our best to make it certain. Come here!'

'Never!'

Marianne tried to run, to avoid the clutching hand which groped towards her, but she found Ishtar barring her way. The tall negress seemed enormous, standing there, as though the evil genie out of eastern tales had suddenly risen up before her to cast her back into the devil's power. Without apparent effort, not even seeming to notice Marianne's instinctive struggles, Ishtar picked her up bodily, screaming and kicking, and flung her on to the bed, straight into Damiani's arms, at the same time saying something in her strange tongue. The steward answered her in Italian.

'No, no hashish. She reacted badly and the child might suffer. We have other means. Call your sisters. You shall hold her down.'

At once, three pairs of black hands clamped down on Marianne, gripping her arms and legs and holding her flat on the bed, in spite of her screams and tears of rage. A gag was put in her mouth to quiet her and this time there was no merciful unconsciousness to spare her the shame and disgust.

For what seemed like endless minutes she was forced to suffer her tormentor, lying half-stifled and utterly helpless in the grip of those vice-like hands, and dying a hundred deaths of shame and sorrow. She felt as if she had fallen into the pit of hell itself, with the man's gross, scarlet, sweating countenance thrusting close to hers and the three black figures, standing still as stones, their blank eyes contemplating the rape with as much indifference as if it had been a mating of beasts. And that was what it was: she, Marianne, was being used like an animal, a brood mare to produce the right stock.

When they let her go at last, she lay unmoving on the ravaged bed, choking with sobs and drowned in tears, exhausted by her body's futile attempts at resistance. She had no more strength even to abuse her ravisher and when Matteo rose, still panting from his exertions, and began, grumbling, to put on his dressing-gown, she could only groan.

'She's so unwilling, there's no pleasure in it! But we'll keep it up, all the same, every night until we're sure. Let her be now, Ishtar, and come with me. That cold creature would put Eros off his stroke!'

So Marianne, broken and defeated, was left in her hated room, alone except for the other two women who remained as mute but watchful guards. No one even took the trouble to cover her. She had ceased to have any hope, even in God. She knew now that she would have to endure every step of this abominable martyrdom, until the time came when Damiani had what he wanted from her.

'But he shan't win – he shan't!' she vowed silently, out of the depths of her misery. 'I'll get rid of the child somehow, or if I fail I'll take him with me…'

Vain words, the desperate ravings born of fever and the paroxysms of humiliation she had suffered, yet Marianne repeated them over and over again in the nights that followed, nights in which even horror began to acquire a kind of monotony. Even revulsion became a kind of habit.

She knew that this was the witch Lucinda taking her revenge, that it was her power reaching out through Matteo from beyond the tomb. Sometimes, in the dark, it seemed to Marianne that she could see the marble statue from the little temple come to life. She heard its laughter… and would wake then in a bath of sweat.

The days were all alike, all dreary. Marianne spent them locked in her bare room under the watchful eye of one of the women. She was fed, bathed, even clothed after a fashion in a kind of loose tunic, like those worn by the black women, and a pair of slippers. Then, when night fell, the three she-devils bound her, for greater convenience, to the bed and left her so, naked and defenceless, to the tender mercies of Matteo. He, in point of fact, seemed to find increasing difficulty in performing what he appeared to regard as some kind of duty. More often than not, Ishtar was obliged to provide him with a glass of some mysterious liquid to revive his flagging powers. From time to time the prisoner's food was drugged, making her lose all sense of time, but she had ceased to care. In the end, overwhelming disgust had finished by inducing a kind of insensitivity. She had become a thing, an inanimate object incapable of reaction or of suffering. Her very skin seemed to have atrophied and grown dull to all sensation, while her sluggish brain held room for only one single, fixed idea: to kill Damiani and then die herself.

This idea, like a persistent, nagging thirst, was the one thing that remained alive in her. Everything else was stone and dead ashes. She no longer knew even if she loved, or whom she loved. All the people in her life seemed as strange and far-off as the characters on the tapestried walls of her room. She had ceased even to think of escape: how could she, guarded as she was by night and day? The she-devils who watched over her seemed incapable of sleep, fatigue or even inattention. All she wanted now was to kill, and then to do away with herself in turn. Nothing else mattered.

They had brought her some books, but she had not even opened them. Her days were spent seated in one of the high-backed chairs, as still and silent as her black guardians, staring at the hangings or at the marks of soot on the ceiling of her room. Words seemed out of place in that room where the silence was like that of the tomb. Marianne spoke to no one and did not answer when they spoke to her. She suffered herself to be cared for, fed and watered with no more response than a statue. Only her hatred was awake amid the silence and the stillness.

At last, this mute indifference began to have its effect on Damiani. As the days passed, Marianne could see the uneasiness growing in his eyes when he came to her at night. Little by little, the time he spent with her grew less until it was only a few minutes, and then, one night, he did not come at all. He had ceased to desire the marble being whose unblinking stare had perhaps power to disconcert him. He was afraid now, and soon Marianne did not see him at all except for the few moments every day when he came to inquire of Ishtar as to his prisoner's health.

He probably thought that by now he had done all he could to procure the child he wanted and that there was nothing to be gained from persisting in what had become a distasteful chore. Somewhere, beneath all her indifference, Marianne had felt a spark of joy at his fears, seeing them as a small triumph, though not enough to appease her hatred: that would only be satisfied with this man's blood, and she had patience to wait for that.

How long did this strange captivity continue, out of time, out of life itself? Marianne had lost all sense of hours and days. She no longer knew even where she was and scarcely who she was. Ever since her arrival she had seen only four people, and yet the palace was built to accommodate a huge staff, although now it was as secret and as silent as the tomb. Every sign of life, apart from the mere act of breathing, seemed to perish there, until Marianne began to think that perhaps death would come to her, creeping quietly of itself without her help. She would simply cease to be. The thing seemed, now, astonishingly easy.

Then, one evening, something did happen.

First of all, the usual watcher disappeared. There was a sound somewhere in the depths of the house, like a hoarse shout. The black woman heard it and, shuddering, left her accustomed place on the steps of the bed and went out of the room, not forgetting to close the door carefully behind her.

It was the first time for many days that Marianne had been left alone but she hardly noticed it. In a moment the woman would be back with the others, for it was near the time usually allotted for her bath. Without interest, she went and lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. The long imprisonment, with its enforced inactivity, was telling on her system. She often felt sleepy during the day and had got into the habit of following her own inclinations as meekly as the will of those outside herself.

She might have slept like that all night but for some instinct which woke her. She knew at once that something unusual had happened.

She opened her eyes and stared about her. It was pitch dark outside and the candles burned as usual in the great candelabra, but the room was as silent and empty as before. No one had come back and the hour for her bath was long past.

Marianne got up slowly and walked a little way across the room. A sudden draught, flattening the candle flames, made her turn her head towards the door and as she did so something stirred in her brain. The door was open.

The heavy oaken panel studded with iron swung back against the wall leaving a black hole between the tapestries. Hardly able to believe her eyes, Marianne moved forward to touch it, to convince herself that this was not simply another of the dreams which haunted her nights, in which, time and again, she had seen the door stand open on to limitless blue distances.

No, surely this time the door was truly open. Marianne could feel the faint draught it created. Even so, to make sure she was not dreaming, she went back to the candles and held one finger up to the flame. At once she gave a little cry of pain. The flame had burned her. Then, as she sucked her smarting finger, her eyes fell on the chest and she cried out again in surprise. There, neatly laid out on the lid, were the clothes in which she had arrived: the olive-green dress with the black velvet trimming, even her shoes and petticoat. Only the hooded cloak edged with Chantilly lace was missing. It was like a memory of another world.

Marianne put out her hand almost fearfully and touched the fabric, stroked it gently and then clutched at it like a drowning man at a straw. Something inside her seemed to snap and come away. She was suddenly alive again, capable of thought and action. It was as if she had been imprisoned in a block of ice and now the ice was broken and pieces were being chipped off and coming back to warmth and life.

With a surge of childlike joy, she tore off the hateful tunic they had put on her and fell on her own clothes as on something infinitely precious. She put them on, revelling in a sensation like feeling herself in her own skin after being flayed. She was so carried away that for the moment she did not even pause to wonder what it meant. It was simply wonderful, even if the heat made the garments uncomfortably hot to wear. She was herself again, from top to toe, and that was all that really mattered.

As soon as she was dressed, she marched determinedly to the door. Whoever had brought the clothes and opened the door must be a friend. She was being given a chance and she must take it.

Outside, everywhere was in total darkness and Marianne went back to fetch a candle to light her way. She saw that she was at the end of a long corridor with no other opening but another door facing her. It seemed to be shut.

Marianne's hand tightened on the candle and her heart missed a beat. Were they merely torturing her with false hopes? Was all this designed simply to bring her, helpless and more desperate than ever, face to face with yet another locked door?

But when she reached it, she saw that it was merely closed, not locked. It yielded to her hand and she found herself in an open gallery like a kind of long veranda, looking down on to a small courtyard. Overhead was a roof of broad, painted wooden beams supported on slender arched columns.

For all her haste to get away from the house, she paused for a moment in the gallery, drawing deep breaths of the warm night air.

It carried with it a disagreeable smell of mud and decaying refuse, but she had not been out of doors for so long and able to see the sky. It made no difference that the sky in question was heavy with cloud with not a star in sight: it was still the sky and therefore the ultimate symbol of freedom.

Resuming her cautious advance, Marianne came to a second door at the far end of the gallery. It opened to her hand and she found herself in China.

All round the walls of the delightful little salon, slant-eyed princesses danced a mad fandango with a joyous troop of grinning monkeys, in and out among black lacquered screens and gilt whatnots bearing quantities of rose and yellow porcelain, over which a Murano lustre cast a shimmering rainbow brightness. It was, in truth, a very pretty room but so much festive illumination made an uneasy contrast with the stillness that reigned there.

This time, Marianne passed on without a pause. Beyond, all was again in darkness, but she was in a broad gallery from which a staircase led, apparently, down to ground level.

Marianne's feet, shod in thin leather, made no sound on the polished marble mosaic as she glided, ghostlike, past the bronze columns that emerged from the walls on either side like ships looming out of the fog, and past the blind stone warriors. Everywhere, on the long inlaid chests, miniature caravels spread their sails to a non-existent wind, and gilded galleys dipped their long oars in invisible seas. On all sides, too, were banners of curious shape bearing the often-repeated crescent of Islam. Lastly, at either end of the gallery, reflected in tall, tarnished mirrors, a great terrestrial globe stood still and useless, dreaming of the tanned hands which had once set it turning in its bronze rings.

Impressed, in spite of herself, by this kind of mausoleum to the warlike, seafaring Venice of other days, Marianne found her feet dragging unconsciously. She had almost reached the staircase when she came to a sudden halt, her heart thudding, and listened intently. Someone was walking about downstairs, carrying a light which was moving slowly along the wall of the gallery.

She stood, rooted to the spot, scarcely daring to breathe. Who was it moving down there? Matteo? Or one of her three sinister keepers? Marianne cast about her for a refuge in case the bearer of the light should come upstairs and catch her unawares. Selecting the statue of an admiral whose armour was partly covered by a cloak with ample folds of stone drapery, she slipped softly behind it and waited.

The light stood still. Whoever it was must have put it down somewhere, because the footsteps went on, growing fainter.

She was just beginning to breathe again when her blood froze. A groan had come from below. There was a muffled cry, as though of terror and surprise, and then, almost at once, the sound of two sets of feet, one running from the other. A crash like the clap of doom told of the collapse of some piece of furniture, evidently laden with bric-a-brac. A door slammed, and the noise of the pursuit dwindled rapidly. Marianne heard a second and much fainter cry followed by the faint but horrible sound of a death-rattle. Somewhere, in the house or garden, a person was dying… After that, nothing. Only an overpowering silence.

Striving to still the thudding of her heart which seemed to echo through the silence like a cathedral bell, Marianne left her hiding place and tiptoed nervously towards the stairs, since there appeared to be no other way out. She reached them, but the sight which met her eyes froze her where she stood.

