[Marianne 6] - Marianne and the Crown of Fire

by Juliette Benzoni

  'And you thought I'd agree to that?' Marianne cried indignantly. "You talk of sending Jolival to Napoleon as if it were no more than going to post a letter. Well, let me tell you something. Look at all these people round us. The roads must be packed like this in all directions and we have absolutely no idea where to look for the army, or for the Russian army either. If we separate we're lost. Jolival would never find us again. And you know it.'

  Arcadius, alarmed at the angry turn the argument was taking, made an effort to intervene but Marianne silenced him with an imperious gesture. Then, as Jason still sat hunched in his seat, remaining obstinately silent, she snatched up her valise and sprang down into the road.

  'Come, Arcadius,' she said imperatively to her old friend. 'Captain Beaufort would rather part from us than involve himself in any way with the army of a man he so dislikes. He has done with France.'

  'After what I suffered there it would be stranger still if I hadn't. I think I have good cause,' the American said sulkily.

  'Oh yes, most certainly. Very well, then, go and join your good friends the Russians, and your old friends the English – but when all this is over, for all wars have an end, you had better forget all about Madame Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin and her champagne, and about the bordeaux wines and chambertins in which you once drove such a thriving contraband trade. And you can forget me, too, while you are at it! Because all these things are France!'

  With that Marianne put up her little chin in a gesture of superb defiance and contempt and, still shaking with anger, picked up her valise and tramped off up the dusty road, which here took a slight turn uphill, without looking back. She had thought, after the quarrel at Kiev, that Jason had been finally convinced and she was seething with rage at finding him still fixed in his stubborn resentment. He was nothing but a deceiver, a hypocrite without a heart.

  'Let him go to the Devil!' she muttered through clenched teeth.

  She heard him behind her, swearing and cursing in the approved manner of the coachman whose role he had adopted. But there was another sound too, the creaking of the kibitka getting under way. For an instant she was horribly tempted to look round and see if he were turning back but that would have been an admission of weakness amounting almost to giving in and she would not allow herself even to slacken her pace. A moment later he had caught up with her.

  Tossing the reins to Gracchus, he sprang to the ground and went after her. He caught her by the arm and forced her to stop and face him.

  'Not only are we in a scrape you don't appear to have the least idea of,' he raged, 'but now we have to put up with your tantrums as well!'

  'My tantrums?' she threw back at him indignantly. 'And what about yours? Who is it who won't listen to a word anyone says? Who won't hear of anything but his own selfish obsessions? I won't let Arcadius sacrifice himself, do you hear? I will not! Is that clear?'

  'No one is asking him to sacrifice himself. You have a talent for twisting people's words.'

  'Have I indeed? Well, listen to this, Jason Beaufort. One evening at Humayunabad, when I reproached you for wanting to leave me and go back to your own country to fight, you said to me: "I come of a free people and I must fight with them", or something of the kind. Well, I wish you would remember sometimes that I belong to the French people who have done more than any for the sake of freedom, beginning with the freedom of some others I could name.'

  'That's not true. You're half English.'

  'I can't think why that seems to give you so much pleasure. You must be out of your mind. Whose are the guns that at this very moment may be sending to the bottom any number of ships like your Sea Witch – flying the same flag, at least?'

  He glared at her as if he could have struck her. Then, abruptly, he shrugged and turned away, striving to repress a grin of apology.

  'Touché!' he growled. 'Very well. You win. We'll go on.'

  In an instant all her anger was forgotten. Like a schoolgirl she flung her arms round the American's neck, regardless of what the refugees might think, seeing a woman dressed in such a comparatively ladylike fashion eagerly embracing a bearded moujik. He returned her kiss and they might have remained lost to the world around them if Craig O'Flaherty's jovial voice had not come to their ears.

  'Come and see!' he called. 'It's well worth looking at!'

