'We'll meet again very soon, Cousin Marie. When we're married, Etiennette and I, we'll come and visit you in Paris. We'll enjoy that…'
'And so will I, Jacques! Tell Etiennette that I shall not forget you, any of you.'
She felt a pang at parting from him. Although she had met him and his grandmother so short a time before, they had been so kind and friendly to her that Marianne felt as if she had always known them. They were suddenly very dear to her and she promised herself that if better times ever came for her she would show them that they had not helped one who was ungrateful. All the same, Jacques was hardly out of sight before Marianne's thoughts had turned once again to their constant obsession with Jason's fate, which was being decided even then, as she was making such efforts to be near him.
After a brief night's rest, spent comfortably enough in a tiny chamber smelling sweetly of wax and citronella, Marianne found herself as day was breaking seated on the driver's seat of a big wagon full of cabbages beside a taciturn fellow who did not utter as much as ten words in the whole course of the journey. They lumbered away peacefully along the road to Paris, far too peacefully, indeed, for Marianne, who nearly died of impatience a hundred times during the interminable drive.
Luckily, it was not raining. The weather was cold but dry. The way was flat and monotonous but Marianne did not succeed in imitating her companion, who dozed a good part of the time, much to the annoyance of his passenger. Whenever she saw his big head nodding, it was all Marianne could do to restrain herself from seizing the reins and setting the whole equipage galloping madly down the endless highway, at the risk of losing all the cabbages. But that would have been a poor return to her friends for all their kindness, so she possessed herself in patience.
All the same, when the spires of Paris appeared at last through the autumnal mists she very nearly shouted for joy and when the wagon reached the village of La Villette and crossed over the site of the unfinished canal of St Denis she had to stop herself jumping down from her seat and running ahead, but she knew it was best to keep up the pretence to the end.
The powerful smell emanating from the city's refuse dump, near which they were obliged to pass, seemed to jerk the driver out of his doze. He opened first one eye, then the second, then turned his head to look at Marianne, but so slowly that Marianne wondered if he were animated by some form of very slow clockwork.
'Tha coozen t'laundress,' he asked 'wheer dost a live? T'mester said t'set thee doon reet by, but ahm f't'market.'
Marianne had had plenty of time on that endless drive to think about what she meant to do when she eventually reached Paris. A return to Crawfurd's house was out of the question and it could prove equally perilous to make for her own. At this point it had occurred to her that by now Fortunée Hamelin might have returned home from Aix-la-Chapelle. The summer season there was over, surely she would be back in her beloved Paris… unless she had sacrificed that love in favour of her other ruling passion for Casimir de Montrond who was officially under open arrest in the Flemish town of Anvers. If that proved to be the case, Marianne decided, she would wait until it was quite dark and then try and slip quietly into her own house in the rue de Lille. So she answered the man: 'She lives quite near the Barrière des Porcherons.' The yokel's dull eye brightened fleetingly: 'T'beant mooch aht't'road. Ah'll set thee doon thar than.' Upon which decisive utterance he appeared to fall asleep again, while ahead of them, by the side of a broad expanse of fresh water, there loomed up Ledoux's elegant rotunda and the guingettes with their red trellises of the Barrière de la Villette.
Safe in her disguise, Marianne did not flinch when the guards made their routine check. Then they were off again, following the wall of the Fermiers Généraux as far as the Barrière de la Chapelle, after which the wagon turned into the Faubourg St Denis. When Marianne's destination was reached they parted without a word spoken and she set out, shaking uncontrollably with the excitement of finding herself in Paris once more, to run to the rue de la Tour d'Auvergne as if her very life depended on it.
It was something of an ordeal because the streets led steeply uphill all the way to the village of Montmartre. To make running easier she had taken off the heavy sabots, which were too big for her and chafed her unaccustomed feet. Consequently, by the time she came to the white house which always in the past offered her such a warm welcome, she was barefoot, red-faced, tousled and panting, but her only fear was that she might find the shutters closed and the house wearing the dismal, unfriendly look common to all houses when the people who live there are away. No, the shutters were open, the chimneys smoking and a vase of flowers could be seen through the hall window.
