Marianne and the Privateer

by Жюльетта Бенцони

  'Have patience. I am in the process of behaving with remarkable gallantry. That is worth the expenditure of a few moments' time. I was saying… ah, yes. I was saying that tomorrow the Señora will be away from home and the field, my dear Princess, wide open for you. Assuming that Beaufort is not altogether a fool, I imagine it will be up to you whether you return home before morning.'

  Marianne's cheeks flamed but at the same time her heart missed a beat. The meaning behind Cranmere's last words was only too clear, but while she could not repress a thrill of pure joy at the image they conjured up, she was by no means pleased to hear the innuendo in his sardonic tone. That Francis Cranmere should presume to bestow his blessing on it seemed to her to besmirch her love.

  'You think of everything,' she said cuttingly. 'One would think your whole object in life was to throw me into Mr Beaufort's arms.'

  Cranmere rustled the notes in his pocket.

  'Twenty-five thousand pounds is a goodly sum,' he remarked casually. Then, without warning, his attitude changed. He sprang at Marianne and, seizing her wrist in a painful grasp, began to speak in a low, angry voice:

  'Hypocrite! Filthy little hypocrite! You haven't even the courage to confess your love! But it was enough to see your face, the way you were looking at him in the theatre tonight, to see that you were dying to fall into his arms! But that would be too mortifying, wouldn't it? Fancy admitting after that farcical episode at Selton, after all your fine airs of outraged virtue, that you had finally fallen in love with him! Tell me, how often have you regretted your silliness that night? How many nights have you lain alone in your bed thinking of it? Tell me? How many times?'

  Wrenching her arm free of his grip, Marianne fled to the bed and seized hold of the gilded bell rope that hung beside it:

  'Get out of here! You have your money, now go! At once, or I call the servants!'

  The anger cleared like a mist from Francis's taut face. He took a deep breath and turned back to the window with a shrug:

  'Never mind, I'm going. At any moment you will tell me it is none of my business and you are right, after all. But I cannot help thinking that – things might have been very different if you had been less foolish.'

  'And you less vile! Listen to me, Francis. I regret nothing that is past and I have never done so.'

  'Why not? Because Napoleon taught you how to make love and made you a princess?'

  Ignoring this, Marianne shook her head. 'You did me a great service at Selton. You gave me a taste for liberty. Your only excuse, if any, is ignorance. You knew nothing about me. You thought that I was made of the same stuff as you and your friends and you were mistaken. As for Jason, I love him, and I am willing to cry it from the rooftops, and I have you to thank for that, too. If I had yielded to your horrible bargain, I should not love him now as I do. If there is any one thing I am sorry for, it is that I did not see at once what kind of man he was and go with him that first night as he asked me. But I am young enough, thank God, and love him well enough to wait for my happiness as long as need be. For I know, I know in my heart that one day he will be mine…'

  'Well – I wish you no worse fate!'

  Without another word, he stepped out on to the balcony, climbed over the balustrade and began to let himself down. Marianne reached the window in time to see his white hands cling for a moment to the wrought-iron balcony rails. Then there came the muffled thud of a falling body, followed almost at once by quick, light footsteps making for the wall of the neighbouring house. Half-unconsciously, Marianne followed him out on to the balcony and walked quickly up and down, striving to calm her agitated nerves and at the same time put some order into her confused thoughts.

  Her first impulse was to ring for Gracchus to put the horses to and drive her to Passy that instant, but Francis's words had not been without their effect and in spite of all her knowledge of him she could not but grant their plausibility. Who could say how that Spanish woman would react to the sight of Marianne on her doorstep in the middle of the night? Would she even agree to warn her husband? Or would her dislike of Marianne provide her with all the reasons she needed to disbelieve every word of what she had to say? And even supposing that she, Marianne, were to attempt to attract Jason's attention by a scene, the result would only be to create a scandal that would do no one any good. Nor did the idea of sending Gracchus alone with a note make more appeal to her, knowing as she did that she would not rest until she knew for certain that Jason was safe. It might take all her tears and entreaties to make him renounce a meeting on which he might have pinned great hopes. Probably the best thing to do would be to wait until morning and then go to Beaufort.

