[Marianne 3] - Marianne and the Privateer

by Juliette Benzoni

  Marianne thought this unlikely, even if she remained ten years in the town.

  The boatman had been duly recompensed for his trouble and gave them good night, assuring them that if ever they wanted him they had only to give him a shout.

  'My name is Conan,' he told them. 'Just stand on that rock there and give a hail and I'll be right over.'

  Followed by Gracchus with the big trunk on his shoulder and a small boy humping a pair of carpet bags, Marianne had plunged into the stepped alleys of Recouvrance and headed in the direction of the Tour de la Motte Tanguy. More than a year had passed since she had left Brest on the mail coach but she found her way as easily as if it had been no more than a week before.

  As they drew near to the tower, she was able to pick out Nicolas's little house at a glance: the whitewashed walls and granite cornerstones, the high, pointed gable window and the neat little garden, bare now of its summer flowers. Nothing had changed, not even Madame le Guilvinec from next door who for years had kept house for the secret agent without the least suspicion of his real activities.

  Warned in advance by letter, the good woman came bustling out of her own house the moment Marianne and her escort had come in sight, arms spread wide and happiness written all over her long, rather masculine face, which was surmounted somewhat disconcertingly by the traditional head-dress of the women of Pont-Croix, in the shape of an erection rather resembling a kind of lace dolmen tied securely under the chin. The two women had clung together for a moment, crying a little as each remembered the sturdy figure of the man who had first brought them together.

  It gave Marianne an odd feeling of homecoming to step once again into Nicolas's little house. Everything there was familiar, from the old, well-polished furniture and gleaming brass and copper to the collection of pipes and the tiny figurines of the Seven Saints which stood on a shelf, the well-thumbed books and the little wooden model of a ship which hung from a beam in the low ceiling. She settled into the house more easily even than she had done into the refurbished splendours of the Hôtel d'Asselnat and from then on, whenever the weather permitted, she had spent the best part of her time wrapped in a big, black shawl in the little leafless garden, gazing out at the roadstead and the quays along the Penfeld.

  She had nothing to do but wait, now that the matter of a ship had been settled by Surcouf in his decisive fashion. She had introduced Gracchus as her servant, without denning his duties exactly, but there was little for him to do in such a small house and he passed his days exploring the town, roaming endlessly about the neighbourhood of the bagne and the poor area called Keravel which lay in a cluster of tumbledown houses and twisted alleyways between the wealthy shopping street, the rue de Siam, and the forbidding walls of the prison itself. For company, therefore, Marianne was limited to Madame le Guilvinec who would pop in for an hour or two and sit, knitting interminably, by the fire, or to the worthy woman's cat which had promptly adopted her and was more often than not to be found sleeping contentedly on the hearthstone.

  Time seemed to stand still. Already it was December and even inside the Goulet the grey waters of the roadstead were rough with the great winter storms. On nights when the wind roared with the greatest violence, Madame le Guilvinec would set aside her knitting and quietly take out her beads, to pray for sailors and fishermen out at sea. Then, remembering Jean Ledru's lugger, Marianne, too, would begin to pray.

  Then, one evening, as the short-lived winter sun was sinking seawards into the mist, the town became filled with a clamour so loud that it rose even above the usual noises of the port: whistles blew and there were echoes of commands roared into loud-hailers. Marianne reacted to the sounds like a war horse to the sound of the trumpet. She snatched up her great, hooded cloak and was out of the door, without even hearing the words her neighbour called after her. She sped down the narrow streets in between the tiny gardens, skidding and jumping on the stones, and reached the quay just in time to see the first wagon round the corner from the rue de Siam and turn along the quay towards the prison.

  Even at that distance she could not mistake the uniforms of the guards and the long carts with their enormous wheels on which the men seemed to be crammed together more wretchedly even than at the start, but already it was getting dark and the miserable cortege was soon invisible through the skeins of mist rising from the river. Marianne shivered and, hugging her thick woollen cloak more closely about her, she turned and made her way home to wait for Arcadius, knowing that now the chain was there the Vicomte could not be far off. She had been tempted for a moment to go on as far as the Pont de Recouvrance and wait for him there by the bridge, but then she recollected that if he took the ferry, as she had done, then she would wait in vain.