But when Marianne entered the gate and made to cross the courtyard to the front door, she saw the gatekeeper come running out after her as fast as a pair of very short legs would carry him, holding his arms out wide as if to block her path. With a sinking heart she saw that he was a new man, one she had not seen before.
'Here! You there, girl! Where d'you think you're going?'
Marianne stopped and waited for him, so that he all but cannoned into her.
'To see Madame Hamelin,' she said coolly. 'She is expecting me.'
'Madame does not receive persons of your kind. Besides, she's not at home. Be off with you!'
He was pulling at her arm, trying to drag her away but Marianne shook him off:
'If she is not at home, then fetch Jonas to me. I suppose he is at home?'
'Fetch him to such a hussy as you? Tell me what name I should say if you want me to go, then.'
Marianne hesitated fractionally, but Jonas was a friend and he was used to seeing her in unexpected guises:
'Say: Mademoiselle Marianne.'
'Marianne what?'
'Never you mind. Go and bring him to me at once and take care Jonas is not angry with you for keeping me waiting.'
The gatekeeper departed unwillingly for the house, mumbling under his breath as he went various uncomplimentary things about brazen hussies forcing their way into honest folks' houses. Not many seconds later, Jonas, Fortunée's major-domo, literally burst out of the glazed front door, his good-humoured black face split in two by an enormous smile of welcome:
'Mademoiselle Ma'anne! Mademoiselle Ma'anne! It is you!… Come you inside dis minute! My lord, but what you doin' dressed like dat?'
Marianne laughed, feeling her spirits revive miraculously at the warmth of this familiar welcome. Here, at last, she had found a safe harbour.
'Poor Jonas! Nine times out of ten I seem to arrive on the doorstep looking like a complete ragamuffin. Madame is out?'
'Yes, but she's coming back soon. You come inside and rest yourself while you wait.'
Dismissing the gatekeeper with an imperious wave of his hand, Jonas led Marianne straight into the house, telling her as they went of the anxiety his mistress had been in on her account since her return from Aix.
'She thinks you' dead! When Monseigneur de Benevento tell her you disappeared, I thought she would run mad, I give you my word… Listen! Here she comes now.'
In fact, hardly had Jonas shut the door before Fortunée's brougham entered the courtyard, described a perfect circle round the fountain and drew up at the foot of the steps. Fortunée got out but she looked very grave and Marianne saw that for the first time since she had known her, her friend was dressed in a plain walking dress of a severe dark purple colour. Also unusual for her was an almost total absence of paint on her face and as her veil was drawn up, Marianne could see by her red eyes that she had been crying. But already Jonas had hurried out to her, calling:
'Madame Fortunée! Mademoiselle Ma'anne is here! See!'
Madame Hamelin looked up and a light of joy sprang into her lack-lustre eyes. Without a word she ran up the steps and flung herself into her friend's arms, hugging her and crying at the same time. Marianne had never seen the light-hearted Creole in such a state and while she returned the embrace with equal fervour she pleaded in an undertone:
'Fo
rtunée, for God's sake, tell me what is the matter! Were you truly so afraid for me?'
Fortunée freed herself quickly and stood for a moment holding Marianne at arms' length, her hands resting on the girl's shoulders while she gazed deep into her eyes with such an expression of compassion that a cold trickle of fear ran through Marianne's veins, leaving her unable to speak.
'Marianne, I have just come from the court,' Madame Hamelin said at last in the gentlest possible voice. 'It is all over.'
'What – what do you mean?'
'Jason Beaufort was sentenced to death an hour ago.'
Marianne staggered as if she had been shot. But after so many days' unconscious expectation of this very thing, she was to some extent prepared, without knowing it, so that the wound had begun to heal over almost as soon as it was made. She had known in her heart that one day she would have to listen to those dreadful words and, as the human body prepares secretly to fight for life against the disease it harbours, so her mind had armed itself against the suffering to come. The danger was too close now, there was no time for weakness, no time for tears or terror.
