[Marianne 3] - Marianne and the Privateer

by Juliette Benzoni

  'A twofold tragedy?'

  'Yes. Only two women were with Donna Adriana when Prince Corrado was born: my mother and Lavinia. But,' she added, seeing the sudden light in Marianne's eyes, 'do not imagine that my mother revealed to me the secret of his birth. That secret was not hers to tell and she had sworn on the cross never to reveal it, not even under the seal of confession. What she did tell me was that, on the night after the birth, Ugolino strangled his wife. He could not touch the child, however, for Lavinia, fearing for its life, had carried it away and hidden it. Two days after this, Don Ugolino was found lying in one of the stalls in the stables with his skull smashed in. His death was naturally accounted an accident but, in fact, it was murder.'

  'Who killed him?'

  'Matteo. Ever since her marriage to Ugolino, Matteo had been passionately in love with Adriana. He lived for her and he killed his master to avenge the woman he loved. From that day onwards, he cared for the child with jealous fondness, he and Lavinia.'

  The thought crossed Marianne's mind that perhaps, in spite of what Eleonora had said about her love for her husband, Donna Adriana might have returned Matteo's passion? What if the child were his and it was this resemblance which had unleashed her husband's fury? But then, if that were so, why had he not killed Matteo first?

  She had no time to ask her final question. The door of the room opened to admit Quintin Crawfurd. Talleyrand was with him and at once the tragic shades of Sant'Anna fell back before the cares of the present. It was true that the Scotsman's appearance, supported on two sticks with his gouty foot swathed in a mountain of bandages, was funny rather than anything else, but the Prince of Benevento's grim expression was enough to dispel any tendency to laughter. It seemed that once again the news was bad.

  With a bow to the two women, Talleyrand silently held out an open letter on which, ominously, the scrawled signature of Napoleon was clearly to be seen. Marianne took it.

  'Sir,' the Emperor had written, 'I have received your letter which I read with some displeasure. While you were my Foreign Minister I was prepared to overlook many things. It grieves me, therefore, that you should raise matters which it has been my wish to forget.'

  The letter was dated from St Cloud, 29 August 1810. Marianne returned it to Talleyrand without a word.

  'You see,' he said bitterly, refolding the sheet. 'I am in such bad odour at court that I am now suspected of attempting to defend one of my foreign friends! I am deeply distressed, Marianne, most deeply and sincerely distressed.'

  'He wants to forget!' Marianne said through clenched teeth. 'I dare say he would like to forget me also! But he shall not get away with it so easily. I will not let him destroy Jason. I will see him, whether he likes it or not, I'll force my way in, even if they do put me in prison afterwards! But I swear by my mother's honour that the Emperor will hear me! And before very long—'

  She was already half out of the room when Talleyrand stopped her. 'No, Marianne. Not now, at this moment. If I am any judge of the Emperor's mind, you would be as good as condemning Beaufort on the spot!'

  'Would you rather I waited – sat here calmly drinking tea, until they kill him?'

  'I would rather you waited at least until he has been tried. It will be time enough to act after the verdict. Believe me. You know that I desire our friend's release as much as you. Be calm, then, and wait, I beg you.'

  'And what of him? Have you thought what he may be thinking in his prison? Is there anyone who has ever told him to wait, to take heart? He is all alone, or so he believes, at the mercy of this devilish plot. I want him to know at least that while I live I will not abandon him! Very well, I agree not to try and see Napoleon – for the present. But I want to see Jason. I want to get inside La Force.'

  'Marianne!' Talleyrand exclaimed, alarmed by her excited state. 'How can you do that?'

  'Nothing could be simpler.' It was Crawfurd, coolly intervening. 'For a long time now, I have had turnkeys in every prison in Paris in my pay.'

  'You have?' Talleyrand appeared genuinely astonished.

  Shrugging his heavy shoulders, Crawfurd eased himself with a sigh of relief into the armchair which Marianne had quitted, and drawing a low stool towards him tenderly placed his gouty foot upon it.

