Marianne and the Lords of the East

by Жюльетта Бенцони

  After watching her visitor's departure from the doorway, Marianne walked slowly back to her bed. Sitting down on the edge of it, she took the diamond drop in her fingers and watched the play of light upon it. It was certainly a very wonderful stone and she caught herself thinking that she would not be averse to keeping it if the countess failed to recoup her losses.

  If that happened she might offer her a further sum to make up for her loss, but on no account would she ever sell such a treasure.

  At the same time, staring at the diamond and remembering the magnificent earrings trembling in the countess's ears the day before, she felt her curiosity awaken. Who were these Gachets who possessed such princely jewels and how had the woman managed to retain them after twenty years of exile, when so many other émigrés had been and still were reduced to dire extremities of need? Had gambling come to her rescue?

  It was hard to credit, for those to whom whist, faro or any other game of hazard had brought lasting prosperity were few indeed. Besides, not even Madame de Gachet herself knew whether her winnings with the thousand rubles left over after her debt was paid would be enough to cover the initial loan.

  The more Marianne thought about it, the more depressed it made her. She had not yet reached the point of regretting her generous impulse but she had to admit that she had been a trifle hasty. Perhaps after all she would have been wiser to send for Jolival and have discussed it with him. But then the countess had been so insistent that the matter be kept a secret between her and her friend's daughter, and that was surely natural enough. At all events, she had given her promise to say nothing.

  Finding no satisfactory answer to any of these problems, Marianne stowed the diamond away safely in her reticule and turned her attention to getting dressed. For some reason she was suddenly in a hurry to find Jolival and discover whether he had learned any more about the widow of the late Comte de Gachet.

  When she was dressed, she left her own room and went along the passage to her friend's, which was at the far end. At this point there were two doors side by side, both opening into the passage, and since she had forgotten Jolival's number she knocked first on one and, receiving no reply, moved on to the next. When this too produced no answer, she returned again to the first.

  Thinking that Jolival must be still asleep, she turned the handle.

  The door opened easily, revealing a disordered room. Since the feminine character of the belongings thus revealed was enough to inform her that she had made a mistake, Marianne withdrew her head and turned to find herself face to face with a chambermaid who was eyeing her suspiciously.

  "Was Madame looking for someone?"

  "Yes. I thought this was the Vicomte de Jolival's room."

  "Madame is mistaken. This room belongs to the Comtesse de Gachet. Monsieur the Vicomte is next door—but I don't think he is there just now."

  "What do you know about it?" Marianne asked crossly, disliking the girl's tone. "I hardly think he'd tell you where he was going?"

  "Oh, no, Madame! It's only that I saw him go out at about eight o'clock. He asked for a horse to be saddled and rode off in the direction of the harbor. Does Madame require anything further?"

  "No… that will do, thank you."

  Marianne walked back to her own room, feeling puzzled and out of sorts. Where the devil had Jolival run off to at this hour of the morning? And why had he said nothing to her?

  She had grown accustomed to the vicomte's solitary expeditions, for he seemed to possess a peculiar faculty of making himself understood anywhere in the world and of finding out whatever he wanted to know. But here in this city where civilization was as yet only skin deep, a thin varnish on the surface of barbarism, it was uncomfortable to feel herself alone, even if only for an hour or two and in surroundings as typically French as the Hotel Ducroux.

  The chambermaid had said that he had ridden toward the harbor. Why? Was he going to look for the Sea Witch or to explore the neighborhood of the old citadel in the hope of hearing some news of Jason? Or perhaps both?

  She paced about her room for a while, uncertain what to do. She was longing to go out herself and begin inquiries on her own account but dared not for fear of missing Jolival if he should return with any news. As time passed she grew increasingly bored and discontented at being obliged to remain indoors when she wanted so badly to go out and start her own search for Jason. She unpacked her boxes and packed them again, did her hair afresh, put on a hat to go out after all, then took it off again and cast herself into a chair, took up a book and threw it down, and finally donned her hat once more with the intention of going down at least as far as the front door and finding out from Ducroux whether any word had come for her from the governor's palace.

  She was tying the wide sea-green crepe ribbons under her chin when all of a sudden an uproar exploded in the hotel. There were loud shouts and the sound of running feet in the passage, with a shrill voice shrieking in some foreign language, followed by the tramp of heavy-booted feet approaching, accompanied by a clash of arms.

  Full of curiosity, Marianne was on her way to her door when it was flung open abruptly. In the opening, his shocked face whiter than his shirt, stood the hotel proprietor. He was accompanied by a law officer and two armed soldiers, and he looked like a man in extreme stages of embarrassment.

  Marianne stared indignantly at the intruders.

  "May I ask, Maître Ducroux, what this means?" she asked icily. "What kind of hotel do you call this? Who gave you permission to enter my room uninvited?"

  "Indeed, Mademoiselle, it is not my fault," the man stammered wretchedly. "Believe me, I should never dream of… It is these gentlemen—" he finished, indicating the three Russians.

  Meanwhile, disregarding both him and Marianne completely, the officer had stalked into the room and was flinging open trunks and boxes and tossing out the contents in such a cavalier fashion that Marianne lost her temper.