  He came, guided by Gracchus who had found him at the very gate of the prison, just as Madame le Guilvinec was closing the shutters and Marianne herself was bending over a stewpot suspended over the fire, gently stirring a thick and savoury-smelling soup.

  'Ah, here is my uncle arrived from Paris at last, Madame le Guilvinec,' Marianne said simply, while the Breton woman fussed about the new arrival. What a long journey indeed! He must be tired!

  Arcadius's face was undoubtedly drawn with fatigue, but there was something else in his expression which alerted Marianne at once. His silence, too, was disquieting. He thanked the good-hearted neighbour for her welcome, then went and seated himself on the edge of the hearth, shifting the cat to make room, and held out his hands to the fire without another word.

  Marianne stood watching him anxiously, but without saying anything , while Madame le Guilvinec hurried to set the table. Gracchus stepped forward quickly:

  'Never mind that, Madame. I'll do it.'

  The Breton people are not talkative and they are highly sensitive to atmosphere. The widow of Pont-Croix was quick to realize that her neighbours wished to be alone and lost no time in bidding them good night, saying that she wanted to go to evening service in the chapel near by. Then, scooping up her cat as she went, she disappeared into the night. Almost before she had gone, Marianne was on her knees beside Jolival, who had let his head droop wearily on his hands.

  'Arcadius! What is it? Are you ill?'

  He raised his head at that and gave her a wan smile which only added to her fears.

  'Something has happened to Jason?' she said, anguish suddenly catching at her throat. They have—'

  'No, no! He is alive. But he is hurt, Marianne, hurt badly.'

  'Hurt? How? Why?'

  Then Arcadius told them what had happened. When they halted at Pontorson, one of those on Jason's chain, a young lad of eighteen, had the ague and was calling for water to slake his raging thirst. One of the guards had amused himself by emptying a jug of water over the boy's head and then kicking him in the ribs until he lay still. This had put Jason in a rage. He had sprung at the man and knocked him down. Having done so, he had then knelt on his chest and done his best to choke the life out of him. The guard's fellows had come hurrying to the rescue with their whips and one of the officers had drawn his sword.

  'He was wounded in the chest,' Jolival went on. 'The brutes would have killed him but for one of the other convicts, a man called Vidocq, who encouraged the rest to gather round him and protect him. Even so, the remainder of the journey was a nightmare…'

  'But – wasn't he looked after?'

  Jolival shook his head. 'His comrades did their best when the chain stopped, but they were made to walk two stages on foot as punishment. I thought he would not reach here alive.'

  'It's horrible!' Marianne said tonelessly. She sat back on her heels, her whole attitude one of despair, and stared unseeingly at the familiar room. Instead, she saw a bleak road, swept by wind and rain, and a wounded man dragging himself along in chains, kept on his feet by other vague, human figures as exhausted as himself.

  'They will kill him,' she said. 'He will never survive. Have these poor wretches even a hospital?'

  It was Gracchus who answered:

  'Th
ere is one in the bagne. But I thought the chain was supposed to have a medical inspection at Pont-a-Lézen before they even got here?'

  'The guards refused to leave him there. It's too easy to escape from the quarantine camp. And the man he attacked was against it, saying he'd have sufficient treatment in the prison to make him able to endure the punishment that was coming to him. That man's nothing but a brute beast. He'll not be satisfied until he has his pound of flesh.'

  'Punishment? What punishment?'

  'A flogging first, and then the cells, where he may remain for several months, if he survives the flogging! And there's no escaping from there.'

  The waiting, buoyed up by the very real hopes which Marianne had brought with her from St Malo, had been a time of comparative peace compared with the horror which now took hold of her. She knew now that Jason was caught in the jaws of a relentless and awful machine from which it would be terribly difficult to free him and which might yet destroy him. In his present state, escape was unthinkable and if he recovered it would only be to fall into a still worse plight.

