'Please don't be offended,' she said gently. 'So much has happened in these last three days that I had forgotten all about this. I was simply making sure I had not lost it.'
With peace restored between them, Marianne drifted back into sleep again. Sleep was still the thing she needed most and she dropped off very quickly while Barbe busied herself in putting the house to rights and coming to terms with Beyle's servant.
When the young auditor returned towards the end of the afternoon, he brought a quiverful of news. First and most important was the fact that the Emperor had returned to the Kremlin at about four o'clock, after making a tour of what remained of the city. His mood had darkened as he traversed the devastated streets where houses, palaces and churches were all reduced to black and smoking ruins. But when he came to the parts that had been saved his grim mood changed to anger at the realization that these were still given over to pillage and that the scum of the city had joined with the still more or less drunken soldiery to carry off everything worth having. A rain of stern commands began to issue forth, accompanied by some harsher sentences.
'It was not the moment to go up to his Majesty and start trying to gauge his intentions towards a mutinous princess,' Beyle concluded. 'Besides, I ran into Dumas, of the Quartermaster-General's staff, and he advised me to stay where I was until he sent for me, which will be tomorrow or the next day. It seems we're going to have the devil of a job to sort out what provisions are left in the city and bring in more from outside if necessary.'
But the provisioning of the army, or even of the city, was of scant interest to Marianne. What she wanted to know more than anything else was what had become of Jolival and Gracchus and to rejoin them as soon as possible. For all Beyle's friendly care, she felt lost without them and she felt as if nothing could be done until they were all three together again. They had travelled the world together for so long now that it had become inconceivable to envisage returning to France without them. She said as much quite frankly to her supposed husband and he did his best to soothe her impatience.
'I know what you are feeling. To tell you the truth,' he added in a burst of confidence, 'when I met you in the avenue, I was searching frantically for an old friend of mine, a Frenchwoman married to a Russian, the Baronne de Barcoff. I have long cherished a great regard for her. She seems to have quite disappeared and I shall not be easy in my mind until I have found her. But I know that, short of a miracle, I shall never do so until order has been re-established. You cannot conceive of the confusion in the city, or what is left of it. You must not expect too much all at once.'
'You mean that we are lucky to have escaped with our lives from one of the greatest disasters of all time?'
'More or less, yes. We must be patient, and allow all those who have fled time to return. Only then will we be able to search for our friends with some hope of success.'
Marianne was too much a woman not to ask what seemed to her the natural question.
'This Madame de Barcoff – are you in love with her?'
He smiled a little sadly and brushed one of his small, white, carefully manicured hands across his brow, as though to drive away a cloud.
'I did love her once,' he said at last. 'So much that surely something must remain. In those days she was called Melanie Guilbert and she was – exquisite. She is married now and I love another but, even so, there is still a great bond of affection between us and I am anxious about her. She is so fragile, so helpless—'
He seemed to be very much disturbed all of a sudden and Marianne held out her hands to him impulsively. Two days before, she had not even met him, and yet now the feelings he inspired in her were so warm that they could readily be called friendship.
'You will find her – and you will see again the woman you love. What is her name?'
'Angelina. Angelina Bereyter. She is an actress.'
'She must be very beautiful. You shall tell me about her. It will help to pass the time. You told me the other day that you would like to be my friend. Would you like us to seal that friendship today – a real friendship, such as you might feel for another man?'
Beyle laughed. 'You are a deal too lovely for that, I fear! I am only a man, after all.'
'Not to me, since you love another. My heart, too, belongs to someone else. You shall be my brother. And my name is Marianne. It's as well for a husband to know his wife's name.'
His answer was to kiss the hands she gave him, one at a time, and then, perhaps in order to conceal an emotion he was ashamed to let her see, he hurried from the room, saying he would send Barbe to her.
The brief respite allowed to Beyle by the Quartermaster-General was over the next morning. A messenger was knocking on the door at the crack of dawn to tell him he was wanted. The Emperor did not mean to waste a moment in bringing Moscow back to life again.
