[Marianne 3] - Marianne and the Privateer

by Juliette Benzoni

  As far as Marianne herself was concerned, the order for silence had been immediate and categorical. The very next evening, Savary came hurrying round to inform that his department had received stringent orders from Napoleon that the Princess Sant'Anna's name was in no circumstances to be mentioned in connection with the affair. Marianne found it difficult to be grateful for the favour.

  'How can I be kept out of it when there is a horrid anonymous note accusing Mr Beaufort of killing Mallerousse for my sake?'

  The Duke of Rovigo coughed discreetly and shifted in his chair, clearly ill-at-ease. He had endured a characteristically unpleasant interview with Napoleon and he could still hear the biting accents of the imperial displeasure ringing in his ears:

  'His Majesty is of the opinion that the accused would be quite capable of killing for your sake, Princess, but he has condescended to inform me of the – er – ties of friendship which subsisted between yourself and the deceased and stated his conviction that it would be absurd to associate you in any way with his death.'

  Napoleon's actual words had been a good deal more forceful than this but they appeared to Savary, in spite of their august source, to be more suited to the camp than to the drawing-room. Marianne, however, expressed some surprise.

  'To inform you? But, my Lord Duke, are you not the Minister of Police? Is it possible that you, as Fouché's successor, can be unaware that when I first came to Paris I occupied the post of lectrice to Madame de Talleyrand-Périgord and that the name I went by was Marianne Mallerousse, although my code name in the files at the Quai Malaquais was the Star?'

  'Unfortunately, Madame, both you and the Emperor would appear to have forgotten that the Duke of Otranto left me very little of any importance on which to build, that for three days he burned all his papers and files-three days!' he added sighing. 'And the Emperor blames me – as if I could have foreseen it! I have had to start from scratch, patiently finding out who was working for us and on whom I could still count.'

  'Not on me, at all events,' Marianne cut him short. She was not in the least interested in the minister's troubles but she knew Fouché well enough to imagine the perverse pleasure he would have taken in making a clean sweep before his successor took over. 'But all this is beside the point. I must see the Emperor, Duke. It is of the utmost importance. I cannot let him do anything so dreadfully unjust as to allow Mr Beaufort to stand trial. To suspect him of so sordid a crime when he has always behaved as a sincere friend to our country would be a monstrous thing to do! Monsieur de Talleyrand knows him as well as I do, he can tell you…'

  'No, Madame,' Savary said, shaking his head gloomily. 'His Majesty guessed that you would wish to see him. He charged me to tell you that it is quite out of the question.'

  At this blow, delivered in a firm, though not unsympathetic voice, Marianne's colour drained away:

  'The Emperor – refuses to see me?'

  'Yes, Madame. He told me that he would send for you when he judged that the time was ripe, which it is not at present. There are certain circumstances which make it appear that Monsieur Beaufort may have been less our friend than you imagine.'

  'And even if that were true,' Marianne cried passionately, 'even if he hated us, would that be sufficient reason to leave him to face an unjust and ridiculous charge?'

  'My dear Princess, this is a serious matter and it is essential that it be cleared up. Leave it to the law to uncover the whole truth about what happened at Passy.'

  'Yes indeed – and the law can only benefit from hearing what I have to say. I was with Monsieur Beaufort when the crime was committed and, what is more to the point, I know who is, or rather are, the real murderers of Nicolas Mallerousse. If the Emperor refuses to listen to me, then you, Duke, must hear what I have to say. The man who did this murder and carefully covered up his crime in order to throw the blame for it on to another was—'

  But Marianne was not fated to find anyone willing to listen to her. Savary cut her short, laying a hand soothingly on her arm:

  'My dear Princess, I have told you the Emperor does not wish to have you involved in the matter. Trust my department to discover the real murderer – if, that is, we have not already discovered him.'

  'But won't you listen to me, at least! I was there, I know all about it, you must admit that I am a valuable witness! Even if what I tell you must remain between ourselves, surely it will save you from making a mistake?'

