[Marianne 4] - Marianne and the Rebels

by Juliette Benzoni

  A few minutes' brisk walk brought Marianne within sight of the old church of Or San Michele, formerly the property of the rich Florentine guilds, which had adorned it with the priceless statuary standing in its Gothic niches. She was hot in her enveloping black lace and heavy cloth. There was sweat on her forehead and trickling down her spine. It seemed a sin to be muffled up like this when the weather was so warm and the sky a canopy of exquisite and ever-changing hues. Florence seemed to be floating in a huge and iridescent soap-bubble lifting to the whim of the setting sun.

  The city, so shuttered and secretive in the heat of the day, opened its doors and spilled out into the streets and squares a throng of chattering humanity, while the thin sound of convent bells called to prayer those men and women whose conversation was henceforth dedicated to God.

  The church struck surprisingly chill, but its coolness did her good: it was a reviving coolness. It was so dark inside, with only the dim light that filtered through the windows, that Marianne had to pause for a moment by the holy-water stoup until her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom.

  Soon, however, she was able to make out the double nave and, in the right-hand aisle, Orcagna's masterpiece, the splendid medieval tabernacle aglow with soft dull gold in the trembling flames of three altar candles. But no figure, male or female, prayed before it. The church appeared empty and the only sound which echoed beneath its great roof was the shuffling footsteps of the verger making his way back to his sacristy.

  The emptiness and silence made Marianne uneasy. She had come with a strange reluctance, torn between her real wish to help her charming friend in her trouble and a vague foreboding. Moreover she knew that she was on time and Zoe was the soul of punctuality. It was odd and disquieting: so much so that Marianne had half a mind to turn round and go home. It was thoroughly unnatural, this meeting in a dimly-lighted church…

  Without thinking, almost, she took a step or two towards the door but then the words of the letter recurred to her:

  '… for the sake of my own peace of mind and perhaps the safety of one dear to me…'

  No, she could not leave that call for help unanswered. Zoe, who had given her this extraordinary proof of confidence, would never understand, and Marianne would blame herself for the rest of her life if a tragedy occurred which she had not done everything in her power to prevent.

  Fortunée Hamelin would never have known that impulse to retreat, that moment of distrust: she was always ready to leap into the fire for a friend, or throw herself into the water to save a cat. The church was empty. Very well. All that meant was that something had happened to delay Zoe…

  Thinking that the least she could do was to wait for a few minutes, Marianne advanced slowly towards the appointed meeting place. She gazed at the tabernacle for a moment before sinking to her knees in fervent prayer. She had too much to thank heaven for to neglect so excellent an opportunity. It was, in any case, the best way of passing the time.

  Deep in her prayers, she failed to notice the approach of a man draped from chin to calves in a black cloak with triple shoulder-capes, and she started suddenly when a hand was laid on her shoulder and an urgent voice whispered in her ear.

  'Come, madame, come quickly! Your friend has sent me to find you. She implores you to come to her…'

  Marianne had risen swiftly and was studying the man before her. His face was strange to her. It was the kind of face, moreover, which gives nothing away, broad, placid and unremarkable, but imprinted now with desperate anxiety.

  'What's happened? Why does she not come herself?'

  'Something terrible. Only come with me, madame, I beg of you! Every moment counts…'

  But Marianne stayed where she was, struggling to understand first this strange meeting and now this stranger… It was all so unlike the tranquil Zoe.

  'Who are you?' she asked.

  The man bowed with all the marks of respect.

  'A servant, Excellenza, that's all… but my family have always served the Baron's and my lady honours me with her confidence. Must I tell her that your highness will not come?'

  Quickly, Marianne put out her hand and detained the messenger, who seemed on the point of withdrawal.

  'No, please don't go! I'm coming.'

  The man bowed again but in silence and followed her through the shadowy church to the door.

  'I have a carriage close by,' he said when they had emerged into the light and air again. 'It will be quicker.'

