Sick with fury, with a burning head and a sharp pain in her back, Marianne watched the brig sail past her boat, veer gently and then draw away, still hardly able to realize what had happened to her.
Soon, before her wide, tear-drenched eyes, appeared the graceful, brightly-lit stern windows, surmounted by their three lanterns. Then the vessel went about and altered course. Gradually the tall pyramid of sails receded and was lost in the surrounding darkness, until it was nothing but a vague shape marked by tiny twinkling lights.
Only then did Marianne begin to grasp the fact that she was alone on the wide sea, set adrift without food or water, practically without clothes, and doomed, coldly and deliberately, to die unless a miracle occurred.
There was the ship, hull down on the horizon, taking her only friends with it, the ship that belonged to the man she loved and to whom she had sworn to devote her life, and who not so long ago had vowed that he loved her above all else. Yet he had not been able to forgive her for concealing her misery and shame from him.
CHAPTER NINE
Sappho
True to Leighton's mocking assurance, Marianne was able to free her hands and feet and get the gag from her mouth without a great deal of difficulty but, except for the small satisfaction to be gained from the unrestricted use of her limbs, she did not find herself very much better off.
All round her was the empty sea. It was still dark, with the awesome, impenetrable blackness of before dawn, but it was a moving darkness, lifting and tossing her as a child plays with a toy in its hand. She was cold as well, for her thin cambric nightgown and light wrapper offered little protection against the early morning chill. A white mist was gathering, thick, penetrating and horribly clammy.
Her groping hands found the oars underneath the thwart but, although she had learned to row as a child, she knew that her efforts would be useless in the absence of anything to steer by. She could only wait for daylight to dispel the darkness and the mist. Pulling her thin garments round her as best she could, she huddled in the bottom of the boat and let it drift, choking back her tears and forcing herself not to think of the others she had left on that fatal ship: Jolival and Gracchus in irons, and Agathe at the mercy of the drunken seamen… and Jason. God alone knew what had become of Jason by now. O'Flaherty had said that he was in the power of a demon, but for Leighton to be so obviously master of the brig, backed up by that handful of brigands, Beaufort must surely be a prisoner, or worse. As for the jovial Irishman, he had probably shared his captain's fate.
To stop herself thinking too much about them, and in a desperate effort to help them, if there were still time, Marianne started to pray as she had never prayed before, with a frantic, terrified earnestness. She prayed for her friends and for herself, abandoned to the mercy of the sea with no other protection than a flimsy boat, a few yards of cambric and her own courage and fierce instinct for survival. In the end, she fell asleep.
She woke, chilled to the bone, with an aching back and her inadequate clothing wet and clammy from the mist. It was light, although the sun had not yet risen, and the mist had thinned. The sky was faintly blue except in the east, where it was dyed a pinkish orange. The sea lay calm as a millpond, extending in an unbroken expanse as far as the eye could see, without a sail or sight of land. There was hardly a breath of wind. The breeze would get up later in the morning, reaching its peak at about ten o'clock.
Marianne stretched her cramped limbs and set herself to consider her position as calmly as she could. She concluded that, though bleak, it was by no means desperate. The study of geography had formed part of the broad education planned for her as a child by her aunt Ellis, and geography, in England, had included the use of the globes. She had laboured for hours, too, over boring maps of mountains, rivers, seas and islands, loathing it all because outside the sun was shining and she was longing to be free to enjoy a good gallop across country on her pony, Harry. She had never been fond of drawing, either. Now, in her trouble, she sent up a prayer of thanks to her aunt's ghost, thanks to whose efforts she had been able to follow approximately the course taken by the Witch, so that she now had some vague idea of where she was.
This was in the region of the Cyclades, the constellation of islands which makes the Aegean Sea a kind of terrestrial milky-way. If she went on in an easterly direction, she was almost bound to come across one or other of the islands before very long and there was always the possibility of encountering a fishing boat. After all, as the unspeakable Leighton had said, this was not the dreaded Atlantic Ocean, where she would have faced certain death.
As much to warm herself and provide a distraction from the terror induced by the vast loneliness around her, as with any very real hope of hastening her salvation, Marianne got out the pair of oars from the bottom of the boat, fitted them to the thole-pins and began to row energetically. The boat was heavy and so were the oars, designed for the calloused hands of seamen, not for the soft palms of a lady, but the physical exercise did provide a kind of comfort.
As she rowed, she did her best to sort out in her mind what must have happened on board the Sea Witch. When they had carried her on deck, she had certainly been blind with rage, but not so blind that she had not registered the fact that Leighton had only a handful of the men with him: not more than thirty or so out of the hundred or more who made up the crew. Where were the others? What had the doctor done with them? A strange kind of doctor, who seemed as well able to make men sick as to cure them! Were they prisoners under hatches? Drugged… or worse? The villain must have had a whole arsenal of diabolical potions at his disposal to enable him to get the better of normally strong, intelligent men. Her own experiences in Venice had taught her how a potion, a philtre, or whatever such devilish brews should be called, could break the will and unleash buried instincts, bringing a human being to the verge of madness. There had been a strange look in Jason's eyes during those last hours on the ship.
That there had been mutiny aboard, Marianne was now quite certain. Leighton and his supporters had made themselves master of the ship. She refused to believe that Jason, however hurt or angry he might be, could have changed in an instant, so radically, into a rapacious freebooter, scheming to take both her jewels and her life. No, he must be a prisoner, and powerless. Everything in Marianne's mind rejected the idea that Leighton could have struck at the life of a man who was his friend and who had welcomed him aboard his ship. In any case, Jason's skill as a seaman must make him indispensable to the navigation of such a vessel. He could not possibly be dead. But… what of his lieutenant? And the prisoners?
As she thought of Jolival, Agathe and Gracchus, Marianne's heart contracted. The evil doctor could have no pressing reason to spare their lives, the Vicomte's and the young coachman's at least, unless he suffered from any qualms about adding further needless crimes to an already overburdened conscience.
As for poor Agathe, the use they had for her was all too clear. Kaleb, who since his attempt on Leighton had been numbered by Marianne among her own people, had, because of his commercial value, nothing immediate to fear beyond the prospect of being sold back into slavery at the first opportunity. Yet that was bad enough, and Marianne felt an overwhelming pity for the dark and splendid being. His nobility and generosity had made a deep impression on her, and now, once again, he was to know the chains of slavery, the cruel whips and fetters of men who differed from him only in the colour of their skin.