Marianne and the Crown of Fire Read online

  'Is there no way,' Marianne said in a voice throbbing with anger, 'of making that woman understand that she is not mistress here?'

  'I'm with you there, Ma—milady,' Gracchus agreed. 'I've a good mind to toss her into the river after all and be rid of her. I'm beginning to see her husband's point, and her mother-in-law's.'

  'Not so loud,' Jason said. 'You only have to know how to deal with her.'

  He bent down and, taking the woman's arm, calmly but firmly obliged her to take her seat on the box, taking no notice at all of the poisonous look she darted at Marianne.

  'There,' he said. 'Now that we are all settled, you may tell the driver to drive on, Gracchus.'

  The man gave vent to a guttural cry to set his horses in motion and the vehicle resumed its northward journey over the same road the cossack horsemen had taken the night before.

  Day after day, week after week, the occupants of the kibitka pursued their way from one posting house to the next, never departing from the main road which would bring them, by way of Uman, Kiev, Bryansk and Moscow, to St Petersburg.

  They could in fact have shortened their journey considerably by going by way of Smolensk, but when they reached the venerable and ancient princely city of Kiev, generally regarded by the Russians as the cradle of their country, the travellers found the place in something like a ferment. The packed churches were reverberating to the sound of public prayers and a perfect forest of candles blazed in front of every glittering iconostasis.

  The reason for it was the grave news brought to the holy city by exhausted messengers galloping weary horses. A few days earlier General Barclay de Tolly and his army had been beaten at Smolensk and had abandoned the city after setting fire to it. The chief city of the Borysthenes, one of the greatest of the Tsar's empire, had been virtually destroyed and was now in the hands of Napoleon's Grande Armée, that vast horde of four hundred thousand armed men, speaking several languages, in which Wurtembergers, Bavarians and Danes fought side by side with Schwartzenberg's Austrians, the troops belonging to the Confederation of the Rhine and the Italians under Prince Eugene. And Kiev, the holy city of St Vladimir, mourned for its dead and prayed to heaven to punish the barbarian who had dared to set foot on the sacred soil.

  This news brought about the beginnings of an argument between Jason and Marianne. She was filled with joy at Napoleon's capture of Smolensk and saw no reason, now, to continue her journey to Moscow.

  'If the French hold Smolensk,' she pointed out, 'we can save time and make directly for St Petersburg. We can even beg assistance—'

  Jason's reply was curt and to the point.

  'Assistance? For Lady Selton? Unlikely, surely? Unless you mean to make your presence known to Napoleon? Well, I mean to have nothing to do with him. We had decided to go by way of Moscow and by Moscow we shall go.'

  'But he may be in Moscow before us!' Marianne cried, suddenly defensive. 'At the rate his army is advancing, it is more than likely. What is the distance from Smolensk to Moscow?' she demanded, turning to Gracchus.

  'About a hundred versts,' he told her, after a rapid consultation with the driver. 'Whereas for us it is about three hundred.'

  'You see?' Marianne concluded triumphantly. 'It's no use deceiving yourself. Short of making an enormous detour, by the Volga, perhaps, we can't avoid Napoleon's army. Besides, how do we know Napoleon himself won't take the road to St Petersburg?'

  'You'd like that, wouldn't you, eh? Go on, admit you're longing to set eyes on your beloved emperor again!'

  'He's not my beloved emperor,' Marianne retorted sharply. 'But he is my emperor and Jolival's and Gracchus's too! Whether you like it or not, we are all French and we've no cause to be ashamed of it'

  'Indeed? That's not what's written on your podaroshna, my lady! You had better make up your mind. For my part, it's the Russians I need and I've no intention of making enemies of them by falling into the arms of their invaders. From now on, we travel twice or even three times as fast. I want to get to Moscow before Napoleon.'

  'You want, you want! What right have you to dictate what we do? But for us you would still be held a prisoner by your dear friends the Russians! You seem very ready to forget that they are even more closely allied to England and that your own country is just now at war with your friends' friends. How do you know that these Krilovs you put such faith in are going to befriend you? You are expecting them to help you? Give you a ship? What if they slam the door in your face and will have nothing to say to you? What will you do then?'

  He cast her a fulminating glance, annoyed that she should cast doubts on what seemed to him so certain.

  'I don't know. But it will never happen.'

  'But suppose it did?'