Fortunée had extended her arms in an automatic gesture, expecting Marianne to fall down in a faint, but she let them drop slowly to her sides as she stared in amazement at the unknown woman who looked back at her out of a face which had turned suddenly to stone. Marianne spoke in a voice of ice:
'Where is the Emperor? At St Cloud?'
'No. The whole court is at Fontainebleau, for the hunting. What are you going to do? You won't—'
'Oh yes I shall. That is precisely what I shall do. Do you think I care for anything in this world if Jason is not in it? I swore by my mother's memory that if they killed him I should stab myself at the foot of the scaffold. What are Napoleon's rages to me? He shall listen to me, whether he likes it or not, whether it suits him or not! Afterwards, he may do to me what he likes. As if it mattered!'
'Don't say that!' Fortunée begged her, crossing herself hurriedly, as if to avert an evil fate. 'Think of all of us who love you.'
'I am thinking of the man I love, and without whom I will not live! There is only one thing I ask of you, Fortunée. Lend me a chaise and some clothes, and a little money, and tell me where I can go in Fontainebleau to avoid being arrested before I have seen the Emperor. You know the place, I think. If you will do this for me, I will bless you to my dying day—'
'Stop!' Fortunée cried distractedly. 'Will you stop talking about dying! Lend you money, my chaise – what are you thinking of?'
'Fortunée!' Marianne protested in accents of hurt surprise, but before she could say more her friend's arm was folded lovingly about her waist and Fortunée was leading her upstairs, murmuring affectionately in her ear:
'We'll go together, of course, you silly thing. I have a house there, a little retreat of my own by the river, and I know every inch of the forest. We'll find that useful if you don't succeed in getting into the chateau – much as Napoleon hates to have his hunting interrupted. But if that is the only way…'
'I can't let you, Fortunée! You may be dreadfully compromised… even banished…'
'Well, if I am, I'll go and join Montrond at Anvers and we'll have a lovely time together! Come, my love. I must say I shan't be sorry to learn how the Emperor came to allow such a sentence to be passed on such an extraordinarily attractive man – to say nothing of one who could not possibly have committed the crimes they have accused him of! A foul murder? Coining? A man with his proud bearing, and those eyes, like a sea-eagle's? It's perfectly absurd!…
Jonas! Tell my woman to prepare a bath for Mademoiselle Marianne at once, and some clean clothes. We'll have a good meal in half an hour and a post-chaise at the door half an hour after that. Is that understood? Off with you, then.'
The major-domo departed speedily in the direction of the stairs, calling loudly for Mademoiselle Clementine as he went, and Fortunée, following more sedately with Marianne, said confidentially:
'Now, darling, we have plenty of time so you can tell me all about it. Where have you been…?'
CHAPTER TEN
The Imperial Hunt
Madame Hamelin reined in her mount beside the worn stone cross, all overgrown with lichens, which stood in the shadow of a broad oak tree at a place where four ways met.
'This is the cross of Souvray,' she said, pointing at the stone with her whip. 'It will be the perfect spot to wait until the hunt begins. I know there is to be a luncheon at the Carrefour de Recloses, about a mile and a half from here, but I do not know which direction the hunt will take.'
As she spoke, she dismounted and, hitching her horse to the trunk of a tall Scots pine, gathered up the long skirts of her leaf-brown habit and strolled leisurely back to seat herself on the steps below the old cross, while Marianne, following her example, tied her own horse to the same tree and joined her friend on the steps.
The cross-roads was quite deserted. The only sounds were the trickle of water somewhere on the other side of a thicket and the rapid scampering feet of a startled hare on the deep, rustling carpet of fallen leaves. A little way to the south, however, the woods were alive with the unmistakable hum of a crowd of people enjoying themselves, punctuated by noises of hound and horn and distant carriages.
'I've never seen an imperial hunt before,' Marianne said, seating herself and settling the ample folds of her dark green habit round her legs. 'What happens?'
