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.