[Marianne 6] - Marianne and the Crown of Fire

by Juliette Benzoni

  'They have men to lead them, Sire. They will never be quite abandoned as long as they have men like Ney and Poniatowski, Oudinot, Davout and Murat to command them.'

  'Constant is right, Sire,' Marianne said eagerly. 'And the Empire needs you – we all need you. Forgive me for reminding you of your grief.'

  He shook his head as if to say that it was nothing and passed a shaking hand across his face. Then, with the shadow of a smile for her, he left the room and Constant closed the door softly after him. Very soon, the morning streets were echoing to the sound of departing vehicles. It was broad daylight by now and the weather was clearing.

  Marianne and Barbe left Kovno three days later in a travelling coach mounted on runners, drawn by a pair of horses, and took the steep hill that led out of the town in the direction of Mariampol. While Marianne lay in bed at the inn, Barbe had gone in search of Ishak Levin and handed over to him his cousin's letter and the pearls, as well as the little horse that had brought them. She had also told him where to find the damaged kibitka. She had returned from this visit with new clothes that were not merely warm but also more in keeping with her mistress's proper station in life. Barbe could not help remarking with deep satisfaction as she took her place in the coach beside Marianne: 'I was quite right in thinking our luck would turn one day, but I'd no idea it would be so soon. Now your Highness has no more need to worry. All our adventures are at an end.'

  Marianne glanced at her and behind the big muff of black fox that she was holding before her face, her lips twitched with something of their old irony.

  'Do you think so? Oh, my poor Barbe, I'm very much afraid I'm one of those women who go on having adventures until the day they die. But I hope you won't have to suffer again as you did on that appalling journey.'

  At Mariampol they learned that the Emperor had abandoned the idea of travelling by the direct route, by way of Königsberg and Danzig and had elected instead to go by Warsaw, so as to revive the waning enthusiasm of his Polish allies, chilled by the news of the reverses he had suffered. But Marianne had no reason to alter her own route and they pressed on towards the Baltic despite the difficulties of the road, where snowdrifts often made the going painful. More than once in the course of that long journey, Marianne blessed the encounter with Napoleon which had made it possible for her to travel in this unlooked-for luxury.

  'In our kibitka, I don't think we should ever have got there,' she confided to Barbe.

  'Oh, we'd have got somewhere right enough, only there's a good chance it would have been to heaven.'

  Even so, with regular changes of horses and stopping at inns for no longer than they needed to snatch a bite of food, it took them nearly a week to reach Danzig. The cold was intense and as they drew nearer to the sea they ran into such a storm as wrought havoc in the countryside and sent the sea storming against the shore.

  They caught their first sight of Danzig one evening through the raging wind that swept across the flat, low-lying plain whipping up flakes of frozen snow. Built on a marshy site between two rivers and the estuary of another, the Vistula, it loomed up beneath a darkening of ragged cloud like a ghost city among the massive white shapes that were the military earthworks ordered by Napoleon and discontinued when the first frosts came.

  The land hereabouts was so low that it might have been Holland but for the high hills to the south-west. But beyond the dark mass of the ancient Teutonic city was the boiling whiteness of the sea, making a roar like gunfire as it bombarded the dykes.

  Marianne had spoken little during the journey. She sat huddled in her furs, her face turned to the window, staring out at the snow-covered world through which their sledge was gliding smoothly now on its great wooden runners. She seemed, if not perfectly restored to health, at least a great deal better and Barbe could not understand why, as they drew nearer to Danzig, her mood seemed to grow more dark and sad.

  She could not know that in this city by the sea, Marianne was to face a great decision in which no one could help her but herself. What lay before them in the drear light of that late afternoon was, for her, the crossroads, the point of no return. It was there that she must make the ultimate decision, on which all the remainder of her life would depend.

