Marianne and the Rebels

Jason struggled to his feet and went over to the door but he did not open it.

'Well I don't want to speak to you,' he snarled. 'Take yourself off! My business is with the lady!'

'Don't be a fool, Beaufort! And don't do anything you'll be sorry for afterwards! Let me in—'

There was fear in his voice, the same fear that gripped Marianne, but Jason only laughed again, with that dreadful laughter that was not his own.

'Why should I let you in? So that you can tell me how she got herself pregnant? Or is it your own part as pander you want to explain?'

'You're drunk! You're out of your mind! Why not open the door?'

'Oh, but I will, my dear friend, I will… when I've dealt with this drab here as she deserves!'

'She is a sick woman! You aren't normally a coward, have you forgotten?'

'I've forgotten nothing!'

He swung round from the door and sprang at Marianne so suddenly that she was taken by surprise. Hurled violently to the deck, she screamed aloud, as much from terror as from hurt.

In another moment, the door burst open under the combined attack of Jolival and Gracchus. They almost fell into the room, Agathe on their heels, and snatched Marianne away from Jason, who appeared to have the fixed intention of strangling her. At the same time, Agathe seized a big water jug and flung the contents full in his face. He spluttered and shook himself like a dog, but slowly a spark of life began to show in his glazed eyes.

Sobered, to some extent at least, he tossed back the black hair dripping in his eyes and glared bitterly at the little group. Agathe had helped Marianne to her bed and after a brief, compassionate glance at the motionless form, Arcadius turned to Jason, shaking his head sadly at the ravaged face where the marks of suffering had bitten deeper than anger.

'I should have made her tell you the truth,' he said quietly, 'but she would not. She was afraid, horribly afraid of what you would say.'

'Was she?'

'Judging by what had just happened, she had every reason to be! But I give you my word of honour as a gentleman, Beaufort, that she was in no way to blame for what occurred. She was raped, appallingly. Will you let me tell you the whole dreadful story?'

'No! I can easily imagine your fertile imagination will have invented a splendid tale, calculated to appease my anger and to make me more her slave than ever. Unfortunately I do not want to hear it.'

Before Jolival could utter another word, Jason had taken the whistle he wore on a chain round his neck and blown three sharp blasts. At once, the boatswain appeared, framed in the broken doorway. Other men were visible behind him so that it seemed probable that half the crew had been listening eagerly.

Jason indicated Jolival and Gracchus.

'Put these men in irons, until further orders.'

'You have no right!'

Marianne had come to her senses and, despite Agathe's efforts to restrain her, had sprung to her friend's side. She was overpowered in a moment.

'I have every right,' the American retorted. 'I am sole master after God aboard this ship!'

'If I were you,' Jolival observed, moving calmly to the door, a seaman on either side of him, 'I should leave God out of this. The real winner here is the devil… and your friend the doctor, of course. Honest, honest Iago – as Shakespeare so aptly puts it.'

'We'll leave Dr Leighton out of this.'

'Indeed? Even though he broke his Hippocratic oath by betraying Marianne's condition?'

'He was not called to attend her. Therefore she was not his patient!'

'A nice, specious bit of reasoning – that did not come from you. Suppose we say he laid a trap, the basest kind of trap, concealing it under charity, and you applaud him for it! It's not like you, Jason.'

'Take him away, I said,' Jason roared. 'What are you waiting for?'

Gracchus fought like a tiger as the crew dragged them away but he was heavily outnumbered. Even so, as he was hustled past Jason, he managed to wrench them to a halt for a moment and looked straight into his eyes, his own hot with indignation.

'To think I once loved and admired you!' he said in a voice in which bitterness and desperation vied with anger. 'Mademoiselle Marianne would 'a' done better to 'ave left you to rot in prison at Brest, for if you didn't deserve it then, you deserve it now!'

Then, having spat on the ground to show his contempt, Gracchus let them take him away. The cabin emptied, leaving Jason and Marianne face to face.

In spite of himself, the privateer's eyes had followed the departing figure of Gracchus. He had paled under that furious outburst, and clenched his fists, but he had made no other move. Yet it seemed to Marianne that his eyes had darkened for a moment with a shade of regret.

The violent scene which had just taken place in her cabin had succeeded in restoring all her courage at a stroke. She was a natural fighter. It was her element and she felt at home in it. In a way, too, however disastrous the consequences, it was a relief to her to be done with the stifling atmosphere of lies and deceit. Jason's blind and jealous rage was after all a kind of loving, even though he might have rejected the idea with loathing, but it was a devouring and, perhaps, an all-consuming fire. In a few moments the love by which she had lived for so long might be reduced to nothing more than ashes – and her own heart with it.

Agathe had remained crouching by the bed. Like an automaton, Jason went to her and taking her by the arm, quite gently, took her to her own cabin and locked her in. Marianne watched him in silence, hugging round her the thick shawl which she had flung over her thin nightgown. He turned and saw her standing facing him, her head held high. There was anguish in her green eyes but they met him squarely.

'Now you can finish what you have begun,' she said steadily, letting the shawl drop just sufficiently to disclose the darkening bruises on her slender neck. 'All I ask is that you get it over quickly. Unless you'd rather hang me from the yard-arm in sight of all the crew?'

'Neither. I meant to kill you just now, I admit. I should have been sorry all my life. One does not kill such women as you. As for hanging you from the yard-arm, I fear I lack the appetite for melodrama which you, no doubt, picked up in treading the boards. In any case, you must be aware that while my crew might well enjoy the sight, it wouldn't please your watchdogs quite as much. I've no wish to be sunk by a brace of Napoleon's frigates.'

'Then what do you propose doing with me and my friends? You might as well put me in irons along with them.'

'Unnecessary. You'll stay here until we drop anchor at Piraeus. I'll put you ashore there, with your friends, and you can find yourself another vessel to take you on to Constantinople.'

Marianne's heart quailed. If he could talk like this, then his love for her must be dead indeed!

'Is that how you keep your promises?' she said. 'Didn't you engage to carry me to a proper port?'

'One port is much like another. Piraeus will do very well. From Athens you will have no difficulty in reaching the Turkish capital – and I shall be well rid of you, once and for all.'

He spoke quite slowly, without apparent anger, but in a heavy, exhausted voice in which to the thickening caused by drink was now added a note of disgust. In spite of all her anger and her grief, Marianne felt her heart moved with a kind of desperate pity. Jason looked like a man wounded to death. Very softly she asked:

'Is that really all you want? Never to see me again… never? For our ways to part… never to meet again?'

He had turned away from her and was looking out of the porthole at the sea, its deep blue struck into a myriad flashing sparks by the sun's fire. Marianne had an odd feeling that her words, penetrating, only served to harden him.

'That is what I want,' he said at last.