  All the others had climbed down from the wagon and walked over to a terrace terminating in a balustraded wall. Marianne and Jason joined them, hand in hand, and saw Moscow lying at their feet.

  The view which met their eyes was both grand and romantic, and with something fascinating about it also. It took in the whole extent of the great city, enclosed within its red walls, twelve leagues in extent and very ancient. At their feet the Moskva looped itself in snakelike coils round islands studded with palaces and gardens. Most of the houses were built of wood plastered over. Only the public buildings and the huge mansions of the nobility were constructed of brick of a dark, velvety softness. Numerous parks and gardens could be seen, their greenery forming a harmonious background to the buildings.

  The sun shone on a thousand and one church steeples and was reflected brilliantly from their gilded or sky blue domes and from rooftops of metal painted black or green. And in the midst of the city, set upon a raised hillock and ringed about by lofty walls and battlemented towers was a vast citadel, a veritable bouquet of palaces and churches: the Kremlin, the proud symbol of the ancient glory of Holy Russia. While all around it Europe and Asia met and mingled like the warp and weft of some fabulous material.

  'It's beautiful!' Marianne breathed. 'I never saw anything like it!'

  'Nor I,' said Jolival, adding, as he turned to his companions: 'It was certainly worth the journey.'

  Clearly he spoke for all of them, even Shankala who, since Kiev, had seemed to lose all interest in her companions. Occasionally, at the staging posts or when the kibitka slowed down on the road, she would speak to a passing peasant or to a stable lad, always asking the same question. The man would wave his arm and answer her briefly and then the gipsy would return to her place without a word and resume her scrutiny of the road ahead.

  But now she was leaning on the balustrade, gazing down with blazing eyes upon the fabulous city spread out at her feet, while her nostrils quivered as though seeking out one single scent from all the many odours that rose to meet her. For the trail of the man she followed must end here, before this city over whose beauty war hung like a menacing cloud.

  For the war was a presence to be breathed and felt. The wind carried a smell of burnt powder and, except for an occasional outburst of noise here and there, the silence in the city seemed to grow more disquietingly complete with every moment that passed. None of the ordinary, everyday sounds could be heard, no bells, no cheerful bustle of men at work, no music hovering about the smokeless rooftops. It was as though the harsh voices of the distant guns had silenced every other.

  Jolival was the first to break the spell which seemed to hold them all enthralled. He sighed and turning from the balustrade remarked: 'If we want to be inside the city by nightfall, I think it's time that we were on our way. We can try and get news of what's happening down there. All the people of the better sort speak French and there always used to be a large French colony in Moscow.'

  Enchantment gave way to something more like horror as they descended the hill and approached the city gates. The confusion here was unbelievable. The tide of refugees came up against a solid mass of women and old men, all kneeling in the dust before the doors of the Danilovski monastery, staring up with clasped hands at the great cross on the principal dome as though expecting some miraculous apparition. The sound of their prayers was a ceaseless murmur.

  At the same time a large convoy of wounded men emerging from a side street was endeavouring to enter by the gates which were already jammed with the press of vehicles. The people in the crowd did their best to make way for it and indeed showed to the wounded men a pious awe almost as great as that with which they gazed u
pon the monastery cross. Some of the women even fell on their knees and attempted to kiss the bloodstained rags binding an arm or leg.

  These wounded soldiers, filthy and ragged, were a sight both pathetic and terrible, an army of spectres with hollow eyes burning in faces parched by the sun.

  People ran out from those few shops which had remained open and from the houses near the gate with offerings of fruit and wine and food of all sorts, while some of those who were leaving actually turned back to give up their carriages to them, or to offer the use of houses left empty in the care of a few servants. Indeed, it all seemed so natural that it did not occur to Marianne and her companions to protest when a pair of tall fellows wearing aprons, who could have been in charge of the wounded, requisitioned their kibitka.

  'We'll probably be torn to pieces if we refuse,' Jolival whispered. 'It'll be a poor look-out if in all this confusion we can't find a vehicle of some sort to continue our journey! Besides, I must confess these people have surprised me. They show a remarkable example of unity in the face of disaster.'