  Despairingly, Marianne brushed her forehead with a trembling hand and took two or three deep breaths in an attempt to still the frenzied beating of her heart. The night was still and warm. The distant heavens were bright with stars and from the garden came the sad, silvery note of the little fountain and a scent of roses and honeysuckle. It was a night made for those in love to be together and Marianne sighed at the strange, persistent twists of fate by which she, whom so many men desired, seemed doomed to everlasting loneliness. A wife without a husband, mistress without a lover, mother robbed prematurely of the child whose fragile form she had so often cradled in imagination. Surely this was a kind of injustice, a mockery on the part of fate? What were they doing now, the men whose influence had helped to shape her life? The one who had just left so swiftly, with that strange expression of weariness in his eyes, what was he doing now, in the house of that quiet, romantic Mrs Atkins whose whole life was spent in a long wait for the return of the child of the Temple, the little Louis XVII whom she was convinced that she had helped to escape from his prison? And the masked horseman of the Villa Sant'Anna whose own dreadful solitude seemed to seek an echo in that of his wife in name only, what was he doing now? As for what Napoleon might be doing, amid the splendours of Compiègne, in the company of his Austrian woman – apart, of course, from nursing his sweet-toothed bride through another of her frequent attacks of indigestion – Marianne could imagine it quite well, but the thought gave her no pain. The warmth and brilliance of the imperial sun had dazzled her for a time, but now the sun had set into an horizon of ordinary domestic bliss and had lost something of his fascination in the process.

  Infinitely more heartbreaking was the thought of Jason, threatened with deadly danger yet closeted, even then, alone with Pilar in the beautiful house beside the Seine which Marianne had more than once admired. The big, terraced gardens must be especially lovely at this hour of a summer's night… but how could that stiff Pilar who hated France feel the potent spell of its old-world charm? She would most likely be happier shut up in some dim oratory, all alone, praying to her own proud and implacably just God!

  Abruptly, Marianne turned her back on the night with its strong evocations of the past, and went crossly back into the room. One of the candles on the chimney-piece was smoking, on the point of going out, and she snuffed the whole lot, leaving the room with no other light than the soft, pink glow shed by the small lamps placed at the bedside. But the room, with its dim, mysterious light and the soft, inviting bed, had no longer any power to attract Marianne. She had just made up her mind to go to Passy at once, whatever might be the consequences. She knew that she would never rest until she had seen Jason, even if she had to rouse the whole district and trample over the body of the odious Pilar to do so. But first, she must get out of that dress…

  She began to undress, first tugging off the head-dress of flame-coloured feathers which was beginning to make her head ache dreadfully and shaking out her hair with both hands so that it tumbled, like a thick, black snake, down to the small of her back. The muslin dress was more difficult to manage and for a moment, driven to distraction by the innumerable hooks, Marianne was on the point of summoning Agathe, but then she remembered that Jason had disliked the dress and with a sudden spurt of anger she tore the fragile stuff away from the fastenings altogether. She was just sitti
ng down in her brief shift tied at the shoulders with narrow white satin ribbon, preparing to take off her shoes, when she had a strange feeling that someone was watching her and looked up quickly. She had been right. A man was standing quite still at the window with his eyes upon her.

  With a gasp of indignation, Marianne sprang towards a green silk bed-gown which lay over the back of a chair and hurriedly wrapped it round her. At first, she could see nothing but a gleam of fair hair in the darkness and she thought that Francis must have come back. A closer look, however, told her that the resemblance ended there and, even before he spoke, she knew him. It was Chernychev. Motionless as some dim statue in his severe, dark green uniform, the Tsar's courier stood and devoured her with his eyes. But there was something in those eyes, such a fixed and unnatural brightness that Marianne felt her throat tighten. Clearly, the Russian was not himself. Perhaps he had been drinking? She knew already that he had the capacity to absorb prodigious amounts of alcohol without losing an iota of his dignity.

