Marianne and the Lords of the East

by Жюльетта Бенцони

  At the sight of that black robe, Marianne uttered a gasp of terror, for to a prisoner the arrival of a priest could scarcely be held a good augury. But it was only for a moment. A second later the newcomer was hurrying across to her with outstretched arms.

  "Marianne! My little one! What are you doing here?"

  She gave a cry of recognition, feeling as if the heavens had opened for her.

  "Godfather! You—?"

  But the shock of joy breaking in on her wretchedness was too much for her. Her head swam and she had to cling to the old man, who was hugging her in his arms, laughing and crying at once.

  "Godfather! It can't be true… I must be dreaming…" She was stammering incoherently, still unable to believe that he was real.

  By this time Cardinal de Chazay had been able to appreciate his goddaughter's condition, her torn dress and pale face, with the imprint of fear still in her eyes, and the angry words burst out of him.

  "What have these savages been doing to you?" He rounded on the jailer and continued his tirade in Russian. The man had been standing by watching in blank amazement while a prince of the Roman Church cradled a common thief in his arms as tenderly as a mother. Now he vanished in response to an authoritative command and Gauthier de Chazay turned his attention to calming his goddaughter's sobs. Her shattered nerves had given way and she was weeping like a fountain into his shoulder, gasping out apologies.

  "I was so frightened, Godfather! I—I thought they would do away with me w-without even a hearing…"

  "And not without reason. I shall never be sufficiently grateful for the providential chance that brought me to Odessa just at this time! When Richelieu told me a female traveler who arrived at Ducroux's yesterday had been arrested for theft and was claiming on the strength of some slight resemblance to be your father's daughter, I felt I had to make sure and I hurried here at once. I'd no idea what could have brought you to this place, but I knew of only one person who looked like your father, and that was you, yourself. Although the business of the theft still worried me—"

  "I stole nothing, I swear to you! That woman—"

  "I know, my child, I know. Or rather, I guessed as much. You see, I know the woman of old. But come, we must not remain here. The governor came with me and is waiting for us in the commandant's office."

  The jailer returned bearing an army greatcoat and a steaming glass. The coat he handed nervously to the priest, the glass he set down by Marianne.

  "Drink it," the cardinal told her. "It will do you good."

  It was a glass of milkless tea, strong and very sweet, and it filled the void in her empty stomach and, with its warmth, restored some life to her. While she drank the priest put the vast overcoat around her shoulders, hiding her tattered dress and bruised flesh. Then he helped her to her feet again.

  "Can you walk? Would you like someone to carry you?"

  "No, no, I can manage very well. The brute beat me horribly but he didn't kill me. But I should like someone to go and rescue my friend Jolival, Godfather. He was arrested not long after me, I heard them bring him here."

  "Don't worry. It shall be attended to. He'll join us upstairs."

  In point of fact Marianne was still far from steady on her feet, but the thought of seeing Richelieu so soon gave her wings. So much the better if it meant another battle to be fought. She felt strong enough to fight the whole world now and win. God had not deserted her. He had sent her one of His most distinguished representatives, and in the nick of time.

  She had been too long familiar with the onetime Abbé de Chazay's mysterious comings and goings to feel much real surprise at finding him here, at the gateway to Russia and the east, dressed as a simple country priest. But a gasp of pure amazement was torn from her as she came face to face with the governor of whom she had been making such an ogre.

  Still dressed in the same shabby boots and ill-fitting coat and still armed with the inevitable pipe, the man she had known as Septimanie was pacing irritably up and down the bare room which the commandant of the castle dignified by the title of his "office," on account of the presence in it of a table bearing at that moment three sheets of paper and an inkwell. He turned at the sound of the door opening and stood with a frown between his eyes and head lowered like a bull about to charge while the cardinal and the prisoner came in. He was evidently in an exceedingly bad temper and he spoke without preamble.

  "So it was your goddaughter, Your Eminence. There can be no doubt of that?"

