[Marianne 6] - Marianne and the Crown of Fire

by Juliette Benzoni

  Craig nodded and with a smile for Marianne in which she seemed to read both sorrow and a hint of compassion, he went on without a word to where the Smaaland lay.

  Silence fell again between them, broken only by the drunken singing of three sailors reeling gloriously from a waterside tavern. Marianne was struggling to still the frantic beating of her heart beneath her furs. It seemed to have got colder all at once, although the wind had dropped, but then she realized that the cold was inside herself. It was spreading from the numbness round her heart.

  'You are going?' she asked after a moment.

  'Yes. Our ship is fit to sail again – and we have wasted too much time already.'

  She gave a tiny laugh. 'Yes, you're right. You have wasted a deal of time to be sure.'

  Did he sense the bitterness in her tone? Abruptly, he seized her by the arm and drew her into the deep shadow of a doorway where they were comparatively sheltered from the wind.

  'Marianne,' he begged, 'why do you say that? You know very well how things stand with us just now! You know I'm going to the war, that I'm no longer my own man, that I have no future to look forward to. It's true. I have wasted too much time, for my time is my country's and my country is at war. We agreed that you should join me later on, remember? Have you forgotten that?'

  'No. I think it's you who have forgotten – forgotten even me!'

  'This is madness!'

  "Very well then. There is one thing that has not even occurred to you. Ever since we met just now, it has not once crossed your mind to ask what I am doing here, how I escaped from Moscow and what has happened to me since. No! It does not interest you. Craig asked me, and I didn't tell him because I was in too much haste to see you. But then Craig is my friend!'

  'And what am I?'

  "You?' She uttered a tiny laugh, full of infinite sadness, and shrugged her shoulders faintly. 'You – are a man who loved me once – and who loves me no longer.'

  'I do! I swear I do – I love you still!'

  All at once he was again the passionate lover of their nights on the hard beds of those posting houses in the empty steppe and the forest. His arms went round her, drawing her to him, and his breath was warm on her face, but she did not return his embrace. Something inside her remained frozen.

  'Marianne,' he implored her, 'listen to me! I swear to you as I hope for salvation that I've not stopped loving you. Only – I no longer have the right.'

  'The right? Oh yes, the war – I see,' she said wearily.

  'No! Listen! Anyone who says that we can ever escape our destiny is a fool or a dreamer! We can never break free from the mistakes that we have made. We must carry them with us for as long as it pleases God to make us! Because we loved each other, you and I, we have done everything we could to bend fate to our will. We've run to the ends of the earth – but however far we've gone, fate has caught up with us. It is stronger than we are.'

  'But – what do you mean? What fate?'

  'Mine, Marianne. The fate that in my stupidity I forged for myself, out of disappointment, anger, jealousy, call it what you will. Crazy as it seems, it caught up with me back there in St Petersburg, in a city that for us Americans might almost as well be in the middle of Africa. I thought, you know, that I might have some trouble making myself known to the Krilovs, who were my father's friends. I thought that they might well have forgotten the very existence of the last of the Beauforts. Do you know what I found when I reached their house?'

  Marianne shook her head. There was something rather frightening about the way he was leading up to this and she was beyond speech. She knew that he was concealing something terrible, something that was going to hurt her very much. It might have been some attempt to soften the blow that made him lower his voice almost to a whisper.

  'I found the Krilovs' youngest son – Dimitri – just returned from a voyage to America. His father had sent him to try and find out what had become of us and to renew the old ties, which might lead to some commercial advantage nowadays. He was in Charleston.'

  "Yes-well?'

  'My – Pilar, whom we thought locked up for good in a Spanish convent, Pilar has come back to me.'

  Marianne was conscious of a sudden surge of anger. So this was his destiny? That wretched woman who had done her utmost to send her husband to his death on the scaffold? Who had come near to killing her, Marianne, also! Was this what was worrying him?'

  'Well?' she cried fiercely. 'What does it matter if she has come back? You can send her packing!'

