[Marianne 6] - Marianne and the Crown of Fire

by Juliette Benzoni

  Jason, on his side, was content at first merely to parry his strokes without taking the initiative. He had spoken confidently enough but even so the strange weapon took some getting used to, for although somewhat lighter than the seaman's cutlass it was also without a guard. Moreover, he was studying his opponent's swordplay. Feet planted firmly on the ground, the upper part of his body almost motionless and the sword blade whistling about him, he looked like nothing so much as one of those Hindu idols with a multiplicity of arms.

  But then, as Chernychev pressed home his attack with renewed vigour, he fell back a pace and in doing so caught his foot against a stone. Marianne cried out sharply and the Russian, taking instant advantage of the momentary mishap, followed up with a lunge that would have pierced the American right through if he had not made a lightning recover and parried the thrust. As it was the sabre merely glanced across his chest leaving a few bright drops of blood in its wake.

  This narrow escape roused afresh all the anger which had seemed momentarily to have deserted Jason. Now it was he who began pressing his adversary who gave ground but not quickly enough to avoid a stab in the fleshy part of the arm. Jason pressed home his advantage and a second, more determined stroke wounded Chernychev in the shoulder. He cursed softly and despite the pain attempted a riposte but the American's sword flashed out a third time and caught him in the chest.

  He staggered and dropped to his knees as Jason sprang back. His lips writhed in a brave attempt to smile.

  'I have it, I think…" he whispered and fainted.

  There was a moment's shocked silence. The cossacks stared down at the tall white figure lying on the ground as if they could not believe their eyes. But it lasted no more than a second. As Marianne sped to Jason with a sobbing moan of relief and he let fall the weapon he had just used with such deadly effect, Aksakov ran to his superior officer.

  'Come away,' Marianne gasped breathlessly. 'Come away quickly! It was a fair fight and you won but you must not stay here—'

  The young captain finished his examination of the wound and turned to look up at them with a combination of anger and relief.

  'He is not dead,' he said. 'And it's as well for you he's not, for I would have had you shot without delay.'

  Jason was putting on his blouse but at these words he stiffened and, turning slowly, subjected the officer to a haughty stare.

  'Is that your conception of honour in an affair between gentlemen? I was the victor, therefore I am free.'

  'The laws governing the duel do not hold in time of war. I shall not kill you because you have not killed him but I am taking you with me. You are my prisoner. The Ataman must decide what is to be done with you. Only the lady may go free.'

  'But I don't want to!' Marianne protested. 'Either you free us both or you take us both. I will not leave him.'

  She clung round Jason's neck but at a word from the Prince two men stepped forward and detached her forcibly while others overpowered Jason and tied him by the wrists to one of their saddlebows.

  When she realized that she was being left alone in the panic-stricken city while Jason was led away to an unknown fate, perhaps even to his death, Marianne burst into uncontrollable weeping. She forgot everything, her reason for being in that place, her desire to reach the Emperor and warn him, even the need to find Arcadius and the others. All she knew was that these wild-looking men, hardly one of whom understood a word she said, were like an unyielding wall about to divide her for ever from the man she loved.

  When the men restraining her released their hold to mount their horses again, she ran to Aksakov, who was supervising the removal of his captain, and cast herself at his feet.

  'I implore you, take me too! What harm can it do? You will have two prisoners instead of one and I demand to share my friend's fate!'

  "That may be so, Madame. But it was expressly stated as a condition of the fight that you, and you alone, should be set free. My duty demands it.'

  'And what is freedom to me? You make great play with your duty, sir, yet by arresting the victor in an affair of honour you are contravening its first rule! Oh, I beg of you – you cannot know how much this means to me—'

  Jason's voice, sounding strangely cold and distant, interrupted her.

  'Be quiet, Marianne! I will not have you humble yourself for my sake. I forbid you to entreat him further. If this officer insists on behaving dishonourably I am not going to make one move to prevent him. Nor will I permit you to do so.'

