[Marianne 5] - Marianne and the Lords of the East

by Juliette Benzoni

  She reached up and linked her arms about the duke's neck, seeking his lips, and they fell back together on to the cushions, she giving a little gasp of pleasure as she felt his weight upon her and sensed the pent-up passion in his body. In her eagerness to satisfy a hunger which had been too long denied and was now brutally awakened, she was already offering herself, but she waited in vain.

  Silence fell, thick and frightening. The weight removed itself from her body and then, quite suddenly, out of the enveloping darkness, as thick and black as the tomb, there came the sound of a sob.

  Marianne got up quickly and felt her way to the desk. Her trembling fingers found flint and tinder, and she struck a light and first one and then another candle came to life, revealing the room with its heavy furniture, its thick curtains and its oppressively businesslike atmosphere, as far removed as it was possible to be from the delirium of love.

  The first thing to catch Marianne's eye was her dress, lying in a snowy heap of satin on the end of the sofa. She snatched at it in a kind of fury to cover her shivering nakedness, still striving to control her breathing and calm the frenzied beating of her heart. It was only then she saw the duke.

  He was sitting on the edge of a chair, his head in his hands and crying like a child whom Santa Claus had forgotten. His shoulders were shaking with sobs and he was shivering so wretchedly that all Marianne's feelings of bitter frustration were swallowed up in pity for him. At that moment, the powerful governor of new Russia looked more wretched and broken than the least of the Armenian beggars that crowded the port of Odessa.

  Hurriedly, she slipped into her dress and did what she could to tidy her hair. She could not bring herself to break the silence, preferring rather to wait for his misery to subside, for she sensed in some confused fashion that it sprang from a deep and private hurt. But when, after a little while, his sobs showed no sign of abating, she went to him and laid one hand timidly on his shoulder.

  "Please," she said gently, "don't cry. It is not worth it. You—you were unlucky. It happens sometimes. You must not upset yourself like this over such a little thing."

  He lifted his head abruptly from his hands, revealing a face so ravaged with tears that Marianne's heart was touched.

  "Not simply unlucky," he said miserably. "It is the curse I spoke of—earlier. I thought—oh, how I thought that you had banished it. That it was lifted from me at last! But it was not to be. I have it still. I shall always have it. It will be with me all my life and because of it my family will die with me."

  He had risen and was pacing the room agitatedly. To her horror, Marianne saw him pick up the heavy bronze inkstand from his desk and hurl it with the full force of his arm against one of the bookcases, the front of which shattered in a crash of broken glass.

  "Cursed! I am cursed!" he raged. "You can't know what it is to be unable to love, to love as other men love. I had forgotten it, but just now, when I touched you, I felt—oh, the wonder, the miracle of it—I felt that my power of feeling was not dead, that I could still desire a woman, that perhaps my life could begin again. But no, it could not! Ever since that dreadful day, it is all over—all over! Forever!"

  He was shaken by a fresh bout of sobbing so violent that Marianne was afraid. The poor man seemed so close to the depths of despair that she cast about in her mind for some way to help him. On a small table by a window she saw a silver tray with a jug of water, some glasses and a decanter filled with a dark-colored liquid that was evidently some kind of wine. Going quickly to the table, she filled a glass with water and then, just as she was about to take it to Richelieu, who had slumped down again on the end of the sofa, an idea came to her. She felt in the pocket of her dress and brought out a small sachet containing a grayish powder.

  Earlier that evening, setting out to keep this dinner engagement which had filled her with such apprehensions, she had brought the sachet with her from her room. In it was a preparation with a base of opium which Turhan Bey's Persian physician had made up for her during the last weeks of her pregnancy, when she was finding it difficult to sleep. It had the power of inducing a swift and pleasant slumber and it had occurred to Marianne that it might prove a useful weapon if Richelieu's attentions should become too pressing.

