Still out of breath from her haste, Marianne asked: 'Have you any news?'
'Yes. I saw him this morning. He is better, but still far from well.'
'How much longer?'
'A week, at least, maybe ten days.'
'And after that?'
'After?'
'Yes… they told me he… was to suffer some punishment…'
The convict shrugged with a gesture of fatalism. 'He's certainly earned a flogging. It all depends on the man who administers it… If he goes easy with it, he'll survive.'
'But I can't – not even the thought of it! He must escape first. If not, he may be crippled – or worse!'
Quick as a snake, the convict's arm shot out from his jacket pocket and clamped down on Marianne's arm.
'Not so loud!' he growled. 'You talk of it as if it were like going to church! Don't worry, everything's in hand. Have you a vessel?'
'I shall have – or so I hope. It has not arrived yet and…'
Vidocq frowned. 'Without a boat, the thing can't be done. As soon as the alarm is given from the bagne, everyone for miles round takes up the hunt. It's worth a hundred francs to capture a man on the run… and there's a gipsy encampment right by the gates with just that one thought in mind. Real bloodhounds! The moment the gun goes off, it's out with the scythes and pitchforks and away!'
The other convicts had by now finished heaping the refuse somewhat haphazardly on to the cart and the comite's head poked round the corner:
'Ready, Vidocq… on your way, now!'
Vidocq dragged himself away from the wall and began to move out into the street:
'When your boat comes, tell Kermeur at the Girl from Jamaica. But try and make it in a week from now – ten days at the latest. So long!'
Without giving a further thought to Madame le Guilvinec, who had in any case disappeared from sight and was probably looking for her at that moment in some other part of the market, Marianne made her way back to the esplanade by the castle, eager to get back to Recouvrance at once and tell Jolival what had occurred. The street sloped steeply and the bumpy cobblestones were slippery with damp but she was almost running, Vidocq's words whirling round and round in her head: in a week – ten days at most… and Ledru had not come, might never come! They must do something – find a boat… They could not afford to wait any longer. Something must have happened to Ledru and they would have to make other arrangements…
As luck would have it, old Conan, the ferryman, was on her side of the river, sitting on a rock, smoking his pipe as placidly as if the sun were shining, and spitting from time to time into the water. Marianne was so excited that had he been on the other bank she might very well have jumped straight into the river in her haste to get across. As it was, she was in the boat before the good man had so much as noticed that he had a customer.
'Hurry!' she ordered. 'Take me across!'
The old man shrugged expressively. 'Bah!' he grunted. 'You young folks, always in a hurry. It's a wonder you take time to breathe!'
All the same, he plied his oars rather more energetically than usual and not many minutes later Marianne was scrambling out on to the rocks, tossing the man a coin as she went, and setting off homewards at a run. When she burst, panting, into the house, Jolival was standing by the table, deep in conversation with a fisherman who had just set down his basket full of fresh, steel-blue mackerel. The smell of fish mingled with that of the wood fire in the hearth.
'Arcadius!' Marianne began urgently. 'We must find a boat at once. I have seen—'
She broke off for the two men had turned and she saw that the fisherman was none other than Jean Ledru.
'A boat?' he asked in his placid voice. 'What for? Won't mine do for you?'
Feeling her legs give way beneath her, Marianne sank down on to the settle and undid her heavy cloak, which seemed to have grown suddenly too hot. Then she pushed back the linen bonnet which covered her hair and gave a sigh of relief:
'I thought you would never come – that something had happened to you!'
'No, all went well. Only I had to put in to Morlaix for a few days. One of my men was… sick.'
He hesitated slightly over this explanation but Marianne was too glad to see him to be conscious of any such detail.
'Never mind,' she said. 'You are here now. And you have your boat?'
'Yes, not far from the Madeleine tower. But I'm off again soon, back to Le Conquet.'
'You're going away?'
Jean Ledru indicated the basket of mackerel:
'I'm an ordinary fisherman, come to sell my catch. That's my only apparent motive for being in Brest. But don't worry. I shall be back tomorrow. Is everything ready, as we decided at St Malo?'