  'No. I can't. Not any more. I have no right to do it. She – she has come back with a child, my child. My son.'

  'Oh—!'

  Marianne said nothing more, nothing but that one tiny sound, but it held all the cruel anguish of a dying breath. Jason was right. Fate, that fell and cunning sergeant, had caught up with them. Their long, unremitting struggle against it was over at last.

  Feeling her body suddenly lifeless against his, Jason tightened his hold and bent his head and tried to kiss her ice-cold cheeks, her closed lips, but she laid her hands flat against that breast where she had dreamed of laying her head all the nights of her life and thrust him gently away without a word. Like a child whose favourite toy is broken, he tried to snatch her back to him, crying out in his sudden grief and terror: 'Say something! Speak to me! Please! Don't just look at me like that. I know I have hurt you, only speak to me! It's true I love you, you know it is! You are all I love and I'd give anything in the world to be able to live out my dreams with you. Listen – there's no need for us to part yet. Surely we can still snatch a little happiness, a little joy from life? I may die in this war, die far away from you – so come with me! Let me take you aboard this ship. It sails at dawn and it is still many days to Anvers – and many nights. Let me go on loving you to the end! Let us not refuse this last miraculous gift—'

  She felt the fever that possessed him. She knew that he was speaking the truth, that he meant what he said, he really did want her to go with him. As he said, it would mean many more days, many more nights for loving, forging a chain of passion which at the last moment he might not have the courage to break. Then, at Anvers, he might ask her again to follow him across the seas to his own land where she might still live a life of secrecy and sacrifice as his mistress. That too would mean many more nights of love – and she did love him so! It was a terrible temptation…

  In the depths of her misery she might have yielded, might have let him persuade her. But then all at once three faces came into her mind: her father's, proud and sardonic, Corrado's, splendid and sad, and then the tiny, soft face of a sleeping brown-haired baby… And with that the weak, desperate and desperately loving Marianne shrank away, driven out by the Marianne d'Asselnat who, on her wedding night and for her honour's sake, had fought the man she loved and left him lying wounded on the floor of Selton Hall, and that same night had sent Jason Beaufort from her. It was no longer possible for her to be any other.

  Firmly, now, she pushed him from her and stepped out of the doorway into the icy wind that billowed out her clothes and stung her body like a whiplash. Gripping her hands together tightly inside her muff of black fox fur, she threw her head back proudly and looked for the last time into the pleading eyes of the man she was leaving and who did not deserve that she should abase herself for him.

  'No, Jason,' she said gravely. 'I too have a son. I am Princess Sant'Anna.'

  Night had fallen. Without looking back, Marianne walked towards the inn which shone through the darkness like a great ship's lantern, or like a beacon through the storm in which her love was foundering.

  Epilogue

  JOURNEY'S END

  MAY 1813

  As before, the black and gold iron gates between the pair of stone giants seemed to open of their own accord at the horses' approach. As before, the magical tranquillity of the park descended like a caress upon those who entered.

  There was still the same pale, sanded avenue running like a river between the black plumes of
cypresses and round, fragrant orange trees to lose itself in the misty spray of the fountains. And yet Marianne was instantly aware of a feeling that something had altered, that these gardens were not quite as they had been three years ago, almost to the day, when she had come there for the first time at the cardinal's side, as one entering an unknown world.

  It was a sudden exclamation from Adelaide that gave her the clue to the difference.

  'But it's beautiful!' she breathed. 'All those flowers!'

  That was it! The flowers! There used not to be any flowers in the gardens, except when the orange and lemon trees were in bloom. Its beauty had derived solely from the contrasting shades of trees and turf and the tossing waters of the fountains where the statues stood unmoving, with an air of infinite boredom. Now there were flowers everywhere, as though a magician in a moment of madness had scattered all the colours of the rainbow over the whole garden. There were pale, fragrant laurels, huge silvery-pink peonies, great purple rhododendrons, pure white lilies and roses, above all roses – an orgy of flowers! Their splendour had brought the great gardens to life. They rioted everywhere, competing with the shining jets of water from the fountains whose refreshing murmur formed a background to the voices of the songbirds. For there were birds, too, as there had not been before, as though the sadness that had weighed on the whole of the enchanted demesne had frightened them away. Now they were singing with all their hearts.

