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!