The stairs ran down to a noble hall sombrely furnished and hung with long tapestries and paintings in the style of Tiepolo, but to Marianne the room looked like a battlefield. A tall candlestick stood on a long stone table and nearby lay the bodies of the two black servants whose living voices she had never even heard. One was on the floor beside an overturned chair, the other lay across the table. Both had died in the same way, stuck through the heart with merciless precision.

But there was a third body, lying right across the lowest steps. Matteo Damiani sprawled with eyes wide open on an eternity of horror and the blood from his severed throat spreading in slowly widening pools over the dripping steps.

'He is dead!' Marianne said aloud, half-unconsciously, and the sound of her own voice seemed to come from an immense distance. 'Someone has killed him – but who?'

The horror of it was mingled in her with a savage joy that was almost painful in its intensity, the instinctive joy of the torture victim who finds the dead body of the torturer stretched suddenly at her feet. Some unknown hand had simultaneously avenged both the murdered Prince Sant'Anna and the sufferings of Marianne herself.

Abruptly, the instinct of self-preservation reasserted itself. There would be time to rejoice later, when she was safely out of this nightmare, supposing she ever got out of it, for there were only three bodies in the room. Where was Ishtar? Was it the black witch who had slain her master? She was certainly capable of it but, if that were so, why had she also killed the other two women of her own race whom she called her sisters? Then, there had been that other cry, the sounds of pursuit and that dying groan… Was that Ishtar? And, if so, who was the author of this slaughter?

Since her arrival at this accursed palace, Marianne had learned nothing of its inhabitants save for Matteo himself and the three negresses and the oily Giuseppe. Yet Giuseppe did not possess the physical strength to overcome a man like Damiani, far less Ishtar. Yet there might be other servants and it was possible that one of them had done this, for reasons of his own.

It occurred to her at this point that the murderer might well return and would not necessarily make any distinction between herself and his earlier victims. She fought off her sense of paralysing horror. She must not stay here. She had to escape from this charnel hell, walk down the stairs, past the red stains at their foot and past the body in its bloodstained golden robe with its hideous gaping wound and its staring eyes.

Shuddering, she crept down, flattening her back against the marble baluster, towards the dark red pools which now gleamed with an oily sheen as they congealed.

She gathered her dress up in trembling hands to keep it from contact with the blood, but could do nothing to save her shoes.

As she went down, she could not drag her eyes away from Matteo's body. They were drawn by the fascination of horror which afflicts imaginative minds, when they have not fainted outright.

So it was that she became aware of the nature of a curious heap of metal lying on the dead man's chest: it was made up of chains, a prisoner's chains and shackles. They were old and fairly rusty but they were unlocked and evidently placed there deliberately.

However, Marianne wasted no time on this latest mystery. A rush of panic swept over her and as soon as her feet touched the ground she began to run down the hall, too much in the grip of fear to care how much noise she made. She plunged through the double doors which stood half-open, without a thought for the murderer who might be lurking outside, and found herself in the entrance hall.

As it happened, it was empty. The two ship's lanterns she remembered were alight and the garden door was also open.

Not checking in her stride, Marianne sped towards it and went down the steps leading to the shadowy garden at breakneck speed in her haste to reach the door to the canal. That, too, stood open, giving a glimpse of the sheen on dark water.

Freedom! Freedom was there, within reach…

She was swerving to avoid the vague shape of the wellhead which loomed clearer as her eyes became accustomed to the dark, when she stumbled and fell headlong over something warm and soft. This time she almost screamed aloud, for the thing which had tripped her was a human form. Her hands encountered damp, silken cloth, and by the exotic scent, mingled with the sweet, sickening smell of blood, Marianne knew that it was Ishtar. So, that death cry had been hers. The mysterious killer had not spared her, any more than her sisters.

Choking back a hysterical sob, she was about to rise when suddenly she felt the body move under her and heard a feeble groan. The dying woman muttered something Marianne could not understand and, instinctively, she bent closer to hear, lifting the head a little as she did so.

In the dimness, she was aware of the black woman's hands moving, groping like a blind person's at the supporting arms, but she felt no fear. The woman was dying: nothing now remained of her phenomenal strength. Then, suddenly, she heard words:

'The… the Master!… Forgive… oh, forgive…'

The head fell back. Ishtar was dead. Marianne laid her down on the ground and got up quickly, but stopped dead as she turned towards the door.

Framed in the opening, two figures had appeared on the small landing. There was no mistaking their military outline and they were followed by others, less clear.

'But, officer, I heard screams, I assure you, frightful screams,' came a woman's voice. 'And now this door open – and that other, up there, at the head of the stairs. It's not right. I always thought there was something funny going on here. If people had only listened to me…'

'Quiet everybody!' A rough voice broke in authoritatively. 'We'll search the house from top to bottom. If there's been a mistake made, then we'll apologize, of course. But it'll go hard with you, my good woman, if you've brought us on a wild-goose chase!'

'I'm quite sure I haven't, officer. You'll thank me, I daresay. I've always said that house was a wicked place.'

'Well, we'll soon see. Bring up some light, there!'

Slowly, holding her breath, Marianne backed away, half-crouching, into the shelter of the dark walled garden which lay beyond a stone arch. It seemed to run parallel with the canal. Her instinct told her that it would not do for her to be seen by the soldiers or by any of these people who, however well-intentioned, were a great deal too inquisitive. She could guess only too well what would happen if she were found, the only one alive in a house full of corpses. How could she expect them to believe her terrible but, on the face of it, improbable tale? At best they would take her for a madwoman and probably lock her up again, and in any case she would be detained by the police and questioned endlessly. Previous experience at Selton Hall, after her duel with Francis Cranmere, had taught her how easily the truth can be distorted. Her dress, her shoes, her hands were all stained with blood. She might very easily be accused of fourfold murder, and then what would become of her rendezvous with Jason?

She was conscious of faint surprise at the readiness with which her lover's name came to her mind, with no touch of fear or foreboding. It was the first time, since awakening from her long-drawn nightmare, that she had thought of the prearranged meeting in Venice. After her rape by Damiani she had experienced a dreadful sense of something irrevocable having occurred, and such a revulsion from her own body that death had seemed to her the only proper end. But now that she had her freedom so unexpectedly restored to her, her own spirit reawakened and with it her passionate love of life and the accompanying instinct to fight.

She remembered now that somewhere in the world there was a ship and a sailor on whom all her hopes were concentrated, and that she wanted to see them again, the ship and the sailor, whatever else might come of it. Unfortunately, in this house of madness, the combination of drugs and despair had made her lose all count of time. The time for their meeting might have come or gone, or it might be still some days ahead: Marianne had no means of knowing. The first step towards finding out was to get out, but that was easier said than done.

Not knowing what to do next, Marianne huddled in the midst of a large flowering shrub and tried to think of a way out of the garden which, for all its scents of orange blossom and honeysuckle, was still a trap. The walls were high and smooth and in a little while the trap would surely be sprung.

Back towards the house, lanterns had been brought and flitted about in the darkness. What looked like a crowd of people poured into the courtyard, led by the two soldiers. From her hiding place, Marianne saw them bend over the body of Ishtar, lying near the well, uttering exclamations of horror. Then one of the soldiers went up the steps and disappeared into the house, followed by a train of interested spectators, only too glad of the chance to see inside the grand house and, maybe, pop something into their pockets on the sly.

It dawned on Marianne then that if she did not want to be discovered, she had very little time left. She crept out of her precarious shelter and stepped out into the garden, searching the wall for some other door, if any existed. It was as dark as the pit. The trees met in a thick roof overhead, making the night blacker than ever underneath.

Holding her hands stretched out in front of her, like a blind woman, she at last encountered warm brick and began following the wall with the intention of making a circuit of the garden. Then, if she did not find a way out, she would climb up into a tree and wait, though goodness knew how long, until the way was clear.

She traversed some thirty yards in this way before the wall turned a corner. A few more steps and the wall ended abruptly, giving way to emptiness and curved ironwork. By this time, her eyes were growing much more accustomed to the darkness and she was able to make out that she was looking at a small opening barred with scrollwork in wrought iron, which made a lighter patch in the surrounding black.

On the other side, contrary to what she had feared, was no canal but an alleyway lit faintly by a distant lantern. Here at last was her way of escape.

As ill-luck would have it, Marianne found herself no better off. The bars were strong and the gate fastened with a padlock and chain. It refused to open. Yet the breath of free air in her lungs was enough for Marianne. She would not despair. Besides, the noises from the house seemed to be coming nearer.

Stepping back a pace, she measured the height of the surrounding wall with her eye. What she saw satisfied her. The gate might not open but it looked a comparatively simple matter to climb: the ironwork offered plenty of footholds, not too far apart, while the piece of wall directly above was not more than eighteen inches high and the brickwork sufficiently ancient to provide a good grip. She thought she could get over it without difficulty.

The sounds were getting more distinct. Voices and footsteps. A light flashed under the trees at the entrance to the garden. However, climbing was out of the question encumbered by a long, thick skirt.

In spite of her haste and her alarm, she made herself take time to take it off and stuff it through the gate into the alley. Then, dressed only in her chemise and cotton drawers, she turned her attention to the climb.

It was, as she had foreseen, a fairly simple matter. This was just as well because her muscles, weakened by her long incarceration and inactivity, had lost much of their old elastic strength.

By the time Marianne reached the top of the wall, she was sweating and gasping for breath. Her head was swimming and she felt so dizzy that she was obliged to sit on the ridge for a moment to recover from the pounding in her chest. She could never have believed that she was so weak. Her whole body was trembling and she had the alarming feeling that her sinews might give way at any moment. Yet there was no choice but to go down.

Marianne shut her eyes and, holding tight to the top of the wall, swung her legs over and groped for a foothold. She managed to move one foot, then the other, one hand, then the other, but as she tried to take the next step downwards her muscles gave way suddenly, she felt the bricks burn her clutching hands and then she fell.

Luckily it was not very far and she landed on the clothes she had pushed through the gate. The thick velvet-trimmed fabric broke her fall, so that she was able to get up at once, rubbing her bruised seat, and cast a swift glance up and down. As she had guessed, she was in a narrow passage, and at either end was a small hump-backed bridge. On one side, the left, there was a faint glimmer of light. In both directions the alley was completely deserted.

Marianne slipped her dress on again hurriedly, taking care to keep in the shelter of the wall, and then hesitated for a moment. As she did so, there came a distant roll of thunder and a gust of wind blew down the passage, lifting her unbound hair. The effect on her was electric. She flung both arms wide, as though to grasp the wind, and took a deep intoxicating breath. The breeze held more dust than it did sea air, but she was free! Free at last! Even if it was at the cost of four killings by a mysterious unknown hand, she was still free, and the dead who lay in the ancient splendours of their stolen palace were not worth a thought. To the newly-escaped prisoner it seemed a veritable judgement of God.

She paused for a moment, undecided which way to go, then, feeling suddenly lighthearted, she turned to the left and made her way towards the gleam of yellow light.

At the same instant, big, heavy drops of rain began to fall, making little coin-sized craters in the dust. The storm was reaching Venice.

CHAPTER FOUR A Sail on the Giudecca

Before Marianne had crossed the little bridge, she was caught in a torrential downpour. She saw people running for the doorway of the Soranzo palace and a cluster of gondolas nosing up to a small landing stage. Then, in a few seconds, everything was blotted out. Venice was drowned in a world of water, only pierced now and then by streaks of white lightning which brought the street into sudden sharp focus. The light for which Marianne had been making, probably an oil lamp burning before some holy statue, had vanished.

Drenched to the skin in no time, Marianne dashed on, without slackening her pace. The joy of being able to run, to forge straight ahead without thought for where her path might lead! So she simply put down her head and bowed her shoulders against the downpour.

For the storm which burst over the city was a good storm and the rain did her good, washing her more thoroughly than Damiani's slaves with their complicated ritual. It was as if the heavens had decided to send down a flood and wash away all trace of the blood and hate and shame, and Marianne revelled in the stinging rain with a blessed sense of release. She longed to scrub each fibre of her being clean of all memory of what had passed.

