'Oh, will he? And on what conditions? No, my friend, don't talk to me about chivalry and gallantry and such drawing-room niceties. They do not hold in a situation of this kind. Not to beat about the bush, I've no desire to be raped I don't know how often before we reach civilization. In any case, have you forgotten what you promised me in Moscow? You said that, once here, it would be easy for you to help me to continue my journey.'
Beyle literally exploded. 'How do you expect me to do that? You've seen what's left of the city on which we had all based such hopes! No garrison to speak of, no supplies, no communication with other cities, and a hostile population only waiting for the word to turn and rend us.'
"Well, you might have expected all that.'
'I might not! Smolensk was our main supply depot. Only it seems that since Marshal Victor left, all our reserves have mysteriously disappeared. As for the things I sent for from Mohilev and Vitebsk, scarcely any of it has arrived. And I was told nothing, nothing! They let me come here without saying a word. Poor Villeblanche almost died of fright when he got my letters and dared not tell me. But now, I must admit, I'm just as frightened and as desperate as he is. Do you know that in a fortnight from now we shall have something like a hundred thousand men descending on us and all we've got to feed them is a few quintals of flour, a little flour and buckwheat, a handful or so of hay and oats, a few dozen scrawny hens, a mountain of cabbages – oh yes, and casks and casks of brandy! How the devil do you expect me to find the time or means to do anything for you when I'm within an ace of going raving mad!'
'A hundred thousand men? What do you mean?'
He smiled bitterly. "That instead of the modest title I'd been looking forward to as the reward of my labours I'm likely to find myself wholly and irrevocably disgraced. The Emperor will never forgive me – or Count Dumas, either, or my cousin Daru. I'm finished, ruined utterly!'
'Oh, do stop moaning,' Marianne cried impatiently, 'and explain! Where are these hundred thousand men to come from?'
'With the Emperor! A courier arrived this afternoon, on foot because his horse had broken its neck on the ice coming down the valley. The Emperor is falling back on us.'
The gloom in his voice told how little he relished Napoleon's imminent arrival. Like a man getting a burden off his chest, he went on to pour out all his news in a rush. He said that on October 24th Prince Eugene had defeated General Dokhtourov's Russian troops at Malo-Yaroslavetz but it had been no more than a partial victory as a result of which Napoleon had learned that the Russian army was re-forming behind Dokhtourov in incalculable numbers. Aware of his own dwindling resources, he had decided to return to the main road and when the courier set out the French army's headquarters had been at Borovsk.
The Emperor's orders were precise. Everything was to be made ready at Smolensk to receive the hundred thousand or so men that remained with him, along with several thousand civilians who had left Moscow in his train.
'But that's not all,' Beyle went on tensely. 'The Emperor is expecting to find massive reinforcements awaiting him here – the 9th Corps, which has gone off to assist Gouvion St Cyr. The Marshal has been wounded and is no longer able to hold the line of the Dvina. And Oudinot's 2nd Corps, which included, among others, four stout Swiss regiments, has suffered heavy losses. Consequently Victor can't hurry back to Smolensk, not if he wants to continue to keep watch on the Vilna road, and without him it's by no means sure that Napoleon could withstand an all-out Russian attack if Kutuzov took it into his head to launch one…'
Marianne listened, appalled and at the same time vaguely irritated by the flat, expressionless voice. Beyle might have been reciting a lesson – a lesson he had not learned very well. Then, quite suddenly, a dark flush mounted to his cheeks and he began to shout in uncontrollable anger:
'So this is not the moment for you to be talking of your finer feelings, Marianne! Can't you understand that you've no choice! If you won't go with the convoy, then you'll fall into the Emperor's hands before very much longer. Therefore I have decided that you're going with the wounded, whether you like it or not.'
Marianne jibbed at that, stung by his angry tone.
'You have decided, did you say?'
'Yes, I! Mourier will come for you at dawn tomorrow with a carriage – yes, I've even managed to work that miracle for you! You won't have to go on foot. You ought to thank me.'