  While she sat lost in these dismal meditations, Gracchus, swearing fluently, had taken up the sailor's pea jacket which he had bought the better to mingle unnoticed with the inhabitants of the great port and was putting it on again. Then, pulling his brown woollen cap down over his ears, he made swiftly for the door.

  He paused at the sound of Marianne's voice.

  'Where are you going at this time of night?'

  'To Keravel. There's a wine-shop by the prison gates where the guards go to drink. I'm known there now and I've struck up an acquaintance with a Sergeant La Violette who's a great one for the bottle. A tot of rum'll be enough to make him tell me anything I want to know – and what I want to know is what's become of Monsieur Jason.'

  A light came into Jolival's tired eyes at these words.

  'He sounds a useful man to know. Well done. You go alone for tonight, but tomorrow I'll come and assist in the saturation of your sergeant.'

  When Gracchus returned, two hours later, Marianne and Jolival were still downstairs, he smoking by the fire in silence, she, incapable of sitting still, trying to calm her fidgets by putting away the crockery. The news which Sergeant La Violette had breathed out, along with the fumes of his rum, confirmed that brought by Jolival in all respects, but with one slightly more encouraging addition. One of the prisoners had been brought in wounded and sent at once to the prison hospital. It was his good fortune that the surgeon in charge of the medical arrangements in the prison was still there at the time the chain arrived. A former escapee being brought back to complete his sentence had managed to inform him and he had examined the injured prisoner at once.

  'François Vidocq again,' was Marianne's thought. But the thought of that odd, insouciant individual who had so annoyed her in La Force, now evoked nothing but gratitude. She could almost have remembered him in her prayers, knowing that it was thanks to him that Jason was alive at that moment. But for how long? The enmity of the man he had knocked down was all about him, watching its opportunity, and that thought, in the days ahead, was to breed in Marianne's heart a vague, but ever-present fear.

  To an outside observer, those days would have appeared calm and unvaried to the point of monotony, punctuated only by the church bells and the castle gun. The inhabitants of the little house lived a quiet, ordered life, attending to their small domestic affairs or walking out, uncle and niece together strolling sedately arm-in-arm through the streets of the town or along the esplanade by the castle, visiting the harbour and the historic old quarters. The young servant, when he was off duty, loafed about doing nothing in particular, as was to be expected of a lad of his age. He would spend hours on the quays by the Penfeld watching the prisoners loading cases of shot and grenades aboard the warships, coiling the new-made ropes as they emerged from the hands of their comrades, working on vessels undergoing repairs and stacking the great baulks of freshly cut timber, still redolent of their native forests, for use in the shipyards. Yet there was another side to these innocent wanderings, which was to gather the greatest possible amount of information and, most important of all, to watch for the arrival of the Saint-Guénolé.

  The lugger was taking an inexplicably long time. According to Jolival's calculations, it should have been sighted at least a week before and Marianne found the delay both fretting and alarming. The sea had been so rough of late that who could say whether the little craft would manage to get safely through the Fromveur channel, with its perilous reputation, round the Promontoire de St Mathieu and make the little harbour of Le Conquet without being driven on to the rocks? Even the fishermen mostly stayed at home and they were saying on the quays and in the taverns that no news had come through from the offshore islands for a fortnight or more. As so often in the winter months, Molène and Ushant were cut off from the mainland by the pounding seas.

  Once the doors and shutters were safely closed, however, the occupants of the house devoted themselves to less innocent occupations. Jolival spent hours painstakingly cutting in half the big bronze sous, in size and thickness more than adequate for the purpose, and just as carefully putting them together again, but with gold coins concealed inside, money being an indispensable tool for the convict. He had also made a copy of the brass numberplate worn by every convict on his cap, with, on it, Jason's number-learned from Sergeant La Violette – only this time in steel with minuscule saw teeth which would enable it to saw through chains. Meanwhile, Marianne had been learning to bake bread and two large loaves had already been dispatched to the bagne, again through the good offices of La Violette. Inside each one was a piece of ordinary civilian clothing.