However, she could not go running about Venice all night long until she dropped with exhaustion. She had to find somewhere to go, and quickly, because, apart from the possibility of being picked up by the police, it was not unlikely that by daylight her strange appearance, and her sodden clothes and hair, would begin to attract attention.

It seemed to her that her best course was to look for a church where she could ask for help and succour, and also find out what the date was.

That was the one place where she could feel safe. The ancient right of sanctuary which had so often stood between the criminal and the law might also extend its inviolable shield to guard a woman, whose only crime was her desperate longing for happiness, from an authority which, she knew in her bones, would be both inquisitive and interfering. As a last resort, she could claim her kinship with the Cardinal San Lorenzo and hope that someone would believe her.

She ran on, between rows of greengrocers' stalls, closed at this hour, towards another bridge, and another alley. Blinded by the rain which streamed into her eyes, stumbling over leeks and cabbage stalks lying in the gutter, she nearly measured her length a dozen times in the mud.

It was pouring harder than ever by the time she came to a largish canal and, following it, crossed over another bridge to emerge breathless into an open square. In the glare of a flash of lightning, the graceful russet-coloured façade of a Gothic church loomed up out of the deluge on her right. But only for a moment. Then the pall of rain and darkness fell thicker than ever and the thunder cracked and rolled directly overhead.

Marianne veered and aimed herself by guesswork at the church glimpsed momentarily through the driving rain, only to be brought up short as she crashed painfully into a projecting corner of stonework. Her gasp of anguish changed to a startled scream as another lightning flash illumined the obstacle she was striving to circumvent. It was nothing but a statue, some equestrian warrior of the fourteenth century, but it reared over her with such vivid realism that it seemed to be plunging out of the very heavens, and, through the sculptor's skill, there was such brutal strength and power in the figure of the greenish-bronze horseman, and in the expression of the face and the jutting jaw outlined below the helmet's brim, that Marianne recoiled in spite of herself, as though the gigantic charger was about to trample her underfoot. On such a night of violence, nothing strange or supernatural seemed out of place, and the bronze condottiere surging unbidden out of the storm bore too much resemblance to the evil genius which dogged her. He reared up before her, crushing her with his pride and menace, as though daring her to try and pass him by…

Dragging herself away, she turned towards the church, which showed up again for a brief instant, and made a dash for the shelter of the porch. The door refused to open but she pressed herself against it in an effort to get out of the wet. Unhappily the porch was not deep and the rain beat down on her.

It had turned a lot colder since the rain, and Marianne was shivering now, with the water streaming in fountains from every stitch of clothing. She tried again and again to open the door, but without success.

'They always shut the church at night,' a quavering little voice spoke close beside her. 'But you can come over here if you like. It's not so wet and we can wait till the rain stops.'

'Who's that? I can't see.'

'Me. Over here. Stay where you are an' I'll come to you.'

There was a sound of splashing and then a small hand was slipped into Marianne's. So far as she could tell from his size, it belonged to an urchin of about ten years old.

'Come on,' he commanded her, towing her after him without further ceremony. 'There's more room in the porch of the Scuola and the rain's not coming that way. Your dress and your hair are sopping wet.'

'How do you know? I can hardly see you.'

'I can see in the dark. I'm like a cat, Annarella says.'

'Who is Annarella?'

'My big sister. She's like a spider. She makes lace. The finest lace in all Venice!'

Marianne laughed. 'Well, if you're hoping for a customer, you're wrong, my lad! I haven't a bean. But you sound like an odd family, I must say! The cat and the spider. It's like a fairy story.'

With the child leading, they ran together to the entrance of another building a few seconds' away, to the right of the church. A brief flash revealed an elegant Renaissance front with curved pediments, on one of which was the lion of St Mark. As the boy had said, the broad pillared portal guarded by a pair of couching beasts was very much more comfortable than the church porch.

Marianne had room to shake out her dress and wring the water out of her streaming hair. In any case, the rain was beginning to ease off. The child had not spoken again but for the sake of hearing his voice, which was pure and clear as crystal, she started to question him.

'Surely it's very late? What are you doing out at this hour? You ought to be in bed.'

'I had something to do for a friend,' the boy said vaguely, 'and I got caught in the rain, like you… Where have you come from?'

'I don't know,' Marianne answered with a pang. 'I was locked up in a house and I escaped. I was trying to get into the church for shelter.'

There was silence. She could feel the child looking at her. He was probably thinking she was a lunatic and had escaped from some institution. She must look like it. But he only said, in the same matter-of-fact tone:

'The sacristan always locks San Zanipolo. In case of thieves. On account of the treasure. Lots of our doges are buried there – and he's there to keep guard over them,' he added, pointing to the bronze horseman who, seen from the side, seemed to be riding ahead of the church.

Lowering his voice suddenly, the boy whispered: 'Was it your lover who locked you up – or the police?'

Something told Marianne that her young friend would be more impressed by the latter. In any case, she could scarcely tell him the truth.

'The police! If they catch me, it's all up with me! Tell me, now – by the way, what's your name?'

'I'm called Zani – same as the church.'

'Well, Zani, can you tell me what day this is?'

'Don't you know?'

'No. I have been in a room with no light and no windows. It makes you lose count of time.'

'Peccato! You were lucky to get out! They're a bad lot, the police, and they've been worse than ever since Bonaparte's people came. Each trying to go one better than the other!'

'Very true, but please, please tell me what day…' She clutched at his arm.

'Oh, yes, I was forgetting. It was the twenty-ninth of June when I set out. It must be the thirtieth now. It's not far off dawn.'

Marianne leaned weakly against the wall. Five days! For five days now Jason must have been waiting in the lagoon! He was so near, was probably spending his nights peering into the darkness looking for her, while she had been submitting in passive despair to Damiani's hateful caresses!

When she had left that dreadful house she had believed that she still had some time left to sort out her feelings, to think things over and try and wipe out the memory of the foul and shadowy time that lay behind her. She felt that she needed a breathing space before she faced Jason's penetrating eyes. She knew his perspicacity too well, and the unerring, almost animal instinct which made him invariably put his finger on the weakest spot. He would know at a glance that she was not the same woman he had said good-bye to aboard the Saint-Guénolé six months before. The blood which had been shed might avenge her shame but it could not do away with the living evidence that might remain inside her, although at this moment she could not bear to believe or even think of the possibility. Yet now, already, he was waiting for her!

In a few minutes, an hour perhaps, she might be with him. It was agony to think that the moment she had looked forward to so passionately for so long now held nothing but terror for her. She did not know now what awaited her beyond these watery streets and streaming domes, across this rain-drenched city which lay between her and the sea.

When she saw Jason, would it be as a happy lover, full of the joys of being reunited, or would he also be an inquisitor, nursing dark suspicions? He was expecting a happy woman, coming to him in the sunshine and in all the dazzle of beauty fulfilled, and he would see a hunted creature, as fearful and uneasy in herself as in her draggled clothes. What would he think?

'It's stopped raining, you know.'

Zani was pulling at her sleeve. She opened her eyes with a shiver and looked about her. It was true. The storm had ceased as suddenly as it had started. The thunder was rumbling away into the distance and the din and drenching rain of a moment ago had given place to a great calm, hardly broken by the trickle of water from the eaves. The exhausted air seemed to have paused for breath.

'If you've nowhere to go,' the child went on, his eyes shining like stars in the darkness, 'you can come to us. You can shelter there from the rain and the carabinieri.'

'But what will your sister say?'

'Annarella? Nothing. She's used to it.'

'Used to what?'

But Zani did not answer and Marianne sensed that his silence was deliberate. He simply walked on with his head held high and that air of innocent self-importance which denotes the bearer of weighty secrets. Forbearing to question him further, his new friend followed. The thought of a roof over her head was an agreeable one. A few hours' rest would do her good and might help her to dredge up from somewhere some semblance of the woman Jason was expecting to meet.

They set off in the direction from which Marianne had come but in the street of the vegetable stalls they turned left and were swallowed up in an infinity of narrow alleys broken by canals which appeared to Marianne a perfect maze.

The way they took was so circuitous that she could have sworn they had doubled back on their tracks a hundred times, but Zani never hesitated for so much as an instant.

The sky lightened to grey and somewhere a cock crowed, hailing the dawn, the only sound in the whole empty labyrinth where all human life lay hidden behind thick wooden shutters and the cats reigned supreme. These had lain snugly in some dry corner while the storm lasted but now they appeared on all sides, slinking past dripping gutters and leaping over puddles as they made their way home. Now, slowly, the houses were becoming visible: whimsical rooftops, pinnacles, balconies and weird funnel-shaped chimneys silhouetted against the first light of day. Everywhere was perfect peace and the two night-walkers might have thought they had the street to themselves when suddenly they ran into ill-luck.

They had just turned into the Merceria, a thoroughfare a little wider than most, although twisting, and lined with shops on both sides, when they came upon a patrol of National Guardsmen. A bend in the street made it impossible to avoid them.

In a moment, Marianne and the child were surrounded by soldiers, two of them bearing lanterns.

'Stay right where you are!' their leader ordered, with more force than logic since it was impossible for them to do anything else. 'Where are you off to?'

Taken by surprise and struck dumb by the sight of the uniforms, Marianne could only stare at him. He was a young officer with an arrogant expression, evidently very well-pleased with his smart uniform and white leathers and sporting a moustache big enough for a small breastplate. He reminded her of Benielli.

But Zani, like a good Venetian, was already deep in a rapid stream of explanations. They poured from him at such a rate that his small, piping voice seemed to fill the street. He knew, of course, that this was no time for a boy of his age to be wandering round Venice but it wasn't their fault and the officer must please believe him because this was how it came about: he and his cousin had been called out last night to the bedside of Zia – that is, Aunt Lodovica who was sick with malaria. Cousin Paolo had sent for them before he went off fishing and of course they had gone at once because Zia Lodovica was old and so ill that her mind was wandering which was a terrible thing! She was such a clever woman, too, and the foster-sister and servant to Monsignior Lodovico Manin, the last doge. And, seeing her like that, himself and his cousin, they had not liked to leave her so they had stayed and watched by her and done what they could for her and so the time had gone by. And then, when the crisis was over and their aunt had gone to sleep it was very late. Since there was nothing more they could do and Cousin Paolo would be back in the morning, Zani and his cousin had set off home because his sister Annarella would be worrying about them. Then they had got caught in the rain and been obliged to take shelter until it was over. So now, if the noble soldiers would kindly let them go on their way…

Marianne had listened to this extempore speech with fascinated admiration, nor did the soldiers make any attempt to interrupt, being probably too dazed by the flow of words. But neither did they stand aside and their leader asked again:

'What's your name?'

'Zani, signor officers, Zani Mocchi, and this is my cousin Appolonia—'

'Mocchi? Any relation to the courier from Dalmatia who disappeared near Zara a few weeks ago?'

Zani bowed his head, as though under the weight of great grief.

'My brother, signor. It's a dreadful thing because we still don't know what has become of him…'

He seemed to be prepared to continue in this vein but one of the soldiers leaned across and said something in the officer's ear which made him frown.

'I understand that your father was shot in 1806 for making subversive speeches against the Emperor, and this sister Annarella, who will be worrying so, is the notorious lacemaker of San Trovaso who makes no secret of her dislike of us. Your family does not love us and there have been suggestions at headquarters that your brother may have gone over to the enemy…'

Things were beginning to look awkward and Marianne cast desperately about for some way of assisting her small friend without betraying herself, but Zani spoke up bravely.

'What cause have we to love you?' he cried boldly. 'When your General Bonaparte came here and burned our Golden Book and proclaimed a new republic we thought he was going to give us real liberty! And then he handed us over to Austria! And now he's taken us back again, only he's not a republican general any more but an emperor, so all we've got out of it is a change of emperors. We could have loved you. It's your fault if we don't!'

'Ho ho! You've a long tongue for such a little shrimp! I wonder now… but what about this one, your cousin is she? What has she got to say for herself?'

