Marianne and the Privateer

by Жюльетта Бенцони

  'I love you… As God hears me, I swear to you I love you and I belong to no other man.'

  'Get out!'

  Opening her eyes, she saw that he was standing with his back to her and the whole length of the room between them. But she saw too that he was shaking and that the sweat was making his shirt stick to his brown skin. She stood up, shakily, but was forced to cling to the chair for support. She felt hot and feverish and the room seemed to be spinning around her but she could not go away without telling him what she had come to say, without warning him… Since he had not killed her, she did not want him to die either. He must live, live! Even if the rest of her days were one slow death because she had lost him. It was her own blind rage which had made her commit an ineffable blunder: it was right that she should pay for it.

  At the cost of a violent effort of will, she made herself walk towards him, over the hundreds of miles of empty desert which the room seemed to have become.

  'I can't,' she croaked. 'Not yet… I must tell you—'

  'You can tell me nothing that I want to hear! I do not want to see you again – ever!'

  The words were harsh, but the fury had gone out of Jason's voice. It was flat and heavy – strangely similar, all at once, to a voice Marianne had heard once before, one night, in a mirror…

  'No – listen! You must not go out tonight. That is what I came to tell you. If you go to Quintin Crawfurd's house, you are lost… you will be dead by morning.'

  Jason turned abruptly and regarded Marianne with genuine astonishment.

  'To Crawfurd's? What are you talking about?'

  'I knew you would deny it, but you are wasting your time. I know that he is expecting you at eleven o'clock, with some other men, for reasons which I do not wish to know, because that is your own business and because – because in my eyes you cannot be altogether wrong.'

  'Who are these other men?'

  Marianne hung her head, hating even to be forced to speak the names. 'The Baron de Vitrolles… the Chevalier de Bruslart.'

  Against all probability, Jason had begun to laugh:

  'I have never heard of Monsieur de Vitrolles, but the Chevalier de Bruslart I do know, and so do you, if I remember rightly. Are you seriously trying to tell me that I have anything to do with these conspirators? Do you expect me to believe that you are doing me the honour to count me one of them?'

  'How can I help it? It is true, isn't it, that you are going to Crawfurd's house in the rue de Clichy?' Marianne insisted, a trifle disconcerted by this unalarmed, not to say hilarious, manner of receiving her news.

  'Quite true. As it happens I am to visit Crawfurd in the rue de Clichy—tomorrow morning. I am to take a luncheon with him and inspect his very fine collection of pictures. But your idea seems to be that I am to go there tonight, to meet these very dubious-sounding gentlemen. Do you mind telling me the motive?'

  'How should I know? All I know is that you are involved in a royalist plot aimed at bringing about peace with England at any cost, that there was to be a meeting at Crawfurd's house tonight, and incidentally that this Crawfurd is playing something of a double game, and that Savary is preparing to arrest you all on the spot and have you taken to Vincennes and shot out of hand. That was my reason for coming here – to beg you not to go… to keep you alive, even if your life belongs to another woman.'

  Jason sank into a chair, where he sat with his elbows on his knees looking at Marianne. Amusement struggled with amazement in his face:

  'I'd like to know where you got this cock and bull story? I can assure you that I am involved in no conspiracy. I, join with royalists, with the men who saved their own skins while they left their king to mount the scaffold and the child Louis XVII to waste away in the Temple? I, plot with the English?'

  'Why not? It was in England that I met you first. Weren't you a friend of the Prince of Wales?'

  Jason shrugged, got to his feet and wandered over to the bookcase. 'It is not hard to become one of Prinny's friends. All it takes is a certain originality, something a little out of the ordinary. He made me welcome, in fact, because I was a friend of Orlando Bridgeman, who is one of his intimate circle. It was Orlando who came to my rescue, dusted me down and put me back in the saddle, after my ship was wrecked off the Cornish coast. We have known each other for ever. Very well. I have one English friend. I imagine that does not mean that I must take all England to my bosom? More especially when, although my country is not yet at war with England, relations are becoming every day more strained and war cannot be all that far off.'

  While he was talking, he had opened one of the cupboards at the bottom of the bookcase and extracted from it a decanter and a tray with two glasses, both of which he proceeded to fill. Outside, the noise of the storm was moving away. It was now only a distant mutter underlying the din of the torrential rain which had followed in its wake and which was now scourging the trees and battering furiously against the roofs and windows of the little town. Filled with an unutterable sense of relief, Marianne subsided on to the harpsichord stool and waited for the pounding of her heart to slow down a little. The only thing that made sense to her in the whole of that night's idiotic adventure was that Jason was not in danger, he had never been in danger – neither had he ever had any thoughts of plotting against Napoleon. It crossed her mind, also, that his attitude to herself had softened remarkably… Her throat felt stiff and tight and her head ached feverishly. She had never felt so tired in all her life. In quiet, obstinately, she was still trying to piece together the fragments of the ridiculous puzzle of all that had been happening to her, trying to understand.