  'It is a useful precaution,' he said, with a small chuckle, 'when one has had, and will doubtless continue to have, friends under lock and key. It is a practice I have been familiar with for a long time. My first – er – clients were two of the gaolers in the Temple, and after that at the Conciergerie. Since then, I have maintained the habit. It is not difficult, if one has money. So you want to see your friend, little Princess? Well, I, Crawfurd, promise you that you shall.'

  Marianne, trembling with happiness, could scarcely bring herself to believe in the miracle that was being offered her. To have the gates of Jason's prison open to her, to see him, talk to him, touch him, tell him – oh, she had so many things to tell him.

  'You would do that for me?' she asked huskily, as though trying to convince herself.

  Crawfurd raised a pair of china-blue eyes to her and smiled:

  'You have listened to all my stories with such patience, child, that you deserve some reward. Besides, I have not forgotten what my Queen owed to your family. It is one way of paying the debt. Leave it to me. Before a week is out, you shall be inside La Force.'

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  An Odd Kind of Prisoner

  The cab turned out of the me St-Antoine and entered, at right-angles to it, a short stub of a street no more than thirty yards long and ten broad, blocked at its farther end by a low, grim-looking building on one floor surmounted by a mansard roof nearly as high again, behind which rose another, taller building. In the darkness, the few peeling houses which gave on to this close, which was called the rue des Ballets, had a sinister appearance and a bleary lantern fixed above a fat stone bollard bound with iron at the farthest corner of the street, almost opposite the entrance to the prison, shone on the greasy cobbles, slippery with the mud and filth left by the rain which had fallen in the early part of the evening. A deep gutter running down the middle of the street was intended to drain off both the water and the refuse but in practice constituted only an additional hazard in the uneven surface. The cab lurched and the driver brought his horse to a stop under the lantern, alongside the squat, round bollard, and, with a weary, automatic gesture, leaned down and opened the door on Marianne's side.

  Crawfurd, with a swift movement of his stick, hooked it shut again.

  'No,' he said roughly. 'Get out my side. Let me go first.'

  'Why? The bollard will help—'

  'That bollard,' the old man cut her short grimly, 'is where the mob dismembered the body of the Princesse de Lamballe. You will soil your gloves.'

  Marianne turned with a shudder from the worn stone and took the hand which her companion was holding out to assist her from the cab, taking care as she did so not to put too much weight on it. Crawfurd's gout was better than it had been, but he still walked with difficulty.

  Seeing them descend from the cab, the guard who had been dozing in the noisome sentry box beside the gate, his gun between his knees, got up and straightened his shako:

  'Who goes there?'

  'Now then, soldier,' Crawfurd said in a low voice, instantly, much to Marianne's surprise, slipping into a strong Normandy accent. 'No need to shout. Keeper Ducatel is a countryman of mine and we have come, my daughter Madeleine and myself that is, to have a little supper with him.'

  A large silver coin gleamed for a moment in the fitful light of the lamp and roused an answering gleam in the eye of the guard, who uttered a shout of laughter and pocketed the coin:

  'You should've said so right away, man. He's a right one, old Ducatel, and been here long enough to make a few friends, eh. I'm one on 'em. In you go, then.'

  He banged vigorously on the low door which stood at the top of a pair of worn steps and was surmounted by a heavily barred fanlight.

  'Hi there! Ducat
el! Someone to see you!'

  While the driver of the cab was still engaged in turning his horse in the narrow rue du Roi de Sicile, preparatory to waiting for them by St Paul's, the door opened, revealing an individual in a brown woollen cap holding a candle in one hand. This candle he raised until it was practically under the noses of his visitors and then, having apparently recognized who they were by this time, he exclaimed: 'Ha! Cousin Grouville! You're late! We were just going to eat without you. And here's my little Madeleine. Come you in then. You've grown a fine big girl now!'