One of the lanterns, held up by an arm in a braided sleeve, shone full on Marianne's face. The officer whistled through his teeth.

'By heavens! What a pair of eyes! And what a rig-out for the cousin of such a ragged urchin! More like a fine lady!'

This time, Marianne knew it was up to her to take a hand in support of Zani's story. The officer was altogether too suspicious. Entering into the spirit of the thing, she favoured him with a saucy smile.

'Well and so I am a lady – almost! It's a real pleasure to meet with such a discerning gentleman, Signor Officer. It didn't take you long to see that I don't belong here even if I am Zani's cousin. I'm just on a visit for a few days to see my cousin Annarella. I live in Florence, really.' She smirked complacently. 'I'm a lady's maid to Baroness Cenami who's companion to her royal highness Princess Elisa, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, God bless her!'

She crossed herself several times very fast as evidence of her devotion to so illustrious a princess. The effect, indeed, was magical. At the mention of Napoleon's sister, the officer's face relaxed. He drew himself up, ran a finger round the inside of his high collar and gave a twirl to his moustache.

'Indeed? Well then, my pretty dear, you can think yourself lucky to have met with Sergeant Rapin, a man that understands these things! Anyone else might have taken you in for questioning—'

'You are letting us go?'

'But of course! But we'll see you on your way a step, just in case you should happen to run into another patrol that might not know how to treat a lady like yourself…'

'But – we should not like to put you to any trouble…'

'Trouble! Not a bit of it! A pleasure! If you're going to San Trovaso, our way is in the same direction. You'll not have to look far for a ferryman to take you across the Grand Canal if you're with us, and besides…' he dropped his voice to a confidential whisper, 'Venice is not safe tonight. We've been warned to look out for conspirators! The south of Italy is full of them and they are sending their agents up here. Seems they call themselves Carbonari – charcoal burners, that is. Not that that makes it any easier to tell them in the dark.'

Delighted with this evidence of his own superlative wit, Sergeant Rapin gave a roar of laughter, dutifully echoed by his men, and then gallantly offered his arm to Marianne who was still gaping at the success of her diplomatic invention.

The patrol resumed its way, swelled by the addition of Marianne, walking ahead on Rapin's arm, and Zani who was so overcome with admiration for his new friend that he attached himself to her skirts and clung inseparably.

The light was growing swiftly, driving out the darkness with the eager haste of a summer morning. In the east the grey dawn was already tinged with pink. In a little while, people and things stood out clearly and the lanterns, now no longer needed, were put out.

Tired and anxious as she was, Marianne thought their curious procession certainly had its funny side.

'We must look like a village wedding gone wrong,' she told herself, as her unlooked-for gallant went on pouring nonsense into her ear, doing his best to obtain an assignation although it was not clear whether he was prompted by her personal charms or by her connection with the court.

The Merceria dived suddenly underneath a broad archway cut through the base of a tower supporting a vast clock surmounted by a bell. As they emerged on the other side, Marianne had a sudden sense that she had been transported into a fairytale, so beautiful was the spectacle which met her eyes.

She saw a cloud of white pigeons fly up into the pale violet morning, and go circling up, like spiralling snowflakes about a slender rose-coloured campanile. She saw the twin green domes and alabaster pinnacles belonging to a church that was like a palace, and a palace like a jewel: delicate, flesh-tinted stone, gold mosaics, lace-work of marble and enamelled turrets. She saw a huge square fringed with a border of arcades and marked out in white marble like some outsize game of hopscotch. Last, between the splendid palace and another box-like building with a row of statues along the top, framed by a pair of lofty columns, one topped by a winged lion, the other by the figure of a saint with a kind of crocodile, there lay a wide expanse of silky blue that made her heart beat faster.

Lateen-sailed vessels moved like bunches of anemones over the silvery surface, and beyond them another dome, another campanile emerging from the misty distance. Yet it was the sea all the same, the roadstead of St Mark where Jason might be waiting for her…

Sergeant Rapin, for his part, had seen something rather different. He dropped Marianne's arm abruptly as they came out from beneath the clock-tower, for they were now in sight of the guards on duty outside the royal palace, formerly the Procuratie, and gallantry must yield to discipline. He saluted in correct military fashion.

'I and my men leave you here, Signorina, but you are not far from home now. But before we part, may I beg the favour of another meeting? It seems a shame that we should be such near neighbours and not see one another, don't you think?' He smiled engagingly.

'I'd be glad to, Sir!' Marianne simpered, with a readiness that did credit to her acting talents. 'But I don't know that my cousin—'

'You're not dependent on your cousin, surely? And you a member of her Imperial Highness's own household?'

Rapin's imagination was clearly as fertile as Zani's and in the short interval of time they had spent together he had contrived to do away with Marianne's supposed employer, the Baroness Genami, whose name evidently meant nothing to him, and remember only her august mistress, the Princess Elisa.

'No, no, of course not,' Marianne said hastily. 'But I shall not be here much longer. Indeed, I am leaving—'

'Don't tell me you are leaving tonight,' the sergeant interrupted her, giving another twirl to his moustache, 'or you will oblige me to stop all vessels leaving for the mainland. Stay until tomorrow… then we can meet tonight… go to a theatre… I can get tickets for the opera, at the Fenice. You'd like that…'

Marianne was beginning to think her importunate soldier would be more difficult to be rid of than she had anticipated. If she were to rebuff him, he might turn nasty, and Zani and his sister might have to pay for it. So she controlled her irritation and glanced quickly at the boy who was observing the scene with a little frown. Then, her mind made up, she drew the sergeant a little apart from his men. They, too, were beginning to show signs of impatience.

'Listen,' she whispered, remembering suddenly his questions to the child. 'I can't go to the theatre with you, or ask you to come to my cousin's to call for me. Ever since my other cousin, the courier from Zara, disappeared we have been more or less in mourning. And Annarella hasn't the same reason to like the French as I have.'

'I see,' Rapin breathed back, 'but what is to be done? I like you, you see.'

'I like you too, Sergeant, but the family would never forgive me. It's much better to be quiet about it – meet in secret, you understand? We shan't be the first.'

Rapin's plain, honest face lit up. He had been long enough in Venice to have heard of Romeo and Juliet and now he was obviously seeing himself in a mysterious love affair with a spice of adventure about it.

'You can count on me!' he declared enthusiastically. Then, remembering to lower his voice to a conspiratorial mutter, he said in muffled tones: 'Tonight… at dusk… I'll wait for you under the acacia at San Zaccharia. We can talk there. You'll come?'

'I'll come. But take care! No one must know!'

On this promise, they parted and Marianne had to bite back a sigh of relief. She had felt for a moment as though she were taking part in one of the farces so beloved of the strollers in the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. Rapin saluted, but not without stealing a furtive and passionate handclasp with one whom he evidently regarded as his latest conquest.

The weary patrol marched off into the palace, trailing their weapons, and Zani led his supposed cousin, somewhat to her disappointment, away from the sea to the far end of the square where workmen were beginning to arrive on the site of a new series of arcades destined to fill up the fourth side.

'This way,' he hissed. 'It's quicker.'

'But – can't I have a look at the sea?'

'Later. We'll get to it sooner like this, and the soldiers would think it funny if we went any other way.'

The city was beginning to wake up. The bells of St Mark's rang out and women in black shawls, some of them made of lace, were hurrying to church for early mass.

When, after a short walk, they reached the waterfront, Marianne's heart missed a beat and she had a temptation to shut her eyes, hoping and yet fearing to see the proud lines of Jason's brig Sea Witch at anchor in the roads. However much she reasoned with herself, she could not help feeling as guilty as an adulterous wife returning to her husband.

But except for the little fishing boats, flitting out towards the Lido, the shallops laden with vegetables making their way up the Grand Canal, and the big barge which served as a passenger link with the mainland, there was no vessel worthy of the name in the pool. But before Marianne had time to feel disappointment, she caught sight of the tall mastheads of sea-going ships standing up behind the Dogana di Mare, on the other side of the Punta della Salute. The blood rushed to her cheeks and she grasped Zani by the arm.

'I want to go across there,' she said, pointing.

The boy shrugged and glanced at her curiously.

'We are. That's the way to San Trovaso, surely you know that?'

Then, as they made their way to the big gondola that ferried passengers across the Grand Canal, Zani voiced the question which must have been on his mind for some time.

Ever since their parting from the patrol, the young Venetian had been oddly silent. He had walked ahead of Marianne, his hands dug deeply into the pockets of his rather frayed blue canvas trousers, pushing up folds of the still-damp shirt of yellow wool which came down nearly to his knees. There was a stiffness in his attitude which suggested that he was not altogether happy about something.

'Is it true,' he asked, in a small, hard voice, 'that you are lady's maid to that Baroness… thingummy?… Close to Bonaparte's sister?'

'Of course. Does it worry you?'

'A bit. It means that you must be for Bonaparte too. The soldier know that, he—'

Doubt and disappointment were written so clearly on the round brown face that Marianne forbore to add to his trouble.

'My mistress is for – Bonaparte, naturally,' she said gently. 'But for myself, I have no interest in politics. I serve my mistress, that's all.'

'Then where are you from? Not from here, at any rate. You don't know the city and you haven't the accent.'

Marianne's hesitation was scarcely perceptible. It was true that she did not speak with the Venetian accent but her Italian was a pure Tuscan which made her answer come quite naturally.

'I am from Lucca,' she said. It was, after all, not altogether a lie.

The result more than rewarded her. Zani's worried little face broke into a dazzling smile and his hand crept back into Marianne's.

'Oh, that's all right then! You can come to our house. But it's some way yet. You're not too tired?' he added anxiously.

'A bit,' Marianne confessed, conscious that her legs were numb with fatigue. 'Is it much farther?'

'A bit.'

A sleepy ferryman took them across the canal, which was almost deserted at this hour of the morning. It promised to be an exceptionally lovely day. The sky was a soft blue, washed clean by the night's storm, streaked across with flocks of pigeons. The wind off the sea was cool and smelled of salt and seaweed, and Marianne took deep rapturous breaths as they moved slowly on to where la Salute on its point hung like a gigantic seashell in the clear morning air. It was a day made for happiness, and Marianne dared not look ahead to what it might hold for her.

Once on the far side, there were more alleys, more little flying bridges, more half-glimpsed wonders and more prowling cats. The sun rose in a glory of gold and she was reeling with exhaustion by the time they came to a point where two canals met. The wider of the two, lined with tall pink houses with washing drying at their windows, flowed directly into the waters of the harbour. It was spanned by a slender bridge.

'There!' Zani said proudly. That's where I live. San Trovaso! The squero of San Trovaso is the hospital for sick gondolas.'

He was pointing across the water to where, beyond the orange peel and rotting vegetables, lay a number of brown wooden sheds with a dozen or so gondolas drawn up before them, lying on their sides like wounded sharks.

'You live there?'

'No, over there. The last house on the corner of the quay, right at the top.'

A masthead sticking up beyond the corner of the house showed where a tall ship lay at anchor. Marianne could not help herself. Her weariness was forgotten as she picked up her skirts and ran with the bewildered Zani hard on her heels. She could not wait to see if Jason was there waiting for her.

It had already occurred to her that he might be late for their meeting and this was the real reason why she had followed Zani so far.

Friendless and penniless, she had nowhere else to go if Jason had not come. Now, suddenly, the possibility seemed to have receded. She was sure he must be there.

She emerged, panting, on to the quay. Sunshine was all about her and there, all at once, on all sides, was a forest of masts. Ships were everywhere: serried ranks of slender prows on one hand and a solid mass of sterncastles with gleaming lanterns on the other. A whole fleet was there, connected to the shore by long dipping planks on which the porters moved up and down under their heavy loads as nimbly as acrobats. There were so many ships that Marianne felt dazed. Her brain reeled.