'He's firing off orders in all directions,' the courier said. 'There's work for you.'
There was indeed. They did not set eyes on Beyle again until the evening and by then he was exhausted.
'I don't know who was fool enough to suggest that the Emperor was overcome by the amount of destruction done to this confounded city,' he said privately to Marianne. 'He's as busy as a bee. He's ridden three times round the ruins since this morning and orders are pouring out like hail. The Kremlin is to be put in a defensive state and the same with all the fortified monasteries in the vicinity. There are orders, too, to fortify all the posting houses along the road to France and institute a regular service of couriers. Orders have been despatched to the Duc de Bassano and General Konopka in Poland to muster a force of six thousand Polish lancers – "those Polish Cossacks", as his Majesty called them – and get them here in double-quick time, since it seems that we have now run short of troops. Orders to station troops all along the way to Paris to guard our rear—'
'But you surely haven't had to do all that yourself? I thought you were concerned with food supplies.'
'I am. Men must be sent out into the country round about to bring in all the cabbages and other vegetables that have not yet been taken. There's the remainder of the hay to be got, and oats for the horses, the potatoes to be dug, the one remaining mill to be got into working order, stocks of oil and biscuit to be laid in, flour to be found from somewhere, for that is getting scarce, and lord knows what besides! At the rate he's going, he's quite capable of sending us off to get in the harvest in the Ukraine!'
'I suppose the fear that the army might run short of food is his greatest anxiety. It's natural enough.'
'Oh, if that were all,' Beyle said furiously, 'I wouldn't really mind. But in the midst of all this, he must needs think of settling his scores as well.'
'What do you mean?'
'This.' Beyle took from his pocket a large sheet of crumpled paper and spread it out on the bed where she could see it. It contained two 'wanted' notices to be displayed on walls about the city. One offered five thousand livres reward to any person giving information leading to the apprehension, dead or alive, of a certain Abbé Gauthier. This was followed by a detailed description of the wanted man. The second notice offered a further thousand livres in return for information leading to the recovery of the Princess Sant'Anna, 'one of His Majesty's personal friends, lost during the fire'. This also included a good description.
Marianne read both notices and then raised a woebegone face to his.
'He's hunting me – like a criminal!'
'No. Not like a criminal. That's just what I've got against him. Anyone at all might give you up without a qualm thanks to that word "friends", put in to deceive the unwary. If you want to know my feelings, I'd say it was – despicable.'
'It must mean that he is very angry with me, that he hates me, even! At all events, you are certainly taking a great risk, my friend, in staying with me. You ought to go away.'
'And leave you all alone? At the mercy of any inquisitive person who might give you up. I'm even beginning to wonder if I ought not to send Barbe about her – er – busines
s.'
'She's a wonderful nurse and she seems quite devoted.'
"Yes, but she's intensely curious, which I don't care for. François caught her listening at the door of this room. What's more, she asks too many questions. Obviously she has a poor opinion of our marital relations.'
'Well, you must do as you think best. In any case, I shall see to it that I leave Moscow as soon as I have found my friend Jolival and my coachman.'
'I'll see if I can pay a visit tomorrow to the first posting house on the Paris road. Probably your friend is there. I'll bring him back with me.'
But when Beyle returned the next evening, covered with dust from his ride, he brought disturbing news. Jolival and Gracchus were nowhere to be found. They had not been seen either at the posting house or at the Rostopchin Palace, where he had also gone in search of news.
'There is one more possible answer,' he went on quickly, seeing Marianne's face crumple and her green eyes fill with tears. 'They may never have left the Kremlin. A good many people stayed there even after the Emperor had left, beginning with the troops left behind to hold the fire in check if that were possible. It's not easy to move a man with a broken leg.'
'I've thought of that. But how can we find out?'
'Tomorrow, the Assistant Quartermaster-General is going to the Kremlin to make his report to the Emperor. He has asked me to go with him. It ought not to be too difficult for me to make my own inquiries and if your friend is there I will find out.'
'You would do that for me?'
