And so, all in all, the days passed not unpleasantly, yet with each new morning Marianne felt her fears returning. She took to watching for the post and studying Talleyrand's expression closely to see if, in the news which reached him from Paris, there might not have been some hint about the Beaufort affair.
One morning, Marianne and the prince walked out a little way along the tree-lined road beside the lake near the chateau. Talleyrand's walks were invariably brief, because of his lame leg, but the weather was so fine, the morning so clear and fresh that both had found the urge to take a turn on foot quite irresistible. The countryside was filled with the scents of hay and wild thyme, the sky was white with doves playing tag around the three grey towers of the chateau and the calm waters of the lake shimmered with iridescent blue and silver, fit to make a fairy's gown.
The man and girl were strolling peaceably along beside the water's edge, throwing bread to the ducks and laughing at the harassed quacking of a mother-duck in her efforts to control a particularly unruly brood of ducklings, when one of the prince's manservants came hurrying towards them holding something white in his gloved hand.
'Post, eh?' Talleyrand remarked with just the faintest shade of irritation. 'It must be urgent to set them running after us.'
There were two letters, one for Talleyrand, the other for Marianne. The prince raised his eyebrows at his own, which was sealed with the Emperor's arms, but Marianne fell on hers eagerly, recognizing the extravagant curlicues which passed for handwriting with Jolival. She tore open the wafer with Arcadius's martlets arrayed upon it and scanned the few lines within. A despairing cry broke from her. Arcadius wrote to tell her that Mrs Atkins had quitted her house in the rue de Lille 'for the country' but that there was no means of finding out whereabouts in the country she might be. This had happened on the very day Adelaide d'Asselnat had returned home. As for the records of the prison at Vincennes, they contained no reference to any political prisoner by the name of Francis Cranmere – only the traces where a page had been torn out of the book. Whoever they were who had dedicated themselves to the ruin of Jason Beaufort and the disruption of relations between France and America, they appeared to have left nothing to chance.
Marianne's eyes filled with tears as she crumpled Jolival's letter nervously between her fingers. At the same time, she heard her companion saying testily: 'Why does he need me to unveil his confounded column! This means that I shall be obliged to interrupt my treatment. And I have not the least desire to return to Paris, eh?'
But Marianne was conscious only of the last words. 'Return to Paris? You are returning?'
'I must. I have to be there for the Emperor's birthday on the fifteenth of August. This year, to add to the magnificence of the occasion, His Majesty has decided to hold the unveiling of the bronze column he has set up in the Place Vendôme in honour of the Grand Army, made from the metal of twelve hundred and fifty cannon captured at Austerlitz. I am not at all sure it is such a brilliant idea. It can scarcely be very agreeable to the new Empress, seeing that a good half of the cannon in question belonged to Austria. But the Emperor is so delighted with the figure of himself as a Roman emperor which is to surmount the column that I suppose he wants all Europe to have an opportunity of admiring it.'
But Marianne's thoughts were very far from the column in the Place Vendôme, so far indeed as to make her forget even her manners and break in on the prince unceremoniously:
'If you are going back to Paris, take me with you!'
Take you, eh? What for?'
By way of a reply, Marianne held out Jolival's letter. Talleyrand read it carefully and slowly. By the time he reached the end there was a deep furrow between his brows, but he returned the letter without comment.
'I must go back,' Marianne said again after a moment, in a choking voice. 'I cannot stay here, safe in the sunshine, while Jason is in this dreadful danger. I – I think I should go mad. Let me come with you.'
'You know that you are forbidden to go – or I to take you. Don't you think you will only make matters worse for Beaufort if the Emperor hears that you have disobeyed him?'
'He will not hear. I shall leave my baggage and my servants here with orders to admit no one to my room and to say that I am ill in bed and will see no one at all. It will cause no surprise. I did very much the same before you arrived. The people here probably think I am mad anyway. With Gracchus and Agathe here, I know that no one will enter my room and find out the deception. Meanwhile, I will go back to Paris disguised as – let me see – yes, disguised as a boy. I shall be one of your secretaries.'