  'Valuable, perhaps – but certainly not impartial. No,' Savary went on quickly, forestalling a further protest from Marianne, 'I have not yet done with the Emperor's orders concerning you.'

  'Orders?' she echoed, with some alarm.

  Ignoring the question in her voice, which might have led him into invidious explanations, the Duke of Rovigo confined himself to expounding the nature of his instructions, taking the trouble to soften them slightly in the process:

  'His Majesty desires you to leave Paris within the next few days for some other locality which may be agreeable to you.'

  Marianne rose at this, oblivious of the pains the minister had taken to wrap up the harshness of the command, for command it was.

  'Let us be frank, Duke. The Emperor is exiling me? Then tell me so plainly, if you please.'

  'By no means, Madame,' Savary said, with a suggestion of a sigh which spoke volumes for his longing to be anywhere but where he was. 'It is merely that His Majesty wishes you to spend the summer away from Paris. Anywhere you like – so long as it is at least fifty leagues distant… the summer and also possibly the autumn, no more. What could be more natural, indeed, for nearly all our beauties have left Paris for some watering place – my own wife is leaving shortly for the waters at Plombiëres… You will merely be following the general fashion. There could be nothing more natural, after all, when one recalls that you are barely recovered from your illness after the tragedy at the Austrian ambassador's ball. You will return to us fully restored in health and more beautiful than ever, Princess, and no one will be more happy to see you than your humble servant.'

  Marianne listened to her visitor's words with an attentive frown. She did not understand this sudden determination to send her off somewhere to take the waters for what was after all, considering that she had incurred the imperial wrath, a comparatively short spell of time. When Napoleon ordered the retirement of one of his subjects who had displeased him it was generally for a much longer period. Because she liked to have an answer to her questions if it were at all possible, she framed this thought aloud:

  'I should like the truth, Minister, if you please. Tell me why His Majesty is so anxious for me to take the waters.'

  There was authority as well as pleading in the green eyes and with another sigh Savary capitulated.

  'The truth is that the Emperor, as I have told you, is anxious to keep your name out of this affair. Now according to the way things go, Monsieur Beaufort may or may not be brought to trial. If it should come to this, the trial will probably take place in October or November… The Emperor does not wish to hear that you are in Paris until it is all over.'

  'The Emperor wants me to abandon my best friend – more than that – and this is a truth which you may tell him I think, Duke? – the man I love!'

  'His Majesty was not unprepared for this reaction. That is why it is a command – and why he will not see you.'

  'And suppose I will not obey?' Marianne exclaimed, quivering. 'Suppose I am determined to stay in spite of everything?'

  Savary's voice, which had so far been calm and gently resigned, acquired suddenly a new touch of hardness. He was discreetly threatening:

  'I should not advise it. It can do you no good to force the Emperor to acknowledge your involvement. Remember that by imposing on you what is, after all, you must admit, a very slight penance, he is moved chiefly by the wish to shield you from a scandal which would bring discredit on the name you bear. Must I remind you that, quite apart from Monsieur Beaufort, there is already one man in prison on your account? When a woman of n
oble family lives apart from her husband, it is bound to cause comment when in the space of forty-eight hours two men find themselves in prison because of her, one for murder, the other for a scandalous duel with an officer of a foreign country who, as it happens, had that very evening called out the first man. Moreover,' the minister concluded, 'any action on your part which compelled us to take sterner steps would not bring you any closer to your friend. It is a long way from St Lazare, the women's prison, to La Force where Monsieur Beaufort is being held. Surely it is better to be free, even fifty leagues away, for both your sakes? Believe me, Madame, by obeying you will be doing the best for yourself and your friend.'