  "This is your hotel, is it not? Then get these men out of here this instant unless you want me to complain to the governor! Gentlemen, you call them! I don't want to know what they think they're doing. Get them out!"

  "Indeed, I can't help it. They insist on searching this room."

  "But whatever for? Will you tell me that?"

  Racked by the glittering green eyes that seemed able to flay him alive, Ducroux tugged awkwardly at his shirt cuffs and kept his eyes fixed firmly on the ground at Marianne's feet, as though expecting the answer to come from there. A curt command from the officer seemed to force him to a decision at last and he lifted his unhappy gaze to hers.

  "There has been a complaint," he said almost inaudibly. "A lady, a guest in the hotel, has missed a valuable jewel. She insists on a search of the whole building and—and unfortunately one of the maids saw you, Mademoiselle, coming out of the lady's room this morning."

  Marianne's heart seemed to stop dead and the blood mounted to her cheeks.

  "A valuable jewel, did you say? Who is this woman?"

  "Madame de Gachet! She has been robbed of a very large, pear-shaped diamond—a teardrop, she calls it. It was an heirloom… she is making a great deal of fuss…"

  Inevitably, the diamond was discovered a moment later in Marianne's reticule and, despite her furious protests as she realized too late the trap into which she had fallen out of pure innocence, she was dragged roughly from her room with a soldier on either side and hurried out of the hotel, watched by a large crowd which had been drawn up to the Hotel Ducroux by the uproar.

  Without further warning she found herself hustled into a closed carriage, which had been hurriedly fetched, and driven away rapidly in the direction of the citadel, which she had been so anxious to visit only a short while before. They had not given her time to utter so much as a single protest.

  Chapter 9

  The General of the Shadows

  THE ancient Podolian stronghold of Khadjibey, rebuilt by the Turks and recovered by the Russians, had no doubt gained in strength and impregnability unde
r its different owners but by no means in comfort. The cell into which Marianne was thrust unceremoniously, foaming with rage, was small and damp with grimy walls and a triple-barred window looking out at a gray wall and a line of stunted trees. Even the sight of these trees, however, was forbidden to the prisoners since the window glass had everywhere been whitewashed over so that a kind of fog seemed to hang over the prison even in bright sunshine.

  The only furniture was a bed, consisting of nothing more than a plank and some straw, a heavy table and a stool, all three items bolted to the floor. An oil lamp stood in a recess but even this was behind bars, as though for fear the occupants of the cell might try to set fire to it.

  After the massive door slammed shut behind her, Marianne remained for a moment sitting dazedly on the straw mattress where her guards had thrown her. It had all occurred so quickly that she could hardly take in where she was or what had happened to her.

  There had been that woman, the wretched creature who had used her father's name as an excuse to reach her, to melt her heart and so get money from her! But what was the purpose of this charade? To obtain the money and ensure that she was spared the necessity of paying it back? That seemed to be the only explanation, for it was impossible to think of any other motive for such a diabolical trick. Revenge or feminine jealousy was ruled out since she and Madame de Gachet had only set eyes on one another for the first time in the entrance hall of the hotel. Marianne could not remember ever having heard her name mentioned before and even Jolival, although thinking he had met that devil in female form somewhere, could not recall when or where, or even put a name to her.

  As her initial bewilderment passed, Marianne was seized again by the anger which had swept over her as she found herself apprehended like a common thief. With a roaring in her head and a red light before her eyes, she saw again the officer's triumphant expression as he pulled the diamond from her bag, the anger and mortification on the hotel proprietor's face and the gaping wonder of those other inmates of the hotel who had been attracted by the fuss at the sight of the magnificent stone.

  "Oh, no!" Ducroux had cried out. "It can't be true!"

  It had been open to doubt whether this last remark was called forth to the splendor of the diamond or his own disappointment in his ravishing young guest. But with such evidence against her, how could she deny it? Especially since the devilish countess had taken good care not to show herself. And now what was to become of her?

  After a little while, however, she began to take some comfort in the thought that Jolival was still at liberty. He would be bound to learn of this catastrophe as soon as he returned to the hotel and he would hurry straight to the governor to put an end to the dreadful mistake before it could end in a miscarriage of justice. But would he manage to see Richelieu in time to rescue Marianne from her present predicament? It seemed not unlikely, even highly probable, in fact: if the governor were anything like the gentleman his rank implied, he would never permit his old friend's name to be mixed up in such a fearful scandal.

  She soon managed to convince herself that they would come for her before long and question her in some language she could understand. Then she would be able to make them listen to her, insist on being confronted with that dreadful woman, and then everything would be all right. They would even have to apologize to her, because after all she was the injured party, it was she who had been cheated out of five thousand rubles and with the most blatant effrontery. Well, they would see which rang clearer, the voice of truth or the voice of lies. How she looked forward to seeing the old harridan take her place in this cell…

  Her spirits much restored, she was meditating along these lines when the brooding silence of the old prison was broken by a variety of sounds. There was the thud of heavy boots, the clatter of weapons and raised voices rising above the sounds of a struggle. To her horror, Marianne recognized that one of those voices was Jolival's.