  Smiling a little ironically, she dropped a pinch of the powder into the glass, adding a little wine to take away the taste. The duke's attentions could hardly have been more pressing, and yet she had quite forgotten what only a little while before had seemed such a vital weapon. Or had she simply refused to remember it in her sudden overmastering need for love? And now the helpful drug was to be used for a more charitable purpose, to obtain a little rest and forgetfulness for an unhappy man.

  She bent and gently made him raise his head.

  "Drink this. You will feel better… Please, drink it and then lie down."

  He drank it all down like an obedient child and then stretched himself on the sofa where not long before he had laid Marianne. His eyes, reddened with tears, were full of a gratitude that went to her heart.

  "You are very kind," he murmured. "You are looking after me as though I had not just made a fool of myself to you…"

  "Please, we'll say no more about it."

  She smiled at him and slipped a cushion under his head. Then, so that he might breathe more easily, she unfastened the high cravat and opened the front of his shirt, so drenched with sweat that it stuck to his thin, dark chest. Then she went to draw back the curtains and open a window to let the cool night air into the close atmosphere of the office.

  "No," Richelieu said, "no, we must speak of it. You must know… You have the right to know why the grandson of the Maréchal de Richelieu, the greatest womanizer in the whole of the last century, cannot even make love to one woman. Listen, I was sixteen in 1782—sixteen when they married me to Mademoiselle de Rochechouart, and she was twelve! It was a great match, worthy of both our families and, like royal alliances, it was concluded by our parents without consulting either of us. And I married her by proxy. I was told that she was considered too young to consummate the marriage, although it was necessary for family reasons that it should take place."

  "Please," Marianne said, "do not tell me this. It will only rouse painful memories for you, I am sure, and—"

  "Painful, yes," he admitted with a bleak smile, "but as to rousing them—even after all these years they will not sleep. Indeed, I believe it will do me good to tell someone, and for that person to be a woman—the one woman I might ever have loved… Where was I? Oh, yes… it was three years after that, when my wife had reached the age of fifteen, that our families decided to bring us together. And when I saw the person who henceforth bore my name, I knew why our parents had been so insistent on the wedding's taking place by proxy. It was so that I should not see my betrothed… If I live to be a hundred I shall never forget the sight which met my eyes as I ran—yes, in my eagerness to see her, I actually ran—up the great staircase of our house. A freak! Rosalie de Rochechouart, Duchesse de Richelieu, was a freak! A dwarf! Hunchbacked and pigeon-chested, with a wizened, monkey face and a huge nose… a caricature of a human being, fit to be shown at a fair. Can you, who are so beautiful, even picture anything so ugly? I felt as if I had fallen into a nightmare. Whether I had a sudden vision of what life would be like with that creature by my side, I do not know now. All I know is that I gave a great cry and fell back unconscious, right to the bottom of the stone staircase.

  "The next day I had myself put into a post chaise… I left a note behind me and I went to recover from my injuries on my estates in the country. I could no longer face Paris. From there, seeing no one, I went off to fight against the Turk, hoping that God would rid me of my life. By then I knew that, whether I wanted to or not, I had no choice but to remain faithful to my wife… You see? It is as simple, and as senseless as that. A wasted life. It is laughable…"

  But Marianne felt no wish to laugh. She knelt beside the sofa, once more cradling the hand of this man whom she had feared, adm
ired, hated and even, for a moment, almost loved, and for whom she now felt a compassion that was something like tenderness. She felt to him as to a brother.

  For her, too, the first taste of marriage had been a cruel disappointment, although it had come nowhere near in intensity to the tragic shock suffered by the young duke. She stroked his hand with a timid gesture of affection, trying to convey to him how much she shared his bitterness and regret.

  He turned his head and looked at her, his eyes already filming over with the effects of the drug, and made a sad attempt at a smile.

  "It is—laughable, isn't it?"

  "No. By no means. Anyone who could laugh must be singularly lacking in heart. The tale of your marriage is one of the saddest things I have ever heard. You are greatly to be pitied—both you and she, for she must have suffered also. And—and you have never seen her since?"