  Defeated, Marianne bowed her head. Napoleon was treating her for the first time as a subject, and a recalcitrant subject at that. She would have to obey and go away, just when she longed with all her heart to remain in Paris, as near as possible to the blackened walls of the old prison behind which Jason must lie stifling for so many weeks. She was to be sent into the country, like a troublesome child who must be given a change of air, when the mere idea of Jason as a prisoner made her ill and took away any wish she might have had to enjoy the fine July sunshine. Jason of the seven seas, of the four horizons, as she called him to herself in the warm, tender pride of her love for him, Jason, whom the mighty albatross and the darting swallow could claim as their brother, Jason pining in a filthy prison cell at the mercy of ignorant turnkeys and unspeakable riff-raff of all kinds. To Marianne, it was like mud thrown at the clear blue sky, like blasphemy in the midst of a prayer, like spitting at a star.

  'Well?' Savary asked.

  'I shall obey,' she said reluctantly.

  'Good. You will be gone in – shall we say, two days?'

  What good would it do to plead when the master commanded? It might be that the Emperor meant his heavy hand to fall lightly and protectively, but for all that, Marianne felt its grip grinding her bones and crushing the fibres of her being quite as painfully as any medieval instrument of torture. No longer able to endure the minister's solemn face and crocodile sympathy, she gave him a slight bow and left the room, leaving it to the gloomy butler, Jeremy, to escort him to his carriage. She wanted, above all, to be alone to think things out.

  Savary was right. It would do no good to rebel openly. Better to seem to bow, even though no force on earth should make her give up the fight!

  Two days later Marianne left Paris, accompanied by Agathe and Gracchus, bound for Bourbon-l'Archambault. It had been her first intention to join Arcadius de Jolival at Aix-la-Chapelle, but that great Rhineland spa was very much in fashion that summer and Marianne felt little inclination for society after all that she had been through, and would go through, until Jason Beaufort was proved innocent and finally exonerated. Moreover, Talleyrand, who had arrived at her house on the heels of Savary, had advised her strongly against the historic capital of Charlemagne:

  'There is certainly plenty of company to be met with there, but it is company of a very doubtful kind. Every exile and troublemaker is flocking there to the king of Holland now that the Emperor has to some extent set him aside by annexing his kingdom. Louis Bonaparte is the most lachrymose creature of my acquaintance and now he is behaving precisely as if he had been driven from his ancestral acres by some remorseless tyrant. Then there is our Lady Mother, also, with her endless prayers and still more endless economies. To be sure, my dear friend Casimir de Montrond has obtained permission to visit the place but, deeply devoted to him as I am, I cannot but feel he has a talent for courting disaster and God knows you have had enough of those… No, you had better come with me.'

  For eight years past, it had been the Prince of Benevento's habit to depart each summer with unfailing regularity to drink the waters at Bourbon. His bad leg and his rheumatic pains were, if not greatly eased thereby, at least made no worse and no human strength, no cataclysm in Europe could have prevailed to stop him taking his cure when July came round. He had enumerated the charms of the quiet, pretty little town to his young friend in glowing terms, adding the further persuasions that it was not nearly so far from Paris, that seventy leagues was far more easily covered than a hundred and fifty, that it would be far better to write to Jolival to join her in Bourbon, that it was far easier to sink into a kind of obscurity, and the consequent freedom of action which resulted from it, in a small town than in a city full of people to whom one was known and, finally, that those in disgrace had a duty to stick together:

  'You can make up my table at whist and I shall read to you the works of Madame du Deffand. We will reshape Europe between us and talk scandal about all those who talk scandal about us. That ought to keep us busy, eh?'

  Marianne had agreed. While Agathe packed her clothes and Gracchus spring-cleaned the big travelling coach, she had sat down to write to her friend Jolival a long letter recounting all that had occurred. She finished by asking him to come back as soon as he was able, with or without Adelaide, and come to her at Bourbon. It made no difference to tell herself that there was certainly nothing the literary Vicomte could do to assist Jason, she was still convinced that, if only he were there, everything would at once seem better. She was perfectly well aware that if he had been there Cranmere's trap would not have worked nearly so well because, being less trusting and a good deal less emotional than Marianne, he would undoubtedly have smelled a rat and acted accordingly.