  "None at all, my friend. None at all. This is Marianne d'Asselnat de Villeneuve, the daughter of my unhappy cousin, Pierre-Armand, and the Lady Anne Selton."

  "If that is so, I fail to understand how the sole descendant of such a man could so far have forgotten herself as to become a common thief."

  "I am not a thief," Marianne protested furiously. "That woman who accused me is the wickedest and most deceitful creature, and the most outrageous liar I have ever met. Only send for her, Your Grace, and we shall see then which of us is in the right."

  "That is precisely what I mean to do. The Comtesse de Gachet enjoys His Imperial Majesty's especial protection and I owe her my respectful consideration on that account. The same can hardly be said of you, Mademoiselle. You have caused nothing but trouble ever since your arrival here. For all your name and your beauty, which I confess is striking, you seem to me the sort of young person who—"

  "If you will allow me, my dear Duke," the cardinal cut in sharply, "I had not finished my introduction. The lady you see before you is no mere young person. Nor should you address her as Mademoiselle. Her full title, since her marriage, is Her Serene Highness, Princess Corrado Sant'Anna. Moreover I believe she has as much right to your respectful consideration as this Madame de Gachet, of whom I may perhaps know more than you."

  Inwardly Marianne commended herself to heaven, cursing the family pride which had led the cardinal to impress his friend with this blunt revelation of her real name. Richelieu's stern eyes had widened and one eyebrow had lifted ominously. His rather high voice went up a full three tones to a harsh squeak.

  "Princess Sant'Anna, eh? I've heard that name. I can't remember just what it was I was told about her, but I seem to think it was nothing very good. One thing at least is certain. She entered Odessa under false pretenses, taking good care to conceal her real rank and traveling simply under her maiden name. There must have been a reason for that—"

  Gauthier de Chazay, Cardinal San Lorenzo, was not a patient man. He had listened with clearly growing irritation to this speech of the governor's and now he put an end to it by banging his fist loudly on the table.

  "We can consider her reasons later, if you please, my son! Are you quite sure that your rather too obvious ill humor is not due to the fact that you owe the princess an apology and that it galls you to admit that Madame de Gachet is not the saint you had imagined?"

  The duke moistened his lips and hunched his shoulders, possibly to hide the red that crept into his cheeks. He muttered something half-inaudibly about the difficulties attendant on remaining a faithful son of the Church when her princes were so unpleasantly meddlesome.

  "Well?" the little cardinal insisted. "We are waiting."

  "I shall apologize to—the lady when the matter has been cleared up. Let the Comtesse de Gachet be admitted."

  Watching the woman to whom she owed her recent unpleasant experiences sweep into the room like a great actress taking the stage, Marianne saw red and could have hurled herself at the impudent creature. She came forward more powdered and plumed than ever and leaning on one of the tall beribboned canes which Marie-Antoinette had made the fashion walking in the gardens of the Trianon, the skirts of her purple gown brushing the ground. After curtsying urbanely to the duke, she sat down without waiting to be asked on a coarse wooden chair. The glance that rested briefly on Marianne and on the unremarkable little priest standing beside her showed precisely what she thought of them.

  She arranged her silken skirts around her as she had do
ne in Marianne's bedchamber and uttered a tiny laugh.

  "Have you sealed the fate of this unhappy creature already, Duke? I see that you have fetched a priest to her, to prepare her no doubt for the proper punishment of her kind. I really think, however, that Siberia will do well enough for the girl and that you will not—"

  "That will do, Madame," the cardinal broke in curtly. "You are here to answer questions, not to pass judgment on what does not concern you. Or to lay down the correct punishment for theft. That is a matter in which you have some experience, have you not? I believe it must be almost twenty-six years since—"

  "My dear sir," the governor began, but the cardinal silenced him with a lift of his hand, although his eyes never left the countess's.

  She had paled visibly under her paint and Marianne saw to her surprise that there were beads of sweat along the line of the powdered hair, while the white fingers emerging from her black lace mittens had tightened on the cane.