  "Yes. Once. When I—when I returned to France to aid the king, knowing his danger. I understood then… what you have just said, that she must have suffered also…poor, innocent child… poor, wretched soul, imprisoned in a monstrous form. We became friends, and are so still, I believe. She lives in France—at the Chateau de Crosilles… She writes to me… She writes beautiful letters, such beautiful…"

  His words had been coming more and more slowly as his eyelids drooped more heavily and he had difficulty in keeping them open.

  Soon they closed altogether and all at once the only sound in the room was that of his calm, regular breathing.

  For a moment Marianne remained where she was, holding his hand relaxed in hers. Then she laid it gently on the cushion by his side and stood up slowly, wondering what she ought to do.

  Silence had fallen on the house. The well-trained servants had evidently retired to bed or to their own quarters. Only the guards were presumably still on duty at the gates. Somewhere in the town a clock struck one, reminding her that the night was not yet over and that she had work still to do.

  Through the satin of her dress, her hand touched the document which was to set Jason free and she began to tiptoe to the door. Her cloak was still across the landing, in the little yellow salon where they had dined. The duke had not allowed them to remove it when she arrived, but had himself taken it from her shoulders and laid it over a chair in case she might feel a chill from the open window. She decided to go and fetch it.

  Then, just as she was about to leave the room, she thought that she would blow out the candles, so that the duke might sleep on undisturbed. She went back to the desk and it was as she leaned across it to blow out the lights that she saw the letter.

  In the varying emotions of the last half hour she had forgotten all about it, and now she reproached herself. Fate had put into her hand a document which might be vital to the emperor. She had no right to pass it by.

  She put out her hand quickly and, taking the letter, read it eagerly. It was from the tsar in St. Petersburg. What had attracted her attention was a name, that of the crown prince of Sweden, Charles-Jean. The tsar sent his friend Richelieu confidential copies of letters written to him by the former Marshal Bernadotte.

  "The Emperor Napoleon," Charles-Jean had written, "is accustomed to the management of great armies and this must inevitably give him confidence, but if Your Majesty can use your forces sparingly and succeed in avoiding a pitched battle, so that you are able to reduce the war to a business of forced marches and minor engagements, then the Emperor Napoleon is certain in the end to make some mistake of which Your Majesty can take advantage. The luck has so far been almost always on his side, for he owes his successes in the military, as in the political field, wholly to the novelty of his proceedings, but if intensely mobile units can be directed speedily against his weak or ill-supported positions, then there can be no doubt that the outcome for Your Majesty will be happy and that Fortune, tired of serving Ambition, will join at last those ranks where Honor and Humanity command…"7

  The letter went on to express the prince's satisfaction at the conclusion of a peace with the Turks and his impatience for the arrival of "subsidies from England" which would enable him when the time was ripe to "take the Emperor Napoleon's armies in the rear and to attack the borders of his Empire…"

  In addition to this there was a note in which the future king of Sweden spoke of his great wish to annex Norway, then a Danish possession, and of the actions which the tsar might take with regard to Denmark in order to assist his friend Charles-Jean in the achievement of his desires, in return for which he might count on the support, very far from negligible, of the Swedish army.

  Marianne turned the dangerous paper around and around in hands that were suddenly icy cold, handling it as gingerly as if it had been dipped in gunpowder. She could not believe her eyes, and her brain simply refused to register at first what could only be read as the purest treachery. Bernadotte was a Swede by too recent adoption for such friendly letters to Napoleon's enemies to come well from him. But, well or otherwise, Marianne felt that Napoleon must be told of the danger threatening his rear.

  With the idea of copying the letter, she had seated herself at the table and was looking for a pen when she changed her mind. A copy would not do without the tsar's letter as well. She knew Napoleon well enough to be sure he would be unwilling to believe it. She looked at the sleeping man, her eyes full of trouble and remorse for what she was about to do. She did not like the idea of stealing his correspondence but it was the only way. She must take the tsar's letter.