In a few words, Arcadius and Marianne told him all that had happened since she had last seen him: Jason's injury, the impossibility of his being in any condition to attempt an escape before another week was out, and the threat which hung over him as soon as he was in a way to be better which left them so small a margin of time in which to get him out. To all this, Jean Ledru listened, frowning and chewing the ends of his moustache with increasing discontent. When Marianne came to the end of her conversation with Vidocq that morning, he slammed his fist down on the table with such violence that the fish leaped on their bed of seaweed and rushes.
'You are forgetting one thing – one rather important thing. The sea. You can't treat that with impunity. The weather in a week's time will have made the Iroise impassable. Your prisoner must be aboard the vessel coming to pick him up at Le Conquet in five days at the latest.'
'What vessel is this?'
'Never you mind. The one that's to take him across the ocean, of course. It will be off Ushant in three days and it can't lie off the coast for long without the coastguard seeing it. We sail on Christmas Eve.'
Marianne and Jolival stared at each other speechlessly. Had Ledru gone mad, or had he understood not one word of all that they had told him? In the end it was Marianne who spoke first.
'Jean,' she said again, very quietly, 'we told you, a week at least before Jason will be strong enough to climb a rope or scale a wall or do any of the other things he will have to do if he is to escape.'
'I suppose he is strong enough, at least, to saw through the chain fastening him to his bed? You tell me you have managed to get all the tools he needs smuggled in to him, and money to buy himself extra food?'
'Yes, we have done all that,' Jolival said quickly. 'But it is still not enough. What would you do?'
'Carry him off, just like that. I know where the prison hospital is, the end building, almost outside the prison itself. The walls are not so high – easier to climb. I have ten men, all used to going aloft in a full gale. To get into the hospital, get your friend out and over the wall will be child's play. We simply knock out anyone who gets in our way. It'll be all over in a brace of shakes. High tide on Christmas Eve is midnight. We can sail on the turn. The Saint-Guénolé will be moored off Keravel. Besides' – he grinned briefly at the two startled faces before him, 'it'll be Christmas Eve – and the guards have their own way of celebrating. They'll be drunk as lords. We'll have no trouble from them. Any other objections?'
Marianne took a deep breath, as if she had just surfaced after swimming for a long time under water. After all these days of doubt and anxiety, Jean Ledru's quiet confidence left her feeling slightly dashed. But, goodness, what a comfort he was! She smiled.
'I'd hardly dare! You wouldn't listen to them if I had, would you?'
'No, I shouldn't,' he agreed seriously, but his eyes twinkled suddenly as he hoisted the fish basket back on to his shoulder, with the crinkling smile which, in this taciturn Breton, was a sign of extravagant mirth:
'Warn the prisoner it's for Monday night. Let him have his chain cut through by eleven o'clock. The rest is up to me. As for yourselves – watch for the boat and when you see her alongside wait until it's dark and then go aboard.'
With a final wave of his hand, the sailor passed o
ut of the house and through the little garden then, with his basket on his shoulder, he set off with great strides in the direction of the harbour. For a little while, the sound of his whistling came floating back to them up the steep, narrow streets, the same, jaunty little tune which Marianne had heard once before, one anguished morning as she stood watching a tiny sailing boat put slowly out to sea, leaving her the captive of Morvan the Wrecker: it was the song of Surcouf's sailors:
The thirty-first of August,
With the larboard watch below,
We spied an English frigate…
Left alone, standing looking at each other across the table on which Jean had left them a few fish, Marianne and Jolival said nothing for a moment or two. Finally, Arcadius gave a shrug and went to fetch himself a cigar from the blue Delft jar. He sniffed it gently for a moment before bending and taking a light from the fire. A rich, tobacco smell filled the room, overcoming the smell of fish.
'He's right,' he said at last. 'It pays to be bold in matters like this. Anyway, we have no choice.'
'You think he will be able to do it?' Marianne asked anxiously.