Orders rang out, mingling with the shrilling of bosuns' whistles and the striking of ships' bells. Music hung in the air, played by an unseen mandoline, and the tune was taken up by a barefoot girl in a striped petticoat carrying a shimmering basketful of fish on her head. The rose-coloured quayside was alive with people going about their business, as noisy and colourful as characters in a Goldoni play, while on board the moored vessels men stripped to the waist were swabbing down the decks with big buckets of clean water.

'What are you doing?' Zani's voice reproached her. 'You've gone past the house. Come in and rest.'

But the impatience of love was stronger than fatigue. At the sight of all those ships, Marianne felt the fever of anticipation stir in her again. Jason was there – not far away! She was certain, she could feel it! So how could she possibly think of going to sleep? Suddenly, all her earlier doubts and hesitations fell away, like so much dead skin. The only thing that mattered was to see him, feel him and touch him.

Resisting all Zani's efforts to detain her, she thrust her way through the busy crowd on the quay, gazing up at the vessels at their moorings, studying the faces of the men and peering at the silhouetted figure of a captain pacing the poop, but nowhere did she see the one she was looking for.

Then, quite suddenly, she saw it. The Sea Witch was there, right out on the Giudecca, several cables' length away from the vessels ranged along the quayside. She was veering gracefully on the calm waters while out ahead the men in the longboats bent manfully to the oars and barefoot sailors swarmed in the shrouds.

Marianne had a brief glimpse of the siren figure at the prow, twin sister to herself.

The sun gleamed on her brasswork and Marianne gazed, fascinated, at the lovely ship, scanning the moving figures on the deck for one she knew would be unmistakable. But the Sea Witch was putting on sail, as a gull spreads its wings, she was swinging round by the head, lifting to the wind, moving out to sea…

Understanding burst on Marianne. A wild cry broke from her:

'No!…No! Don't!…Jason!'

She began to run along the quay, screaming and shouting like a lunatic, hurling herself blindly through the crowd regardless of the knocks she received or of the stares that followed her. Dock hands, market women, sailors and fishermen turned to look after the dishevelled, tear-stained woman running with outstretched arms and uttering heartbroken cries, apparently on the point of casting herself into the sea.

Marianne herself was aware of nothing, she saw and heard nothing, only that the ship was going away from her. The thought was torture. It was as though an invisible thread, woven from her own flesh, had been drawn between her and the American vessel, stretching tighter and tighter, agonizingly, until it tore the heart out of her breast and drowned it in the sea.

A single sentence repeated itself endlessly in her brain, with cruel insistence, like an ironic refrain:

'He didn't wait for me… He didn't wait…'

Jason had sailed across two seas and an ocean for this meeting, yet his patience and his love had not endured beyond five days. He had not sensed that she, whom he claimed to love, was there, close at hand; he had not heard her desperate cries. Now he was going away, sailing out to sea, to the sea that was his other mistress, this time, perhaps, for ever. How could she reach him now, how call him back?

She was gasping for breath and her heart was knocking painfully in her chest, but she ran on, her eyes, blinded with tears, fixed on the ever-widening dazzle of sunlight between ship and shore. It danced before her like an ultimate sign of hope, drawing her like a lover. A few more steps and she would plunge into it…

A strong hand grasped her just as she reached the very end of the quay.

She was on the point of casting herself, borne on an irresistible impulse, straight into the water, when she found herself pulled up short and overborne. She looked up and found herself face to face with Lieutenant Benielli, who was staring at her as if he had seen a ghost.

'You?' he ejaculated, as he recognized the frenzied woman whom he had just saved from suicide. 'Is it you? .. It's unbelievable!'

But Marianne had reached the point where the sight of Napoleon himself could not have surprised her. She did not even recognize who was holding her, seeing him only as an obstruction to be circumvented. She struggled furiously in his arms, fighting desperately to escape.

'Let me go!' she screamed. 'Let me go!'

Fortunately the Corsican lieutenant had a firm grip, but his patience was short. It came to an end abruptly and he gave his prisoner a smart shaking in an effort to silence the screams which were attracting everyone on the quay. Some of those who approached were looking quite ugly, seeing only that a member of the 'occupying' forces was molesting a young woman. Conscious that he was in a minority, Benielli opened his mouth and yelled:

'Dragoons! To me!'

Marianne herself did not see the arrival of Benielli's reinforcements. She continued to scream and struggle until the exasperated lieutenant silenced her with a neatly delivered blow from his fist. Instead of into the waters of the harbour, Marianne plunged into merciful unconsciousness.

When she came round from the effects of this involuntary swoon, under the influence of a compress of aromatic vinegar held under her nose, it was to find herself looking at the lower half of a black and yellow striped dressing-gown and a pair of embroidered slippers which seemed somehow familiar. She had worked that design of roses on a black background with her own hands.

She raised her head, reviving the pain in her injured jaw, and almost bit the pad which a kneeling chambermaid was holding under her nose. She thrust the girl away automatically and gave a cry of joy.

'Arcadius!'

It was he indeed. Swathed in the striped gown, his feet thrust into the slippers, and his hair standing on end in two comical tufts which made him look more like a mouse than ever, the Vicomte de Jolival was earnestly supervising the restorative treatment.

'She's come round, my lord,' the chambermaid announced, with remarkable perspicacity, as the invalid sat up.

'Splendid. You may leave us now.'

Almost before the girl had got to her feet and made room for him to sit down on the edge of the sofa, Marianne had flung herself into his arms.

The return of consciousness had brought with it the recollection of her woes and she fell on his chest and wept, too much distressed to utter a single word.

Deeply pitying, but also deeply experienced, Jolival allowed the storm to wear itself out and confined himself to gently stroking the still-damp hair of the girl he regarded in the light of an adopted daughter. Gradually, the sobs diminished and in a lost, little-girl voice, Marianne murmured into her old friend's ear:

'Jason!… He's gone!'

Arcadius laughed and raising Marianne's tear-blotched face from his shoulder, he drew a handkerchief from his dressing-gown pocket and wiped her red and swollen eyes.

'And is that why you were trying to throw yourself into the harbour? Yes, he's gone – all the way to Chioggia to take on fresh water and a cargo of smoked sturgeon. He'll be back tomorrow. In fact, it was for that very reason that Benielli was watching the harbour. I told him to be there as soon as the Sea Witch put to sea and I was to relieve him later on myself in case you should arrive while the ship was away, as indeed you did.'

A wonderful sense of relief stole over Marianne. She was torn between the desire to laugh and a strong impulse to cry again and she looked at Jolival with a good deal of respect.

'You knew I'd come?'

The urbane vicomte's smile faded and the girl saw that he had aged in her absence. There was a little more silver about his temples and lines of anxiety were deeply carved between his brows and at the corners of his mouth. Very tenderly, she kissed away the signs of worry.

'It was our one chance of finding you,' he said, sighing. 'I knew that if you were still alive, you would do your utmost to be here in time to meet Jason. And in spite of all our efforts, even the efforts of the Grand Duchess herself, who set her own police to work on the case, we could find no other clue. Agathe said something about a letter from Madame Cenami which might have had something to do with it, because you had gone out in a hurry, and plainly dressed, as though to avoid notice. But Madame Cenami had sent no letter, of course – and you failed to leave the slightest hint.' The last words were uttered in a mildly reproachful tone.

'Zoe's letter begged for secrecy. I supposed she must be in some trouble. I never thought… but if you only knew how I've regretted it!'

'Poor child. Love, friendship and prudence do not generally live easily together, especially where you are concerned. Naturally, both Arrighi and myself thought at once of your husband, that he had lost patience.'

'The Prince is dead,' Marianne said soberly. 'Murdered.'

'Hm.' It was Jolival's turn now to study his friend's face. How much she had endured was written dearly in its pallor and the haunted look in her eyes. He guessed that she had lived through some terrible experience and that it was, perhaps, still too soon to talk about it. So, postponing the inevitable questions, Jolival said merely:

'You shall tell me about it later. Obviously, that explains a good deal. But when you vanished, we were half out of our minds. Gracchus was threatening to set fire to the villa at Lucca and Agathe cried all day long and kept on insisting that the devil of the Sant'Annas had carried you off. The coolest person, as might have been expected, was the Duke of Padua. He went in person to the Villa dei Cavalli, with a strong escort, but found none there but servants, and no more of them than served to keep the place up. No one could tell him where the Prince was to be found. It seems that he is – or rather was – in the habit of going away suddenly, often for long periods, telling no one when he meant to return.

'We went back to Florence feeling thoroughly hopeless and wretched, because we no longer had the smallest clue. We were still very far from convinced that Prince Sant'Anna had no hand in your disappearance but we knew virtually nothing about his other estates, or where to begin the search. In what direction, even! The Grand-Ducal police were equally baffled. It was then I thought of coming here, for the reason I have told you, although I must say, ever since Beaufort arrived five days ago, my hopes have been dwindling hourly. I thought—'

Jolival's voice broke and he turned his head away to hide his feelings.

'You thought I was dead, didn't you? Oh, my poor friend, forgive me for the distress I've caused you. I wish I could have spared you. But did he – did Jason think that I—'

'No! He never had a moment's doubt. He absolutely refused to even consider it. He rejected the very idea. "If she were no longer in this world," he kept saying, "then I should feel it. I should feel as though I'd lost a limb, I'd bleed, or my heart would cease to beat, but I should know!"

'Indeed, that was why he went this morning: so as to be ready to weigh anchor the moment you appeared. Although I suspect the waiting was preying on his nerves, though he would have had his tongue cut out before he admitted it. He was like a man possessed, never easy unless he was on the move, doing something. But where were you, Marianne? Do you feel able to tell me yet, or is it still too painful?'

'Dear Jolival! You have been through hell on my account and now you're dying to know… And yet you've waited all this time to ask because you were afraid to awake unpleasant recollections! I have been here, my dear.'

'Here?'

'Yes. In Venice. At the Palazzo Soranzo, which once belonged to the Prince's grandmother, the notorious Dona Lucinda.'

'So we were right! It was your husband—'

'No. Matteo Damiani, the steward. It was he who killed my husband.'

And Marianne told Jolival all that had taken place since she had gone out, supposedly to meet Zoe Cenami, in the church of Or San Michele: her abduction, the journey and her degrading captivity. The telling of it was long and difficult because, greatly as she loved and trusted her old friend, she was obliged to recall too many things that did violence to her pride and modesty. It was hard for a woman both beautiful and much admired to have to confess that for weeks she had been treated no better than an animal, or a slave bought in the open market. But it was necessary that Arcadius should know the whole extent of her moral wreck, since he was probably the only person who could help her – perhaps even the only one who could understand.

He heard her out with a mixture of imperturbable calm and fierce agitation. Now and then, at the most painful moments, he got up and strode about the room, his hands behind his back and his head thrust forward, struggling to take in the extraordinary tale which, coming from anyone but Marianne, he would have found almost beyond belief. When it was over and Marianne fell back exhausted on the sofa cushions and closed her eyes, he went quickly to a marquetry side-table, poured himself a drink from a flask, and drank it off at a gulp.

'Would you like some?' he offered. 'It's the best cordial I know, and you probably need it more than I do.'

Marianne shook her head.

'Forgive me for inflicting all this on you, Arcadius, but I had to tell you everything. You don't know how badly I needed to!'

'I think I do. Anyone who had been through what you have suffered would feel the need to get some of it off their chest, at least. And you know that my chief function on earth is to serve you. As for forgiveness – my dear child, what have I to forgive you for? You could not have given me a greater proof of your confidence than this tissue of horrors. What we have to decide is what to do next. This villain and his accomplices are all dead, you say?'

'Yes. Killed. I don't know who by.'

'Personally I am inclined to think that executed would be a better word. As for who was the executioner…'

'Some prowler, perhaps. The palace is full of treasures.'

Jolival shook his head doubtfully.

'No. There are those rusty chains you found on the steward's body. That suggests vengeance as a motive, or some kind of rough justice! Damiani must have had enemies. Perhaps one of them learned of your plight and set you free… remember that you found the clothes that had been taken from you lying ready to hand! It's certainly a most peculiar story, don't you think?'