  Either she would continue on the road mapped out for her by the Emperor, with a wisdom it did not even occur to her to dispute, or she must disobey him once again, for the last time, perform her final act of rebellion and burn her boats once and for all. If she did that she would go down to the harbour in Danzig and try to find a ship to carry her out through the bay, dotted with low-lying islands on which the sea broke in foam, and through the perilous Nordic straits to some Atlantic port where she could take passage at last for America. But what would she find there? That was the question she was asking herself, sitting silently in the sledge, throughout that long journey.

  And the answer had been: the unknown, waiting for someone to come to her, for the end of the war, for love, yes, and happiness, perhaps. That it could be at most a partial happiness was certain. It could not be otherwise because Marianne knew herself too well now to be unaware that, even married to Jason and the mother of more children, there would always be one corner of her heart that would mourn for little Sebastiano, for the child who would grow up without her and who might one day, grown a man, meet with no feeling whatsoever, a woman who would be his mother.

  Only in Danzig could that heartrending choice be made. Easy as it looked, it would be impossible to return to France and sail from Bordeaux, Nantes or Lorient. If she wanted to vanish, she must do it now, once and for all, because only then would it seem feasible. It was a long way from Danzig to Paris and the weather so bad that an accident was always possible. Her friends would believe her dead and it would not occur to Napoleon to revenge himself on her family. They would mourn her for a little while and then forget her. Yes, the thought of such an escape was tempting because it would effectively wipe out all trace of Marianne d'Asselnat de Villeneuve, Princess Sant'Anna. She would be born again and one fine day a new woman, without ties, without a past, would step out on to the quay at Charleston and start to breathe a new air…

  A cough from Barbe brought her back to earth.

  'Are we stopping here, my lady?' she asked. 'Or are we simply changing horses and going on?'

  'We'll stop, Barbe. I'm tired out. I need a rest and so do you.'

  They entered the city just as the courier bearing the mails was leaving it in a miniature whirlwind of flying snow after changing horses, clattering over a wooden bridge above the white and frozen waters of a moat. And as the sledge glided through the narrow streets of the old Hanseatic town it seemed to Marianne that she was being carried back into the Middle Ages. It was a medieval world of tall, gabled houses, timbered walls and upper storeys overhanging narrow alleys, dark as mountain chasms.

  Here and there, round the corner of a street, a soaring red church would rise in gothic splendour, as though out of the mists of time, or it might be a mansion, a period gem bearing witness to the city's wealth in the fifteenth or the seventeenth century. Yet those few people they saw who were not soldiers of the mixed French, Dutch, German and Polish garrison commanded, since General Rapp's departure for Russia, by General Campredon, were plainly dressed and their cheerless looks were out of keeping with the beauty of this queen of northern cities. There was an atmosphere of constraint, of suppressed anger and an obstinate reserve.

  The carillon in the imposing town hall, its belfy reminiscent of the Flemish towns, was striking four as the sledge made its way along the waterfront, lined with tall houses buffeted by the howling wind. Just opposite the Krantor, the corn exchange, was an inn. The snow lay thick on its gilded signboard and the lights that twinkled behind its small, bottle-glass windows were bright and welcoming. There was a continual coming and going through the low doorway, sailors in sealskin boots and soldiers muffled to the eyebrows, and those coming out were noticeably redder in the face than those who went in.

  The s
ound of the sledge brought out the innkeeper attended by a beanpole of an ostler with heavy clogs on his feet, both bowing low at the sight of such evidently well-to-do travellers. Marianne had just descended and was about to enter the inn when she was jostled aside by a tall, red-headed individual coming out. He was singing loudly, evidently the worse for drink, and the song he was singing was an Irish air.

  'Hie! Pardon me!' this person remarked, gently removing the human obstacle from his path.

  Marianne would have known him anywhere.

  'Craig!' she cried with amazement. 'Craig O'Flaherty! What in heaven's name are you doing here?'

  He had been on the point of walking on, but at the sound of his name he paused and screwed up his eyes like someone peering through a fog.

  'Craig!' she repeated rapturously. 'It's me! Marianne!'

  He bent down at that and picking up a handful of snow rubbed it energetically over his face and head. Then he looked again.