  'Unity?' Craig muttered. 'Yet it seems to me that there is one great difference between those leaving and those staying. For the most part the carriages we've met have been smart and well-upholstered. The rich are going, the poor are left behind.'

  'Well, naturally, only those who have some property to go to outside the city can go away. What's more, I think it's chiefly their property that they are trying to protect. The others have nowhere to go. Besides, the Russian soul is essentially fatalistic. They believe that everything happens by God's will.'

  'I'm coming to very much the same view of things myself,' Jason said grimly. 'The exercise of free will seems to have become increasingly difficult for some time past.'

  However, after some delay and considerable effort on their part, they did manage to pass through the gate and found themselves in a long street, equally jammed with traffic, leading towards the centre of the city. But as they went on they passed the entrances to broad, deserted boulevards and empty streets that showed no sign of life, in vivid contrast to the one they were following. Many of the houses had their shutters up and presented blind faces to the world.

  Before long they came to the Moskva and saw men in barges busy sinking casks and boxes in the river. The Kremlin walls towered redder than ever in the setting sun. But the travellers' eyes were already growing accustomed to the almost asiatic splendours of the Holy City and they spared no more than a passing glance for the ancient citadel of the Tsars. What was taking place outside its walls was far more interesting.

  There were still crowds of people all along the river and on the bridges across it, and in the huge square outside the Kremlin wall. But these crowds were of a different kind from those outside the city. Young gentlemen in frock coats, armed with swords, were hurrying to meet the convoys of wounded, which seemed to be arriving from all directions, and greeting them with eager cries. Their youth, the elegance of their dress and, in many cases, their extreme good looks formed a striking contrast to the dirt and suffering among which they moved and attempted in a clumsy and often ill-judged fashion to relieve.

  Trapped in the bottle-neck of one of the bridges, Marianne and her friends were caught up and carried along almost in spite of themselves in an irresistible tide, so that they had crossed the river almost without noticing and found themselves deposited, with more or less freedom of movement, in the vast square in front of an enormous, glittering church whose vivid colours made it look like some gigantic jewel.

  On its eastern side, the square was bounded by a line of large and splendid private palaces which, with their elegant, white stuccoed classical facades and green, spreading gardens formed a barrier between it and Kitaigorod, the chief commercial district of Moscow. And outside of these palaces a crowd had gathered and was roaring with excitement at what, Marianne soon realized with horror, could only be a public execution.

  A ladder had been placed upon a platform built against the palace wall and bound to it by his wrists dragged up above his head was a man, naked to the waist, and being beaten with the knout.

  The whip, which was made of fine thongs of plaited white leather which it was the habit to steep in milk the night before an execution in order to stiffen them, left a bloody weal across the victim's back at every stroke and drew a groan of agony from him.

  Standing on the dais a step or two away from the ladder, observing the proceedings, was a giant of a man with a nagaika, or horsewhip, thrust through his belt. His arms were folded on his chest and he was dressed in a coat of military cut, blue and high-collared, with gilt epaulets. His strong, arrogant features showed traces of Turcoman blood, but it was nevertheless an expressive face, animated by a pair of very large eyes of some indeterminate colour, although at the moment it reflected nothing but a cold cruelty.

  The crowd had fallen silent, manifesting neither pleasure nor any other emotion at the torture of a fellow being. Yet as she mingled with them, Marianne was struck by the look on the people's faces. All, without exception, expressed a total, absolute and, as it were, concentrated hatred. The sight of it appalled her.

  'What are these people made of?' she muttered under her breath. 'The enemy is at their gates and they stand here watching a poor devil being flogged to death.'