  'But don't you understand, he means to separate us? We are going to be parted, here and now, and they may be taking you to face a firing squad.'

  The corner of his mouth lifted a little in his familiar, mocking smile. Then he shrugged.

  'That is in God's hands. Think of yourself. You know quite well that you'll come through. You won't be friendless in the city for very long.'

  'But I don't want to! I don't want to! I want to stay with you, to share your fate whatever it may be.'

  She was striving desperately to reach him and cling to him, even at the risk of being trampled by the horses, but already the squad of mounted men had closed in on him. She uttered a piercing cry, like a wounded animal: 'Jason! Don't leave me!'

  Aksakov, too, was lifting himself into the saddle as she turned to him.

  'Don't you understand that I love him?'

  It was his turn to shrug and he made her a derisory little bow.

  'I dare say. But we must abide by the conditions. Your Serene Highness is free – free even to follow us if you wish, although at the risk of being trampled by the crowd and lost without trace.'

  With that, paying no further attention to her, the little troop formed up about the wounded man who had been hoisted as comfortably as possible on to his own horse until a conveyance could be found for him and, with the prisoner in their midst, rode off down a side street which, in due course, would bring them up with the body of the retreating army.

  Marianne watched them go. In her wretchedness it was even some time before the significance of Aksakov's last words sunk in. Not until the last horse had vanished round the corner of the street did her brain grasp the fact that nothing, as the captain had said, prevented her from following, whatever the dangers involved. As he had just told her, she was free.

  The thought of her friends whom she was abandoning with little hope of ever seeing them again crossed her mind briefly but she dismissed it. Her fate was bound to Jason's. She could not and would not have it otherwise. She had to follow him to the last moment, even if that last moment were very close now. After all that she had been through to find and keep him, anything else would be senseless desertion and a betrayal of herself.

  She threw back her head and took a deep breath, then set off in her turn along the same way that the cossacks had taken. She had crossed the square and was just entering the street when she saw Shankala.

  The gipsy was standing in the middle of the narrow thoroughfare with her arms spread wide as though to bar the way. All through the fight Marianne had not thought of her once, for the girl had an incomparable talent for vanishing into the tiniest patch of shadow and remaining there unseen and unheard. But now she had shown herself and Marianne knew by the grin of hatred and triumph that distorted her brown features that if she wanted to go after her lover it would not be without a fight. Too late, she understood that by pretending, against all probability, to be pursuing the man who had cast her off, the half-wild gipsy girl had all the time been aiming at nothing but the conquest of the master she had chosen for herself and taking him from the woman who might consider him her own rightful property.

  Marianne stepped out boldly towards the other woman who, in her blood-red garments, looked like nothing so much as one of those crosses that were once drawn on the doors of houses where the plague had struck. Throwing out her arm in a commanding gesture, Marianne ordered her to let her pass.

  'Begone!' she said sternly.

  The other gave a shrill, high laugh and then, before Mar
ianne could lay a hand on her to put her out of the way, she had drawn a dagger from her belt. The short blade gleamed for a moment in the sun and then she struck.

  With a sound like a groan, Marianne collapsed on to the earth, already trampled by the horses' hooves. Shankala was bending over her, her weapon already lifted again to deliver one final stroke, when a sudden outcry made her look quickly back towards the farther end of the square. Instantly she abandoned her intention and instead ran swiftly after the cossacks.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Player Queen

  Pain bit sharply through the cocoon of thick mist which for Marianne had replaced the world of reality. It was like a persistent burning sensation and she tried to shake it off but her invisible tormentor refused to be dismissed.

  A voice was speaking, a feminine voice with a lilting Italian accent.

  'It's better than I feared. Madre mia, but she was lucky! I quite thought she was dead.'

  'I too,' agreed a second voice, this time without an accent. 'But her assailant did not. She was just about to strike again when you shouted out and banged the shutters, Vania dear. Luckily we frightened her.'