  'Go away,' she said quietly, her voice a little thickened by nervousness. 'How dare you come here!'

  Without answering, he took one step forward, then another, turned and snapped the window shut behind him. Seeing him about to close the other, Marianne sprang forward and gripped the casement.

  'I told you to go!' she said furiously. 'Are you deaf? If you do not go away this minute I shall scream.'

  Still there was no answer, but Chernychev's hand fell heavily on her shoulder, wrenched her away from the window and sent her sprawling on the carpet to fetch up against the leg of a sofa, uttering an instinctive cry of pain. Meanwhile, the Russian calmly shut the window and then turned back to Marianne. His movements were those of an automaton and left a horrified Marianne in no doubt that he was totally drunk. As he came closer, a powerful smell of spirits assailed her nostrils.

  She tried to wriggle underneath the sofa to escape him, but already he was upon her. With the same irresistible strength, he picked her up and carried her over to the bed in spite of her frantic struggles. She made an attempt to cry out but instantly a hand was clamped roughly over her mouth while the Russian's slanting green eyes shone like a cat's in the dim light with such an ominous gleam that Marianne felt a chill of real fear creep through her veins.

  He released her but only for a second to pull away the gilded cords that held back the bed curtains of heavy, sea-green silk. The curtains swung forward, enveloping the bed in a greenish shade, through which the lamp at the bedside showed like a spot of gold. Before Marianne could make a move to protest, she found her wrists tied, swiftly and efficiently, to the bed-head. She tried to scream but the sound was choked in her throat as a summary hand thrust a rolled-up handkerchief into her mouth.

  In spite of her bonds, Marianne continued to twist and turn like a snake in a desperate effort to escape from her tormentor but she only succeeded in making the metallic cords bite deeper into her wrists. She was wasting her time. Immobilizing her legs by the simple method of sitting on them, Chernychev proceeded easily to tie both her ankles to the bedposts. Then, as Marianne lay, spread-eagled and quite unable to move, the Russian stood up and regarded his victim with satisfaction.

  'You made a fool of me, Aniushka…' he said, so thickly that the words were barely intelligible. 'But that's all over now. You went too far. It was very foolish of you to prevent me killing the man you love, because I have never yet turned my back on a challenge. You touched my honour when you made my duty a means to save your lover, and for that I have to punish you…'

  He spoke slowly and deliberately, each word following the last as monotonously as a child repeating a well-learned lesson.

  'He is mad!' Marianne thought, although it required very little imagination to divine the form that Chernychev's punishment was to take. She guessed that he meant to rape her and just then, as though his intoxicated brain were telling him that he had talked enough, the Russian bent and, setting aside the green robe, ripped open her shift from neck to hem and parted the two sides carefully, yet all without laying so much as a fingertip on Marianne's bare skin. This done, he straightened and without another glance at her began to divest himself of his clothes as calmly as if he had been in his own bedchamber.

  Half-throttled by the handkerchief which had been rammed so far down her throat that it made her retch, Marianne watched appalled as he revealed a body as white and well-muscled as a Greek god's but approximately as hairy as a red fox. This body descended, without further preliminaries, upon her own and what followed was unbelievably swift and savage and, to Marianne, as unpleasant as it was unexciting. This drunken Cossack made love with the same furious concentration that he might have given to chastising some insubordinate moujik with the knout. Not only did he make no attempt to give the least pleasure to his companion, he seemed to exert himself to cause her the greatest possible discomfort. Fortunately for Marianne, nature came to her rescue and her martyrdom, which she bore without a murmur, was mercifully brief.

  Weak and half-stifled, she thought that her release had come at last and that Chernychev would leave her and take the road to Moscow; but her tormentor got up and, far from releasing her, said in the same toneless voice: 'Now I am going to make quite sure that you can never forget me. No other man shall touch you and not know that you belong to me.'