  'Have we far to go? The palace is very near.'

  'To the villa at Settignano. Now, if you will forgive me, that is all I am allowed to tell you. I'm only a servant, you understand…'

  'A devoted servant, I'm sure. Very well. Let us go.'

  The carriage which was waiting a little farther on proved to be an elegant brougham with no crest visible on the panels. It was standing underneath the archway connecting the church with the half-ruined Palazzo dell'Arte della Lana. The steps were already down and a man dressed in black stood by the door. The driver, on his box, seemed to be dozing, but Marianne was no sooner inside than he cracked his whip and the horses moved off at a brisk trot.

  The devoted servant had taken the seat beside Marianne. She frowned a little at this familiarity but said nothing, attributing the solecism to his evident distress.

  They left Florence by the Porte San Francesco. Marianne had not spoken since leaving Or San Michele, but cast about anxiously in her mind for the explanation of this sudden disaster which had befallen Zoe Cenami. She could hit on only one. Zoe was attractive and she was courted ardently by many men, some of them of great charm. Was it possible that one of them had succeeded in winning her favours and that some indiscretion, or malice, had made Cenami aware of his misfortune? If that were so, then Marianne did not see what help she could give her friend, except perhaps in calming the outraged husband. Certainly, Cenami had a high opinion of the Princess Sant'Anna. It was not a theory very flattering to Zoe's virtue, but what else could justify a cry for help so urgent and so fraught with extraordinary precautions?

  It was as hot as an oven inside the closed carriage and Marianne was driven to lift her veil. She leaned forward to lower the window, but her companion held her back.

  'Better not, madame. Besides, we're already there.'

  It was true. The carriage had left the main road and was jolting along a narrow way between the ivy-clad ruins of what appeared to have been a convent. Below, at the end of the track, the Arno shone like brass in the setting sun.

  'But – this is not Settignano!' Marianne exclaimed. 'What does this mean? Where are we?'

  She turned to her companion, fear struggling with anger in her face, but the man only answered with impassive calm:

  'Where I was ordered to take your highness. A comfortable travelling coach is waiting. You will be quite comfortable. Necessarily so, since we shall travel through the night.'

  'A travelling coach? Travelling… where to?'

  'To where your highness is awaited with impatience. You will see…'

  The carriage stopped amid the ruins. Instinctively, Marianne clutched at the door with both hands, as though clinging to her last refuge. She was frightened now, horribly frightened of this man with his smooth, over-polite manners and his eyes which she now saw to be both shifty and cruel.

  'Who awaits me? And whose orders? You are not a servant of the Cenami?'

  'Correct. I take my orders from his Serene Highness, Prince Corrado Sant'Anna.'

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Ravisher

  With a little scream, Marianne shrank back into the carriage, staring with eyes of horror at the peaceful, romantic scene, all bathed in the glorious sunset light which was framed in the open door. To her it might have been a prison.

  Her companion got out and stood beside the man who had lowered the steps, bowing respectfully as he offered his hand.

  'If your highness will descend…'

  Hypnotized by the two black-clad figures who seemed to her suddenly l
ike the ambassadors of fate, Marianne got out, moving like an automaton, knowing that it was useless to struggle. She was alone in an isolated spot with three men whose power was all the greater because they represented one whose authority she was not entitled to ignore. Her husband's rights were paramount and she now had every reason to fear the worst. If it were not so, Sant'Anna would never have dared to have her abducted like this by his servants, right in the middle of Florence and almost under the nose of the Grand Duchess herself.

  Beneath the ruined arch of a ghostly cloister, which in any other circumstances would have charmed her, Marianne saw that a large travelling berlin was in fact standing ready waiting. A man was standing at the horse's heads. The berlin itself, while not new, was well-made and evidently designed to spare its occupants as much as possible the discomforts of the road.