  'But,' she said at last, slowly, thinking aloud more than addressing herself directly to Jason, 'but you were at Mortefontaine with your – with Señora Pilar and you came back without her?'

  'Correct. I was there and I returned this evening.'

  'You returned… because someone was coming to see you – someone I saw leave this house…'

  'Right again,' Jason said. 'Your information up to that point is quite correct but, I repeat, only up to that point. This Crawfurd business is the product of a brilliant imagination and I think it is my turn to ask some questions on that subject. Here, drink this. You must need it.'

  'This' was one of the two glasses of sherry he had been pouring. Marianne accepted it automatically and drank a little. It burned her throat but it did her good.

  'Thank you,' she said, putting the glass down on the corner of the harpsichord. 'Ask what you like. I will answer.'

  Prepared for a fresh tirade when she mentioned the name of her informant, Marianne resigned herself with a little sigh and sat looking down at her clasped hands. A short silence followed during which Marianne dared not raise her eyes, thinking that Jason was choosing his questions. However, he merely gazed at her.

  'Very well,' he said at last. 'In that case, I have only one thing to ask you, and that is the name of the person who told you this extraordinary story. I must try and get to the bottom of this nonsensical affair. You did not think it up for yourself. Who told you I was going to Crawfurd's to meet these conspirators?'

  'Francis…'

  'Francis? You mean Cranmere? Your husband?'

  'My first husband,' Marianne corrected acidly.

  'Never mind that now,' Jason said impatiently. 'Where the devil did he spring from? Where and when did you see him?'

  'Last night, at my house. He was waiting for me in my room when I got back from the theatre. He had got in by climbing over the garden wall and up to my balcony.'

  'This is fantastic! Insane! Go on. I want to know everything. Where he is concerned, all things are possible.'

  All trace of amusement had vanished from Beaufort's expression. His face was very tense and he was leaning against the harpsichord, his tall figure dominating Marianne as she sat and his eyes fixed compellingly on her sweet, downcast features. His voice was stern as he added: 'And look at me, for a start. I must know if you are telling me the whole truth.'

 
; Still that suggestion of contempt, the same hint of distrust. What must I do, Marianne asked herself despairingly, to make him understand that I love him, that he is the only person in the world for me? But she looked up as he bade her and her green eyes met those of the man leaning over her with a gaze that was wholly candid and direct.

  'I will tell you everything,' she said simply. 'You shall judge…'

  Few words were needed to describe the scene which had taken place on the previous night between herself and Francis Cranmere. As she spoke, Marianne was able to follow the swift succession of emotions reflected on the keen face before her: surprise, anger, indignation, contempt, even pity. But all the time the story took to tell Jason did not utter a single word, not even the smallest exclamation. Even so, when Marianne came to the end, she saw with joy that nearly all the hardness had vanished from the sea rover's blue eyes.

  He remained where he was for a moment, watching her in silence, then, with a shrug and a sigh, he turned and walked away a little.

  'And you paid!' he said roughly. 'Knowing him as you do, you paid, blindly! It did not occur to you that he could have been lying, that it was simply an excuse to get money out of you?'

  And you, Marianne thought sadly, it does not occur to you that I love you so much I lost my head, that to save your life I would have given him everything I possess? But she did not utter these bitter thoughts aloud. Instead, she merely answered miserably: 'He had it all so pat that I was forced to believe him. It was he who told me that you would be at Mortefontaine all day today, and that you would be alone when you returned, and he told me, too, that you would have an important visitor this evening – and it was all quite true because I came straight here first thing this morning and had it all from the man at your gate. It was all true – except the one, most important thing, but how was I to guess?'

  'A conspirator! I? Jason flung at her. 'And you believed it? Surely you knew me well enough?'

  'No,' Marianne said seriously, 'no – I don't really know you at all. Remember I saw you first as an enemy, and then as a friend and a saviour, and then at last as someone – someone indifferent.' The word was not easy to say, but Marianne did say it firmly. Then she went on, very gently: 'Which of these men is the real one, Jason? For from indifference you seem to have come to dislike, even to hate me?'

  'Don't talk such rubbish,' Jason retorted sharply. 'What man could be indifferent to a woman like you? There is something about you which drives a man to commit the wildest follies. One must either love you to distraction – or want to wring your neck! There can be no half-measures.'

  'You – you seem to have chosen the second alternative. I can't blame you. But before I go, there is one thing I should like to know—'

  He was standing with his back to her, staring out, unseeingly, at the rain streaming down the windows and at the blackness of the garden beyond.

  'What?'

  'This visitor – who was so important as to bring you back from the Queen of Spain. I should like to know – forgive me – I should like to know if it was a woman?'

  He turned and looked at her again, but this time there was in his eyes something like an involuntary tenderness:

  'Does it matter so much?'