But Marianne had already lost interest in her captor of yesterday. Now that she had made a clean breast of it all to her friend, her next preoccupation was with her love, and her thoughts turned irresistibly to the man she had come to meet and with whom she still meant to make her life.

'But Jason?' she asked desperately. 'Should I tell him all this? You are very fond of me, and yet even you found it difficult to accept my story, didn't you? I'm afraid—'

'Afraid that Beaufort, who loves you, will find it even more difficult? But, Marianne, what else can you do? How are you going to explain your disappearance during the past weeks except by telling the truth, however painful?'

Marianne sprang up from her cushions with a cry and running to Jolival took both his hands in hers.

'No, for pity's sake, Arcadius, don't ask that of me. Don't ask me to tell him those shameful things. It would make him loathe me… he might even hold me in disgust…'

'Why should he? Was it your fault? Did you go to the villain of your own free will? You have been abused, Marianne, first in your kindness and simplicity and secondly as a helpless woman, not to mention the base means employed: drugs and violence!'

'I know. I know all that but I know Jason, too. He can be jealous… violent. He has already had much to forgive me. Remember what it must have done to his strict moral principles to find himself in love with Napoleon's mistress. Then remember that after that I was obliged to literally sell myself to a total stranger in order to preserve my honour. And now you want me to tell him… to try and explain…? Oh, no, my dear friend! I can't. Don't ask me to do that! It's just impossible.'

'Be sensible, Marianne. You said yourself that Jason loves you enough to overlook a good deal.'

'Not that! Oh, he wouldn't blame me, of course. He'd… understand, or try to look as though he understood to spare me pain. But I should lose him. There would always be that frightful picture between us, and if I kept anything back from him, he would imagine it! I should die of grief. You don't want me to die, do you, Arcadius? You wouldn't like that…'

She was trembling like a leaf in the grip of a panic fear resulting partly from the terrors of the past days and partly from despair and the tormenting dread of losing her only love.

Arcadius put his arm round her, led her very gently to a chair and made her sit down. Clasping her suddenly ice-cold hands in his, he knelt beside her.

'Not only do I not want you to die, my child, I very much want you to be happy. Of course, it's natural for you to be frightened at the idea of telling the man you love a thing like this, but what can you tell him?'

'I don't know. That the Prince kidnapped me… locked me up somewhere… and I escaped. I'll think of something… and you'll think too, won't you, Arcadius? You're so clever… so intelligent…'

'And supposing something comes of the affair? What will you say then?'

'Nothing will come of it. I won't let it! To begin with, there's no reason to think that monster's efforts were successful, and if they were…'

'Well?'

'I'd get rid of it, if I have to risk my life to do it. I'd do anything to be free of that rotten fruit, and I will, if I ever find out that it's true! But Jason must never, never know! I told you: I'd rather die! You must promise me you'll not tell him, even on pledge of secrecy. You must swear to it. If you won't, I shall go mad!'

She was in such a state that Jolival saw it was impossible to reason with her. Her eyes were burning with fever and exhaustion and there was a shrill note in her voice that revealed nerves strained almost to breaking point, ready to snap at any moment.

'I promise, my dear, and now, for heaven's sake, calm yourself. You need rest and sleep… to help you recover. You are quite safe with me. No one can harm you and I'll do all I can to help you to forget this time as quickly as possible. Gracchus and Agathe are here with me, you know. And now I'll call your maid and she shall put you to bed and take care of you and no one, I promise you, is going to ask you any more questions…'

Jolival's voice flowed on in a gentle, reassuring murmur, soft and soothing as velvet, and it acted like oil on troubled waters.

Little by little, Marianne relaxed, and when, a minute later, Agathe and Gracchus burst into the room with cries of joy, they found her weeping softly in Jolival's arms.

But these, too, were healing tears.

CHAPTER FIVE Dreams to Reality

Late on the following afternoon, Marianne lay on a sofa pulled up to the open window and watched two ships come sailing through the Lido Channel. The first and larger of the two was flying the American colours from her peak but it did not need the stars on her flag to tell the watcher it was Jason's ship.

She had known from the confused and contradictory state of her own feelings, even when the tall, square-rigged brig was no more than a white dot against the sky.

The sun which all day long had blazed down on Venice was sinking in a welter of molten gold behind the church of the Redeemer. A breath of cooler air drifted through the window, bringing with it the sound of seabirds crying, and Marianne sniffed appreciatively, enjoying the fragile peace of these last moments of solitude, and wondering a little that she should be doing so when the thing she was waiting for was the arrival of the man she loved.

In a few minutes, he would come. She pictured his entrance, his first look, his first words and trembled with mingled joy and apprehension: apprehension that she might not be able to sustain the role she had decreed for herself, that she might not be sufficiently natural.

Waking that morning, after practically sleeping the clock round twice, she had felt much better, her mind easier and her body relaxed by her sleep which, thanks to Jolival, had been surrounded by more luxury than might have been expected.

Instead of putting up at one of the inns, Jolival had taken rooms in a private house on his arrival in Venice. In Florence he had been recommended to the house of a Signor Giuseppe Dal Niel, a polite, good-natured and cheerfully-disposed individual who, at the fall of the Republic, had rented the upper floors of the splendid old palace built for the doge Giovanni Dandolq, the man who had given Venice her coinage and had been responsible for striking the first golden ducats.

Dal Niel was a widely-travelled man and consequently deplored the poverty of contemporary inns and hostelries. He had the notion of taking in paying guests and surrounding them with a degree of comfort, even luxury, hitherto quite unknown. It was his dream to get possession of the whole of the mansion and turn it into the greatest hotel of all time, but in order to do so he needed the ground floor, and this, so far, he had failed to acquire, since the present owner, the old Countess Mocenigo, was violently set against any such commercial undertaking.[1]

He made up for it by taking in only hand-picked visitors in whom he took as much interest as if they had been his personal guests. Twice a day he would attend them in person, or send his daughter Alfonsina to make sure that they had everything they required. Naturally he could not do enough for the Princess Sant'Anna, in spite of her somewhat unconventional arrival, clad in a soaking wet gown, in the arms of an officer of dragoons, and he had given strict orders to his staff that no noise be allowed to disturb her rest.

As a result of his care, Marianne had succeeded, in a single day, in erasing the marks of her imprisonment, and she now presented a fresh and blooming countenance to the sun. If it had not been for the evil memories which still persisted, she would have felt gloriously well.

As soon as the Witch's lines became clear beyond a doubt, Jolival had gone down to the harbour to tell Jason of Marianne's arrival and explain what had happened to her, or that version of it which had been concocted between them. Agreeing that the simplest was always the best, this was what they had decided upon together: Marianne had been carried off by her husband's orders and kept prisoner under strong guard in a house whose whereabouts she did not know, where she remained in total ignorance of the fate in store for her, a fate which her injured husband seemed in no hurry to reveal. All she knew was that she was to be put on board ship for some unknown destination. One night, however, when her guards were unusually lax, she had succeeded in escaping and making her way to Venice where Jolival had found her.

It was Jolival, of course, who had applied himself to fabricating a sufficiently circumstantial account of her actual escape, and Marianne had spent much of the day going over her lesson until she was sure of being word perfect. Even so, she could not help feeling uncomfortable at telling a lie against which all her natural honesty and truthful instincts rebelled.

The story was a necessary one, certainly, because, as Jolival himself said, 'the truth cannot always be told', especially to a lover, but Marianne found it all the more distasteful because it involved the name of one who was not only innocent of any wrong but was actually the chief victim of the affair. It went against all her instincts to portray as a ruthless abductor the man whose name she bore and for whose death she was, indirectly, responsible.

She had always known that everything, in this imperfect world, had to be paid for, and happiness above all, but the thought that her own would be built upon a lie brought with it a superstitious dread lest fate should exact its penalty for the deception.

All the same, she knew that she was capable of enduring anything for Jason, even the hell of these past days… even to live a lie.

A large mirror ornamented with glass flowers, hanging on the wall near her sofa, showed her her reflection looking charmingly graceful in a dress of white muslin, with her hair beautifully dressed by Agathe, but neither rest nor any amount of beautifying had been able to dispel the worried look in her eyes.

She forced herself to smile but the smile did not reach her eyes.

'Is there anything wrong, your highness?' asked Agathe, who had observed this manoeuvre from the corner where she was sitting quietly with her needlework.

'No, nothing at all, Agathe. Why should you think so?'

'Only that you did not look very happy, my lady. You should go out on to the balcony. At this time of day the whole city is out there on the quayside. And you will be able to see Monsieur Beaufort when he comes.'

Marianne told herself she was a fool. What did it look like for her to be sitting here, skulking on a sofa, when she ought ordinarily to have been bursting with impatience to see him? The previous day's exhaustion made it natural for her to let Jolival go alone to the harbour, but not to be lurking here indoors instead of looking out for him like any woman in love. She could hardly explain to her maid that she was afraid of being recognized by a sergeant in the National Guard or by a nice small boy who had helped her.

At the thought of Zani, she was aware of a twinge of remorse. The child must have watched in utter bewilderment as she was knocked out and carried off by Benielli. He must be wondering now what kind of a dangerous person he had been consorting with and Marianne felt some regrets for a promising friendship which had been broken off.

Nevertheless she got up from her couch and took a few turns up and down the loggia, while taking care to keep in the shade of the Gothic pillars that supported it.

Agathe had been right. Down below, the Riva degli Schiavoni was crowded with people. It was like an endless ballet, full of noise and colour, moving back and forth between the Doges' Palace and the Arsenal and offering an amazing spectacle of life and gaiety. Even defeated, uncrowned, occupied and reduced to the status of a provincial town, Venice still remained the incomparable Serenissima.

'Which is more than I do!' Marianne muttered, remembering that she bore the same title. 'Much more than I do!'

A sudden swirl in the crowd dragged her from her melancholy thoughts. Down there, a few yards away, a man had jumped from a boat and was forging through the throng towards the Palazzo Dandolo. He was very tall, much taller than those he was thrusting out of his path. He cut through the crowd like an irresistible force, as easily as a ship breasting the waves, and Jolival, behind him, was having considerable difficulty keeping up. The man was broad-shouldered and blue-eyed, with a proud face and unruly black hair.

'Jason!' Marianne breathed, suddenly wild with joy. 'At last!'

In an instant, her heart had made its choice between fear and happiness. Everything but the glow of love had been swept away. Her whole being was irradiated.

As Jason, down below, vanished inside the palace, Marianne picked up her skirts with both hands and ran to the door. Speeding through the rooms like lightning, she flung herself down the stairs just as her lover was starting up them two at a time. With a shriek of joy that was almost a sob, she cast herself on his chest, laughing and crying at once.

He, too, cried out as he saw her. He roared out her name so loudly that the vaulted ceilings of the ancient palace rang again, making up for the many months of silence during which he had only been able to murmur it in his dreams. Then, his arms were round her, and he swung her off the ground, covering her with frantic kisses, devouring her face and neck like a starving man, regardless of the servants who, drawn by the noise, were hanging over the banisters to watch.

Jolival and Dal Niel stood, side by side, at the foot of the stairs and gazed upwards with approval.

'E meraviglioso! Que belle amore!' the Venetian sighed, clasping his hands.

'Yes,' agreed the Frenchman modestly. 'It's well enough.'

Marianne, her eyes closed, saw and heard none of this. She and Jason were alone together in a storm of passion, cut off as though by some strong enchantment from the world around them. They scarcely even noticed when their audience, good Italians for whom love is no light matter, was moved to express a connoisseur's appreciation of the scene. The applause rose to a climax when the privateer picked Marianne up bodily and, still without taking his lips from hers, bore her up the stairs. The door, kicked back by an impatient boot, slammed shut behind them to the cheers of the delighted onlookers.

'Will you do me the honour to drink a glass of grappa with me to the health of the lovers?' Dal Niel said, smiling broadly. 'Something tells me they will do quite well without you… and such happiness deserves a little celebration.'

'I should be delighted to drink with you. But, at the risk of disappointing you, I shall be obliged to interrupt the lovers' meeting before long, because we have important matters to decide.'