'Oh, it's quite simple. All the court is supposed to take part, but in point of fact the Emperor hunts alone, except for his equerry-in-chief General Nansouty, the master of the hunt Monsieur d'Hannecourt, a single huntsman and his Mameluke servant Rustan, who goes with him everywhere. Before Savary was chief of police, he used to be there as well, but now he is obliged to watch over his master at a rather greater distance. As to the formalities-well, everyone, men and women, including the Emperor, set out from the chateau in a procession of carriages. They drive to a point which has been decided on beforehand and there is a splendid collation. When that is over, the court either hangs about doing nothing in particular, except digest their luncheon, or else goes quietly home, and Napoleon hunts. That is all there is to it!'
'I never knew he was so fond of hunting. He never mentioned it…'
Fortunée laughed. 'My dear child, our Emperor is a man with a prodigious talent for creating the right atmosphere, and doing what he feels goes with the part. Privately, he has no great fondness for hunting, very largely because he is an indifferent horseman, and if his horses were not always very well trained he would certainly have a respectable number of falls to his credit. However, he believes that a sovereign of France is obliged to hunt. French kings have always hunted madly – Capets, Valois, Bourbons, were all devoted to the chase. I dare say he feels he owes it to his uncle Louis XVI! And you need not look so downcast about it, either. It gives you all the better chance of finding him more or less alone.'
For Fortunée's sake, Marianne summoned up a wan smile but the fear which clutched at her heart was too great to allow her any pleasure in her friend's witticisms. Jason's life would depend on what took place that afternoon and in the three days since she had arrived at La Madeleine, Fortunée's charming rural retreat, this thought had never left her, day or night.
Almost as soon as they arrived, in fact, Madame Hamelin had hastened to the palace to see Duroc and try, through him, to obtain an audience with the Emperor. The ever-helpful Duc de Frioul had communicated the request to his master but Napoleon had made it known that he did not desire to see Madame Hamelin, intimating that she had better confine herself for the present to her own delightful property and not venture to appear at court. Marianne's heart sank when she heard this.
'Oh, my poor Fortunée! You are involved in my disgrace! He would not see you because he knows you are my friend.'
'Well, if he does it's because he threw us together. Actually, though, I think it is rather my friendship with Josephine which makes him keep me at a distance. They say her new
Danubian majesty is horribly jealous of anything even remotely connected with our own dear Empress. Indeed, I never really thought Napoleon would see me – in fact I expected it so little that I went to the trouble of making a few inquiries on my own account. The day after tomorrow the Emperor goes hunting. You may come upon him at some time during that day – and although he may be a little angry at first, I shall be very much surprised if he won't listen to you.'
'He must listen to me! Even if I have to throw myself under his horse's hooves!'
'Which would be a great piece of folly! With his clumsiness, he'd more than likely ride right over you. And your looks, my dear, are still quite your best weapon.'
It was decided, therefore, and Marianne was left to count the hours and minutes that must elapse before their ride into the forest of Fontainebleau. Yet now, as the fatal moment drew near, her eagerness to be up and doing was tempered by nebulous fears. She knew Napoleon's temper of old. What if he refused to let her speak, sent her away without so much as listening to what she had to say?
Fortunée had taken some chocolate from her pocket and was offering it to Marianne:
'Here. You'll need all your strength and it's none too warm here in the woods. But the luncheon can't go on for ever.'
A little biting wind had got up, sweeping the dead leaves over the surface of the Route Ronde which had been made in the days of Louis XIV to encircle Fontainebleau and a large portion of the forest for the vehicles following the hunt. Clouds raced across a sky more pale grey than blue, just failing to keep up with a dark mass of swallows on their way to find the sun. Marianne's throat tightened as she watched the birds, flying so fast and free, thinking of Jason, a sea bird held basely in a cage until such time as the dull hand of a slavish, so-called justice should strike him down, not letting him see the vast, pure ocean again, even for one day.
[Marianne 3] - Marianne and the Privateer Page 28