Marianne and the Lords of the East
Page 29
Evidently the Sea Witch had blown up and now the fire was traveling to the other ships moored nearby. It seemed as if the sea itself were on fire and the screams of the crowd were drowned in the roaring of the flames, driven by the wind.
"Jason knew his ship," Jolival muttered. "He must have set fire to the magazine. That explosion was a ton of powder going up."
In fact the after part of the stricken brig was still spitting fire like a volcano. The mizzenmast flared like a torch and crashed in a shower of sparks onto the prow of a neighboring frigate, which was already alight. Marianne swallowed suddenly and found that there were tears in her eyes. She had been jealous of the ship, seeing her as a rival for Jason's love, but to see her perish thus, by her master's own hand, was a shocking thing. It was as if she were watching the death of a friend, or even her own death. She thought of the figurehead, the figure of the green-eyed siren carved in her own likeness, which in another moment would be burned to ashes.
She heard Jolival at her side give a slight sniff and she knew that he too was having difficulty with his feelings.
"She was a beautiful ship," he said quietly.
Jason's voice, breathless and rasping, answered him.
"Yes, she was beautiful… and I loved her like my own child. But I'd rather see her burn than know her in another's hands."
Marianne saw by the light of the fire that both he and Craig were white and dripping with sea water. But neither seemed aware of it. Both their eyes were on the Sea Witch and in both there was the same fury of grief.
"Our boat capsized from the force of the explosion," the Irishman explained. "We had to swim for it."
All at once Marianne flung her arms around Jason's neck, shaking with convulsive sobs. Tenderly, his arm went around her while with the other he drew her head down onto his shoulder and gently stroked her hair.
"Don't cry," he said quietly. "We'll have another ship, bigger and still more beautiful. It was my own fault in a way. I ought never to have called her Sea Witch. She was fated to be burned… like a real witch."
Marianne gulped miserably. "Jason… are you superstitious?"
"No… not in the usual way. But it grieves me and maybe I am not quite myself. Shall we go? The whole town seems to be converging on the harbor. No one will notice us."
"But you're soaking wet and your clothes are in rags! You can't travel like that."
"Why not? I may be all you say, but at least I'm free, thanks to you, and that in itself is wonderful."
With that, he swung her almost gaily off the stone bench onto the ground and, still holding her hand, pulled her after him up the street that led up the hill to the new town. Jolival and Craig hurried after them, keeping close to the walls to avoid being swept away by the ever-increasing crowds of people flowing downhill to the harbor.
Seen from above, the fire had assumed such proportions that the whole port area seemed to be alight. In fact, only three ships, those nearest to the brig, had been attacked by the flames. The four fugitives paused under the branches of a gigantic sycamore that overhung a garden wall to regain their breath after the climb and looked back for a moment.
The Sea Witch was dying. Her stern had gone and her bows, borne under by the weight of water, were lifting dramatically. For an instant the fine line of her prow reared up, still intact, holding up her figurehead like a last prayer to heaven before dragging it down beneath the waves. Then slowly, almost solemnly, she sank back and disappeared below the surface of the sea.
Marianne felt Jason's hand tighten on hers. He was cursing hoarsely through clenched teeth. Then, he raised his voice and, flinging the words out like a challenge, he cried out: "I shall have another, I swear that before long I shall have another ship of my own to take the place of this one. Another ship just like her!"
Gently, timidly almost, Marianne began to stroke his cheek, feeling the muscles rigid under her hand as though turned to stone.
"But you will not give her my face, for it has not brought you luck."
He turned to look at her, his eyes bright with unshed tears, and then, swiftly and suddenly, like a horseman gulping down a stirrup cup before a grueling ride, he bent and kissed her hard upon the mouth.
"But I shall," he answered her gravely, and then, with a tenderness that made her heart melt within her, he added: "She shall have your face—and I shall call her Bel-Espoir!"
It was not long after that that they came up with Gracchus a short distance from the posting house. There had been a moment's panic for Marianne as they passed the governor's residence, but like all the upper town it was quiet and silent as a tomb. Marianne spared a thought for the man within, who must even then have been deep in the drugged sleep she had procured for him. Certainly no one would have succeeded in waking him. She knew the power of the drug she had given him and the sun would be high in the sky before the Duc de Richelieu opened his eyes. He would learn then of the conflagration in the harbor in the early morning and of the burned ships, but it might be some time yet before he discovered the theft of his letter, because he would first have to hurry down to the harbor to assess the damage and take such steps as might be necessary. That would give the fugitives a little more time if he decided to pursue them inland. But what was much more likely was that he would direct the search to sea, as the natural element of seamen—and their friends.
So that if he did eventually decide to pursue the thief she should, with luck remaining on her side, have acquired a very good start.
After they came upon Gracchus, propped up tranquilly with folded arms against the side of an impressive vehicle drawn by three horses in charge of a huge bearded driver in a red hat with a square crown to it, Marianne was very nearly sure that luck was on her side, in the person of this resourceful Paris urchin who seemed to possess an uncanny knack for adapting himself instantly and imperturbably to any circumstance, however unlikely, and also of working miracles. The vehicle that he had acquired now was an example of this in its way.
It was a kibitka, one of the great four-wheeled covered wagons, not unlike those used by the American colonists, which the Russian merchants were accustomed to employ to transport themselves and their merchandise from town to town and from fair to fair.
