[Marianne 3] - Marianne and the Privateer

by Juliette Benzoni

  She rose quietly and Talleyrand made no move to stop her. He was not looking at her. He was sitting with his chin sunk in the immaculate folds of his neckcloth, absently tracing with the tip of his cane the primitive design of roses decorating the carpet.

  A board creaked as Marianne moved to the window which opened on to a tiny balcony. She had picked up a blue shawl from a chair and hugged it round her shoulders. She felt chilled to the soul, despite the August heat of the sun, but when she leaned on the worn iron balcony rail she was not conscious of any warmth.

  Outside, everything rejoiced in the tranquil beauty of a fine summer's day. From next door, young Charlotte's voice could be heard chanting in clear tones one of the rhyming games that children love. Farther off, by the pump, three women in blue skirts and flowered petticoats were chattering away to one another in the local patois, now and then bursting into shrieks of laughter. They wore the charming costume of the region with easy grace and their rosy faces glowed with happiness under their complicated double headdresses made up of a frilled cap surmounted by a coquettish little hat cocked up before and behind and known delightfully as 'à deux bonjours'. Some children were playing at quoits under a tree and the Prince of Benevento's grooms were leading the coach horses away to the stables, while in the distance could be seen a rather touchingly old-fashioned sedan chair with drawn curtains, conveying some invisible curiste to or from the baths. On all these things the sun poured down his golden beams. Only Marianne seemed excluded, and she wondered why, even in this scene of rural peace where everyone was happy, she should have to bear such a weight of grief and suffering. She had believed that she was pitted only against a handful of villains, the stupidity of the police and Napoleon's displeasure. Instead, she found herself at the centre of a vast and dangerous political intrigue in which neither she nor Jason counted for anything. It was rather as if she had been condemned to imprisonment for eternity and could look out at the world of the living only through the bars of a dungeon. Perhaps the truth was that she was not fashioned for such a world. The world to which she belonged was one of fury and violence that would not allow her to live in peace. It was to that world she must return.

  She turned from the balcony and went quickly back to Talleyrand, who had been watching her attentively through half-closed eyes. She met his light blue gaze steadily:

  'I am going back. I must see this woman, speak to her. I have to make her understand—'

  'What? That you love her husband as much as he loves you? Do you really think that will make her change her mind? This Pilar is like a rock. Besides, you will not get near her. She has the whole of the Queen of Spain's guard to protect her, and if I know Julie Clary she will be only too delighted to play the queen for the benefit of the only one of her subjects who has ever asked for her assistance. At Mortefontaine, Pilar is surrounded, hemmed in by ladies- and gentlemen-in-waiting who are more effective than any castle walls. She has asked never to be left alone and her request has been granted. No visitors. No messages even, unless they are addressed to the queen. Do you think,' Talleyrand said wearily, 'do you think I have not tried? I was politely shown the door. What chance would you have? Your reputation is, to say the least, unlikely to recommend you to those pious ladies!'

  'Never mind. I shall go just the same… at night, in disguise… I'll climb the walls if I have to. But I must see Pilar! It is unthinkable that no one should try and make her see reason, make her realize that her attitude is sheer wickedness.'

  'I believe her to be quite aware of that. She simply does not care. When Jason has paid for his crime, then she will expiate her own, that is all.'

  'To her, the worst crime is to betray herself.' It was a new voice, speaking from the doorway. Marianne and the prince both turned at once and for the first time for many days, Marianne uttered a cry of pure joy:

  'Jolival! At last.'

  In her delight at seeing her faithful friend once again, she ran to him impulsively and flung both her arms round his neck and kissed him resoundingly on both cheeks like a little girl, heedless of the fact that the said cheeks had not seen a razor for two days and that Arcadius himself was quite dreadfully dirty.

  'Eh, well!' The prince extended a hand to the new arrival. 'You could certainly not have come at a better moment. I was very nearly out of arguments to dissuade this young lady from indulging in the most precipitate piece of foolishness. She wishes to go back to Paris.'