  Amused by Marianne's evident surprise, Jolival bent forward and touched her hand.

  'Are you awake, Marianne, or are you dreaming? Anyone would think you had never seen these wonderful gardens before.'

  She gave a little shiver, as if she were indeed just waking from a dream.

  'In a way that's true. I have never seen them like this. There never used to be any flowers, or birds, or any real life at all, I think… It was all like a strange dream.'

  'You were very frightened then. You can't have looked properly.' And Jolival laughed and turned to his newly wedded bride for confirmation. But Adelaide shook her head at him and slipped her arm through Marianne's.

  'You don't understand at all, my dear. For my part, I think this change has come about because there is a child here now. A child can make even a graveyard burst into blossom.'

  Adelaide and Arcadius had been married for a month now. On her return to Paris in the previous January, Marianne had found the two of them living a cloistered life together in the Hôtel d'Asselnat, locked in their shared grief and it was that, little by little, had brought them together. They were both sure that Marianne was dead and they mourned for her with all their loving hearts.

  The arrival of official documents confirming Adelaide as the lawful owner of the family mansion in place of Marianne had not helped matters. Quite the reverse, in fact. This unexpected inheritance had finally convinced them that Marianne was really gone, especially as no one had been able to give them the slightest news of her. After that they had suddenly felt very lonely and unwanted, no longer knowing what to do with their lives. The house had become a mausoleum and the two of them settled down behind its drawn curtains to wait for the end, with only Gracchus to wait on them, but a Gracchus who no longer sang.

  On the night when the mud-bespattered coach bearing Marianne and Barbe had drawn up below the steps, the travellers had been met by two very old people dressed in deepest mourning and leaning on each other's arms, both of whom had, in good earnest, very nearly died of joy.

  That unexpected homecoming had truly been a great and wonderful moment. They had clung to each other for minutes on end, unable to tear themselves away, while Gracchus, having kissed his mistress in his turn, sat down on the front steps and sobbed as if he could never stop.

  After that, they had sat up all night telling one another their adventures, Arcadius and Gracchus with the convoy led by General Nansouty and Marianne and Barbe on the long road to Danzig.

  There had been eating and drinking, too, and Adelaide, who for a month had scarcely touched a morsel, had suddenly recovered her old voracious appetite. On that memorable night she had accounted all by herself for a whole chicken, a pâtè, an entire dish of prunes and two bottles of champagne.

  By daylight, she was slightly grey about the face, but as happy as a queen. And it was then, while she went off to seek her bed with steps that tottered a little, that Jolival turned to Marianne as she stood in the middle of the yellow salon, gazing up at her father's portrait.

  'What are you going to do now?'

  Without taking her eyes from that proud face whose faintly ironic stare seemed to follow every move she made, she lifted her shoulders in a little shrug.

  'My duty. It is time I – for me to grow up, Jolival. And besides – I'm tired of adventuring. You wear yourself out and tear yourself to pieces, and all to no avail. There's Sebastiano – I want to think of him now.'

  'Of him alone? There is someone else with him, remember.'

  'I've not forgotten. It must be possible to find some sort of happiness in making another person happy. And he more than deserves it, Jolival!'

  He nodded, paused for a moment and then said tentatively: 'And – you'll have no regrets?'

  She gave him the same proud glance as she had given Jason Beaufort at the moment of parting. But now there was no anger in it. It was as calm and limpid as sunlight on the sea.

  'Regrets? I don't know. All I do know is that for the first time for a long while I feel at peace with myself.'