  'So it is, by St Patrick!'

  Uttering a joyful bellow, he swept her bodily up off the ground and held her, like a little girl, at arms' length before setting her down, none too gently, and depositing a couple of smacking kisses on either cheek.

  'Glory be! It can't be true! Sure and if this doesn't beat all! You! You here, me darlin', I can scarce believe it! But come away with you, into this thieves' kitchen here. You'll be perished with cold – and we have to celebrate this!'

  In another moment, while Barbe went with the landlord to take possession of a well-appointed bedchamber looking out over the harbour, Marianne, regardless of the soldiers and sailors drinking and smoking their clay pipes all around them, was sitting with Craig beside the big white porcelain stove that was roaring like a furnace. The Irishman was calling loudly for brandy.

  'I'd rather have tea,' Marianne said hastily. 'But tell me, Craig, tell me quickly – are you here alone, or did you find Jason?'

  He shot her a swift glance that suddenly held no trace of inebriation in it.

  'I found him,' he said briefly. 'He's on board just now. But tell me about yourself. I want to know—'

  But Marianne was not listening. Her heart was banging like a demented gong within her and her cheeks were flushed with excitement. So she had been right! Her premonitions had not been deceiving her, nor those dreams which had so often seemed like nightmares: something had been waiting for her at Danzig, and that something was Jason! She clasped Craig's hand with both hers where it lay on the table while he rummaged with the other for his pipe.

  'I want to see him. At once! Tell me where he is. What ship is this?'

  'There, there! Keep calm! You'll see him, but for God's sake don't get excited. I'll tell you all about it. Sure, it won't take long.'

  Nor did it, for there was little enough to tell. Craig had reached St Petersburg without much difficulty, thanks to the name of Krilov which he brandished like a passport whenever he fell in with Russian troops. In this way he had accomplished the entire journey on horseback, with an official escort into the bargain, since he had been obliged to pass through the lines of Wittgenstein's defending army to reach the capital. Once there it had been a simple matter to find the Krilovs' house and Beaufort.

  The two of them had stayed in the little palace on the bank of the Neva until they were able to find a ship to take them out of Russia. This was no easy matter because Russian ships no longer plied through the Denmark Straits since the beginning of the war with France, and there could, of course, be no question of an American citizen taking a passage on one of the occasional English ships that dropped anchor in the roadstead since those two countries were also at war.

  In the end, they had found berths on a Swedish vessel which, owing to the double game played by the Swedish crown prince, Bernadotte, was equally immune from the effects of the continental blockade and from difficulties with the Tsar. The master of the Smaaland had agreed to carry Beaufort and O'Flaherty as far as Anvers, from which port they should find it comparatively simple, despite the French occupation, to get a ship for America.

  'We ought not to be here at all by rights,' the Irishman concluded. 'We only called at Danzig to make good the storm damage we suffered after leaving Königsberg. Our vessel broke a mast and we were forced to run for port. We've been here three days now and while she's refitting—'

  'You are making a study of the local hostelries,' Marianne finished for him merrily. 'I see it all! But now, please won't you take me to Jason? I can't wait to see him.'

  'Sure, you can spare a moment yet. Tell me what became of yourself.'

  'That can wait, but I cannot! Oh, Craig, can't you see what this means to me? It's like a miracle finding him again when I had thought him gone for ever! Have mercy on me and take me to him. You can see I'm dying of impatience.'

  It was quite true. Incapable of sitting still a moment longer, she had jumped up, forgetting all about the hot tea that a maidservant had just set before her, and was already half-way to the door. O'Flaherty was obliged to follow. Tossing a few coins on to the table, he followed her outside but the look on his face might have done something to cool her ardour had she paused to look at him. But Marianne was carried away by an emotion stronger than herself, by a joy so delirious that it came close to madness. Regardless of the freezing wind in her face and of the foreign city all about her, she had eyes for nothing but that one familiar figure that was dearer than all else to her. The doubts, the half-promises wrung from her by Napoleon were all gone and all that mattered was that she had found her love again.