  "You have no right," he was protesting furiously at the top of his voice, "I tell you I'm a Frenchman, do you hear, a Frenchman! You have no right to lay hands on me! I demand to see the governor—I wish to see the Duc de Richelieu. Ri-che-lieu! For God's sake, why won't you listen to me, damn you?"

  The last words ended in a kind of agonized grunt which told Marianne sickeningly that they must have struck the prisoner to quiet him.

  Clearly, the unfortunate vicomte had been apprehended on his return to the hotel, perhaps even without a word of explanation. He must be totally bewildered by what was happening to him.

  She flung herself at the door and pressed her face against the grating, screaming out: "Arcadius! I'm here… close by! They've arrested me too! It was that woman, Arcadius, that horrible Madame de Gachet!"

  But there was no answer beyond another cry of pain, further away this time, followed by the noise of a door being opened and shut again with a great crashing of bolts. Then a frenzy of rage seized Marianne. She hammered at the thick oaken door with hands and feet, screaming insults and abuse in a variety of languages in the crazy hope that one of the dumb brutes who had arrested them might catch some fragments of what she was saying, and demanding that someone be sent at once to inform the Duc de Richelieu.

  The effects of this clamor were not long in coming. The door of her prison was pulled open so suddenly that she almost tumbled into the passage. What prevented her was a hand belonging to a gigantic individual with a completely bald head, as though all his capacity for growing hair were concentrated in the enormous gingery mustache that dropped on either side of his mouth. With one thrust of his great hand he sent her reeling back onto the straw, at the same time shouting at her in words she did not understand but which evidently contained a crude request to make less noise.

  After which, the better to drive home his message, he took a long whip from his belt and laid about her back and shoulders with a force that made her scream aloud.

  The thought that she was being treated like a vicious animal was the last straw to Marianne's temper. Writhing off the bed, she twisted like a snake and sprang, biting the man savagely on the wrist.

  The jailer roared like a slaughtered ox. He tore her off and hurled her bodily across the room, to lie half-dazed by a few more blows from his whip. Then he left her.

  She lay for a long while on the floor, incapable of movement. Her back and shoulders hurt abominably and she had a struggle to calm the frantic beating of her heart. Such was the fury and indignation that possessed her that in spite of the pain of the blows she had not shed a single tear.

  What kind of people were these who maltreated their prisoners like that? Out of the depths of her memory she recalled things Princess Morousi had told her while she had been staying in her house. Justice, in Russia, was swift and summary. Often, those unfortunate enough to offend the tsar or his representatives would simply disappear. They would be sent in chains to the farthest reaches of Siberia to rot in the mines. They never came back because cold, hunger and ill-treatment very soon opened for them the way to what could only have been a better world.

  Perhaps that was the horrid fate which awaited her and Jolival. If the Duc de Richelieu, that dedicated enemy of Napoleon, were ever to discover who she really was, then certainly nothing could save them from living death, unless the despot of new Russia should prefer to follow the fashion of his Turkish neighbors and drop them in the Black Sea with a stone around their necks.

  At the thought of the governor, all her earlier anger revived. What kind of man must he be to permit such savage customs in the land where he was master? Surely the most hateful and contemptible of beings. How dared he bear the name of the greatest enemy of feudalism whom France had produced until Napoleon and suffer himself to play the lackey to a Muscovite tsar, the ruler of a race of men more barbarous even than the rudest savages, at least if her own galling recollections of the handsome Count Chernychev were anything to go by!

  Painfully, she dragged herself to her feet at last, but only to collapse once more helplessly on her bed. He
r back was hurting her and she was beginning to shiver violently in her thin silk dress, now rent and torn by the jailer's whip. She was cold in her dank cell. She was thirsty too, but the water in her pitcher, when she succeeded in lifting it with an effort to her lips, tasted horribly brackish and slimy, as if it had not been renewed for many days.

  In an effort to obtain some meager warmth, she huddled as best she could into the straw, trying to avoid hurting her sore back more than she could help. And to steady her fast-waning courage she tried to pray. But the words did not come easily, for it was hard to pray when she was full of anger, but at least that underlying rage helped to stave off fear.

  How long she lay like that, with eyes wide open and staring, as still as the dead in the oppressive silence, she did not know. The hours passed slowly and the gray light that filtered through into the prison became dusk, but the girl on the pallet did not seem to notice. All her thoughts were with her friends, with Jolival, who must be enduring similar treatment to herself, and with Jason, who would never now receive the help that he must need so sorely… To think that he might be only a few yards away from her, sick, perhaps, and in despair. No amount of whipping or ill-treatment would ever overcome his fury of resistance. God alone knew what these brutes might have done to him.

  She did not hear the judas in her door open. Nor did she move while a thin pencil of light entered the cell by the same way and move across until it fell on her pale figure lying in the straw.

  "Dear God, it is she!" murmured a voice. "Open this door at once!"

  The pencil beam grew until it became the bright light of a lantern carried by a jailer. It filled the cell, banishing the shadows, and only then roused the girl from her torpor. She sat up blinking just as a small man in a black soutane, with a halo of white hair, darted into the cell.