The Rape of Venice (37 page)

‘Where is she?' Roger croaked. ‘What have you done with her?'

‘She is here in the Palace; in good health and being well cared for. Tomorrow I propose to provide her with a little sport. She is, as you know, a fine shot with a bow and arrow. I intend to provide her with a special target. We shall make a package of you so that you have no resemblance to a man, and your vital parts will be well protected, as I do not mean you to be killed—as yet. We shall gag you, then tie you firmly in position, with only your behind unprotected, and that we shall cover with a paper target, painted in circles of red, white and blue. Miss Marsham—or rather Mrs. Brook—will I am sure greatly enjoy practising her skill upon you.'

Roger's tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of his mouth. Malderini's hypnotic eyes held his so that he was forced to listen, while unable even to curse him. The Venetian touched
the still livid scar that ran from his ear down to his chin, and went on:

‘There is then this. I think to make you a just return for it I had best rip your face open with a piece of glass; but you may rest assured that I shall exercise great care that I cut no vein which might cause you to bleed to death. I do not mean you to die for a long time yet. But we must also consider the question of interest on the debt. Since you will never again be in a position to enjoy your wife, your manhood will be useless to you. I shall therefore deprive you of it and watch you grow fat, as is the case with eunuchs.'

With a supreme effort Roger had managed to force his eyes away from the Venetian's and down to the floor. Sweating with horror at the thought of these tortures from which there could be no escape, he gasped out:

‘Go on! Go on! Then, no doubt, you'll have my nails torn out, my bones broken and my flesh burnt with hot irons till I die a mangled travesty of a man. Helpless as I am, I can rely only on God to punish you in the long hereafter. And in that I'll not be disappointed. But what of her? What of Clarissa? You cannot keep her indefinitely under the vile spell you have east upon her.'

Malderini shrugged his drooping shoulders. ‘I can for long enough to serve my purpose. Because I substituted a trick for a genuine attempt to levitate the Princess Sirisha, you must not assume that I have had no success in practising the Secret Art. I have long needed a fair woman born under the sign of Leo, and with Jupiter in the ascendant, for a ritual which I mean soon to attempt. She fulfils these conditions, so her body shall serve as an altar on which to make sacrifice to the Indian form of Bahomet, the giver of all power on this earth. After that I'll have no use for her, but there are others here who will have.'

His eyes still downcast, and with his arms bound behind him, but distraught with rage, Roger suddenly ran at his tormentor, swung back his right foot encased in its heavy riding boot, and kicked him in the stomach.

With a scream, Malderini went over backwards. There came a shout from the young Rajah, a sudden rush of trampling feet and the guards seized Roger, dragging him back from the squirming Venetian.

For a minute or more the silence was broken only by Malderini's groans. Then, having been helped to his feet, still sweating and panting for breath, he gasped out at Roger:

‘A new debt…. A new debt! It shall be paid … paid in full. When … when I have done with your … your wife, we'll give her to Alāuddin … His Highness's pet baboon, Alāuddin likes women. It is good sport to see what he does with them. You shall see too. Yes, I'll have your eyes held open so that you'll not miss a thing.'

Driven near mad by the hellish picture Malderini had conjured up, Roger exerted every ounce of his strength in an attempt to break away from his guards and get at him again. It was useless. They had him firmly by the arms and kicked his feet from under him. As he lay between them, half sprawled upon the floor, the Venetian glowered over him and wheezed:

‘You hoped to provoke me into making a quick finish of you, did you not? But I have learned to control anger and to prevent myself from giving way to impulses which I should later regret. Tonight you may sleep in peace—if you can. It is said, though, that anticipation is the greater part of pleasure. That it may harrow the mind with the thought of pain to come is equally true. I think that you will get little sleep while through the dark hours you contemplate the promises I have made you.' From French he broke into fluent Urdu and, after making a jerky bow to the young Rajah, ordered the guards to take Roger away.