'I hope so! If he can't, my dear child, nothing can save us. We shall all be hanged at the yard-arm – unless they decide to shoot us instead. There will be no quarter, you know, if we are caught? Are you afraid?'
'Afraid? The only thing I fear, Jolival, is a life without Jason. I care for nothing else, rope or a shot is all one to me.'
Arcadius drew luxuriously on his cigar and then considered the glowing tip of it intently.
'I always knew you had the makings of a great tragic heroine,' he said equably. 'Or else a great lunatic! For my own part, I've no complaints about staying alive and since we've seven saints in the house, I'll ask them kindly to make sure this exciting Christmas Eve which our ebullient captain promises us may not be our last.'
With that, Arcadius strolled out to finish his cigar in the garden while Marianne, left to herself, started unthinkingly to gut the fish.
December the twenty-fourth began badly. When daylight dawned belatedly, it was to reveal dense, yellow fog, thick enough to cut with a knife. Recouvrance, with its grey stone walls and isolated trees, might have been a lost world drifting in some cloudy infinite. Visibility extended no further than the tower of La Motte Tanguy. Everything else, town, port, castle and roadstead, had vanished as utterly and completely as if the hill had loosed its moorings suddenly and sailed away into the sky, like some enormous air balloon.
Marianne, who had not slept a wink all night long, stared out resentfully at the fog. Fate seemed to be taking a malicious pleasure in making things difficult for her. She was angry with fate, angry with nature, angry with herself for her own fidgets, she was even angry with the world for continuing to turn in its ordinary way while she was in such suspense. She was so nervous and complained so many times that they could never see the Salnt-Guénolé even supposing that she was able to feel her way into the river mouth, that in the end Jolival told Gracchus to go and keep watch from the rocks by the castle point on whatever shipping appeared.
This was at about noon and after that Marianne did make some effort to behave normally for the remainder of the crucial day which was to decide the whole course of her life. Even then, she could not refrain from asking the endlessly patient Jolival a hundred times over if he were quite sure that Jason had been warned to hold himself in readiness and if François Vidocq had also been alerted, as he had requested, so that he could help the American while at the same time seizing a heaven-sent opportunity to escape himself. For Marianne was quite sure that Vidocq was not the man to do anything for nothing.
Madame le Guilvinec, who was spending the festive season with her niece at Portzic, came in during the morning to make sure that her neighbour would want for nothing during her absence and also to bring the traditional yule log which was supposed to be put on the fire to burn slowly up to the time for midnight mass. This one was prettily decorated with red ribbons, golden laurel leaves and sprigs of holly, and Marianne was all the more touched by this mark of friendship because she had been careful to give no hint of her intention to leave Brest that night for the last time and had been inclined to look on the niece's invitation as a stroke of luck.
The good lady was so distressed at the thought of leaving her new friends for this, their first Christmas, that she came back two or three times to ask them if they would not rather she stayed, or would like to come with her to her family. However, in the face of their firm, though smiling refusal, she eventually brought herself, with many expressions of regret, to say good-bye, although not without innumerable injunctions to Marianne regarding local customs: the welcome to be given to the youthful carol singers, not to forget to say a prayer for the dead before going off to midnight mass, to have the hearth cakes and the chicken ready for the modest revelllon which should follow and a host of other things, one of the most important of which was a strict injunction to remain fasting until the evening.
'To eat nothing?' Jolival protested. 'When we have enough ado as it is to make her eat like anyone else?'
Madame le Guilvinec raised an admonitory finger to the blackened rafters:
'If she wants to see miracles happen on the holy night, or even if she wants her own wishes to come true, she must take nothing all day long, not until after dark when she can count nine stars in the sky. If she is still fasting when the ninth star comes out, then she can expect to have a gift from heaven.'
Arcadius, being a rational man with a strong aversion to anything that smacked of superstition, might have muttered a little, but Marianne was deeply attracted by this romantic prophecy. It was with eyes suddenly softened that she looked at the widow from Pont-Croix, standing there in her black garments, like some antique sibyl.