  But the harm had been done and now they could only do everything possible to repair it and to bring the real murderers of Nicolas Mallerousse to justice. In any enterprise of that kind, Arcadius was a priceless ally because he knew far better than Marianne herself those sinister inhabitants of the Parisian underworld among whom the Englishman had found his confederates.

  The letter had been entrusted to Fortunée Hamelin, who was even then on the point of setting out hot foot for Aix-la-Chapelle, for she, like her friend Talleyrand, had heard that the irresistible Count Casimir was to take the waters there and no power on earth could have kept her from the man who, with Fournier-Sarlovèze, shared her amorous and highly inflammable heart. The fact that Fournier was at that moment in prison in no way deterred her.

  Well, at least he can't run off with anyone else while I'm away,' she had remarked, with her usual airy cynicism, regardless of the fact that she herself was preparing to fly to the arms of the handsome general's rival.

  So Fortunée had gone the day before, promising to give the letter to Jolival before she so much as set eyes on Montrond, and reassured on that point, Marianne had set out sedately for the Allier, where she was to meet Talleyrand. It had been his intention, before going to Bourbon, to spend a few days on his estates at Valençay, partly to pay his respects to his permanent though unwilling guests, the Spanish princes, and partly to talk business with his agent, the Prince of Benevento's financial affairs having suffered a grievous blow through the failure of Simons Bank in Brussels.

  Marianne left Paris on the fourteenth of July 1810, not without a good deal of regret. Quite apart from the thought that she was leaving Jason in the hands of the police, she found herself hating to leave her own dear house. In spite of Savary's reassuring words, she wondered how long it would be before she saw it again, for she knew in her heart that sooner or later she would disobey the Emperor and that if Jason were brought to trial, if all her own and Jolival's efforts proved vain, then no power on earth could keep her from him at that moment. Sooner or later, she would incur the wrath of Napoleon… and God alone could say how far that wrath might go. The Emperor was perfectly capable of ordering the Princess Sant'Anna bade to Tuscany and forbidding her to leave it. He might force her to remain shut up in the villa, so beautiful and yet so terrifying, from which she had fled once before after a night of nightmare horror.

  The mere thought of it made Marianne's skin prickle with fear. Ever since losing her child, she had been unable to think without apprehension of the moment when the prince in the white mask should learn that the longed-for heir would not be forthcoming, indeed, would
never be. She had put off from day to day the moment of writing the fatal letter, so great was her dread of what might be his reaction. Something told her that if the Emperor, in his anger, were to have her returned to the palace of Sant'Anna she would never be able to escape from it again. The memory of Matteo Damiani had not yet faded from her mind.

  She had often wondered what had happened to him. Donna Lavinia had told her as she was leaving, that Prince Corrado had confined him in the cellars, that no doubt some form of punishment would follow. But how could he punish a man who all his life had served him, and served his family devotedly… and one moreover who certainly knew his secret! With death? Marianne could not believe that Matteo Damiani had been killed, for he himself had killed no one.

  The horses trotted on towards Fontainebleau and the sun splashed gaily through the moving curtain of leaves, but Marianne paid no attention to the road slipping by outside the windows of her coach. Her mind remained curiously divorced from the present and divided in the strangest way, part of it dwelling on Germany and her friend Jolival, of whom she had such high hopes, and part, the greater and more vulnerable part, roving about the ancient prison of La Force which she knew so well.

  There had been a day when Adelaide, in a mood of nostalgia, had taken her to the old quarter of the Marais to show her her old home, a beautiful building made of pink brick and white stone dating from the time of Louis XIII, a neighbour of the Hôtel de Sévigné, but horribly scarred and disfigured by the warehouses and rope-walks which had taken it over during the Revolution. La Force was not far away and Marianne had glanced with revulsion at the squat, blank shape, under the low mansard roof, the stout though leprous walls and the low, heavily barred gate with its two rusty lanterns. It was a sinister gate, indeed, a dirty rusty-red in colour as if it were still soaking up the blood which had washed about it during the massacres of September 1792.