'What a delightful place!' Marianne exclaimed softly, wholly won over. 'How happy they all look!'
'A bit like dancing on the edge of a volcano,' Jolival said. 'Too many people would like to get their hands on the island for the people to be quite as happy as they look. But it's a land made for loving, that I grant you.'
He helped himself to a pinch of snuff, then added, with elaborate casualness: 'It was here, wasn't it, that Jason – the Argonaut, I mean – brought Medea and married her after he had stolen her away from her father, the King of Colchis, along with the Golden Fleece?'
This apt allusion to classical mythology earned him a scowl from the American Jason and a short answer.
'That's enough classics for one day, Jolival,' Jason warned him curtly. 'I don't care much for legends unless they end happily. Medea was an atrocious female, murdering her own children in a fit of jealousy!'
The vicomte, elegantly flicking a grain of snuff from the revers of his cinnamon coloured coat, was unperturbed by the brusqueness of his tone, and merely laughed.
'Who can tell where jealousy may lead? Wasn't it St Augustine who said that the measure of love is to love without measure? Great words, and how true! As for legends, there is always a way round them. To have a happy ending it's often enough to want one – and to alter a few lines.'
The brig had no sooner come alongside than she was mobbed by a noisy, colourful throng who swarmed aboard, all anxious to get a look at the new arrivals from the other side of the world. It was not often that the American flag was seen in the eastern Mediterranean. Furthermore, the word had gone around that there was a grand court lady on board and everyone was eager to see her. Jason had to post Kaleb and two more of the strongest men in the ship's company at the foot of the poop ladder to save Marianne from suffocation.
He did, however, allow up one gentleman, elegantly attired in a coat of sky-blue superfine and fawn-coloured pantaloons for whom Captain Montfort was doing his best to make a way through the crowd, although even then the gentleman's magnificent cream-coloured neckcloth came very near to suffering irreparable damage. After them, like a splendid shadow, came the colonel of the 6th Regiment of the Line.
Shouting to make himself heard above the din, Montfort managed to present the newcomers, Colonel Pons, who came to welcome her on behalf of the Governor, General Donzelot, and Senator Alamano, one of the principal personages of the island, who had a request to make to her. In a flowery speech which lost much of its elegance through being shouted at the top of his voice, the senator invited Marianne 'and her suite' to go ashore and accept the hospitality of his house for as long as the Sea Witch remained in harbour for repairs.
'I assure your ladyship that you will find it vastly more comfortable than remaining on board ship, agreeably as I am sure you are accommodated, and offering much more protection from vulgar curiosity. If you remain here you will have neither rest nor quiet, and Countess Alamano, my wife, would be grieved to be denied the pleasure of entertaining your ladyship.'
'If I may add my word to what the senator has said,' Colonel Pons put in, 'I should add that while the Governor would be most happy to offer her the hospitality of the Fort, he feels that the senator's house is much more suited to the accommodation of a young and lovely lady.'
Marianne hesitated. She had no wish to leave the ship because that would mean leaving Jason, and just at the moment when he was showing some signs of weakening. On the other hand, she could not very well disappoint these people when they were giving her such a kindly welcome. The senator was a plump, smiling man whose bravely curling whiskers did their utmost to impart an air of ferocity to his good-natured face.
She glanced at Jason and saw him smile for the first time in many days.
'Loth as I am to part with you, ma'am, I believe that these gentlemen are right. While we are undergoing repairs – a matter of three or four days I should think – your life on board would be exceedingly uncomfortable, quite apart from the curiosity you would arouse. This will enable you to rest and relax.'
'You will come and visit me ashore?'
His smile broadened, lifting one corner of his mouth with the familiar irony, but the eyes which met hers had recovered nearly all their old tenderness. He took her hand and kissed it quickly.
'Most certainly. Unless the senator forbids me his house.'
'I? Why, my dear Captain, my house, my family and all I have are yours! You may move in for weeks at a time with your whole crew if you've a mind. It would make me the happiest of men.'
'Then you must be the owner of vast estates, indeed, sir,' Jason answered him, laughing. 'But I fear that would be to impose on you rather too much. If you'll go ashore, ma'am, I'll see that your maid follows with such baggage as you require. For the present, then, good-bye.'
A brief order, a twittering of pipes and the crew had cleared the deck for Marianne and her escort to leave. She took the senator's proffered arm and accompanied by Arcadius and by Agathe, who was evidently delighted at the prospect of setting foot on dry land again, made her way to the gangway to cross the plank linking ship to shore. The senator went first, holding her hand with the satisfied air of King Mark presenting Isolde to his people.
Marianne descended graciously to the cheers of the crowd delighted by her beauty and her smile. She was happy. She felt beautiful and admired and marvellously young and, more than all this, she did not need to turn her head to know that she was watched by one pair of eyes whose regard she had almost despaired of ever regaining.
And then, just as her foot, in its yellow silk slipper, touched the warm stone of the quay, it happened; precisely as it had happened before, one night at the Tuileries, over a year ago. Then it had been in the Emperor's cabinet, after that concert when she had braved his anger by walking off the stage right in the middle of a song, without a word of explanation… after the terrible quarrel which had taken place between herself and the master of Europe. Without warning, the white town, the blue sea and green trees and the multi-coloured crowd all merged into an insane kaleidoscope. Marianne's eyes swam and her stomach heaved wildly.
Just before she slipped into unconsciousness and the arms of the senator, who opened them in the nick of time, there was an instant's realization that happiness was not to be, not yet. The evil consequences of her Venetian nightmare were not yet done.
Senator Alamano's house was situated not far from the village of Potamos, a couple of miles from the town. It was simple, white and spacious, and the surrounding garden was a perfect earthly paradise in miniature – a paradise in which nature, almost unaided, had played the role of gardener. Orange and lemon trees, citrons and pomegranates, bearing flowers and fruit together, alternated with arbours of vines, all tumbling headlong down to the sea. The heady scent of flowers was lightened by the freshness of a spring that tumbled down a bed of mossy rocks to form a tiny stream whose clear waters played mischievous hide-and-seek about the garden with the myrtles and the huge sprawling fig trees contorted with age. House and garden nestled in the hollow of a valley whose slopes were silvered over with hundreds of olive trees.
The woman who ruled over this miniature Eden, and over the senator as well, was small, busy and irrepressibly gay. Much younger than her husband who, although he would never have admitted it, was well on the way to a youthful fifty, Countess Maddalena Alamano had a real Venetian head of hair, made of fire and honey, and a true Venetian way of speaking, fast, soft and slurred, and by no means easy to follow until one got used to it. She was pretty rather than beautiful, with small, delicate features, an impudent tip-tilted nose, eyes bright with mischief, and the prettiest hands in the world. Besides being kind, generous and hospitable, she also possessed a busy tongue, capable of diffusing an incredible amount of gossip in the shortest possible space of time.