  And yet, like Dante at the gate of hell, she seemed to see written above it the words: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. She had thought to cheat the man who had trusted her, only to find she had been cheated in turn. Too late she realized that Zoe Cenami had never written that letter, that she did not need her help and must be quietly occupied at that very moment in welcoming the usual company of friends to her house. As long as Marianne could rely on the powerful protection of Napoleon, she had turned to it as to a cliff-girt isle against which the most terrifying waves must break in vain. And finally she had believed that her love for Jason made her somehow invulnerable and could only end in triumph. She had gambled and she had lost.

  The unseen husband had claimed his rights. Deceived, he had a brutal way of making himself felt, and when the fugitive found herself face to face with him at last, even if what she faced were still a blank mirror, and she would stand alone, with her hands tied and her soul defenceless. There would be no Duke of Padua, with his powerful form and voice accustomed to command, to stand as a bulwark, proclaiming the inalienable rights of the Emperor.

  Suddenly a faint glimmer of light penetrated Marianne's despair. Her disappearance would be noticed. Arcadius, Arrighi, even Benielli would look for her. One of them might guess the truth. Then they would go straight to Lucca to check, at least, that the Prince had no part in her abduction, and Marianne knew them well enough to be sure that they would not readily abandon hope. Jolival, for one, was perfectly capable of taking the Villa dei Cavalli apart, stone by stone, to find her.

  Nothing on earth could have made her betray her fears to the servants, whom she saw as nothing more than tools, so she sat with apparent calm, concealing the raging anxiety in her heart, watching the preparations for this new departure as if it did not concern her. She watched the man who held the horses hand them over to the coachman, before setting off at a tranquil pace with the brougham, back in the direction of Florence. Then the berlin itself moved off slowly, driving back up the track between the ruins to the road. It was this road which had dragged Marianne out of her state of apathy.

  Instead of heading straight for the red disc of the setting sun, now about to sink behind the city's campaniles, so as to skirt the town and come out on the Lucca road, the heavy coach was continuing eastward in the same direction as that taken by the brougham a little earlier. They were making for the Adriatic, in quite the opposite direction from Lucca. It might, of course, be a ruse intended to throw pursuers off the scent, but Marianne could not help risking an oblique question.

  'If you are my husband's people,' she observed coldly, 'you must be taking me to him. Yet you are taking the wrong road.'

  Without deviating from a politeness which, however necessary, Marianne was beginning to find overdone, the black man answered in the same oily voice:

  'Many roads lead to the master, Excellent. One has only to know which way to choose. His highness does not always reside at the Villa dei Cavalli. We are going to another of his estates, so please your ladyship.'

  Marianne was chilled by the irony in the last words. It did not please her in the slightest, but what choice had she? A cold sweat prickled unpleasantly at the roots of her hair and she felt the colour drain from her face. Her slender hope that Jolival and Arrighi would find her evaporated. She had known, of course, from Donna Lavinia, that her husband did not live at Lucca all the time but was sometimes found at his other properties. To which was she now being taken? And how could her friends discover her there when she herself did not know the first thing about these places?

  By not listening to the reading of the marriage contract on her wedding night, she had lost a good opportunity of learning… but that was only one of so many opportunities already lost in the course of her short life. The best and greatest of all had been at Selton Hall when Jason had asked her to fly with him; the second in Paris when she had refused once more to go with him.

  At the thought of Jason, grief threatened to overwhelm her and she became a prey to bitter depression. This time fate was against her, and nothing and nobody was going to come and put a spoke in its wheel on her behalf.

  Her husband's was to be the last word. The little hope that remained to her now was all in her own charm and intelligence, in the kindness of Donna Lavinia who was always near the Prince and who at least would plead for her, and perhaps in the occurrence of some chance to escape. If such a chance did present itself, Marianne was, of course, fully determined to grasp it and to use it, to the best of her ability. It would not be the first escape she had contrived!

