Chapter 6
"I come of a free people…"
MARIANNE had been in labor for more than thirty hours and still the child had not appeared. Donna Lavinia and the doctor stayed with her in her room while she endured the onslaughts of pain with ever-weakening resistance. As the contractions grew more violent she had set herself not to cry out, making it a point of honor with herself to behave with the stoicism proper to a great lady. Scarcely a moan escaped from between her clenched teeth.
But the ordeal had gone on for so long that in the end the incessant torture of it had made her forget all her resolutions. Writhing like a captive animal, her sheets soaked with sweat, she was screaming now without restraint. She had been screaming for hours and her voice was growing fainter. All she wanted was to die quickly and get it over.
Her screams found an echo in the hearts of the two men who waited in the boudoir adjoining her bedchamber.
Jolival stood at the window, biting his nails and staring into space, as though fixed there until the end of time.
As for Jason Beaufort, his almost British phlegm had flown to the winds at Marianne's first moan. He was pale and hollow-eyed and smoked continuously, in a kind of frenzy, lighting one cigar after another and pressing his hands to his ears from time to time when her screams were more than he could bear. The heel of his boot had worn a large hole in the carpet.
Day was breaking. Neither Jason nor the vicomte had slept since the previous night but neither seemed aware of it. Then, at the very moment when the distant gun proclaimed the dawn, aery from the bedroom ending in a despairing sob made Jason start as if the cannon had been fired at Marianne herself.
"This is intolerable!" he cried. "Can nothing be done? Must she endure this agony?"
Jolival shrugged. "It is nature's way, it seems. The doctor tells me that the birth of a child is often a lengthy business."
"The doctor! Do you trust that pompous ass ? Well, I do not!"
"Is that on account of his turban?" Jolival inquired. "I suppose you think no doctor can be any good unless he's dressed in a frock coat. This one seems competent enough, as far as I have been able to judge from talking to him. Not but what I'm beginning to share your opinion. When I looked in just now he was sitting in the corner with his chin on his chest playing with a string of amber beads and taking no notice whatsoever of poor Marianne, who was screaming her head off."
Jason strode toward the door as though intending to batter it down.
"I'm going to tell him what I think of him," he said wildly.
"You will do no good. It makes no impression on him at all. I tried it. I asked him how much longer this agony would go on."
"And what did he say?"
"Insh'Allah."
Beaufort's bronzed face darkened to brick red.
"Oh, did he! Well, we'll see whether he'll dare to answer me in the same way!"
He was on the point of bursting into Marianne's room when a door which gave on to an external gallery was opened by a woman servant who stood aside to permit the entrance of an extraordinary apparition. The newcomer was a tall woman swathed in black muslin robes and wearing on her head a curious kind of pointed headdress which gleamed with pure gold in the first rays of the morning sun. Gold, too, were the long earrings that dangled against either cheek.
The room was thick with the reek of Jason's and Jolival's cigars and Rebecca recoiled a little as she entered and waved her hand before her face in an effort to clear the smoke. She looked thoughtfully at the two men, who were staring at her as though she had been the statue of the Commendatore come to life to demand an account of their misdeeds. Then, going to the window, she flung it open, letting in the cold, damp air from the garden.
"One does not smoke near the chamber of a woman in labor," she said sternly. "Moreover, men have no business in the women's quarters at such times. Go now."
The two men looked at one another, considerably taken aback by this quelling speech, but Rebecca was already opening the door by which she had just entered and pointing commandingly to the gallery.
"Go, I say! I will call you when it is over."
"But—but who are you?" Jolival managed to ask.
"I am called Rebecca," the strange woman deigned to answer. "Judah ben Nathan, the physician of the Kassim Pasha quarter, is my father. The lord Turhan Bey sent for me an hour past to attend a friend of his who is suffering greatly in childbed."
Satisfied with this information, Jolival turned meekly to the door, but Jason stood eyeing this autocratic female, whose headdress made her taller than himself, suspiciously.
"He sent for you, you say? I don't believe it. He has his own doctor in there."
"I know that. Jelal Osman Bey is a good doctor but his ideas on childbirth are those of a true believer of Islam. The woman must fight her own battle and it is necessary to wait the outcome before interfering. But there are times when it does not do to wait too long and so, if you please, do not waste any more of my time with idle questions."
"Come along," Jolival said, drawing the reluctant American away. "Leave it. Turhan Bey knows what he is about."
Neither he nor Jason had set eyes on the master of Hamayunabad since early the previous morning. He had appeared suddenly in the midst of the confusion caused by Jolival's cries for help and when Jason, who had also been awakened by the servants' clamor, had come to see what the matter was, the two men had found themselves face to face.
The meeting had passed off smoothly, in spite of Jolival's fears and the fumes of old brandy. Jason Beaufort had thanked his preserver warmly and with a perfect self-command. He had also contrived tactfully, and with unexpected delicacy for a man of his temper, to convey his regrets for the somewhat rough-and-ready treatment he had accorded to him when the true identity of the man was unknown to him and he had seen him only in the romantic guise of an escaped slave. Turhan Bey, not to be outdone in courtesy, had assured his erstwhile captain that he bore him no malice for usage which he had brought on himself. Then he had begged the American to consider his house his own and to call freely on his wealth and influence.
He had listened without expression to Jason's halting words of thanks for having taken the Princess Sant'Anna into his house and, in some sort, making up for the grave wrongs which he, Jason, had unconsciously done her, replying merely that it was the least he could do. Then he had bowed politely and withdrawn and they had not seen him since.
When Jolival had presented himself at the door of the pavilion where he dwelt, he had been informed that the lord Turhan Bey was at his warehouse.
After being sent packing by Rebecca, the two men wandered down the long covered passage which ran through the bare, wintry gardens to a brightly painted kiosk that rose up against the surrounding grayness like an outsized and improbable flower. Each was feeling awkward and out of place and neither could think of anything to say, although both of them were secretly relieved to have escaped from the smoke-filled atmosphere of the boudoir and the cries from the next room. The silence of the empty garden seemed to them delicious and each sought to prolong it as long as possible.
But their moment of respite was fated to be a brief one. Jason was just lighting a fresh cigar when the sound of running footsteps echoed along the gallery. An instant later Gracchus appeared. He was out of breath and scarlet with exertion, while the carroty hair stood up straight on his head. Obviously the news he brought was far from good.
"The brig!" he called out as soon as he caught sight of the two men. "She's not at her moorings!"
The color drained from Jason's face and as the boy stumbled, exhausted, almost at his feet, he seized him by the shoulders and hauled him upright again.