  'I know. I heard,' Jolival said gloomily, flinging himself down without ceremony in a chair which groaned under the shock. 'But she must not go back to Paris, for two reasons. The first is that her house is being closely watched. The Emperor knows her very well and he would rather make it impossible for her to disobey him than be obliged to punish her. The second is that her absence is the one thing which might serve to calm that Spanish woman's temper a little. Queen Julie must have put it to her that by sending his former favourite away, Napoleon is paying tribute to the virtue of Beaufort's wronged spouse.'

  'Nothing—!' Marianne muttered grittily.

  'Possibly. But your return, my dear, would unleash a pack of troubles. Monsieur Beaufort may be in prison but even there he is under close watch by his wife's friends, and in particular by one Don Alonzo Vasquez who seems to have heard something of the estates in Florida and to have ambitions to restore them to the Spanish flag.'

  'Good heavens, Arcadius!' Marianne exclaimed. 'Wherever did you learn all this?'

  'At Mortefontaine, my love, at Mortefontaine where I have been spying quite unblushingly on your foe while ostensibly engaged in pruning Queen Julie's roses, after a fashion. Yes, for your sake I have been the Queen of Spain's gardener for three whole days!'

  Talleyrand smiled slightly. 'I suppose it did not occur to you that one does not prune roses in July, eh?'

  'That was why I stayed no more than three days. The head gardener tired of my efforts and suggested I take my talents elsewhere for employment. But if you want to hear any more, for pity's sake give me a bath and a meal! I'm choked with heat and dust, and half-dead of hunger and thirst as well. I can't decide which to die of first.'

  'I'll leave you,' Talleyrand said, getting to his feet, while Marianne hurried from the room to give orders. 'In any case, I have said all I came to say and I must go home.' He paused and added in a lowered tone: 'Have you any further news?'

  Arcadius de Jolival shook his head sadly:

  'Not much. The real murderers seem to have vanished into thin air. Not that I'm surprised at that. Fanchon is an old hand. She and her people must have done their work and gone to earth somewhere. As for the Englishman, he has disappeared so completely, whether to become the Vicomte d'Aubécourt or to assume some other identity, that it is easy to believe – as unfortunately it is believed – that he never existed outside our friend's imagination.' He sighed. 'Things are going badly… very badly.'

  'Quiet. Here she comes. She is sufficiently unhappy as it is. Until later, then…'

  An hour later, adequately washed and refreshed, Jolival was answering Marianne's questions. He told her that he had left Aix-la-Chapelle the moment he had received the letter which Fortunée Hamelin had pledged herself to deliver. Before the hour was out, he and Adelaide d'Asselnat were posting back to Paris.

  'Adelaide came back with you?' Marianne said in surprise. 'Then why isn't she here?'

  Then Jolival explained how, hearing of the troubles which had beset her young cousin, that elderly spinster had not hesitated for a moment. 'She needs me,' she had declared generously. 'I will go to her.' It seemed, also, that the fascination with the life of the mountebank which had led her to share for a while the existence of the clown Bobèche, was beginning to wear off. Aside from the somewhat doubtful charms of a career as a street player combined with that of a secret agent, Adelaide had finally come to recognize that a difference in age of more than ten years between herself and the object of her affections was a considerable handicap. It may well have been that a budding romance betw
een Bobèche and a blooming flower-girl in the spa gardens at Aix had something to do with her new-found wisdom.

  'Naturally,' Jolival said, 'she has returned a little disappointed, rather disenchanted and inclined to melancholy, but at heart I think she is quite pleased to get back to her own life again… and to French cooking. She was very fond of Bobèche but she does dislike sauerkraut! Besides, when you are in trouble, she thinks her place is with you. She is vastly proud of the fact that you are now a princess, by the way, although she would be torn in pieces before she admitted it.'

  'But then, why did she not come with you?'

  'Because she thinks she will be more useful to you in Paris than coming here to sympathize. Your people know about your exile and it is just as well that someone should be there to mind the house. That is something Mademoiselle Adelaide can do perfectly and everything is running quite smoothly there.'