  A sharp jab from an elbow in her side silenced her abruptly. Looking round, she saw that it had come, not from one of her companions, but from an elderly man of pleasant and distinguished appearance, dressed in old-fashioned style but with a simplicity that did not preclude a certain elegance. Far from it, for while he wore his hair long, no trace of powder marred the gleaming surface of the black satin ribbon that confined it and showed off its fine, silvery hue.

  Seeing Marianne gazing at him in astonishment, he smiled faintly.

  'You should be more careful, Madame,' he murmured. 'French is not an unfamiliar language in these parts.'

  'I speak no Russian, but if you would rather we conversed in some other tongue – English, for instance, or German—'

  This time the old gentleman, for such he clearly was, smiled openly, an action which detracted somewhat from his charm by revealing some regrettable deficiencies in his teeth.

  'As to English, it is rare enough to arouse some curiosity. German, on the other hand, is known and, ever since the time of Peter III, cordially detested.'

  'Very well then,' Marianne said. 'Let us continue in French. That is, Monsieur, if you will be kind enough to satisfy my curiosity. What has the wretched man done?'

  Her new friend shrugged his shoulders.

  'His crime is twofold. He is a Frenchman and he dared to rejoice openly at the approach of Bonaparte's armies. Before this he was a man much valued and even respected for his culinary talents, but that was enough to ruin him.'

  'Culinary?'

  'Yes indeed. His name is Tournais and he was head cook to the Governor of Moscow, Count Rostopchin whom you see there, personally overseeing his punishment. Unfortunately for his back, Tournais allowed his tongue to run away with him.'

  Marianne clenched her fists, feeling herself overcome with helpless rage. Must she stand there in the sunset watching a fellow-countryman flayed alive for nothing more than loyalty to his emperor? Fortunately, she had not long to wonder for the beating was coming to an end.

  At an order from Rostopchin, the unfortunate chef was cut down, unconscious and covered in blood, and carried inside the palace.

  "What will become of him?' asked Jolival, who had joined Marianne and overheard her conversation.

  'The governor has given out that tomorrow he is to be sent to Orenburg to work in the mines.'

  'But he has no right to do that!' Marianne burst out, once more forgetting all caution. 'The man is not a Russian. It's horrible to treat him like a guilty moujik!'

  'So he is also being treated as a spy. Ultimately, poor Tournais, for whom I am sincerely sorry, for he is a true artist, is merely a scapegoat. Now that the great battle is over, Rostopchin
is not sorry to show the people that he means to have no mercy on all who have the slightest connection with Bonaparte.'

  It was the second time the old gentleman had used that name and it gave Marianne the clue she needed. Evidently he was one of those unyielding émigrés who were sworn never to return to France as long as the scourge of God, Napoleon, reigned there. A little circumspection would therefore be wise. Nevertheless, Marianne could not resist her thirst for information.

  'A great battle, did you say?'

  The old gentleman stared and, reaching for the lorgnettes suspended on a velvet ribbon round his neck, set them on his nose and considered the young woman with astonishment.

  'Well, well! My dear young lady, where have you been, if I may make so bold?'

  'In the south, Monsieur, more precisely at Odessa, where I had the privilege of meeting his grace the Duc de Richelieu.' She added a few more vague words of explanation but her new friend was no longer listening. The name of Richelieu had quite won him to her and now that he felt sure that this young woman was one of his own kind he heartily approved of her. From then on there was no stopping him and once Jolival also had been introduced, the others being relegated to the obscurity of servants, he seemed prepared to hold forth endlessly.

  And so it was in the pleasant, educated tones of the man they learned to call Monsieur de Beauchamp that the travellers heard of what had taken place five days earlier on the plain of Borodino, on the right bank of the river Kologha, a tributary of the Moskva, and some thirty-five leagues from Moscow itself. The Russian army, which up to that point had seemed to melt into the landscape as the French advanced had decided to make a stand and attempt to bar the way to the capital. The fighting for the redoubts on the road was fierce and the casualties on both sides appalling,1 if the reports of the wounded who were even now being brought into the city were to be believed.