'Where will you go to in Paris?' the prince objected, looking not at all relieved. 'Your house is being watched, you know that. If the police were to see you going in you would be arrested on the spot.'
'I thought…' Marianne began, sounding suddenly rather shy.
'That I would take you in? Yes, well, I thought of it myself for a moment, but it would not do. You are known to everyone in the rue de Varennes and I do not think everyone is to be trusted. There is a likelihood that you would be betrayed and that would not help matters, either for you or for myself. I am not, you will recall, on the best of terms with His Majesty… even if he has asked me to go and unveil his column!'
'Then it can't be helped. I will go somewhere else – to a hotel perhaps.'
'Where your disguise would be seen through in a moment. No, you are being altogether foolish, my child. But I believe I have a better idea. Go and make what arrangements you need. We are leaving Bourbon this evening. I will see that you have some man's clothes and you can pass as a young secretary of mine until we reach Paris. Once there, I will take you to – but you will see. No need to speak of that now. You are set on this piece of folly?'
'I am,' Marianne said firmly, flushed with joy at a degree of assistance she had scarcely dared to hope for. 'I feel that if I am near him, I shall find some way to help him.'
'He is a lucky man,' the prince said with a faint, rather wistful smile, 'to have such a love. Ah, well, I seem to be fated to refuse you nothing, Marianne! And perhaps, after all, it may be best to be within reach. An opportunity may occur, and if it should, you will be there to take advantage of it. For the present, let us go in. Good heavens, child! What are you doing?' The last words were accompanied by a vain attempt to draw back his hand which Marianne had carried gratefully to her lips. 'Haven't I chosen you for my daughter, after all? I am merely trying to prove myself a tolerable father, that is all. Though I can't help wondering what your own father would say to all this!'
Arm in arm, the lame prince and the young girl made their way slowly back to the village, leaving the lake to the company of the ducks.
Eleven o'clock was striking from the Quinquengrogne Tower when Talleyrand's coachman set his team bowling along the road to Paris. As the coach began to move, Marianne looked up to the window of her room and saw, behind the closed shutters, the glimmer of the lamplight showing through, just as it had done every night since her arrival. No one would ever think that it shone on an empty bed, in an empty room. Gracchus and Agathe had received strict orders, although Gracchus, especially, had proved hard to convince. He had been deeply shocked to think that his beloved mistress could consider setting out on such a perilous adventure without his stalwart support. Marianne had been obliged to promise that she would send for him as soon as possible, and certainly at the first hint of danger.
The darkened countryside sped past the windows of the coach and very soon the motion lulled her and she slept, with her head on Talleyrand's shoulder, and dreamed that she was going to fling wide the gates of Jason's prison all by herself with her bare hands.
Part II
THE PRISONER
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Queen's Lover
The house, when Marianne entered it with Talleyrand, was dark and silent. An expressionless servant in staid, brown livery bearing a branch of candles preceded them up a broad, black marble staircase adorned with a handsome, gilded
rail of wrought iron to the first-floor landing off which, in addition to a number of darkened salons, there opened a room like a large bookroom but so filled with furniture, pictures, books and works of art of all kinds that, if he had not come to meet them, Marianne and her companion might have had some difficulty in distinguishing the bald head and heavy, stooping figure of the Englishman, or rather Scotsman, Crawfurd.
'When I lived in this house,' the prince had observed with a rather forced lightness of tone, 'this was my library. Crawfurd has made it a shrine of a somewhat different order…'
By the dim light of a few, scattered candles, Marianne saw to her astonishment that all the pictures and other objects, or nearly all, were of the same person. In bronze, in marble and on canvas, everywhere the proud, lovely face of Queen Marie-Antoinette stared down at the newcomers. Even the furnishings had come from the Petit Trianon and nearly everything in the crowded room, fans, snuff-boxes, handkerchiefs, books, bore either the queen's arms or her monogram. On the walls, which were hung with grey silk, were many gilt frames in which the occasional note in her own handwriting alternated with portraits and miniatures.