  Endeavouring to sound as provincial as possible, Marianne managed to utter a word of greeting. Ducatel, still continuing his flow of welcoming chat, assured the guard that 'a nice mug of Calvados' should be sent out to him as a reward for his trouble, and then shut the door behind them. Marianne saw that she was in a narrow entrance passage ending in a turnstile. To the right was the guardroom through the half-open door of which four soldiers could be seen smoking and playing cards by the lights of a couple of lamps. Still talking loudly, Ducatel led his guests up to and through the turnstile, then opened a door into another darkened room at the far end of which was a second turnstile. Here, Ducatel paused.

  'My lodging looks on to the rue du Roi de Sicile,' he said in a whisper. 'I'll take you there, M'sieur, and we'll make a little bit of noise so that the guards know we're at supper. I'd've had you in by my private door, but it's always best to look open and above board.'

  'I can find my way alone, my good Ducatel,' Crawfurd replied in the same tone, nodding approval as he spoke. 'You take the lady to the prisoner you know of.'

  Ducatel nodded his understanding and opened the gate:

  'This way, then… He's an important prisoner so he's not in the new building. He's been put with the "specials" in the Condé room… very nearly by himself.'

  As he spoke, Ducatel unlocked a further door and led Marianne across a courtyard. Crawfurd, meanwhile, turned to the left in the direction of the region known as the Kitchen Court, an appellation more than justified by the powerful smell of greasy soup emanating from it, beyond which lay the keeper's quarters.

  As she followed the turnkey, Marianne looked about her with distaste at the buildings surrounding the courtyard and the treeless expanse of cracked paving which was the entrance to the prison itself: high, menacing walls, crumbling and worm-eaten, dotted with barred windows from behind which came an assortment of nightmare groans and shrieks, hideous laughter and the sound of men snoring, and all the other multifarious noises made by the dirty and dangerous portion of humanity penned within by crime and fear. Four floors of rogues, thieves, debtors, convicts escaped and recaptured, murderers, criminals of every kind which the slums of Paris and elsewhere had thrown up into the net of the police. Here was none of the medieval yet not altogether squalid simplicity of Vincennes, for this was not a place for prisoners of state, held for political offences. This was the common gaol, where all the vilest felons were huddled in appallingly overcrowded conditions.

  'We had a bit of a job,' Ducatel confided to Marianne, 'to find him a corner that was a bit quiet-like.' He was leading her up a staircase whose wrought-iron handrail betrayed that in the days of the dukes of La Force it had been noble and handsome, though now the treads were cracked and slippery and made the ascent perilous. 'The prison is stuffed as full as it can hold, you know. Never gets much emptier, either. Here we are now…' He indicated an iron-studded door which had come into view in the thickness of the wall. The keeper opened a spy-hole in the door and a little yellowish light filtered out into the passage.

  'Someone to see you, M'sieur Beaufort!' he said into the opening before drawing the bolts. Then he added in a lower tone to Marianne: 'It's not my fault, M'dame, but I can't let you have more than an hour or so, I'm afraid. I'll be back to fetch you before they do the rounds.'

  'Thank you. You are very kind.'

  The door opened almost noiselessly and Marianne slipped through the opening and stood looking a little startled at the sight which met her eyes. On either side of a rickety table, two men were seated, playing cards by the light of a candle. Something which might have been another man was lying curled up in a ball in the corner, on one of the three truckle beds, wrapped in an uneasy slumber. One of the two card players was Jason. The other was an individual about thirty-five years old, tall, dark and active-looking with a good-looking face, regular features, a mocking curve to his lips and bright, inquisitive black eyes. Seeing that a woman had entered the room, the second man rose at once while Jason, too surprised to do more than stare, sat still, the cards still in his hand:

  'Marianne! You! But I thought—'

  'I thought,' his companion broke in with heavy irony, 'that you, my friend, were a gentleman. Did no one ever teach you to stand up for a lady?'

  Jason rose mechanically and as he did so received Marianne full in his arms, laughing and crying at once.