  'Oh, you make me lose all patience. We shall see. There are always ways of finding a ship. If the worst comes to the worst—'

  'You can always steal one? It's becoming a habit with you. Well, it's not always possible, let me tell you. Not even for such an intrepid seaman as yourself. Be sensible for once, Jason, and listen to me. We have nothing to fear from Napoleon and everything to gain. Let us go straight to meet him. I promise you I've no ulterior motive in suggesting it. And indeed,' she gave a bitter little laugh, 'indeed I thought that we had finished once for all with all that, that it was old history—'

  'It won't be old history until you have rid yourself of this overriding obsession to go to him at any cost.'

  Marianne sighed distressfully. 'But I have no obsession, except to get away and go with you, as soon as possible! The only thing is that I have it in my power to do the Emperor a service, a very great service in return for which he will gladly provide me with the best and fastest ship in Danzig – not just a passage, or even a loan, but as a gift! You see—'

  There was no holding her now. In spite of all Jolival's anxious glances, warning her not to show all her hand, Marianne was carried away by her own anger, and by an almost physical need to convince Jason. She was beyond stopping and by the time she saw that she had given too much away it was too late. The inevitable question had been asked.

  'A service?' Jason demanded suspiciously. 'What kind of service?'

  It was said to hurt and she was on the point of snapping back that it was none of his business but she controlled herself and merely reminded him that the question might have been more courteously phrased. 'However, I will answer it all the same, as politely as I can,' she said. 'Naturally, considering the state of your feelings towards the Emperor, I cannot tell you the precise nature of the information I am carrying. I will only tell you that I learned by chance of a grave danger threatening not just the Emperor himself but his whole army and—' She broke off, for Jason had begun to laugh but it was a laughter with no trace of amusement in it.

  'I will follow you to Siberia if you will, you said! And all the time your one object was to reach Napoleon! And I believed you!'

  'And you should believe me still, for I meant what I said, and so I do still. But that does not mean that when fate puts into my hand the means of warning my friends of a danger threatening them that I should do nothing and maybe let them walk into a trap.'

  Jason's brow was set in obstinate lines and he was clearly about to make a sharp rejoinder when Jolival came to his friend's aid.

  'Don't be a fool, Beaufort,' he cried impatiently. 'And don't start behaving again in a way you will be sorry for afterwards! None of us forgets that you have little to be grateful for in the Emperor's treatment of you but you will not remember that Napoleon is not a private person to be dealt with as an equal by us or by you.'

  'I'd have expected you to agree with Marianne,' the American remarked.

  'I see no cause to disagree with her. Far from it. And, if I may say so, this seems to me to be a singularly pointless argument. You want to reach St Petersburg and our way there, whether you like it or not, is almost bound to bring us into contact with Napoleon's army. That being so, Marianne would be betraying her country if she failed to deliver the information she h
as. In any case, to put your mind at rest, I can tell you, if it will satisfy you, that she will not see Napoleon. I will go to him myself when the time comes. I shall leave you and we will meet again later. If you are willing to wait for me, I may even be able to bring you an order for a vessel, in which case there will be no further problem. Does that satisfy you?'

  Jason made no answer. He was standing with folded arms staring down with a grim expression into the blue waters of the Dnieper, which the Greeks had called Boysthenes, as it flowed southwards in a broad, majestic stream at his feet. The travellers had descended from their vehicle and strolled a little way along the river, past the painted wooden houses of the lower town, newly rebuilt after the disastrous fire which had destroyed the commercial district of Podil, with its church and warehouses, in the preceding year. Above them, on a kind of cliff overhanging the river harbour, which occupied the narrow strip of land between it and the stream, was the old town, enclosed within its medieval walls, with its blue and gold onion domes, its rich religious houses and old-fashioned, brightly-painted wooden palaces.

  Outside the inn built of undressed logs which did duty as a posting house, the driver was unhitching the horses.

  Still Jason said nothing and in the end it was Craig O'Flaherty who lost patience and answered for him. Clapping his captain on the back with a force sufficient to have knocked him into the river, he beamed at Jolival with cheerful approval.

  'He'll be a churl if he's not satisfied. Sure, you talk like a book, Vicomte. And you've a knack of hitting on a solution that suits everyone. And now, if you please, let's be making for that henhouse they call an inn and see if they can find us some dinner. I could eat ahorse.'