"Thank you? Who gave you the right to order me about?'
She, too, was beginning to lose her temper. By what right did this young man who, after all, was nothing to her, dare to take that tone with her? He had helped her during the fire but had she not returned his kindness a hundredfold? Forcing herself to remain calm, she said, with awful clarity: 'I refuse absolutely to submit to your dictation, my friend. I have said that I am not going and there is an end of it.'
'And I tell you that you are going because I say you shall. You may think you would prefer to face Napoleon. Your previous intimacy may give you the right to hope for some lessening of his displeasure, but I am in no such happy position and I've no wish to make matters worse for myself than they are. If he finds out, at the very moment when I'm having to confess my failure to produce those damned reserve supplies, that I've been hiding you and helping you to escape from his anger my position will be intolerable! I'll be court martialled, perhaps even shot!'
'Don't talk such nonsense! Why should the Emperor find out all that now? We're not living together any more, are we? And I can't see the Emperor taking a Jewish house for his headquarters. Mourier is the only person who knows that I am a woman and once the convoy has gone no one will ever guess that you helped me.'
'And what of the people here? Believe me, your disguise was transparent enough to the fellows at the commissariat. Then there are the people of this house.'
'Exactly. And it may surprise you to learn that I've nothing to fear from them. I'm sure of that. Far from it, indeed. There's no reason why I shouldn't stay hidden in this house until the time comes when I can get away.'
Beyle shrugged angrily. 'Hide here for months, is it? You really are mad. Anywhere is safer in these days than a Jew's house. Suppose the Russians retake Smolensk! These people you trust so much will throw you out into the street at the first hint of danger. And I'll wager you'd not stay here long if they found out the terms you'd been on with Napoleon. They could find themselves in serious trouble if you were discovered in their house. Enough of that! You'll be fetched tomorrow at dawn – and you will go. I shall get an expulsion order from the governor tonight. It won't be hard to drum up some pretext. Then the house will be searched from top to bottom should you fail to appear. Now do you understand—?'
For a moment they stood facing one another like a pair of fighting cocks. Marianne was white and Beyle red with anger, and both pairs of fists were clenched. The girl was trembling with indignation at the discovery of what changes fear and selfishness could work in a man who at the outset had shown himself good and kind, with a mind and heart not merely better than average but even with a kind of greatness. She had learned enough during the time of their enforced proximity to know that there was the stuff of a great literary genius in this young man. But he had been prised out of his cosy elegancies of life and thrust into the hell of ice and fire by turns that was war. He had been tired and hungry and dirty, and frightened, too, almost certainly. And now to that was added the fear of disgrace, because in his pride and his innocence he was taking on himself all the responsibility for this – by no means unforeseeable – shortage of provisions. If he were not quite himself there might certainly be said to be some excuse for him, but she, Marianne, was not going to allow herself to be infected by his panic.
"This is a great change in you,' was all she said, her anger subsiding all at once, like a ship in a storm. Her calmness acted on Beyle like a shower of cold water. Gradually, his natural colour returned and he shook his head, opened his mouth as if to say something, shut it again and made a helpless gesture with his hands. Then,
abruptly, he shrugged and turned away.
'I'll come and say goodbye tomorrow – before you leave,' he said. Then he was gone.
Marianne stood motionless in the middle of the room, listening to the echoes of their quarrel dying away in the quiet house. Then she turned slowly and looked at Barbe.
Barbe was standing by the stove, her arms folded low over her stomach and her breathing sounding strangely loud in the silence of the room. The green eyes and the violet met but Marianne's were beginning to glisten with unshed tears while the Polish woman's showed only a quiet contentment.
'Well,' Marianne said with a sigh, 'it seems we have no choice, Barbe. We must resign ourselves to going with the convoy. We'll defend ourselves as long as we can.'
'No,' Barbe said.
'What do you mean, no? Are you saying we shan't have to defend ourselves?'
'No – because we're not going with the soldiers.'