  'Oh, my love, my love! I couldn't bear it! I had to come—''

  'This is madness! You should be in exile, they may be looking for you…'

  But even as he protested, his hands were drawing her face close to his. His blue eyes shone out of a face too deeply weatherbeaten for a few weeks' incarceration to whiten it with a joy which his words tried to deny. His expression, oddly touching in a man of his strength, was like that of a lonely, unhappy child who, expecting nothing, suddenly finds that Father Christmas has come and brought him the most wonderful present. He gazed at Marianne, unable to speak another word, then suddenly crushed her to him and kissed her hungrily, like a starving man. Marianne closed her eyes and abandoned herself to his kiss, feeling as if she could die of happiness. It was nothing to her that the man who held her in his arms was unshaven and filthy dirty, and that the cell smelled anything but sweet. It was obvious that, to her, paradise had nothing more to offer.

  From their respective positions by the table and the door, the other prisoner and Ducatel looked on, smiling, and with a degree of awed fascination, at this unexpected love scene. However, when it showed no signs of breaking up, the prisoner gave a shrug and, throwing his cards down on the table, announced: 'Right! I'm not wanted here. Ducatel, will you ask me to supper?'

  'With the best will in the world, my lad. You're already expected.'

  The effect of this exchange on the two lovers was to bring their embrace to a swift conclusion and they stood looking so shamefaced at the speed with which they had forgotten the existence of everything but themselves that the prisoner burst out laughing:

  'It's all right, you needn't look like that, you know! We all know what it is to be in love.'

  Marianne gave him a withering glare and turned indignantly to the keeper:

  'Is it necessary that Monsieur Beaufort should be forced to endure the company of—'

  'Of people like me? Alas, Madame, the prison is overfull and it cannot be helped. But we don't rub along too badly, do we, friend?'

  'No,' Jason responded, grinning, in spite of himself, at Marianne's outraged expression, 'it might be a great deal worse! In fact, I'll even introduce you.'

  'Spare yourself the trouble,' the other prisoner interrupted him. 'I mean to do that myself. Fair lady, you see before you your genuine gallows bird, not often met with in polite society: François Vidocq of Arras, three times convicted felon and in a fair way to be so again. Deep bow and exits left, as they say in the theatre. Come, Ducatel. I'm hungry.'

  'And that?' Marianne said furiously, indicating the black bundle which had continued to jerk and mutter indistinguishably. 'Aren't you taking that with you?'

  'Who? The abbé? He'll not trouble you. He's half-cracked and talks nothing but Spanish. Besides, it would be a shame to wake him. He's having such lovely nightmares.'

  And escorted almost respectfully by the keeper, the strange prisoner, apparently very much at home, departed from the cell to go and sup with his gaoler as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  'Well!' said Marianne, recovering from
her astounded contemplation of this exit. 'Who is that man?'

  'He told you,' Jason said, folding her in his arms again. 'He is an habitual felon, always escaping and as often returning, what they call here an old lag.'

  'Is he – a murderer?'

  'No, a thief merely. I am the murderer here,' Jason said wryly. 'He's a curious fellow, but I owe him my life.'

  'You do?'

  'Yes, indeed! You don't know this prison. It is a hell inhabited by demons, a sink of all that is base and cruel and ugly, where the law of the strongest prevails. I was a stranger – well dressed, which was enough to make them take me in dislike. I should have been a dead man beyond a doubt if François had not taken me under his protection. He is a great man hereabouts, and he has the trick of taming these ravening beasts. That poor devil sleeping over there has him to thank that he is still alive. It's a grand thing to be a master of escape. Even the turnkeys respect him – as you've seen!'

  Marianne understood the danger which had threatened Jason on his first arrival at La Force better than he could have known. She herself retained vivid memories of the one night she had spent in the prison of St Lazare and from time to time in her dreams she still saw the leering face of the woman known as La Tricoteuse who had tried to kill her only because she was young and beautiful. She saw the yellow eyes and evil grin, and the horrible skill with which the creature had wielded her clumsy knife.

  Just then, the black bundle which was an abbe stirred suddenly on his pallet bed and sat up with a smothered shriek. Marianne could see a gaunt, raggedly bearded face and eyes that looked at her with staring terror.

  'Tranquilo,' Jason murmured quickly. 'Es un'amiga.'