While Talleyrand shook hands with Crawfurd in the American fashion, Quintin Crawfurd himself was watching with a melancholy smile the obvious astonishment with which Marianne's eyes took in the room. At last he said, in the gruff voice which still retained some traces of a highland accent: 'From the first day on which it was my privilege to be presented to her, I vowed to devote my life to the service of the martyred queen. I did all that I could to snatch her from the hands of her enemies and restore her to happiness. Now I honour her memory.'
Then, as Marianne was silent, awed by the strange passion which throbbed in the old man's voice, he went on: 'Your own parents died for her, and furthermore your mother was an Englishwoman. My house shall shelter you against all your foes, and any that may try to tear you from it, or to harm you in any way, shall not live to boast of it.'
He gestured towards a pair of massive pistols which lay on a table and, on a chair near by, an ancient, heavy claymore whose glittering steel blade spoke of the assiduous care which kept it ready for instant use. Yet in spite of the somewhat theatrical drama of his welcome, Marianne could not help finding Crawfurd rather impressive, and he was undeniably sincere in what he said: he was a man who would kill rather than betray his guest. Somehow, startled as she was, she managed to utter some polite words of thanks, but he cut her short at once:
'Not at all. The blood of your family and the prince's friendship make you doubly welcome here. Come, my wife is waiting to meet you.'
If the truth were known, Marianne's feelings when, as they drew near to Paris, Talleyrand had told her that he planned to ask for the Crawfurds' hospitality on her behalf, had been less than enthusiastic. Her recollection of the odd couple she had glimpsed only once, in the Prince of Benevento's box at the theatre, was strange and rather disturbing. The woman, in particular, had both intrigued and frightened her a little. She knew that before her marriages, first, morganatically, to the Duke of Würtemberg, then to the Englishman Sullivan, and then to Crawfurd, she had passed the early years of her life with the Sant'Annas and must therefore be familiar with them. But more than this, she had been conscious of Eleonora Crawfurd's dark gaze resting on her for a long time across the width of the house that night. There was admiration in the look, certainly, and a good deal of curiosity, but there was also something else, a kind of detached irony which did not suggest very friendly feelings. On the strength of this look, she had felt a peculiar reluctance when Talleyrand's coach had turned into the rue d'Anjou-St-Honoré on that evening of the fourteenth of August and drawn up at the door of what had formerly been the Hôtel de Créqui. It was a pretty, eighteenth-century house which, two years earlier, had been the home of Talleyrand himself, while the wealthy Crawfurd had lived, since 1806, in the Hôtel Matignon. The exchange had been made partly as a matter of private convenience, for Matignon was far too big for Crawfurd's household, and partly in obedience to the Emperor's desire to see his Minister for Foreign Affairs installed in a suitably grand establishment, to which, be it said, the minister in question had been by no means averse.
But Talleyrand had retained a certain affection for his old home in the rue d'Anjou and he would not have understood if Marianne had expressed any unwillingness to stay there in the care of people whom he counted among his oldest and most trusted friends. He maintained that Eleonora, who had been his mistress before becoming attached to the unfortunate Count Fersen, was the quintessence of all that was most charming in the previous century, a period which, for him, represented an achievement in the art of living which was now gone for ever. And this despite the fact that she had begun her career as an opera dancer – but then Talleyrand had always had a weakness for dancers.