'Important matters? What matters can a pretty woman like that have to decide beyond the choice of her clothes?'

Jolival laughed.

'You'd be surprised, my friend, but her toilette plays only a very small part in the Princess's life. I spoke of decisions and here, I see, is one coming upon us now.'

Lieutenant Benielli, very smart in uniform, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword, had just marched into the hall. His entry, although somewhat less tumultuous than Jason's, nevertheless had the effect of bringing about the instant dispersal of the inquisitive servants.

He approached the two men and clicked his heels.

'The American vessel has returned,' he announced. 'I must see the Princess at once. I may say that it is of the utmost urgency. We have already wasted too much time.'

Jolival sighed. 'I see. You will have to excuse me, Signor Dal Niel, but I am afraid we must postpone the grappa. I shall have to take this impulsive military gentleman upstairs.'

'Peccato! What a pity!' was the understanding answer. 'Do not be in too great a hurry to disturb them. Leave them a moment longer. I will keep the lieutenant company.'

'A moment? Upon my soul, a moment to them could well mean hours! They have not seen each other for six months.'

However, Arcadius was mistaken. No sooner had Marianne allowed her love to overcome her fears than she was regretting it. She had not been able to resist the impulse which had made her fly into the arms of the man she loved, as soon as she set eyes on him, an impulse to which he had responded with equal passion. Too much so, perhaps. But even as he was carrying her upstairs two at a time and slamming the door behind them in his haste to be alone with her, Marianne was suffering a return of all the clearheadedness which had flown so deliciously to the winds a moment before.

She knew what would happen next: another moment and Jason, in an ecstasy of love, would cast her on to her bed; in five minutes, or even less, he would have undressed her and in a very short time after that, he would have made her his own, giving her no chance to stop the tender hurricane in which she was caught up.

Yet there was something inside her which refused, something she had not been aware of until now, and that something was the depth of her love for Jason. She loved him enough to crush down her own, fiercely urgent desire for him. In a lightning flash of understanding, she knew that she could not, must not be his while that doubt still hung over her unresolved, while her body was still horribly mortgaged to Damiani.

Of course, if some germ of life was beginning to grow inside her, it would be undeniably convenient, and even easy to throw the responsibility for fathering it on to her lover. Given a man of his passionate nature and so deeply in love, any goose could do it! But although Marianne might not be prepared to tell the truth about her six weeks' disappearance, she was even more determined not to make him her dupe – and in that worst way of all! No, until she was absolutely certain, she could not let him make love to her. On no account. It could lead them both into a morass of lies from which she would never escape. But, heavens, it was going to be difficult!

As he paused for a second in the middle of the room and stopped kissing her for long enough to get his bearing and find out the door of her bedchamber, she uncoiled herself smoothly from his arms and stood up.

'My God, Jason! You are quite mad! And I think I must be as mad as you.'

She walked across to a mirror and began putting up her hair which was falling down her back but he came after her at once, enveloping her once more in his warm embrace. Laughing, his mouth in her hair, he murmured:

'I sure hope so! Oh, Marianne, Marianne! For months I have dreamed of this moment… when I'd be alone with you again at last… Just the two of us, you and me… with nothing between us but our love. Don't you reckon we've deserved that much?'

His voice, so warm and yet with a sardonic undertone never far away, was roughened and he was putting her hair aside to kiss the nape of her neck. Marianne shut her eyes. Already she was in torment.

'We are not alone,' she murmured, disengaging herself once more. 'There is Jolival… and Agathe… and Gracchus – any one of them might come in at any moment. This house is practically public property! Didn't you hear them clapping on the stairs?'

'Who cares? Jolival, Agathe and Gracchus have all known for long enough how matters stood. They'll understand that we want to be together, now, this minute.'

'They will, yes – but they are not all. The people here are foreigners and I must respect—'

Abruptly he had had enough. In a voice sharpened perhaps by disappointment, he flashed back:

'Well, what? The name you bear? It's a good while since we heard much about that! And if Arcadius is to be believed, you'd be a fool to waste too much consideration on a husband capable of abducting you and keeping you prisoner! Marianne, what's come over you? You're playing propriety all of a sudden, aren't you?'

Marianne was spared the necessity of answering by the arrival of Jolival. Jason stood frowning, somewhat put out, it seemed, by this untimely interruption which appeared to support Marianne's previous arguments.

Taking in the scene at a glance, Jolival saw Marianne at the mirror pinning up her hair while Jason stood at a little distance with folded arms, looking broodingly from one to the other in evident displeasure. Arcadius's smile was a masterpiece of conciliation and fatherly tact.

'It's only me, my children, and, believe me, I hate to interrupt your first meeting. But Lieutenant Benielli is here and he insists on coming up at once.'

'That confounded Corsican again? What does he want?' Jason growled.

'I didn't stop to ask him, but it may be important.'

Marianne stepped quickly over to her love and, taking his head between her hands, stifled his protests with a swift touch of her lips.

'Arcadius is right, my darling. We had better see him. I owe him a great deal. But for him, I might be lying drowned in the harbour by now. Shall we at least see what he wants?'

The cure was miraculous. The captain calmed down at once.

'The devil fly away with the fellow! But if that's what you want… Go and fetch the nuisance, Jolival.'

As he spoke, Jason turned away, straightening the dark-blue coat with the silver buttons which fitted so closely to his wiry, muscular form, and took up his stance at the window, clasping his hands behind his back, which he kept firmly to the unwanted visitor.

Marianne's eyes followed him lovingly. She did not know exactly why Jason should feel such antipathy towards her bodyguard but she was sufficiently well-acquainted with Benielli to guess that it had probably not taken him long to rub the American very thoroughly up the wrong way. So she respected his evident wish to have no part in the conversation and prepared to receive the lieutenant. His entrance and initial bow were punctilious enough to have wrung approval from the most exacting commanding officer.

'If your serene highness will permit, I have come to take my leave. I rejoin the Duke of Padua tonight. May I tell him that everything is now satisfactorily settled and that you are safely on your way to Constantinople?'

Before Marianne could reply, an icy voice spoke from behind her.

'It pains me to have to tell you that there is no question of this lady's travelling to Constantinople. She sails with me tomorrow for Charlestown where it is my hope that she will be able to forget that women were not made to be pawns on some political chessboard. That will be all, Lieutenant.'

Stunned by this uncompromising declaration, Marianne looked from Jason, pale and angry, to Jolival who was chewing his moustache with an air of embarrassment.

'Arcadius, didn't you tell him?' she asked. 'I thought you would have explained to Monsieur Beaufort about the Emperor's orders?'

'And so I did, my dear, but without a great deal of success. Our friend simply refused to listen and I thought it best not to insist, relying on you to be better able to convince him than I.'

'Then why didn't you tell me at once?'

'Don't you think you had enough to trouble you when you came here?' Jolival said quietly. 'It seemed to me that such diplomatic arguments could wait at least until—'

'I don't see that there is any argument about it,' Benielli broke in harshly. 'To my mind, when the Emperor commands he is obeyed.'

'You are forgetting one thing,' Jason said. 'Napoleon's commands are no concern of mine. I am an American subject and as such answerable only to my own government.'

'So? Is anything being required of you? The lady does not depend on you. The Emperor desires merely that she sails on a neutral vessel and there are a dozen in harbour. We can do without you. Go back to America!'

'Not without her! Can you not understand what is said to you? Very well, I will spell it out for you. I am taking the Princess with me whether you like it or not. Is that clear?'

'So much so', snarled Benielli, his slender patience at an end, 'that short of having you arrested for kidnapping and incitement to revolt there is only one answer—' He drew his sword.

Instantly, Marianne sprang to her feet and flung herself in between the two men who were measuring one another dangerously.

'Gentlemen, I beg of you! I suppose you'll allow me a say in the matter, at least? Lieutenant Benielli, be good enough to leave the room for a moment. There is something I wish to say to Mr Beaufort in private.'

Contrary to her expectations, the officer acquiesced without a word. He clicked his heels and gave a curt little bow.

'Come along then,' Jolival said amiably, leading the way to the door. 'We'll go and try some of Signor Dal Niel's grappa to pass the time. There's nothing like a glass before a journey. A kind of stirrup cup, you know.'

Left alone again, Marianne and Jason stood and looked at one another with some amazement: she on account of the hard, stubborn line which had settled disquietingly between her beloved's black brows; he because, for the second time, he had encountered resistance from that soft and graceful creature with her deceptive air of fragility. He sensed that all was not well with her and in the hope of finding out what it was, he made an effort to overcome his bad temper.

'Why did you want to speak to me alone, Marianne?' he asked quietly. 'Are you hoping to persuade me to undertake this ridiculous voyage to Turkey? Well, don't. I haven't come all this way to indulge Napoleon's whims again.'

'You came to find me, didn't you… so that we could begin a new life together? Then, what does it matter where we live it? Why won't you take me, if I want to go and it could be so very important to the Empire? I shan't stay long and afterwards I shall be free to go wherever you like…'

'Free? Do you mean that? Have you finally broken completely with your husband? Have you persuaded him to a divorce?'

'No, but I am still free because the Emperor says so. He has made this mission he has given me a condition of his help and I know that once I have performed it, nothing and no one will stand in the way of our happiness. It is the Emperor's wish.'

'The Emperor! The Emperor! Always the Emperor! You still talk about him as besottedly as when you were his mistress! Have you forgotten that I've rather less reason to love him? You may cherish an understandable nostalgia for the imperial bedchamber and for the life of princes and palaces. My own memories of La Force, and Bicêtre and the bagne at Brest are by far less alluring, I assure you.'

'You are unjust! You know there is nothing between me and the Emperor, and has not been for a long time, and that he really did his best to save you without upsetting a delicate diplomatic situation.'

'So I recall but I am not aware that I stand in Napoleon's debt in any way. I belong to a neutral country and I have no intention of becoming any further involved in his policies. It is enough that my country should be risking her peace abroad by refusing to take sides with England.' He took hold of her suddenly, cradling her close and laying his cheek against her forehead with a desperate tenderness.

'Marianne! Oh, Marianne! Forget all that… everything but us two! Forget Napoleon, forget that somewhere in this world there is a man whose name you bear, forget, as I have forgotten, that Pilar is still living somewhere, hidden in some remote corner of Spain, believing me still in prison and hoping I'll die there. There is only the two of us, nothing else… us two and the sea, there, right at our feet. If you will, it can carry us away tomorrow to my home. I'll take you to Carolina. I'll rebuild my parents' old house at Old Creek Town that was burned down. As far as anyone knows, you will be my wife…'

Carried away by the touch and the scent of the slender form pressed close to his, he was enveloping her again in his disturbing caresses and this time Marianne was too weak and too much enslaved to fight against it. She recalled those dizzying hours in the prison. It could all happen again so easily. Jason was hers, wholly and completely, flesh of her flesh, the man she had chosen from all others, whom no one could replace. Why, then, should she refuse the thing he offered? Why not so with him, tomorrow, to his land of liberty? After all, he might not know it but her husband was dead: she was free.

In an hour she could be aboard the Witch. She could easily tell Benielli she was going to Turkey, when all the time the ship was really sailing to freedom in America, and she, Marianne, would be lying for the first time all night long in Jason's arms, rocked on the waves, and drawing a final curtain over her past life. She could take up her own life again from where it had left off at Selton Hall, at the moment when Jason had first begged her to go with him, and in a little while she would forget all the rest: the fear, the flights, Fouché, Talleyrand, Napoleon, France and the villa of the fountains where the white peacocks roamed but where no ghostly rider in a white mask would wake the echoes any more.

But once again, as it had done earlier, her conscience awoke, a conscience which was becoming a great deal more inconvenient than she would ever have thought possible. What would happen if, during the long journey to America, she were to find herself pregnant by another man? How would she be able to deal with the situation there, in a land where she would never be out of Jason's sight for a moment, for she refused categorically to deceive him? Assuming, of course, that he did not begin to suspect anything in the course of a voyage at least twice as long as that to Constantinople!