  After dark, Jolival and Gracchus would slip out of the house and make their way down to Keravel, to the tavern known as 'The Girl from Jamaica' where they were looked on by now as regular customers. Nor was the news they brought back unencouraging. The injured man was recovering, slowly but surely. His youth and strong constitution had won. The danger of infection was past. Arcadius and the surgeon of the prison were, in fact, agreed on the beneficial effects of sea air on healing wounds; but still Marianne was unable to think without a shudder of the narrow pallet of seaweed and the chains which held the body of the man she loved, for the convicts were never released from their chains.

  Christmas was coming and as it fell this year on a Tuesday and Friday was market day in Brest, Marianne went with Madame le Guilvinec on the Friday before, down to the rue de Siam to make the necessary purchases in preparation for the festival which was probably dearer than any other to Breton hearts. It would have looked suspiciously odd if the new inhabitant of Recouvrance had behaved differently from her neighbours in this.

  The weather was mild but misty. The rue de Siam, always at its busiest on market days, was wrapped in a dense yellow fog, making the animation all about appear strangely subdued. The sailors' striped trousers and varnished hats, the rich, colourful costumes of the peasant girls, a different dress for every village, seemed to fade into unreality. The Leon girls, in their tall hennins with long, fringed shawls falling almost to their heels, took on the air of witches from a fairy tale, while those from Plouaré, all smothered in red and gold embroidery, were like so many figures of the Virgin, stepped down from their niches in the church. Everyone, even the old people in their sombre blacks, was transformed into a fantastic being from another world, while the men, with their embroidered waistcoats, wide, pleated trousers and little round hats were as colourful and gay as any.

  Marianne was wandering in Madame le Guilvinec's wake from a stall of oysters to another heaped like a small mountain with cabbages, when she saw a cart loaded with refuse coming towards her. It was being pushed and pulled along by a group of four convicts, one of them wearing the green cap of the incorrigible criminal, under the somewhat vague eye of the guard who was following on behind in a bored way, nose in the air and hands clasped behind his back, oblivious of the sabre banging against his calves. No one took any notice
of them. Convict labour was an everyday affair to the people of Brest. There were even some who smiled at them, as at old acquaintances.

  The man in the green cap seemed especially well known. A ship's chandler, standing smoking his long clay pipe in the doorway of his shop, gave him a friendly wave. The convict waved back and Marianne saw suddenly that it was Vidocq. He was quite close to her by then and, drawn as though by a magnet, Marianne could not withstand the longing to attract his attention. Madame le Guilvinec had paused underneath the awning of a market gardener's stall to gossip with another old soul in a similar dolmen head-dress to her own and had temporarily forgotten her companion. Marianne raised her hand.

  The convict's bright eye caught hers at once. He gave a hint of a smile to show that he had recognized her and then nodded at the next street corner where a heap of refuse was waiting to be carted away. Next, he jerked his head back to where the guard was still ambling along behind the refuse cart and tossed a pebble in his hand, as if it had been a coin. Marianne realized that he was telling her to go to the heap of rubbish where, for the price of a coin, she would be able to exchange a few words with him.

  Slipping swiftly between two groups of people, without Madame le Guilvinec's seeing her, she made her way hurriedly to the corner and waited for the cart to come up with her. Then, taking a silver coin from her purse, she slipped it into the guard's hand, saying under her breath that she would like a word with the man in the green cap.

  The man shrugged and uttered a crack of ribald laughter:

  'That Vidocq! He's a right one for the girls, he is. Go on, then, sweetheart, but not more than a minute, mind!'

  It was dark in the entrance to the alley which was no more than a narrow passage, sucking up the fog. Marianne stepped quickly inside, while the convict, with an unnerving rattle of his chains, stationed himself against the slate-hung wall, half-hidden by a small, wooden shrine adorning the corner of the house.