'Of course, and much more if you should ask me. For to tell you the truth I did not mean to go with Mathieu Dumas at first.'
'Why not?'
He smiled a little wistfully and indicated the coat he was wearing.
'An audience with the Emperor in my present state—'
In fact this visit to the Kremlin which gave Marianne such pleasure posed considerable sartorial problems to her friend. He had lost all his baggage, having jumped into his carriage right in the middle of his dinner in the Apraxin Palace. He had driven back to his lodgings just in time to see the house burn down and had been obliged to look on, in helpless rage, while his belongings were destroyed. His entire wardrobe now consisted only of what he stood up in: a coat of blue superfine, of an excellent cut but no longer very clean, blue kerseymere pantaloons and a white shirt decidedly the worse for wear.
'We must think of some way to make you look more presentable,' Marianne said. 'The Emperor has a great dislike of slovenliness in dress.'
'I know that well enough. He'll favour me with one of those damned disgusted stares of his.'
All the same, a couple of shirts made of a reasonably fine linen were dug up from somewhere, with the help of Beyle's driver, François, now, by reason of the defection of his fellow servants, promoted to the office of valet. The coat was made fairly presentable by dint of a careful going over, followed by some energetic brushing. This left the elegant kerseymere pantaloons, for which no replacement could be found, and they were badly snagged in several places, one more than a trifle embarrassing. For his day-to-day work in the Quartermaster-General's office, Beyle had managed to discard them in favour of a coarse pair of infantryman's breeches but there could be no question of wearing these in the Emperor's presence.
'There's not so much as a yard of the damned stuff in our stores,' he complained. 'I'll have to resign myself to appearing before the Emperor bundled up in a pair of sergeant major's breeks or else in none at all.'
From this dilemma he was rescued by Barbe who, once she heard of it, promptly saved the situation. François, moved more by a sense of duty than by any real belief in what he was doing, had already washed and dried the offending garment. Barbe now carried them off and darned them with such exquisite neatness that by the time she had done with them they were virtually a work of art and infinitely respectable.
Beyle was so delighted that, quite forgetting his earlier suspicions, he instantly invited this new guardian angel to form a permanent part of his entourage.
'I engaged you for the duration of my – er – my wife's illness,' he said, 'but I should be very happy to keep you on indefinitely, unless, that is, you have some objection to returning with me to France or feel any hankering after your former – profession.'
Barbe, her yellow hair now neatly braided up in a coronet about her head and adding to the natural dignity of her demeanour, raised one haughty eyebrow and quite literally looked the young man up and down.
'I had not looked,' she said stiffly, 'after all that I have done, for your honour to have so little delicacy as to remind me of my youthful indiscretions. At my age, I'd have you know, such a way of life loses its charm. I should be glad to quit it and take service again – in some great house.'
Now it was Beyle's turn to be vexed. His usually even complexion flushed brick red.
'Do I understand you to imply that my household is not good enough for you?'
Barbe inclined her head. 'You have it,' she said coolly. 'I have been tirewoman to Princess Lubomirska, may I remind you. I could not, for the sake of my own self-respect, undertake to serve a lady of lesser degree. My dead father would turn in his grave.' For a moment, Marianne thought Beyle would choke.
'Ha! I suppose you think you had his blessing when you became a whore!' he yelped.
'Maybe not, 'though I always kept myself for soldiers so in that way I was serving my country. But supposing I were to go back into service for good, I could only do so with a really great lady. Now if your good lady were not merely your good lady – if she were a duchess, say, or even a princess, well, in that case, even supposing she should be homeless and without a penny to bless herself with – even wanted by the law, then I'd not refuse. Oh, by no means! Yes,' Barbe went on dreamily, 'I can see her as a princess. It would suit her down to the ground.'
Beyle and Marianne stared at one another in dismay. It was obvious where Barbe was leading. The woman knew their secret. Going about the city as she did each morning to see what she could pick up in the way of food, she must have seen the bills pasted up everywhere with their accurate descriptions of Marianne. And now, not satisfied with the thousand livres offered as a reward, she was intending to blackmail her employers.