Heavier, certainly, and also slower than the various other conveyances in use on Russian roads, the kibitka possessed a definite advantage in that it was more stoutly built, less conspicuous and able to carry more passengers, not to mention a great deal more baggage, than would have fitted into a telega or a troika. It would take all the fugitives, whereas normally at least two carriages would have been needed to accommodate the whole party. And finally, Richelieu would be less likely to look for the Princess Sant'Anna under the hood of a countrified wagon than amid the cushions of a more fashionable type of vehicle.
But Gracchus's genius did not stop short at the choice of transport. Poking her head inside, Marianne saw that it contained a number of rolled-up mattresses, also designed to serve as seats, and a pile of new blankets, as well as cooking utensils and provisions. There were also spades and an assortment of weapons. Last of all, there were suits of clothes which, although they might not have been cut in London or Paris, were nonetheless respectable. These were evidently intended for Jason and Craig. It looked as though Gracchus had laid out the money Jolival had given him to advantage, and with a speed that no one else could have hoped to rival.
"It's like magic," Marianne said happily, emerging from the wagon to allow the two men to change their clothes. "However did you manage it, Gracchus? There can't have been any shops open at this hour?"
Gracchus blushed crimson, as he always did when his mistress paid him a compliment, and chuckled.
"Well, it's not so wonderful, Mademoiselle Marianne. You can get hold of anything, at any hour of the day or night here, if you've got the money. You only have to know what doors to knock on."
Craig O'Flaherty's coppery head peered out from inside the wagon. "Well, you seem to know the right doors,
me lad, and that's for sure! But I've a nasty notion there may yet be one thing we're lacking. You'll not have heard, maybe, what we poor prisoners were told by an Italian fellow back in the castle there for his misfortune, but it seems that if you want to travel in these parts, and more important, if you want to be able to get fresh horses on the road, you need to have some kind of passport—"
"It's called a podoroshna," Gracchus agreed placidly and pulled from his pocket a paper bearing an official stamp freshly applied. He waved it at the Irishman. "Like this. But to be exact, Monsieur Craig, the podoroshna is nothing more or less than a permit to use post horses. You can do without one if you've got the money, but it's a great saving and it ensures that the people at the posting houses treat you with some respect. Anything else you'd like to know, Monsieur Craig?"
"No, nothing else," said the Irishman, gloomily extricating his large person from the cart, revealing himself clad in a pair of baggy trousers tucked into short boots and a gray shirt buttoned at the neck and caught in at the waist with a leather belt. "Except that I suppose I shall have to get used to these new fashions somehow and that I could do with a shave."
"And so could I," added Jason, also emerging and dressed in similar garb. "We look just like our late keepers."
Gracchus ran a critical eye over them, then nodded approvingly.
"Not bad at all. In any case, it's all that I could find. And if you'll take my advice, you'll stick to your beards. They make you both look like proper little sons of holy Mother Russia and that's the best thing we could ask."
Gracchus, in fact, had shown himself a worthy general, and not liking to let his mistress travel deeper into enemy territory under her own name, he had taken it upon himself to have the podoroshna made out in the name of Lady Selton, an English traveler, and consequently eccentric, whose object was to see something of the tsar's empire and to study the patriarchal customs of his people.
Gracchus, Jason and Craig were entered on this all-important document as the lady's servants, while to Jolival, rechristened Mr. Smith, was allotted the role of secretary.
"Mr. Smith!" the vicomte grumbled. "Was that the best you could think of? Where's your imagination?"
"Monsieur the Vicomte will pardon me." Gracchus retorted with dignity, "but Smith is the only English name I know, apart from Pitt and Nelson."
"I've had a narrow escape, then. Well, Mr. Smith, so be it. And now I think it's time we were making a move."
Dawn was already breaking in the glorious reds and purples of a blustery sunrise. From somewhere nearby came the chimes of a Russian orthodox monastery calling its monks to their morning prayers. The copper domes of a church gleamed like fire against a lurid sky suddenly filled with the gliding flight of gulls and the swift, darting black shapes of swallows.
The streets in the upper town were beginning to come to life. Those people who had run down to the harbor were drifting back again, talking noisily about what they had seen. Others, who had not thought it worthwhile to leave their beds, now opened their windows and threw back the shutters to shout their questions from house to house.
At the far end of the street soldiers were taking down the heavy chain that was stretched between the two squat bastions of the Kiev gate to close it for the night. The first of the day's wagons of grain were visible on the other side.
The travelers climbed into the kibitka and settled themselves as comfortably as they could on the mattresses. Gracchus hopped up beside the driver, who had apparently been continuing his interrupted night's sleep because he found that it was necessary to shake him awake before he could take his place beside him on the wooden plank which served as a box.
Having cast a glance inside to assure himself that all was well with his companions, Gracchus addressed himself to the driver and declaimed majestically, and not without some consciousness of the effect he was producing: "Fperiod! Forward!"
The man chuckled to himself, but he touched up his horses and the huge wagon lumbered away lurching over the ruts, for such things as cobblestones were still unknown to the new town, and drew up to the gate.
Marianne slid her hand into Jason's and, leaning back against the side of the wagon, composed herself for sleep.
Not many moments later, the kibitka had left Odessa behind it and was beginning the long journey across the vast extent of Russia.
Footnotes
1
The Ikbals aspired to the title of Kadine which would be theirs once they had borne the sultan a child.
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2
The Greek quarter of Constantinople.
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3
Governor.
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4
Court interpreter.
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5
Palace.
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6
Turkish law officers restored.
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7
AMDG: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam the motto of the Jesuits.
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8
Taken from an actual letter.
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