  The two friends talked on far into the night. There was so much they had to tell. Arcadius did not mean to make a long stay at Bourbon. It was his intention to return to Paris the next day and his visit was chiefly to inform Marianne of his return and assure her of his practical help. At the same time, he wanted to hear from her own lips a complete account of all that had happened, so that he could draw his own conclusions.

  'I gather then,' he said, settling himself with half-closed eyes to the enjoyment of a glass of the old Armagnac which Talleyrand had sent round in the course of the evening, 'that neither Inspector Pâques nor Savary would listen to you when you tried to put the blame on your – on Lord Cranmere?'

  'No. One thought I was mad, the other simply refused to listen.'

  'The fact that no trace of his presence has been discovered does rather strengthen their belief. The gentleman would appear remarkably adept at concealing his tracks. All the same, he is still in Paris. Somewhere, there must be someone who has seen him.'

  'I've an idea,' Marianne said suddenly. 'Has anyone been to our neighbour, Mrs Atkins? Adelaide was very friendly with her and Francis stayed there. She should be able to tell us at least whether or not he is still there, and if he is not, how long he was in her house.'

  'Wonderful!' Jolival exclaimed. 'This is just what I came for. You said nothing about Mrs Atkins in your letter. She once hid your cousin in her house, and Adelaide will easily persuade her to tell everything. Her evidence might be all the more valuable precisely because she is herself English.'

  'We do not know yet,' Marianne said soberly, 'if she will agree to give evidence against a fellow countryman.'

  'If Mademoiselle Adelaide cannot persuade her, then no one can. In any case, we can only try. Another thing is that Lord Cranmere was briefly at Vincennes, when Nicolas Mallerousse arrested him in the Boulevard du Temple. It may be possible to trace him from the prison records.'

  'Do you think so? He escaped so easily. He may never have been entered at all.'

  'Not entered? When Nicolas Mallerousse handed him over in person? I'll wager he was. And that entry in the register is incontrovertible proof of the connection between Lord Cranmere and your poor friend. If we can get the register examined, then we have a chance of getting first the police and then the court to listen to us. And if necessary we will go to the Emperor. You have been forbidden to seek an audience, my dear, but I have not! And I shall demand an audience, and he will hear me. And then we shall win!'

  As he spoke, Arcadius became more and more carried away by the new hope which had risen in him with these two new suggestions, put forward by Marianne and himself. His little bright eyes sparkled and the funny crumpled face which a moment before had been drawn with worry wrinkled into something approaching a smile. To Marianne, his infectious enthusiasm was like a breath of joy and hope. She hugged him warmly, her whole being quite transformed.

  'Arcadius! You are a marvel! I knew that as soon as you were here again I should be able to hope and to fight again! Thanks to you, I know now that all is not lost. We may save him yet!'

  'May? What is all this may?' retorted Jolival, on whom the effects of the prince's brandy were working to increase his natural enthusiasm. 'You must say that we shall save him!'

  'Yes, you are right. We shall save him. At all costs,' Marianne echoed, in a tone of such ferocious determination that Arcadius returned her hug, so delighted was he to find her showing a touch of her old spirit.

  That night, for the first time since she had left Paris, Marianne went to bed free from the overriding feeling of hopeless impotence which had haunted her every night, growing sharper and more agonizing as darkness fell. She had recovered her confidence, at least, and she knew that even if she were exiled, far from Paris, she could still act through others and do something to help Jason. The thought was a comforting one.

  When Jolival set out again for Paris the next morning, with a readiness which did honour both to his horsemanship and to his powers of endurance, he carried with him, besides a letter to Adelaide from Marianne, all his young friend's renewed hopes. He left behind him a woman who had rediscovered the will to live.

  To Marianne, the next few days provided a much-needed period of relief. Trusting in Arcadius and Adelaide to do what was necessary, she allowed herself to be seduced by the charms of the little spa and the hours passed leisurely, marked by the clock in the Quinquengrogne Tower. She even found a certain amount of entertainment in watching Talleyrand's household relax in conditions of greater freedom than those it enjoyed in Paris.