Seeing that Beyle was too much overcome by this blow of fate to answer, Marianne took the matter into her own hands. Going right up to Barbe she looked her straight in the eyes.
'Very well,' she said icily. 'I am completely at your mercy. But, as you yourself have observed, I have no money, only—' She broke off, biting her lip as she realized that, stupidly, she had been on the point of mentioning the diamond. But that did not belong to her. It as hers only in trust and she had no right to use it even to save herself.
'Only what?' Barbe inquired innocently.
'Only the knowledge that I have done nothing to deserve that I should be hunted. But I will not argue with you. Since you have discovered who I am – the door is there! You may run to the nearest soldiers and give me up. The Emperor will be delighted to pay you the thousand livres when you tell him you have found the Princess Sant'Anna.'
She had expected the woman to sneer at her, perhaps utter some coarse words of abuse, and then make a dash for the door, but nothing of the sort occurred. Barbe certainly began to laugh but, to Marianne's immense surprise, her laughter was as candid as it was free of all malice. Then she came to Marianne and took her hand and kissed it, in the best tradition of Polish retainers.
'There,' she said, happily, 'that was all I wanted to know.'
'I don't understand you.'
'It's simple enough. If your highness will allow me to say so, I have known for a long time that you were not the wife of – this gentleman.' Barbe jerked her head in a vaguely contemptuous fashion to indicate Beyle. 'And I was hurt that you did not trust me. It seemed to me I had earned the right to be treated, not as a friend, to be sure, but at least as a loyal servant. I hope your highness will forgive me for having, to some extent, forced the truth fr
om you, but I had to know where I stood and now I am content. I should not care to serve a person of no consequence but I'd regard it as an honour if your highness will allow me to wait on you.'
Marianne began to laugh, relieved and also a little touched, more so perhaps than she cared to admit, by this sudden, unexpected development.
'Oh, my poor Barbe,' she said with a sigh, 'I'd like above all things to keep you with me, but you know my position. I have nothing, I am hunted, threatened with imprisonment—'
'As if that mattered! The great thing is that no great lady can afford to be without an abigail, not even in prison. It is the privilege of those who serve a great house to follow their masters into misfortune. We'll begin with that and maybe the good will follow in its own time.'
'But why choose me? Why not rather go back to your own country?'
Barbe's violet eyes darkened briefly.
'To Janowiec? No, there is nothing for me there any more. No one is waiting for me or wishes to see me again. Besides, for us Poles, France does not seem so very far from home. But most of all, if your highness will allow me to say so, I've taken a fancy to you – and there's no gainsaying that!'
After that, there was nothing more to be said and so it came about that Barbe Kaska came to occupy the place in Marianne's life left vacant by young Agathe Pinsart, much to the disappointment of Henri Beyle who had already been picturing the Polish woman ruling over his own bachelor establishment in the rue Neuve du Luxembourg. But he was not the man to give in to disappointment and nevertheless gallantly offered to pay the new abigail's wages for as long as her mistress remained in his company.
These matters of domestic economy once settled, Barbe set to with a will to assist François in turning her master out creditably. The young man departed for the Kremlin looking distinctly presentable.
Marianne's heart beat high with hope as she watched him go. All the time he was away, she could hardly sit still. While Barbe settled herself by the window with some sewing – she had undertaken to run up a chemise or two for Marianne out of a length of batiste acquired by Beyle out of the products of the sack – singing to herself one of those lugubrious Polish ballads of which she seemed to have an unending repertoire, Marianne paced up and down, hugging her arms across her chest, unable to control her excitement. The hours dragged on, keeping her suspended between hope and foreboding. At one moment, she would be sure of seeing Beyle come back bringing Gracchus and Jolival with him, the next she would be on the brink of tears, convinced that everything had gone wrong and Beyle too had been flung into prison, if not worse. She had suggested to her friend that he should try and speak to Constant who, she was sure, was still her friend.
[Marianne 6] - Marianne and the Crown of Fire Page 23