  Without more ado, she thrust the letter into her pocket, snuffed out the candles and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her. To cross the landing to the yellow salon, recover her cloak and hurry downstairs, dragging it around her as she went, was the work of a moment.

  A minute or two later she was scurrying past the drowsy sentries, who barely opened an eye in time to glimpse a flash of white satin vanishing into the night, then drowsed again and troubled themselves no further in the matter.

  Marianne was possessed now with a feverish haste. She had to wake Jolival, get Jason out of his prison and leave Odessa somehow before daylight. When Richelieu woke, he would know at once who had stolen his letter and would be bound to make a search for her. If she was to warn the emperor, she must first make good her escape.

  Marianne picked up her skirts and ran as fast as she could toward the Hotel Ducroux.

  Chapter 11

  Death of a Witch

  FROM the moment when he was shaken awake by an excited Marianne from the chair where he had fallen asleep while waiting for her to return, Jolival knew that this was going to be a memorable night. Fortunately, he was not a man who ever found much difficulty in dragging himself out of the mists of sleep and it did not take long for Marianne to put him in possession of the facts.

  He watched her dubiously for a moment as she waved the two letters under his nose, one the order of release, signed Richelieu, the other a letter from the tsar which had come into her hands somewhat less honorably. Then he asked a question or two which very readily convinced him that there was no time to lose if they did not wish to find their stay in Odessa uncomfortably prolonged. Complimenting Marianne briefly on her prompt action, he began to struggle into his coat.

  "If I have it right," he said, "the first thing we have to do is to get Beaufort and his men out of the castle. But what then?"

  Knowing Marianne, he had put this last question in a tone of perfect innocence, but she replied without a shadow of hesitation.

  "Surely the tsar's letter told you that. Wake up, Jolival! We must reach the emperor on the march into Russia and see that he knows of the danger threatening him at home."

  Busy stuffing shirts into a big leather valise, Jolival only grunted.

  "You talk as if this were Paris and we had only to travel as far as Fontainebleau or Compiègne. Have you any idea of the size of this country?"

  "I think so. In any case, its size does not seem to have daunted the soldiers of the Grand Army, so there is no reason why I should let it f
righten me. The emperor is marching on Moscow. So to Moscow we will go."

  She had folded Alexander's letter again and now put it, apart from the other paper, into an inner pocket in the dress of smooth, dark woolen cloth which she had donned in place of the dress she had worn that evening.

  Jolival went to the table and picked up the paper authorizing the release of Jason and the crew of the Sea Witch.

  "And what of him?" he asked gently. "Do you expect to persuade him to travel halfway across Russia with us? Have you forgotten his reaction in Venice when you asked him to sail with us to Constantinople? He has no more cause to love Napoleon now than he had then."

  Marianne's green eyes met her friend's squarely, with a determination in them that was new.

  "He will have no choice," she said crisply. "Richelieu agreed to release him but he would not hear of letting the brig go. The harbor here is too well guarded for him to repeat his exploit in February. And he can scarcely swim home."

  "No. But he might take a passage in any vessel sailing through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles."

  Marianne made an impatient movement and Jolival recognized that it would be useless to persist. Besides, they both had more important things to do than stand there arguing. They hurried on with their preparations for departure, and as two o'clock was striking from the nearby church Marianne and her friend left the Hotel Ducroux. Each was carrying a single large valise containing their money, a few clothes and their most precious possessions. Everything else had been left behind as too cumbersome for fugitives to take with them. They had also left money, in the shape of a gold coin, on the table in Marianne's sitting room, to pay for their lodging. The things they had left behind would have more than covered such charges as they had incurred, but the affair of the "stolen" diamond was still fresh in Marianne's mind and not for anything would she have left a dubious reputation behind her. It would be bad enough when the police came looking for her, as they surely would, on the grounds of tampering with the governor's private correspondence.