'The ninth star,' she said seriously. 'I will wait, then, until it is out. Although in this fog—'
'The fog will go away with the tide. God bless you and keep you, young lady. Nicolas Mallerousse did well to leave his house to you.'
With one last stroke for her cat which she was leaving with her neighbours, she was gone and Marianne, watching her wide, black cloak billowing along the road to the church, felt oddly sad for a moment. Just as Madame le Guilvinec had predicted, the fog was already beginning to clear, blown away by the gusts of wind that had got up, and by the beginning of the afternoon it had gone completely, leaving the countryside restored to all its wild beauty. It was about an hour after this that a lugger with red sails entered the harbour channel below the castle and came on up the Penfeld. The Saint-Guénolé had reached the rendezvous. The adventure had begun.
That evening, when it was quite dark, Marianne, Jolival and Gracchus left the house silently. They locked the door behind them, having taken care to leave a window open and unshuttered so that Madame le Guilvinec's cat, left with ample supplies of fish and milk, might come and go at will. Gracchus skipped lightly over the low garden wall and slid the key under the neighbour's door, along with a note explaining that Marianne and her 'uncle' had been obliged to return to Paris unexpectedly.
It was long after the time when the castle gun and the great bell of the prison had announced the end of work for the day and the church bells had rung for evening prayer, yet the town was not going to sleep as it usually did. The ships of war were dressed overall and as the lights went up on the mastheads so the lighted sterncastles showed that those aboard were keeping their own Christmas Eve. From the taverns came the sounds of lusty voices singing everything from the old Christmas carols down to lewd sea shanties, while the streets were full of people, whole families of them, all in their best caps and bonnets, the men carrying in one hand a lantern and in the other the knotted wooden staff called the pen-bas, and all hurrying off to spend the evening with friends until the time came round to go to church. There were groups of small boys as well, armed with beribboned branches, going the rounds of the houses knocking on doors and singing carols for all they were worth, for the reward of a few
coins or a cake apiece. The whole town basked in the aromatic scents of cider, rum and pancakes.
The three of them attracted little notice, in spite of the small box containing Marianne's few clothes and her jewels which Gracchus carried under his arm, beneath his heavy cloak, and her own carpet bag. There was little to mark them out from other pedestrians that night.
Once they reached the other side of the Pont de Recouvrance, the bridge being the shorter way on this occasion, they began to encounter the occasional drunk. The lights of the taverns at the lower end of the rue de Siam, near the harbour, shone out across the pavement, and now and then gleamed on the dark water beyond. Everywhere there was a holiday feeling in the air and only those few vessels that were putting to sea on the tide showed any signs of activity aboard.
Marianne had taken Arcadius's arm and all the way she kept her eyes glued to the dark sky, counting the rare stars that appeared there. So far, she had reached no more than six and Jolival smiled at her worried face.
'If it clouds over, you're likely to starve to death, my child.'
She only shook her head, without answering, then pointed suddenly to where the seventh star had come out, above the tall masts of a frigate in the bay. As for starving, until she had found Jason again she was oblivious of hunger.
At the same time, she caught sight of the lugger, tied up below Keravel, and the figure of Jean Ledru beckoning on the deck. The Saint-Guénolé looked very small alongside the brig Trident and the two frigates, Sirène and Armide, berthed close by, but her very insignificance was a safeguard, as was the single, modest riding light at her masthead.
Seconds later, the fugitives had crossed the plank connecting her with the shore and were aboard. Suddenly, in the yellow light of the ship's lanterns, Marianne found herself the centre of a ring of silent faces which might have been carved out of mahogany, despite the many blond heads and beards among them. Dressed all alike in thick, dark jerseys, their caps pulled well down over their eyes, Jean Ledru's men looked far more like a crew of pirates than of honest seamen, but all their faces wore the same look of grim determination and the muscles beneath the heavy jerseys were certainly like knotty oaks.
[Marianne 3] - Marianne and the Privateer Page 35