  'More than you could ever believe. I – I will never ask you anything else. You will never hear of me again…'

  It was said in a tone of such doleful resignation, and with such humility, that it found the chink in his armour. A force which he could not control brought the privateer to his knees beside her, imprisoning both her hands in his:

  'Little fool! That visit was important only from a business point of view. And the visitor was a man, another American, a boyhood friend of mine, Thomas Sumter, who has just gone off to supervise the loading of my ship. You probably don't know, but on account of the blockade a number of major French exporters are using American vessels to transport their goods. One of these is a delightful lady at Rheims, Madame Veuve Nicole Cliquot-Ponsardin, the head of great champagne caves, who has done me the honour to entrust her wares to me. Thomas has just been settling our latest agreement and has driven off to Morlaix tonight to arrange for the cargo's conveyance to – well, to somewhere outside the Empire. That is all my conspiracy. Are you satisfied?'

  'Champagne!' Marianne cried, laughing and crying at once. 'It was all about champagne! And I thought—Oh dear, it's too much, it's really too wonderful… too funny! I was right when I said I did not know you at all!'

  But Jason had only smiled perfunctorily at her relief, and there was no laughter in his eyes as he searched her radiant face with painful eagerness:

  'Marianne, Marianne! Who are you yourself with your childlike innocence and the artfulness of a woman of the world? Sometimes you are as clear as day, and at others full of strange shadows, and it may be I shall never know the truth about you.'

  'I love you – that is all the truth.'

  'You have the power to make my life a hell, and to turn me into a devil. Are you a woman or a witch?'

  'I love you – I am only a woman who loves you.'

  'And I almost killed you. I wanted to kill you…'

  'I love you. I have forgotten it already.'

  The strong, brown hands had moved steadily up Marianne's arms and folded round her, drawing her close to a hard, warm chest, and Jason's lips were on her eyes, her cheeks, were seeking her mouth. Trembling with a joy so great that for an instant it seemed that she would die, Marianne abandoned herself to the arms that now held her fast, pressing herself close to Jason and closing her eyes which were so full of tears that they overflowed and her cheeks were wet with them. Their kiss tasted of salt and fire, bitter-sweet, with all the passion and tenderness of a thing long awaited, long desired, long prayed for without real hope of that prayer being answered. It was eternity in a few seconds, broken off only to begin again, more passionately still. It was as if neither Jason nor Marianne could ever quench their grievous, burning thirst for each other, as if both were trying to cram into this fleeting moment of happiness all their share of paradise on earth.

  When at last they drew apart a little, Jason took Marianne's chin between his fingers and pushed her head up a little until the candlelight shone in the marine deeps of her eyes.

  'What a fool I've been,' he murmured. 'How could I ever have imagined for a moment that I could live the rest of my life away from you? You are a part of myself, my flesh and blood!… Now what are we going to do? I cannot keep you with me, and you have no right to stay. There is—'

  'I know,' Marianne said quickly, laying her hand on his lips to keep him from uttering the names that would have broken the spell. 'But these few hours belong to us. Surely we can forget the real world for a few moments more?'

  'Like you, I wish we could – oh, how I wish we could!' he said desperately. 'But Marianne, there is this peculiar behaviour of Cranmere's, this false information – and all that it cost you—'

  'The money is nothing. I have more than I know what to do with.'

  'Nevertheless, I will repay you. But it was not the money I was thinking of. Why did he spin you this yarn?'

  Marianne laughed. 'Just for the sake of the money, of course. You said so yourself, he was undoubtedly in need of it and he found a perfect means. The only thing to do now is to forget it.'

  She slid her arms tenderly round his neck and tried to draw him to her once again but Jason unfastened her encircling arms very gently and got to his feet:

  'Can you hear? There is a window banging in the next room.'

  'Call one of the servants.'

  'I sent them all to bed before Thomas came. My business affairs are my own concern.'

  He moved towards the door which led to the adjoining room and Marianne followed him automatically. Now that the rain had stopped and everywhere was quiet, she sensed a strangeness in the atmosphere of the house, as if it were full of the rustle of skirts, faint whisperings which were probably nothing more than lingering drops of water dripping from the trees on
to the gravel paths outside. The room where the window was banging, a large, almost empty salon, was dark but, glancing out of the windows, Marianne thought she saw lights flitting among the shadows in the grounds that ran down to the Versailles road. There was something ominous about them in the thick dark out there, and she hurried after Jason, who was making the window fast.

  'I thought I saw lights in the garden. You saw nothing?'

  'Nothing at all. Your eyes have been playing tricks on you.'

  'And the noises?… Did you hear nothing? As it were a rustle of silk, a sighing?'

  It might have been the effects of darkness, for it was almost completely dark, the lights in the next room casting only a feeble shaft through the half-open door, but Marianne found that her hearing and her mind seemed attuned to a host of faint, disquieting sounds. It was as if every board, every panel, every piece of furniture in the house had taken on a life of its own – a frightening feeling.

  Startled by the odd note in her voice, Jason folded her once more in his arms, clasping her to him gently, like some fragile, precious object, then, as he realized that she was burning hot, he began to worry:

  'You're feverish! It is that which makes you see and hear things. Come, I can feel you shivering… You need care. Oh, my God, and to think I…' He tried to urge her forward but she hung back, staring wide-eyed into the darkness, which now began to seem less black.