  The voices belonged definitely to the real world. Marianne opened her eyes and nearly closed them again at once at the strange picture made by the two women bending over her in the light of a candle. She who held the light was a handsome woman, no longer in her first youth, with red hair, a pale complexion and golden-brown eyes, dressed in the velvet farthingale, starched ruff and peaked head-dress of a renaissance princess, while the other, who was clad in the dark red draperies of a Roman matron, bent over the injured girl energetically sponging the wound, with such an expression of concentration on her fine, regular features below the piled-up hair and Roman diadem adorned with flame-coloured plumes that her black brows met in a frown above her dark eyes and the tip of a pointed tongue protruded from between shapely red lips.

  She was dressing Marianne's wound with the aid of a bottle of brandy and a wad of lint with a thoroughness that drew a moan of protest from her patient.

  'You're hurting me,' she protested.

  The wearer of the plumes paused in her work and addressed a beaming smile to her companion.

  'She speaks French! And without a trace of accent,' she cried, giving full range to a magnificent contralto voice. 'How strange that we do not know her!'

  'I am French,' Marianne said. 'And I gather that you are also. But, please, you are hurting me.'

  The other lady laughed, revealing small, pointed teeth, irregular but of a flawless whiteness.

  'Be glad that you can still feel pain,' she observed. 'In any case, we cannot help it. The girl's knife may have been dirty. The wound must be cleaned.'

  'Besides, it is finished,' the Roman lady said cheerfully. 'The wound is not very deep. I've probed it and by good fortune I have with me a quite miraculous ointment. I am going to bandage you up and, with a little rest, I think you will do very well.'

  She was doing so as she spoke, anointing the wound with a kind of thick cream that smelled agreeably of balsam and concocting a makeshift bandage out of a pad and a long strip which the renaissance princess had ripped from the bottom of what had once been a white petticoat. This done, she reached for the brandy bottle again, poured a little into a glass and, placing two or three cushions under Marianne's head, obliged her to drink it.

  Now that she was sitting up, Marianne could see that she was lying on a large sofa in a fair-sized room but the shutters, drawn tightly across the windows, made it too dark for her to make out many details. However, the candle in the princess's hand enabled her to make out strange shapes of stacked-up and dilapidated furniture.

  She felt stronger after the brandy and made an effort to smile at the two women who were regarding her with some anxiety.

  'Thank you,' she said. 'I think I owe you a great deal. But how did you find me?'

  The Roman lady stood up, displaying a queenly yet graceful form, and moved to a window, her dark red robes swishing dramatically around her.

  'We saw it all from this window. Not very clearly, of course, because you were at the far end of the square.'

  'You saw it all?'

  'Everything. The cossacks and that splendid duel… not that we understood much of what it was about, or of what happened afterwards. It was quite thrilling, and most mysterious. But we should never have interfered if it had not been for the last moment when that woman went for you with the knife. Then we threw back the shutters and shouted so that she ran away and we went down and fetched you up here. And that is all about it.'

  "Not quite. Won't you tell me where I am?'

  The woman in the ruff burst out laughing.

  'That is the first thing you should have asked. Where am I? What's happening? What is that noise? That is the sort of thing heroines always say in plays when they come round after a faint. There is some excuse for you, though, because we must have looked very strange to you, so I will put your mind at rest. You are in a room over the stables in the Dolgorouki Palace. The place is left empty for the best part of the time and the porter, who is a friend of ours, let us in. I might go on to puzzle you still further by introducing myself as Mary Stuart and this lady as Dido, but I will rather tell you that I am Madame Bursay, director of the Théàtre Français in Moscow. And I daresay you will feel more honoured by the attentions of your temporary doctor when I tell you that she is none other than that celebrated singer Vania di Lorenzo, of La Scala, Milan—'

  'And of the Théâtre des Italiens in Paris! Admirer and personal friend of our great Emperor Napoleon himself!' Dido concluded with a triumphant air.

