'Well, you may be a foreigner, after all – that or you have a nerve of iron! Either way it makes no differences. Your friend Theodoros will be handed over to the pasha of Candia, who'll pay well for him. As for you, you look as though you'd be worth keeping until Tunis. The bey might prove generous if you take his fancy. Come, I'll take you where you'll be more comfortable. Damaged goods lose their value.'
He had grasped her by the arm and was dragging her towards the ladder, ignoring her resistance. Not even for the sake of an improvement in her own material surroundings, was she willing to be taken too far away from her companion who, she now found, had acquired a certain value in her eyes. Whatever else he might be, he was a brave man and the victim of the same involuntary betrayal on the part of the little winged messenger. She felt at one with him. But the renegade's sinewy fingers were clamped tightly round her slender arm, giving her as much pain as if they had been made of iron.
As she had feared, it was to the sterncastle that he was taking her. Guessing that he was making for his own quarters, she was preparing to put up an energetic fight, for who could tell whether the pirate would not decide to test his captive personally before putting her on the market? It must happen often enough.
The door he opened and closed carefully behind her was, in fact, that of his own cabin, but the cabin itself was the very opposite of what might have been expected of a Mediterranean pirate. Imagination might have predicted a combination of luxury and untidiness, mixed with a kind of oriental squalor.
In fact, with its dark mahogany and brass nautical instruments, the room had the brand of austere and sober elegance that would not have disgraced a British admiral. It was, furthermore, meticulously clean. It was not empty.
As Kouloughis thrust her inside, Marianne beheld a youth reclining on the bunk, amid the purple cushions which provided the single note of colour in the room. His appearance was sufficiently arresting to have attracted the most casual eye. In his way, he was undoubtedly a work of art, but of a somewhat perverse kind.
He was dressed, with calculation, in full trousers of pale blue silk with a kind of matching dolman decorated with immense silken frogs. Thick black curls flowed from under a cap with a long golden tassel, and he stared up languorously out of doe eyes rimmed with kohl and further enlarged by dashing pencil strokes. The rose-bud lips that pouted in a face of milky whiteness also quite clearly owed the better part of their bloom to diligent applications of rouge.
This androgynous creature, undeniably beautiful but with a beauty that was wholly feminine, was occupied in cleaning a statuette of a faun, his long, supple fingers polishing the thing, which was of a quite remarkable obscenity, as lovingly as a mother. Here, presumably, was the fastidious housewife responsible for this unexpectedly neat domain.
He showed no sign of being disturbed by Kouloughis' tumultuous entry with his captive, but merely raised his exquisitely plucked eyebrows and favoured the girl with a glance that was half-affronted, half made up of sheer distaste. No doubt he would have looked much the same had Kouloughis suddenly thrown a bucketful of slops into his well-ordered world: a new and startling experience for one of the prettiest women in Europe.
The big cabin was well lighted by clusters of perfumed candles. Kouloughis dragged Marianne over to one of these and with a quick movement ripped off the embroidered shawl that covered her head and shaded her eyes. The light shone on the gleaming black mass of her plaited hair, and her green eyes sparkled angrily. She shrank back instinctively from the renegade's hand.
'How dare you! What are you doing!'
'Taking a good look at the goods I propose to sell, that's what I'm doing. There's no gainsaying you've a lovely face and your eyes are very fine – but it's hard to tell what may lie under the clothes worn by the women of my country. Open your mouth!'
'What—!'
'I said open your mouth. I want to see your teeth.'
Before Marianne could stop him, he had gripped her face between his hands and forced her jaws apart with a deftness born of long practice. Marianne might rage as she liked at finding herself treated precisely like a horse; she was compelled to endure the mortifying examination which, it seemed, was entirely to the satisfaction of the examiner. But when Kouloughis tried to undo her dress, she sprang away and fled for refuge behind the table in the centre of the cabin.
'Oh, no, you don't!'
The renegade looked vaguely surprised but he only gave a small shrug of annoyance and called:
'Stephanos!'
This was obviously the name of the dainty occupant of the bunk and, no less evidently, Kouloughis was summoning him to help.
Apparently the youth disliked the idea, because he began to shriek alarmingly and wriggled himself further down among his cushions as though defying his master to dislodge him, giving vent to a stream of words, uttered in a shrill tone that grated on Marianne's ears like a rasp, the gist of which was unmistakable: the delicate creature was refusing to sully his hands with anything so repulsive as a woman.
Marianne, who reciprocated his dislike to the full, had a momentary hope that his refusal might earn him a box on the ears, but Kouloughis merely shrugged and smiled, an indulgent smile that sat ill on his face. Then he turned back to Marianne.
Her attention deflected by the little scene, she was not expecting this new attack, but he made no further attempt to open her dress, being content merely to run his hands swiftly over her body, lingering a little over the breasts and acknowledging their firmness with a satisfied grunt. This treatment was not at all to Marianne's liking and she responded by dealing the slave-driver two resounding slaps.
For a brief instant, she tasted the fierce joy of triumph. Kouloughis stood stock still, rubbing his cheek mechanically, while his little friend seemed ready to faint with shock and indignation. But it was only for an instant. A second later, she saw that she would have to pay dearly for her gesture.
The corsair's sallow face seemed to turn dark green before her eyes. The fact that he had suffered this humiliation before the eyes of his minion made him wild with rage and, staring with dilated eyes, he suddenly seemed to her a creature less than human.
Urged on by the boy, who was now screaming excitedly in the nasal whine of a maniac muezzin, Kouloughis seized hold of Marianne and dragged her bodily out of the cabin.
'You'll pay for that, daughter of a bitch!' he snarled. 'I'll show you who's master!'
'He's going to beat me,' was Marianne's terror-stricken thought as she was jerked towards one of the carronade's that formed the polacca's armament, 'or worse!'
In a trice she found herself bound to the breech. Two men had covered it first with a tarpaulin but not, it was soon clear, with any idea of sparing her unpleasant contact with the metal.
'The meltemi is coming,' Kouloughis told her. We'll have a storm and you shall remain out here on deck until it's over. That may cool your temper. When you're cut loose, you'll have thought better of trying to strike Nicolaos Kouloughis. You'll go down on your knees and lick his boots to spare you further tortures! If you're still conscious!'
It was a fact that an ominous swell was getting up and the ship was beginning to roll. Marianne could feel a queasiness inside that intimated sickness to come, but she forced herself not to blench. She was not going to show this brute that she was ill. He would only think she was afraid. Because of this, she chose to attack instead.
'You're a fool, Nicolaos Kouloughis. You don't know your own interests.'
'My interest is to avenge an insult dealt me in front of one of my men!'
'That? A man? Don't make me laugh! But that's beside the point. You're going to lose a lot of money.'