And before the startled Marianne could say another word, she had marched to the door and opened it.
'Come, my lady,' she said. 'There is no time to lose. Our host awaits us in the parlour.'
'The parlour?'
Barbe smiled briefly. 'Why yes,' she said. 'There is a parlour in the house. Although it may not be quite what you are accustomed to.'
Solomon Levin's house, although the largest and handsomest in the long narrow street that constituted the ghetto of Smolensk, was a cramped building with no more than two rooms on each floor. Downstairs was the shop, dark with age and, opening directly out of it, the kitchen, a cavernous, vaulted place, lit by a single narrow window but containing the unheard-of luxury of a pump. On the first floor (the second consisting of a corn loft and the attic occupied by Marianne and Barbe) was the Levins' bedchamber, over the kitchen, and the parlour, which was directly above the shop. It was a dark room, hung with faded green tapestry, but it was scrupulously clean. The principal piece of furniture was a table covered with a carpet worked in a floral design on which was a large book, bound in black, and a brass candlestick. A number of straight-backed wooden chairs stood guard around the walls.
When Rachel ushered Marianne and Barbe into the room, the candles were alight and old Solomon, a black silk skull cap on his head and a thing like a striped shawl over his shoulders, his spectacles on his nose, was reading from the book – it was the Talmud – with an expression of pious concentration. He closed it as the women entered and as he did so let his hands, which were pale and thin, yet curiously beautiful, caress the binding lovingly. He rose and, bowing slightly, indicated that they should be seated. Then he took off his spectacles and studied Marianne attentively for some time in perfect silence.
She thought that he looked like a weary prophet, with the grey skin of his face sagging a little on the firm bone structure. His beard, which he wore long, seemed made of the same stuff as his skin and the hair under the black cap, which might once have been curly, now hung in sad, wispy corkscrews. But the glance of the dark eyes was still young and steadfast.
"Young woman,' he said, 'your companion tells me that you are here against your wishes and in danger and that it is your earnest desire to return to your own place by some other way than in the company of soldiers. Is that so?'
'It is.'
'Then I may be able to help you. But I must know who you are. In these evil times we live in, faces are often not what they seem, souls even more so, and an innocent gaze may hide an unclean heart. If you want me to trust you, you must trust me first. You are a woman, yet you came here in man's clothing.'
'How will it help you to know my name?' Marianne asked gently. 'We belong to such different worlds. My name can mean nothing to you – nor is there any way for you to know that I am telling the truth.'
'Tell me, nevertheless. Why should you greet a friendly offer with suspicion? It says in this book,' he parted the dark cover softly, 'that a goose may walk with bent head but yet his eyes miss nothing. We Jews are like geese – and we know a great many more things than you might expect. Amongst others, I am familiar with many names – even in your world.'
'Very well,' Marianne said. 'I am the Princess Sant'Anna and I have incurred the Emperor's displeasure because I helped to secure the escape from prison of a man who had been as a father to me and who was then under sentence of death. And now it is for me to warn you. You are taking a grave risk in helping me.'
The old man's only answer was to take from the pocket of his long, grey gown a sheet of paper which he unfolded and laid before Marianne. To her amazement, she saw that it was one of the bills that had been posted on the walls of Moscow concerning her.
'You see,' Solomon remarked. 'I had the means of knowing whether you spoke truth.'
'Where did you get this?' she asked in an altered voice, not taking her eyes from the soiled sheet of paper.
'From outside the posting house. It seems that the men carrying the mail have left them at every place of any size all along the road to the Niemen. I make a point of picking up printed sheets. They can be interesting.'
Marianne said nothing. She felt as if she were sliding into a bottomless pit. She could never have believed that Napoleon would carry his resentment so far. Because she had been mistaken in her first impression that this was the same bill as before. The text was different. There was no longer any mention of the Emperor's friend. This time it called purely and simply for the apprehension of the Princess Sant'Anna, and the reward had been doubled.