  She recalled with some pleasure and no little pride her escape from Morvan the Wrecker, and, more recently, from the barn at Mortefontaine. Luck had been with her both times, but even so she had not managed so badly!

  Her need to find Jason, a deep, visceral longing which came from the inmost parts of her being to fill her heart and brain, would act as a stimulant, supposing any were needed beyond her own passionate desire for freedom.

  Besides… she might be wrong: there might be no need to torment herself about Sant'Anna's plans for her. All her fears stemmed from Eleonora Sullivan's hair-raising confidences and from the drama surrounding this abduction, but she had to admit that she had left her invisible husband little alternative. Perhaps, after all, he would be merciful, understanding…

  To boost her courage, Marianne went over in her mind the moment when Corrado Sant'Anna had rescued her from Matteo Damiani, on that dreadful night in the little temple. She had almost died of fright when she saw him burst from the shadows, a dark, ghostly figure masked in pale leather and mounted on the plunging white shape of his horse, Ilderim. And yet this terrifying apparition had brought rescue and life.

  Afterwards, too, he had tended her with a solicitude that might easily have suggested love. Suppose he did love her… No, better not to think of that, but make her mind a blank and so try to recover a little calm, a little peace.

  Yet, in spite of herself, her thoughts would keep turning to the enigmatic figure of her unknown husband, caught between fear and a queer uncontrollable curiosity. Perhaps this time she would penetrate the secret of the white mask…

  The coach was still travelling into the oncoming dark. Soon enveloping darkness lay all around, and the coach pressed on through the mountains, from stage to stage, on its journey to the end of the night.

  Marianne slept at last, exhausted, after refusing the food offered her by Giuseppe – for this she learned was her kidnapper's name. She was in too much anguish of mind to swallow a bite.

  Daylight woke her, and the sudden jolt as the berlin pulled up for fresh horses outside a small hostelry smothered in vines and climbing plants. They were on a hillside at the top of which a little red-walled town clustered round a squat castle, its towers almost hidden behind the red roofs. The sun revealed a landscape of neat rectangular fields, intersected by irrigation ditches on the banks of which a variety of fruit trees served to support great swags of vines, while far in the distance, beyond a broad band of darker green, a sheet of silvery blue spread to the horizon. The sea.

  Giuseppe, who had got out when the coach stopped, now poked his head in
the door.

  'If your ladyship cares to descend for refreshment, I should be happy to be your escort.'

  'Escort me? It does not occur to you, I suppose, that I might prefer to be alone? I wish, yes, I wish to restore my appearance a little. Surely you must see that I am covered with dust?'

  'There is a room in the house where your ladyship may retire for that purpose. I shall be satisfied to remain outside. The window is very small.'

  'In other words, I am a prisoner! Hadn't you better admit it openly?'

  Giuseppe bowed with exaggerated courtesy.

  'A prisoner? There's a nice word for a lady in the care of a devoted servant! My duty is merely to see that you reach your destination safely, and it's for that reason only that I have orders not to leave you for any cause whatsoever.'

  'Suppose I shout and scream?' Marianne exclaimed with exasperation. 'What will you do then, master gaoler?'

  'I should not advise it, Excellenza. In the event of any shouts and screams my orders are clear… and far from pleasant.'

  Marianne was outraged to see the black muzzle of a pistol gleaming in her so-called servant's plump hand.

  Giuseppe gave her a moment to ponder this before tucking the weapon back unconcernedly in his waistband.

  'In any case,' he went on, 'screaming will do no good. This place belongs to his highness. The people would not understand why the Princess should be calling for help against the Prince.'

  Giuseppe's face was as bland as ever but Marianne knew from the cruel glint in his eye that he would not hesitate to kill her in cold blood in the event of a struggle.

  Beaten, if not resigned, she decided that for the present her best course was to submit. For all the undoubted comfort of the coach, her body ached from the bad roads and she was longing to stretch her legs.