  It seemed that he had not finished with her after all. Marianne, watching helplessly, saw him take from his finger a large, gold seal-ring of the kind used for sealing letters, with his arms engraved upon the stone, and hold it to the flame of the lamp. As he did so, his eyes roved over the girl's sweat-streaked body with a calculating expression. But Marianne, guessing his intention, was moaning wildly and writhing against her bonds with such a fierce energy of desperation that the Russian's hand, which was in any case none too steady, missed its aim. He had aimed for the belly but it was on Marianne's hip that the searing hot seal landed…

  So excruciating was the pain that, despite the gag, a strangled shriek of agony burst from Marianne's throat. The only response was a chuckle of drunken satisfaction, followed almost immediately by the sound of breaking glass. More dead than alive, Marianne heard the window flung open with a crash and then, as though in a dream, she saw the curtains round the bed dragged away and in their place the dark figure of a man in hussar uniform, his right hand holding a naked sword. As he took in the extraordinary spectacle before him, the newcomer uttered a magnificently comprehensive oath.

  'Well, well,' he remarked, in a strong Périgord accent which sounded to Marianne like the sweetest music in all the world. 'I've seen a good deal one way and another, in my time, but nothing quite like this.'

  Marianne was in too much pain from her burned hip and had been through too much that night already to be capable of further surprise. Not even the sight of Fortunée Hamelin's favourite lover, the effervescent Fournier-Sarlovèze, standing at the foot of her bed with a drawn sword in his hand had any power to amaze her. In any case, after a curt command to the Russian, who was sitting blinking on the bed, a good deal astonished, to get dressed 'sharpish' and be prepared to answer to him for this, the dashing François turned his attention swiftly to Marianne, removing the handkerchief which was all but suffocating her, cutting the gilded cords and folding the torn clothes modestly over her maltreated person, all of this without interrupting the flow of his conversation.

  'It seems it was rather a bright idea of mine to go home by way of the rue de l'Université,' he said cheerfully. 'In fact, I was only thinking of you, dear lady, and telling myself it was high time I called on you to thank you for getting me out of prison, when I saw this fellow here just heaving himself over your garden wall. Naturally, my first thought was that he was expected, but then I said to myself that a lady who lives alone has no need to make her lovers ruin their clothes with scrambling over walls. When I visit Fortunée, I go in by the door like everyone else. You're up to something, I thought. Besides, if you must know, I'm not overly fond of Russians, and this c
hap less than most. So I thought about it for a bit, and finally made up my mind to follow. Once I was in the garden, though, I nearly popped out again. There was nothing to be seen and all the windows, even those with lights in, were closed. Damned if I know what it was made me climb up here – curiosity, perhaps. I never could resist other people's business.'

  While Fournier talked, Chernychev had been putting on his clothes, still in the same mechanical way, paying not the slightest attention to what was going on.

  He was soon brutally reawakened. No sooner was Marianne released than she leapt up, regardless of the pain in her hip, and rushing at her tormentor dealt him a ringing box on the ears. Then, beside herself with fury, she picked up a large Chinese vase which with its bronze base was no light weight and smashed it over his head.

  The vase shattered into a thousand pieces but the Russian remained on his feet. His eyes opened wide in an expression of enormous surprise and he swayed slightly. Then he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed while Fournier-Sarlovèze gave vent to a great shout of laughter that effectively drowned the torrent of abuse which Marianne was heaping on her late attacker. When, however, she made a lunge for a second vase, the twin of the first, with the object of following up her advantage, the hussar general saw fit to intervene:

  'Now then, easy does it, young woman! Pretty things like that don't deserve such treatment.'

  'And what about me? Did I deserve such treatment as this brutal savage meted out to me?'

  'Precisely. So there's no need to add to the injury by destroying your own property. You might use the poker or the fire irons just as well—No!' he added firmly, seeing Marianne's eye light with a gleam on the heavy bronze poker. 'Leave that where it is. All things considered, I'd rather kill him myself.'

  With difficulty, because she was still in great pain, Marianne summoned up a smile for her unlooked-for preserver. She wondered how on earth she could ever have disliked François Fournier.