  The interminable journey had left her very tired and so she decided to rest for a little while before going on to Italy. The house, needless to say, was still hers to stay in for as long as she pleased. They saw a few friends, among them Fortunée Hamelin, who cried like a schoolgirl when Marianne told her of her meeting with François Fournier. Talleyrand, too, as biting and affectionate by turns as he had ever been, but visibly suffering from a good deal of nervous strain, like Paris itself, which Marianne scarcely recognized. The city was very grim. The Emperor had come back almost furtively and then, after him, week by week, the survivors of what had been the finest army in the world. Sick and wounded men, dragging frostbitten limbs. Many would never rise again from the beds they had gone through so much to reach. And yet it was said that the Emperor was already trying to assemble a new army. The recruiting sergeants were hard at work. For Prussia was raising its head again, encouraged by the disastrous Russian campaign, fostering small rebellions here and there, mustering arms and allies. In the spring, Napoleon would be off again with fresh troops, and Paris was beginning to murmur.

  Yet, one piece of good news there was in these dark days. It came to Jolival through his lawyer, and it was good news in keeping with the times, for it, too, told of a death. Jolival's estranged wife was dead. Septimanie, Vicomtesse de Jolival, had succumbed to a severe inflammation of the lungs, contracted while accompanying the Duchess of Angoulême on charitable errands in the vicinity of Hartwell in the chill of the English winter.

  Jolival was not hypocrite enough to weep for her. He had never loved her and she had played little part in his tempestuous life, but he was too fine a gentleman to betray any ill-timed rejoicing.

  Marianne did it for him. She had not failed to notice, with pleasure and affection, the bond that had developed between her cousin and the Vicomte de Jolival. Jolival's behaviour to Adelaide held a tenderness and consideration that revealed his feeling for her. And so, on the day that she announced to them her intention of leaving for Lucca almost at once, she went on to say point-blank: 'Now that you are free, Jolival, why don't you marry Adelaide? The two of you get on so well together and it would at least give you some proper status in the family, instead of being merely a sort of adopted uncle.'

  Jolival and Adelaide both blushed as red as each other. Then Jolival said quietly, and with evident emotion: 'My dear Marianne, it would give me the greatest happiness – but I am not the most eligible of husbands. I've no money, no estates, still less any expectations. A carcass that's seen better days�
��'

  'Well, I'm not precisely the Queen of Sheba,' Adelaide murmured, fluttering like a schoolgirl. 'But I do think I might make a good wife if I were to be asked.'

  'That's settled then,' Marianne told them, smiling. 'You shall be married and then come with me to Italy. It shall be your honeymoon.'

  And so, on a late afternoon in April, when the air still had a nip in it, Adelaide d'Asselnat and Arcadius de Jolival were married in the lady chapel of the church of St Thomas Aquinas, with Prince Talleyrand and Madame Hamelin as witnesses. The Vicomte stood straight as an arrow, his dress a symphony of exquisite pearly grey, while Adelaide at his side was radiant in heavy Parma violet silk with a bouquet of violets in her hand, and looking ten years younger in a matching silk bonnet with feathers in it. Afterwards there was a delicious supper at the magnificent Hotel de Talleyrand in the rue St Florentin, where the Vice Grand Elector had been living for the past year and more, since selling Matignon to the Emperor, at which the great Carême deigned to display the full fruits of his genius.

  It was just before midnight on the same night that a man in black came knocking on the door of the house in the rue de Lille. He was heavily cloaked and his face was hidden by a mask, but he bowed to Marianne as to a queen. He extended his black-gloved hand without a word, showing her a gold disc engraved with the four letters: A.M.D.G.

  Then Marianne knew that this was the messenger of whom Cardinal de Chazay had told her in Odessa. Hurrying to her bedchamber, she took from her desk the diamond drop that she had carried with her faithfully through so many perils. She did not even pause to take it from its leather bag for one last time, but went straight down again and placed it in the messenger's hand. He bowed once more, then turned and went away. She had not even heard his voice. Nor, indeed, had he heard hers, for neither of them had uttered a single word. But when the heavy front door had closed behind the man in black, Marianne sent for Gracchus.