Something snapped inside Marianne. Her world had fallen in ruins. If Napoleon's hatred was so bitter, what respite could she ever hope for? Wherever she went, his anger would pursue her and, sooner or later, he would catch up with her. She was alone and utterly helpless in a vast empire where no one was safe from the imperial wrath. Her thoughts flashed to her house in Paris, where Adelaide might already be suffering persecution from the police, and then to Corrado himself! In his determination to capture Marianne, Napoleon was capable of harrying him in his own house, or even of forcing him to appear in public or stripping him of his possessions.
The touch of Solomon's hand on her shoulder made her start. She had been so lost in her own bleak thoughts that she had not seen him rise and come round the table to her. When he spoke, she realized that he had read much of what was in her mind.
'You must go home,' he said gently. 'You have risked everything to save your kinsman and the Almighty will not forsake you. In our law it is said also that it is more blessed to be cursed than to curse and it was the Lord's hand that led you to this house. You are a great lady and yet you kissed my old wife. We are your friends – and it may be that the great emperor will never leave Russia.'
'What do you mean?'
'That it is a long road to France and the Russian winter is a fearful thing. Ataman Platov's cossacks are like locusts, they descend in their thousands and when those are destroyed they are reborn miraculously. You did well to refuse to travel with the convoy, for that, too, may never arrive.'
'But what am I going to do? What will become of me?'
'One hour before dawn, I will take you to our cemetery. It lies in a quiet spot outside the city and few Christians go there. There is a ruined synagogue where you will find a conveyance waiting, with a good horse and food enough to last you as far as Kovno. Only you must be prepared to pass as one of us. If you do as I say, you will be able to continue your journey without hindrance – and without danger.'
'Without danger!' Barbe had so far taken no part in the conversation, but now she broke in loudly. 'Say, rather, that we'll be in danger from both French and Russians. We'll be robbed at the very least!'
'No you will not. Listen.'
Then Solomon Levin explained to them the laws passed by Tsar Alexander I concerning the Jews and how these would help them. Alexander had not been blind to the profit to be had from the commercial efficiency of the Jewish people and at his coronation had conferred notable advantages on them, reserving only the trade in alcoholic beverages, but these had been counterbal
anced by a number of restrictions, including that of being obliged to live in the towns, in areas called ghettoes, varying in size from a whole district down to a single street and never in the country villages. But it was on these restrictions that Solomon based his plan. For, since they were not allowed to stay in the villages, Jewish merchants, when they travelled, as they must from time to time, were given permits to go from one town to another, and these were generally respected by the authorities. The only danger might come from occasional bands of cossacks, but they had no respect for anyone, not even the Tsar's own officials.
'But you are women,' Solomon went on. "You will pass as my sister and my niece and that will give you some protection, for the cossacks do not care to soil themselves by contact with Jewish women. Moreover, the young lady will be unwell – with a contagious infection. I will give you letters to my brothers in Orcha, Borisov, Smorgoni and Vilna and so you will travel from town to town until you reach the Niemen. At Kovno, you will find my cousin, Ishak Levin. You may leave the horse and the vehicle with him and they will be returned to me in due course. At Kovno, you will be in Poland and will have nothing more to fear from the cossacks. Ishak will provide you with the means to reach Danzig. There, with a little money, you may choose what you wish to do. Danzig is a port and ships trading in contraband goods are more numerous than honest traders. The Emperor's power, too, is more theoretical than actual. His troops pass through it and it is a depot for them, but the people do not love them. What you do then is for you to decide.'
A port! Marianne started at the word. A port meant the sea, the best possible way of escape. She had been trapped in this vast country for so long that she had almost forgotten the sea existed. In an instant the old dream, so painfully buried beneath the rocks of reason and the promise that had been extracted from her, shivered and tried to raise itself again. Danzig. It was there that she had tried to make Jason go, there that she had hoped to take ship, with Napoleon's blessing, bound for the high seas and the land of liberty. It was there, perhaps, that the great vice that was crushing her would loose its hold.
[Marianne 6] - Marianne and the Crown of Fire Page 28