  Madame de Gachet turned her head, clearly unwilling to meet the calm blue gaze fastened so steadily on her. She laughed again, lightly, and shrugged her shoulders with an assumption of indifference.

  "Naturally I have experience, Monsieur l'Abbé, but indeed I am at a loss to understand your meaning."

  "I think you understand me very well. The fact that you are here at all you owe to some of my own order, as well as to the unwitting kindness of the tsar. Nevertheless, those few drops of royal blood that run in your veins do not authorize you to make fresh victims."

  Marianne had been following this strange and incomprehensible exchange eagerly. Now she saw the countess's eyes start from her head. She put a shaking hand to her throat as if she were choking, made an effort to rise and sank back heavily onto her chair as though her legs refused to bear her.

  "Who—who are you?" she whispered almost inaudibly. "How could you know that—unless you are the devil?"

  Gauthier de Chazay smiled.

  "Nothing so illustrious, and my dress should tell you I have not even the honor to represent him. But we are not here to play at riddles or to uncover secrets. I have said what I have solely in order to persuade you to withdraw a charge which you know very well is false."

  The fear had not left her eyes but she said at once with a kind of desperate haste that she withdrew the charge, that it was all a dreadful misunderstanding.

  But this Marianne would not have.

  "That does not satisfy me," she said. "I mean this woman to confess the truth, the whole truth. Witnesses saw the officer who arrested me take the diamond drop from my reticule, so how can anyone say the woman was mistaken? She gave me the stone as surety for a loan of five thousand rubles which she needed to pay her gambling debts and was to pay back the same evening. I suppose she lost it all and made up this shameful story as a way of getting back her diamond without repaying the money."

  This time it was the Duc de Richelieu who interrupted.

  "Is this true, Madame?" he asked sternly, turning to the countess, who was looking the picture of guilt.

  She nodded, not daring to raise her eyes. A heavy silence fell on the room as they regarded her. The duke tapped out his pipe mechanically on a corner of the table. His face was strangely blank and he was evidently torn between his sense of justice and the pressing instructions which had come to him from Petersburg. Justice prevailed.

  "Then I have no choice but to place you under arrest…"

  She looked up at that, but before she could speak the cardinal had forestalled her.

  "No," he said with unexpected authority. "You will do nothing of the kind, Duke. You have had instructions from the imperial chancellery to assist the Comtesse de Gachet to settle in the Crimea—where she is to reside for the remainder of her natural life, with Colonel Ivanoff to—er, look after her. You will do just that."

  Now it was the duke's turn to bang his fist on the table.

  "Your Eminence," he said forcibly, "I yield to no one in respect for your cloth, but this is not a matter for the Church. It is a matter for the state. I shall inform the tsar of what has occurred and I am sure His Majesty will agree with me. The woman must be tried and sentenced."

  The cardinal did not answer at once. Instead he took Richelieu by the arm and drew him aside into the embrasure of the single narrow window, which at this hour of night was in deep shadow. But Gauthier de Chazay was not after light. Marianne, watching him intently, saw him lift his hand palm upward and display the ring he wore turned inward on his finger to the governor's eyes. Richelieu whitened visibly and rewarded the little cardinal with a glance of mingled awe and apprehension.

  "The general—" he breathed.

  "Well?" the priest said.

  "I shall obey, Monseigneur."

  "You will earn the order's gratitude. And now, Madame—" He turned back to the defeated countess, who had been watching this scene without understanding but with alternate hope and dread. "You may return to your hotel where you will announce your departure for tomorrow morning. Colonel Ivanoff shall hear within the hour to which Crimean city he is to escort you and he will receive the appropriate papers. After that we must consider how best to establish the truth in the best interests of all."

  Madame de Gachet rose with an effort and stood leaning on her ridiculous cane like a wounded soldier on his musket. All her arrogance had left her. She looked now like a very old woman.

  And it was in a tone almost of humility that she murmured: "I do not know who you are, Monseigneur, but I should like to thank you—yet I do not know how."

