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?