  All day long, she could hear little Charlotte laughing and singing. The child seemed to be making it her business to rejuvenate her staid preceptor, Monsieur Fercoc, and was succeeding for once in encouraging him in a regime in which expeditions into the surrounding countryside played a much larger part than Latin and mathematics.

  Every morning, Marianne derived a good deal of amusement from watching from her window the prince's departure for the baths. Having first bundled himself up in such an incredible assortment of shawls, blankets, flannel waistcoats and woollies of every description that he resembled nothing so much as a huge and hilarious cocoon, he inserted himself, according to local custom, in a sedan chair with the blinds drawn down. None of this prevented him from dressing and behaving perfectly normally once the various stages of the ritual had been performed, nor was there any indication of a special diet when the whole company sat down to dinner (Marianne took all her meals with her friends) to do justice to the marvels which Carême managed to produce – from a kitchen of such modest resources that it threw him into a permanent state of nerves each summer until he was able to return to the splendidly appointed nether regions of Valençay or the Hôtel Matignon.

  There was also the deaf brother, Boson, who paid shy court to Marianne in a manner both archaic and almost wholly incomprehensible, since he was unable to understand more than half of what was said to him. However, his advances were somewhat interrupted owing to the fact that he passed the greater part of his time with his head immersed in water in the hope, apparently, of achieving a cure for his deafness,

  The afternoons were passed either out driving with the princess or reading with the prince. They went to Souvigny, the St Denis of the dukes of Bourbon, to admire the abbey church and its tombs, driving through the wooded Bourbonnais landscape of hedgerows and tree-shaded meadows dotted with big, white oxen. The warm, perfect weather showed the rich farmland in the full flush of peaceful beauty and even Madame de Talleyrand's aimless chatter seemed to Marianne sane and restful in this interlude from the dark plots which surrounded her.

  With Talleyrand, Marianne read, as he had promised, Madame du Deffand's Letters which the prince enjoyed very much because they reminded him of 'his youth, his first entry into the world and all the people who mattered at the time'. And in his company Marianne found herself plunged to her surprise and delight into the charming, frivolous eighteenth century which had been the setting for her parents' courtship. Often, too, their reading would end in talk and the prince would find pleasure in reviving for his young fri
end his own recollections of 'the handsomest and most perfectly matched pair' that he had known, but of whom she, their daughter, knew so little. Through his words, which could be strikingly tender and affectionate, Marianne seemed to see her mother, a golden beauty in a white muslin dress, a tall, beribboned cane in her hand, moving about the alleys of the Trianon or seated in an armchair by the fire in her own drawing-room, graciously entertaining the guests who flocked to her house to drink 'English tea' and managing somehow to create an intimate and delightful occasion for as many as fifty people at once. Next, Talleyrand would momentarily bring to life again the idealistic Pierre d'Asselnat, his whole life devoted to his two great loves, the monarchy and his wife. Then it would be the big, military portrait in the rue de Lille which came to life in Marianne's imagination as she listened, dazzled and yet oddly envious.

  Oh for a love like that! she thought, hearing her friend talk. To love and be loved like them… and then if need be, to die together as they did amid the blood and horror of the scaffold. But before that, a few years… a few months even, of irreclaimable happiness!

  Oh, how readily she could understand her mother's gesture when, seeing her husband taken, she had proudly claimed her right to follow him to his death, rejecting all thoughts of the child she left behind her, in order to live out her love to the end. She herself had thought many times during the long nights through which she had suffered since that terrible night at Passy that she would not outlive Jason. She had pictured a hundred tragic ends to her own, unhappy story, had seen herself breaking from the crowd and casting herself in front of the guns of the firing squad as the command was given to fire or, if he were not given the right to a soldier's death, stabbing herself to the heart at the foot of the scaffold, supposing he were treated like a common criminal. But now that Jolival had given her fresh hope her whole will was directed towards the achievement, against all odds, of that happiness which still seemed so obstinately to elude her. Let her only live with Jason and then let the whole world perish, only so long as they had drunk the cup of happiness together to the last drop.