  In spite of the pain in her shoulder and the misery which had returned with the return of consciousness, Marianne could not help smiling.

  'You too?' she said. 'I have heard much praise of your voice and talents, Signora. I myself am Princess Sant'Anna and I—'

  Before she could finish, Vania di Lorenzo had snatched the candle impetuously out of her friend's hand and was holding it so that its light fell on her face.

  'Sant'Anna?' she exclaimed. 'I knew I had seen you somewhere! Princess Sant'Anna you may be but to me you are the singer, Maria Stella, the Emperor's nightingale and the woman who preferred a titled husband to a brilliant career. I know, for I was at the Théàtre Feydeau on the night of your debut. What a voice! What a talent! And what a crime to let it all go!'

  The effect of this outburst was almost magical because, notwithstanding Vania's genuine disapproval, it completely broke the ice between the three women by reason of that amazing sense of fellowship which exists between all theatre people under any circumstances, however bizarre.

  To Madame Bursay, as to Signora di Lorenzo, Marianne had ceased to be a great lady, or even a lady of quality, she was simply one of their own kind, no more – and certainly no less.

  While they made a meal of smoked pork and dried apricots washed down with beer – the diet of the refugees in the Dolgorouki Palace was distinctly unorthodox, being derived almost exclusively from the contents of the palace cellars – the actress and the prima donna explained to their new friend how they came to be there.

  Madame Bursay and her company had been holding a dress rehearsal of Schiller's Maria Stuart in the city's Grand Theatre the previous evening and Vania had been trying on the costume in which she was to sing Dido in a few days' time, when the theatre had been invaded by a furious mob. The arrival of the first of the wounded from Borodino and the disastrous news they brought with them had driven the people of Moscow wild with rage. A wave of hatred against the French had arisen and spread like wildfire. The people had turned on everything in the city that had any connection with the hated nation. Shops had been broken into and plundered, private dwellings ravaged and even some French émigrés with no love for Napoleon had suffered.

  "We were the best known,' Madame Bursay sighed, 'and the best loved also, until this unhappy day.'

  'Unhappy!' Marianne cried. 'When the Emperor is
victorious and will soon be in Moscow?'

  'I too am a loyal subject of His Majesty,' the tragedienne said, smiling a little, 'but if you had lived through what we did yesterday—It was horrible! At one time we thought we were going to be burned to death in our own theatre. We had barely time to escape by way of the cellars, just as we were, and then we had to wait for nightfall before we could leave our underground refuge. It was impossible to reach our hotel. Lekain, one of our company who was not rehearsing, did manage to get there unobserved and saw our rooms ransacked and all our belongings thrown into the street and burned. And what was worse, while we women were escaping, our stage manager, Domergue, was caught by the mob and nearly torn to pieces. Fortunately, a company of police coming to prevent the theatre from being burned down was able to intervene and he was taken into custody. It seems that Count Rostopchin has announced his intention of sending him to Siberia!'

  'Along with his own cook,' Marianne said, sighing. 'It seems to be a passion with him. But what became of the rest of your company?'

  Vania made a helpless gesture. 'We don't know. Apart from Louise Fusil and Madame Anthony who are here with us, living across the courtyard, and young Lekain, who has gone out to try and get news, we know nothing of the others' whereabouts. It seemed wiser to separate – being in costume we looked strange enough on our own, but all together! Well, imagine Mary Queen of Scots and all her followers, her guards and ladies in waiting and so forth all walking about the streets of Moscow! We can only hope that they have been as lucky as we are and have found somewhere where they can hide in comparative safety until the Emperor enters Moscow.'

  'You took a very great risk in coming out to rescue me,' Marianne said quietly. 'God knows what might have happened to you if you had been seen.'

  Vania laughed. 'What was happening in the square was so exciting that we never thought of that,' she said. 'It was like a scene from a play! And we had been so bored. So of course we never hesitated. But in any case I don't believe that there is anyone still living in this part of the city.'