  "Very easily. By honoring the bargain you made with Mademoiselle d'Asselnat. You agreed, did you not, that the diamond drop should be hers if you failed to return her five thousand rubles? Can you return them?"

  "No—but if someone were to lend me the money I might—"

  "You might do nothing of the sort. Your repentance is a fragile thing, Madame, and deceit is second nature to you. On your return to the hotel you will have the stone delivered to the governor's palace and he will see that it is handed to your victim. That will be safer—"

  "But I don't want it," Marianne protested.

  "You will keep it, however. That is my order. You will keep it—in memory of your mother, who died on the scaffold for having tried to save the queen. Do not try to understand. I will explain later. But now you too should go back to the hotel and rest, for you stand in great need of it."

  "I won't go without my friend Jolival."

  Before she had finished speaking, the door opened and Jolival appeared. His eyes were closed and he was supported by a jailer, for he seemed to have difficulty in walking. Marianne saw to her horror that there was a bandage around his head and that it was stained with blood.

  "What have they done to him?" she cried, and ran to him.

  But as she took his other arm to help guide him to a chair, he opened one eye and smiled at her.

  "A tap on the head to keep me quiet… nothing serious, but I feel a trifle dizzy. It's brought on one of my headaches… If you could manage to obtain a glass of brandy, my dear…"

  The duke opened a cupboard set in the wall and after a glance inside emerged with a bottle and a glass which he half filled.

  "There's only vodka here," he said. "Would that do as well?"

  Jolival took the glass and gazed with some surprise at the man who proffered it.

  "Well, well, if it isn't Monsieur Septimanie. What brings you here?"

  "Jolival," Marianne broke in, "this gentleman is the governor, the Duc de Richelieu himself."

  "Well, I never! And I was thinking—" He paused to swallow the contents of the glass but showed no particular sign of surprise. Then he returned the empty glass with a sigh of satisfaction. A little color had come back to his wan face.

  "Not bad," he said. "I might even say it goes down like water."

  His eyes suddenly took in the presence of the countess and Marianne saw them darken.

  "That woman," he muttered. "I know now who she is! I know where
I saw her last. My lord Duke, you are the governor here, then let me tell you that this woman is a thief, a creature publicly branded as such! The last time I saw her she was being held down while Sanson, the public executioner, set his iron to her flesh. That was in 1786, on the steps of the Palais de Justice in Paris, and I can tell you—"

  "Be quiet," the cardinal interrupted him sharply. "No one has asked you to say anything on that subject or what you may think about it. I am Gauthier de Chazay, Cardinal San Lorenzo and Marianne's godfather. By the grace of God I was here when I was needed to set things right. That is now done and we need hear no more of the matter." He turned to the countess, whose terrors had revived at the entrance of Jolival. "Madame, you may go. Colonel Ivanoff awaits you. He will have his orders within the hour and you have only to pack your belongings. But if you wish to enjoy a quiet sojourn here, see to it that you do not indulge in any more such escapades. You will be provided with enough to live on."

  "You have my promise, Your Eminence… Forgive me!"

  She stepped forward timidly and, bending her knee with difficulty, bowed her head with a beseeching look. He made a quick sign of the cross above her purple feathered headdress and then held out his hand for her to kiss. On that hand there now appeared only a plain gold band.

  Madame de Gachet rose and left the room in silence without looking back.

  "She didn't even apologize," Marianne said when she had watched her go. "I think she might have done that at least, after all I suffered on her account."

  "It is useless to expect it," answered the cardinal. "Hers is the kind of mean spirit which never forgives its victims for the wrongs she has done them… and for the consequences."

  The governor came forward from behind the table, where he had remained an observer of the preceding scene, and spoke to Marianne.

  "Then it is I, Madame, who will offer you my apologies, for you have suffered at the hands of my subordinates. How can I make it up to you? When we met down by the harbor yesterday evening you seemed most anxious to speak to the governor. Is there something you would ask him?"