  Hardly knowing even where she was going, she ran on, skidding perilously over patches of frozen snow, hurrying down the long waterfront in the gathering purple dusk. The Smaaland, Craig had said, and she was searching for a vessel with that name and a broken mast. She wanted to shout out loud and call to Jason, to proclaim in triumph that the moment had come when they could be together for always. Meanwhile, Craig pounded breathlessly after her, shouting: 'Marianne! Marianne, for God's sake, wait for me! Let me explain!'

  But she neither heard nor saw. She was all instinct and joy and passionate eagerness and with the sureness of a compass needle swinging magnetically to the north, she went straight to that ship that she had never seen.

  Then, all at once, he was there, the man she had loved more than her own life. She saw him walking easily, with his long, loose-limbed stride, down the gangway connecting a big, swag-bellied vessel with the quay. The cry that burst out of her then rang like a paean of victory.

  'Jason!'

  He heard and gave a start of surprise. One glance was enough to tell him and they met at the foot of the gangway. Laughing and crying at once, Marianne flung herself into his arms with such enthusiasm that she all but tumbled into the water. Jason caught her in a strong grip and as she clung to him on the verge of hysteria led her gently away from the edge, but without letting go his hold.

  'You!' he uttered. 'Is it really you?'

  A trickle of icy water came to damp down the blaze of joy. There had been amazement in his voice and something very close to disbelief, but no real gladness. It was not the welcome she had hoped for.

  'Yes,' she said, in what was almost an undertone. 'It's really me… Did you – did you think I was dead?'

  'No, of course not. Craig told me you were safe and had managed to reach Napoleon. I'm only surprised because I'd not thought to see you here. It's so unexpected—'

  Marianne released herself then and stepped back to look at him. Could he really be just the same as she remembered him? There was still the same tall, lean, active figure, the same strongly marked features, the same face, too deeply tanned ever to revert to its natural whiteness, the same hawk-like profile, the same brilliant eyes – and yet it suddenly seemed to her that she was looking at another man, a man she did not know.

  What was it? Was it in the hard twist to the mouth, a certain weariness in the eyes or something distant in his whole attitude? It was as if he had suddenly removed himself into another world. S
till gazing at him intently, she nodded slowly.

  'So unexpected?' she repeated after him. 'Yes, you are right. It's quite incredible that we should meet like this! Especially since you have really done nothing at all to make it happen.'

  There was a flash of the old, mocking smile that she had always loved.

  'Don't talk nonsense. How could I have done? There were armies between us, and a whole vast country.'

  'You knew I was in Moscow. Why didn't you come back? Why didn't you look for me? That woman who tried to kill me, Shankala, she told us before she died that you had gone with your friend Krilov, without a thought for me! I was alone, lost in a doomed city, and you could not know what would become of me, and yet you left me.'

  He shrugged a little wearily and the light that had come into his blue eyes a moment before died suddenly.

  'I had no choice, but you had! I thought you would have followed me when the cossacks took me.'

  'Haven't you heard what prevented me?' She turned her head sharply to where Craig O'Flaherty, seeing them together, had paused beside a stack of empty casks a few yards off and was watching them.

  'Yes, when O'Flaherty joined me, I heard then. But when I left Moscow I did not know. I thought – that Napoleon was near and you had made your choice.'

  'Made my choice!' Marianne said bitterly. 'Is there any choice to be made when everything is burning and collapsing and dying all round you? I had to think of survival before I could start making any choices! While you—'

  'Come. We can't stand here. It's too cold.'

  He would have taken her arm to lead her back to the inn but once again she moved away, leaving the remainder of her sentence unspoken. For a moment or two they walked side by side in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, and Marianne's throat contracted as the conviction came to her that never again would they be reunited, even in spirit.

  As they came level with the Irishman, Jason paused for an instant.

  'All's ready now,' he said shortly. 'We sail with the tide. Weather's fairing up.'