Besides, at the back of her mind she seemed to hear Arrighi's grave voice saying: 'Only you can persuade the Sultana to keep up the war with Russia, only you can calm her anger against the Emperor, because you, like her, are Josephine's cousin. She will listen to you…'

Could she really betray the trust of the man she had once loved and who had sincerely tried to make her happy? Napoleon was relying on her. Could she deny him this one last service which was so important to him and to France? The time for love was not yet. It was still the time to be brave.

Gently, but firmly, she pushed Jason away.

'No,' she said. 'I can't. I must go. I have given my word.' He stared at her incredulously, as though she had suddenly changed before his eyes into a different creature. His dark blue eyes seemed to withdraw more deeply beneath the black brows and Marianne's heart was wrung as she read the vast disappointment in them.

'You mean – you won't come with me?'

'No, my love, it's not that I won't come. All I am asking is for you to come with me for a little while, only a few weeks. A little delay, that's all. Afterwards, I shall be all yours, heart and soul. I'll go wherever you like, to the ends of the earth if I must, and I'll live exactly as you please. But I must carry out my mission. It is too important to France.'

'France!' he said bitterly. 'That's a good one! As though France, for you, didn't mean Napoleon.'

Pained as she sensed the underlying jealousy which still persisted, Marianne gave a little, hopeless sigh and her green eyes dimmed with tears.

'Why won't you understand me, Jason? Whether you like it or not, I love my country. I have scarcely begun to know it yet and the discovery is precious to me. It is a beautiful country, Jason, noble and great! And yet I shall leave it and without regrets or heartburnings, when the time comes to go with you.'

'But that time is not yet?'

'Yes… perhaps, if you will agree to take me to meet this queer Sultana who was born so near to your own land.'

'And you say you love me?' he said.

'I love you more than anything in the world because for me you are the world, and not only that but life and joy and happiness. It's because I love you that I won't steal away like a thief. I want to stay worthy of you.'

'Words, words!' Jason shrugged furiously. The truth is that you can't bring yourself to give up, all at once, all the glittering life that was yours as someone close to Napoleon! You're young, rich, beautiful – and a Serene Highness – of all the God-damned stupid, pompous titles! And now they've sent you on an embassy to a queen! What can I offer to match that? A fairly humble existence, and not altogether respectable at that, so long as neither of us are free of our matrimonial ties. I can understand your hesitating.'

Marianne regarded him sadly.

'You're so unfair! Have you forgotten that if it hadn't been for Vidocq I would have given all that up without a moment's thought? And believe me, this voyage isn't an excuse or anything, it's a necessity. Why won't you?'

'Because it's Napoleon who sends you. Do you understand? Because I owe him nothing but humiliation, imprisonment and torture! Oh, I know, he gave me a guardian angel but if the guards had bludgeoned me to death or I'd died of my wounds, do you think he would have grieved overmuch? He'd have expressed polite regret, and then turned to something else. No, Marianne, I have no cause to serve your Emperor. Indeed, if I agreed, I should feel a fool. As for you, you may as well know that if you lack the courage to say no now, once and for all, to all that has been your life up to this moment, you'll not find it tomorrow. When this mission is accomplished, you'll find another – or another will be found for you. I'm not denying a woman like you is a valuable asset.'

'No, I swear it! I'll go away at once!'

'How can I believe you? Back in Brittany, you asked nothing better than to flee this man, yet now you want to serve him at all costs! Are you even the same woman? The one I left would have committed any madness for my sake. This one is hidebound by respectability and won't kiss me for fear of the chambermaid's coming in! I can't help noticing it, you know.'

'What are you after? I swear to you I love you and only you, but you must take me to Turkey.'

'No.'

Uttered without anger, the word was none the less final.

'You refuse?' Marianne said dully.

'Precisely. Or rather, no. I give you the choice. I'll take you, but after that I shall sail alone for my own country.'

Marianne recoiled as though he had struck her, knocking over a small table and smashing a fragile piece of Murano glass. She sank on to the sofa where she had lain so short a while ago – a century, it seemed! She stared at Jason wide-eyed, as though seeing him for the first time. He had never looked so tall, so handsome – or so inflexible. She had believed his love was like her own, equal to anything, ready to suffer and endure anything for the sake of a few hours happiness, and how much more so for a lifetime of love. Yet now he could find it in his heart to offer her this ruthless choice.

'You could leave me – of your own will?' she asked incredulously. 'Leave me there and go away without me?'

He folded his arms across his chest and regarded her without anger but with a terrifying firmness.

'The choice is not mine, Marianne. It is yours. I want to know who is boarding the Witch tomorrow: the Princess Sant'Anna, official ambassadress of his Majesty the Emperor and King – or Marianne Beaufort.'

The sound of that name, coming so unexpectedly, when it had figured for so long in her dreams, cut her to the quick. She closed her eyes, her face as white as her dress. Her fingers curled and the nails dug into the silk upholstery, fighting off incipient panic.

'You're so hard…' she moaned.

'No. I only want to make you happy, in spite of yourself, if need be.'

Marianne gave a sad little flicker of a smile. The egotism of men! She could see it even in this man she adored, just as she had seen it in Francis, Fouché, Talleyrand, Napoleon, and even in the monster Damiani. All of them had this curious urge to make decisions about the happiness of the women in their lives, convinced that in this, as in so much else, they alone possessed the key to real wisdom and truth. They had both suffered so much from all that had come between them. Were the obstacles now going to come from Jason himself? Couldn't he subdue his overbearing pride for the sake of his love?

Once again there came the temptation, so powerful as to be almost irresistible, the temptation to give in, to cast herself into his arms and allow herself to be carried away, without further thought. She needed him so much, his strength and his man's warmth. Despite the mildness of the evening, she felt chilled to the heart. Yet, perhaps just because she had suffered so much to win this love, her pride restrained her on the very verge of yielding.

The worst of it was that she could not really blame him. From his man's point of view, he was right. But neither could she retract, or not without telling him the whole. And even then? Jason's feelings towards Napoleon had grown so very bitter!

Miserably unhappy, Marianne chose, none the less, the course that came most naturally: to fight.

She put up her head and met her lover's gaze squarely.

'I have given my word,' she said. 'It is my duty to go. If I abandoned my mission now, you might still love me as much – but you would have less respect for me. In my world, and in yours too, I think, we have always placed duty before happiness. My parents died for that belief. I will not disgrace it.'

It was said quite simply, not boasting. Merely a statement of fact.

It was Jason's turn to pale. He made as if to go to her but checked himself and bowed slightly, without a word. Then, crossing the room in a few swift strides, he opened the door and called:

'Lieutenant Benielli.'

The lieutenant appeared promptly, accompanied by Jolival, whose eyes went straight to Marianne. She avoided his anxious glance. Signor Dal Niel's grappa had evidently been to the lieutenant's taste. His face was noticeably more flushed than on his previous appearance, although he had lost none of his rigidity.

Jason studied him from his superior height with a cold and barely contained anger.

'You may return to the Duke of Padua with a quiet mind, Lieutenant. I sail at dawn tomorrow for the Bosphorus where I shall have the honour to convey the Princess Sant'Anna.'

'I have your word on that?' the other said, without emotion.

Jason's fists clenched in a visible effort not to drive them into the little Corsican's arrogant face, which must have recalled, all too clearly, another that was out of reach.

'Yes, Lieutenant,' he ground between his teeth. 'You have. And you can have something else, as well. A piece of advice. Get out of here before I give way to my inclinations.'

'Which are?'

'To throw you out of the window. It would not be good for your uniform, your fellows or your own comfort on the journey. You've won. Don't try my patience too far.'

'Oh, please, go!' Marianne breathed, terrified that the two men would come to blows.

Jolival was already laying a discreet hand on Benielli's arm. The lieutenant, while clearly dying to hurl himself at the American, had the sense to look closely at the faces of the other three. He saw that Marianne was on the verge of tears, Jason tense and Jolival anxious, and he realized that something was seriously amiss. His stiffness showed the faintest relaxation as he bowed to the young woman.

'I shall be privileged to report to the Duke that the Emperor's trust was not misplaced. May I wish your serene highness a successful voyage.'

'Accept my good wishes for your own journey. Good-bye, monsieur.'

In a moment she had turned back, imploringly, to Jason but even before Benielli had quitted the room, Jason too was bowing coldly.

'Your servant, madam. My ship will weigh anchor at ten o'clock tomorrow morning, if that suits you. It will be ample time if you are on board half an hour before that. Allow me to wish you a good night.'

'Jason! Have pity…'

She held out her hand to him, begging for him to take it, but he was encased in his anger and resentment and either did not or would not see it. Without a glance, he strode to the door and went out, letting it swing shut behind him with a bang that echoed in the very depths of Marianne's heart.

Slowly her hand fell and she threw herself sobbing on the sofa.

There, a moment or two later, Jolival found her, half-choked with tears, as he came hurrying back, sensing disaster.

'Good God!' he cried. 'Has it come to this? Whatever happened?'

With much difficulty, a good many tears and hesitations, she told him while he busied himself with a handkerchief and some cold water in trying to calm her sobs and restore her face to something like the appearance of a human being.

'An ultimatum!' Marianne hiccupped at last. 'A – a beastly b-bargain! He told m-me – told me I m-must choose… And he said it was… for my own good!'

She turned suddenly and clung to Arcadius's lapels, saying beseechingly:

'I can't… I can't bear it! Oh, my friend, for pity's sake, go and find him. Tell him…'

'What? That you've given in?'

'Yes! I l-love him… I love him s-so very much… I c-can't…' Marianne was beyond knowing or caring what she was saying now.

Jolival gripped her shaking shoulders with both hands and forced her to look at him.

'Yes, you can. I am telling you that you can, because you are right. Jason is abusing his power by offering you such a choice, because he knows how much you love him. Not that, from his point of view, he isn't right. He has little enough cause to love the Emperor.'

'He – he doesn't love me!'

'Of course he loves you. Only, what he hasn't understood is that the woman he loves is you, as you are, with all your inconsistencies and follies, all your enthusiasms and revolts. Change, make yourself into the cool, submissive person he seems to want and I wouldn't give him six months to stop loving you.'

'Truly?'

Gradually, by dint of much persuasion, Jolival was beginning to penetrate to the slough of despond where Marianne was floundering, letting in a little air and daylight to which, unconsciously, she was already turning.

'Yes, truly, Marianne,' he said seriously.

'But, Arcadius, think what will happen at Constantinople! He'll leave me. He'll go away and I shall never see him again, never!'

'It's possible… but before that you will have lived with him, almost on top of him, in the confined space of a ship's quarters for quite a long time. If you aren't able to drive him out of his mind in that time, then you're not Marianne. Play his game for him. Let him enjoy his bad temper and the blow to his masculine pride. If anyone goes through hell, it won't be you, I promise you.'

As he talked, the light came back, little by little, to Marianne's eyes, while that other light of hope was reborn within. Meekly she drank the glass of water with a little cordial in it which he held to her lips, then, leaning on his arm, she managed to walk as far as the window.

It was dark by this time but everywhere lights shone like points of gold reflected in the dark water. A smell of jasmine floated in, along with the sound of a guitar. Down below, by the waterside, couples were drifting slowly along, pairs of dark shapes, moving close together, that melted into one. A decorated gondola passed by, steered by a lithe figure like a dancer. Light streamed golden from behind the drawn curtains, and with it came the happy note of a woman's laughter. Away beyond the Dogana di Mare, the masthead lanterns of the anchored ships swayed gently.

Marianne sighed and her hand tightened a little on Jolival's sleeve.

'What are you thinking?' he asked softly. 'Feeling better?'

She hesitated, not quite knowing how to phrase her thought, but with this one faithful friend she had no need to dissemble.

'I was thinking,' she said, somewhat regretfully, 'that it is a beautiful night for love.'

'That's true. But remember that one night lost may add to the joys of others still to come. The nights in the east are unrivalled, my child. Your Jason doesn't know yet what he is in for.'

Whereupon, closing the window firmly on the swooning night outside, Jolival led Marianne into the little rococo salon where supper awaited them.