Still struggling, he was dragged from the lofty hall, along several corridors and down a dark stairway. At its bottom there was a narrow chamber dimly lit by a smoky oil lamp. Along one side of it were a row of stout wooden doors, and a burly man was sitting there on a stool eating a mess out of a brass bowl. As the man stood up, a bunch of keys jangled at his girdle. Selecting one he unlocked one of the doors, and Roger was pitched through it, down a short flight of steps into a light-less dungeon.

How long he lay where he had fallen, his body a mass of pains and aches from the kicks and cuffs he had received, and his brain half numbed by shock and hopeless misery, he never knew. Scratchings, squeaks and scamperings came to his ears without meaning; it was not until a rat actually ran across his face that he jerked himself up and made a conscious endeavour to think coherently. Wriggling along the floor he reached a wall, turned over, sat up with his back to it, and tried to sort out the nightmare through which he had lived since being brought before the Rajah of Bahna.

Bemused as his mind still was, one clear thought dominated
it. He had done Clarissa a terrible injustice. On the flimsy grounds that she had encouraged Gunston's attentions during the latter half of January, he had allowed himself to believe that she had eloped with him. For four days he had been obsessed with that thought, yet now it seemed positively farcical. Worse, it was an insult to her honest and fearless character. The depth and tenacity of the love with which she had pursued him for so long should have been guarantee enough that she would never abandon him lightly, and that even if they had tired of one another to the extent of quarrelling most bitterly, she would have had the courage to tell him her intention before finally committing herself with another lover. Tears of shame welled up into his eyes and he mentally squirmed at the memory of having thought so meanly of her.

About what had actually taken place, he now had no doubts at all. As he had warned Clarissa at Stillwaters, no hypnotist could obtain power over a person unless that person willingly submitted to being hypnotised. But once they had surrendered their will to the hypnotist, he could without their consent hypnotise them again. The tragedy was that his warning had been given too late. In her eagerness to catch a glimpse of the future, Clarissa had asked Malderini to hypnotise her that afternoon, and all she could promise afterwards was to keep away from him, so that he should have no opportunity of throwing her into a trance again.

Evidently, on learning from Gunston that they were in Calcutta, Malderini had set off there and, probably, stayed for some days at a place outside the city while he sent spies into it. All native servants were born gossips, and delighted in talking boastfully about their masters' and mistresses' affairs; so it would have been easy for a spy to learn from one of Roger's household that he intended to spend the week-end up at Chinsurah.

After that all Malderini would have had to do was to come face to face with Clarissa so that he could stare at her for a few moments with those compelling eyes of his. To enforce silence on her temporarily and the suggestion that she must hear what he had to say in private would have been his first move. No doubt to break her will to a degree at which she would consent to have all her things packed and go away, apparently quite willingly, with him had required far greater effort and prolonged concentration, as it was certain that in her subconscious mind she would have fought desperately against such a command;
but that explained why they had remained for over an hour together out on the veranda before she had begun to make her preparations for departure.

Roger could only hope now that Malderini had kept her in a state of trance right up to the present; for, if so, it seemed possible that she was still unaware that she had really been abducted, and thought herself only the victim of a horrid dream, so was at least not a prey to an agony of apprehension about her future.

He had got only so far in his unhappy speculations when the big key grated in the lock, the door swung open and the powerful looking jailer came down the three steps into the dungeon. The light percolating in from outside was just sufficient for Roger to see that he was carrying a calabash in one hand and a bowl in the other. Setting these down on the floor the man produced from his tunic a hammer, then fumbled about until he found the loose end of a chain that had its other end fixed in the wall. With the deft movements of long practice he put an iron shackle round Roger's left ankle and hammered home some rivets which secured it to the chain. Next he drew a knife, and cut the cords that bound Roger's arms, then, turning away, he left the dungeon, locking the door behind him.

As Roger's arms had been bound for several hours, he at first found it very painful to move them, but after a few minutes he was able to stretch out for the food and water left for him by the jailer. The bowl contained a cold curry which was so fierce that normally he would have refused it, but he had not eaten since midday and felt that he ought to keep up his strength; so he gulped down the mess bit by bit, then drank more than half the water in the calabash in an attempt to allay the burning of his throat.