Meekly, forcing herself to think of nothing but the bed which she was offered and which she longed for with all her heart, Marianne followed her host into a nearby sitting-room where Mrs Crawford was seated, a branch of tall pink candles at her side, working at a piece of tapestry. In her dress of black watered silk, its folds catching the light, with a white muslin cap and a scarf of the same material crossed in the old fashion over a breast that was still lovely, and her silver hair dressed high with one or two long, flowing curls stressing the line of her neck, the mistress of the house bore such a startling resemblance to the portrait of the late queen in the Temple that Marianne paused in the doorway and stared at the apparition as if she had found herself suddenly looking at a ghost.
But the resemblance stopped short at the first impression. The black eyes which looked up, sharp and inquisitive, at the visitor and the red, rather hard curve of the mouth, did not belong to Marie-Antoinette, any more than the figure, which was much shorter and slimmer, or the hands, which were seen to be thin and bony, in spite of the black lace mittens and the splendid diamonds which adorned them.
'So this is our fugitive,' Eleonora Crawfurd said, getting up and coming forward to meet them. 'I am very happy to welcome you, my dear, and I hope you will look on this house as your own. You may come and go as you please in it, for although we have few servants, those few are all people we can trust.'
The voice was a splendid contralto, very deep and warm, retaining some musical echoes of its native Tuscany, and extremely attractive. Eleonora knew how to use it, too, like a real artist.
'You are very kind, Madame,' Marianne said, wondering vaguely if she ought to bow and compromising with a smile and a little bob of her head. In her boy's clothes, a curtsy would have been ridiculous and she did not place much confidence in her ability to make a leg with credit. 'I am only sorry to impose upon you in this way, and perhaps put you at some risk—'
'Tut! Who talks of risks in this house? Quintin and I have run risks all our lives and this, supposing it to be one, is very small by comparison. Besides, I trust your troubles will not be of long duration and that you will soon be able to return to your own house. You were only to spend the summer months – er – taking the waters, were you not? You will be home again in the autumn. Until then, you must feel quite at home here, and to start with, you and our dear prince must take a little supper. You must be in need of it. Afterwards, I will show you your room.'
Supper, at that late hour, was brought to the sitting-room and consisted of some magnificent peaches and some light creams and pastries, as well as a superb Brie of which Talleyrand was known to be particularly fond, washed down with an unusually fine old burgundy.
Conversation soon languished, however, owing to the manifest weariness of the guests. It revived only slightly when Crawfurd remarked, as though announcing a fact of no great importance: 'It appears that Champagny has sent a note to ambassador Armstrong.'
Talleyrand raised one eyebrow, while Marianne roused abruptly from her sleepy doze at the mere mention of the American diplomat's name.
'A note eh?' the prince said. 'And what does it say?'
'How should I know? A
ll I can tell you is that there was a note from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – and that the ambassador's expression has been a trifle less harassed ever since the – the fifth of August, I think it was, when the note arrived.'
'Less harassed? What do you think, Crawfurd? Does it mean the Emperor has decided to treat the Beaufort business leniently? It would be quite easy, of course, simply to let him go…'
'Don't you believe it. The matter is past hushing up now. The seaman, Perez, who, quite between ourselves, seems singularly well-informed as regards political affairs for an ignorant seaman, declares that Beaufort intended to put in at Portsmouth to unload some of his cargo of champagne and is demanding a third of the value as a reward for his evidence, by virtue of the Milan decree. Which reminds me, it's a curious thing how, although the affair was to be kept a deadly secret, every interested department seems to have got wind of it. I wonder what the Emperor thinks…'
'That,' Talleyrand said energetically, rising to his feet and striking the table with the flat of his hand, 'is what we have to find out. The whole business seems to have got thoroughly out of hand, and we are hearing a great deal too much about this seaman, Perez. Don't be alarmed, Marianne,' he added, seeing her pale face and widening eyes suddenly bright with tears, 'I will try to see the Emperor, and if I fail there I will write to him. It is time a few honest voices made themselves heard. But go and get some sleep now, my child. You can scarcely keep your eyes open. Your hostess will take good care of you and I will tell your friends where you are first thing in the morning.'
[Marianne 3] - Marianne and the Privateer Page 20