The meal did him good and after it he began to wonder if there was any conceivable means by which he might escape. Now that his arms were free, next time the jailer came in to bring him a meal he might seize and attempt to overpower him. But the man was bigger than he was, so the chance of succeeding was poor. Perhaps, though, he could even up the odds by first snatching the jailer's knife. One swift ruthless stab, and to silence him after that would be easy. But did he carry his hammer on him? Roger had already examined the chain that held him by the leg and found it impossible to shift with his fingers the bolts fastening the ankle clamp. Without the hammer he would be unable to free himself—unless. Yes,
he should be able to work the staple, that secured the chain to the wall, out from between the stones with the point of the jailer's knife. But that might take hours. And what then?

He had been hustled through a maze of courts and corridors, vague memories of which now confused him rather than helped him to form any idea of the geography of the palace. When he reached the top of the stairs, he would not even know which way to turn with the best chance of getting out. He could disguise himself in the jailer's clothes; but he could not conceal his blue eyes and fair-skinned face. They would betray him at one glance from any of the Rajah's people; and it was a certainty that he could not for long seek a way to freedom without coming upon some of them. Then, should he have the luck to reach a gate, during the night it would be locked and, since he was a foreigner, he could not hope to bluff the guards into letting him through. Even if by some miracle he escaped all these hazards and found a wall over which he could climb into the street, he would be little better off. As a single European in a native city his recapture within a few hours was certain.

Roger was an optimist by nature and, however desperate his situation, his resolution had never failed him; but he was forced to admit to himself now that to escape from Bahna, without help from outside, was beyond his capabilities. If he attempted to kill his jailer and failed, he could expect a frightful beating. If he managed to get up into the palace, to the gate, or even out into the city, his eventual recapture, wherever it might take place, would certainly be accompanied by kicks and blows. Apart from a few bruises he was still in good shape, and he decided that it was better that he should remain so rather than expose himself to serious injury in attempting a forlorn hope. As long as he continued sound in wind and limb there was at least a chance that an opportunity would occur for him to spring upon and kill Malderini. If he could do that, whatever the Rajah's people might do to him afterwards, he would have the consolation of knowing that he had saved his sweet Clarissa from being made use of in some abominable Black Magic ceremony.

What sort of ceremony Malderini intended to perform, Roger could only guess at. But the Venetian had spoken of using Clarissa's body as an altar; so it sounded like a form of the Black Mass. Roger recalled a book he had read while in France which described the Marquise de Montespan's efforts
to recapture the love of King Louis XIV. Apparently the discarded favourite had secured the infamous Abbé Gibourg to perform a number of Black Masses dedicated to that intent. There had followed a description of the Abbé saying the Mass backwards over the naked body of the beautiful Marquise, then cutting the throat of a kidnapped infant; after which both had drunk of the blood of the sacrifice and finished up blood-spattered and mouthing obscenities in a violent sexual embrace.

From the mental picture of Malderini and Clarissa, under hypnotic domination, engaged in such a scene, Roger's mind revolted. He felt that if he allowed himself to think of it for any length of time he would go mad; so he sought desperately for some other matter upon which he could concentrate his thoughts.

The possibility of their being rescued seemed terribly remote; but at least it was a subject he could speculate upon. As he realised now, the three men of his escort had been deliberately murdered to ensure that no news of what had happened to him should get back to Calcutta. There, only Hickey knew that he had set out for Bahna; but Hickey believed that it was Gunston who had carried off Clarissa. He would therefore expect that Roger would regain possession of her and return with her towards the middle of the coming week or, should he fail to do so, presume that Gunston had proved the better man and that Roger had either been killed or seriously wounded by him in a duel. Either way, as far as he was concerned, it was a private quarrel between two young men over the possession of a pretty young woman and, whether or not he learned the outcome of it, no matter about which to go to the Governor.