  Jason followed the others without a word but Marianne had a feeling he was still not convinced. She was sure of it when, after what was certainly the best meal they had eaten since setting out, consisting as it did of a vegetable bortsch to start with, followed by a thick, twisted sausage called kolbassa and vareniki, light, sugared tarts, the privateer got up from the table and announced curtly that they had better get to bed since they would be leaving the city at four the next morning. This was tantamount to a declaration that he intended to do his utmost to beat Napoleon's army to it, and no one made any mistake about it.

  Marianne least of all, for that night she waited in vain for her lover beneath the inevitable icon which, this time, depicted, no less inevitably, St Vladimir. The door of the tiny room with its lingering odours of cooking fat and cabbage never opened to admit Jason.

  In the end, tired of turning over and over on her mattress like St Lawrence on his gridiron, she got up but remained undecided what to do next. She hated the idea of letting a fresh misunderstanding grow between them. This quarrel was a stupid one, like so many lovers' tiffs in which both parties seemed determined to vie with one another in selfishness and unfairness. But with a man as stubborn as Jason, who could carry obstinacy to the point of blind stupidity, it could become protracted. And that, too, was something Marianne could not endure. Their journey was painful enough as it was.

  For a minute or two she prowled to and fro between the door of her room and its small window, set wide open because of the heat which, even at this time of night, was stifling. She was consumed with longing to go to Jason. After all, it was her idea of going straight on to Smolensk which had started the argument and it might be for her to make the first move towards a reconciliation. But to do that she would have to overcome her pride which revolted at the picture of herself going humbly to seek out her lover in the room which he was no doubt sharing with Jolival (which would not be too bad) or, much more awkward, with Craig, and dragging him from his bed to her own, like a she-cat on heat come looking for a torn.

  Still struggling with herself, she lingered at her window which framed a view of the river and the low, flat outline of its eastern shore. The Dnieper ran like a stream of quicksilver in the moonlight and the reeds upon its banks stood out like fine, black strokes brushed in Indian ink. The big freight barges slumbered side by side, waiting for their next voyage and dreaming perhaps of fabulous, distant seas that they would never see, even as Marianne herself dreamed of America which at that moment seemed to her to be retreating farther and farther into the mists of the unattainable.

  She was making up her mind to go down to the water's edge in search of a little freshness to cool the fever that burned in her and had actually begun to reach for her clothes, although still without taking her eyes from the river, when she saw walking by the very man who filled her thoughts.

  Jason was strolling down towards the gleaming water, his hands clasped behind his back in that familiar attitude of his as he paced his quarterdeck. And Marianne smiled suddenly, relieved to know that he too had been unable to sleep. It filled her with tenderness to think that he had been fighting the same battle with his pride as she had with hers. Jason had never found it easy to extricate himself from a situation of this kind. She had only to humble herself a very little and she would have no trouble in bringing him back to her.

  She was on the point of rushing from the room when, all at once, she saw Shankala.

  The gipsy girl was evidently following Jason. Making no more sound than a cat in her bare feet, she was running as lightly as a ghost after the man who drew her and who had clearly no suspicion of her presence there.

  Marianne, in the darkness of her room, felt her cheeks flush with sudden anger. She had had more than enough of this woman. She had not yet exchanged a single word with her and yet her silent presence oppressed her like a nightmare. Through all the long miles they had travelled together in the enforced proximity of the kibitka, the gipsy's black eyes had remained fixed on one of two points: on the white ribbon of the road ahead, at which she would gaze tirelessly for hours on end as though searching for something, or on Jason to whom she would turn from time to time with a smile lurking in her eyes. The look on her face as she moistened her red lips with the tip of a pointed tongue made Marianne long to hit her.

  Jason strolled on slowly until he was hidden behind one of the piles of logs which lined the waterside beyond the narrow strip of quay. At Kiev, the steppes came to a sudden end and gave way to the great forests whose produce was piled beside the waterway that would carry it south.

  Shankala, however, instead of following Jason, had turned aside and was taking a parallel path on the nearer side of the heaped-up logs. Marianne, observing her eagerly, saw her set off at a run towards the rising ground which marked the end of the river harbour. The gipsy's intention was clear. She meant to meet Jason coming the other way.

  Unable to stay where she was a moment longer and impelled by a curiosity she could not control, Marianne left the inn in her turn and hurried down to the river. Jealousy, a primitive instinct, drove her after Jason, a jealousy she could not have justified or explained. She only knew that she wanted to see what Jason would do when he came face to face alone with the woman who had made no secret of her intentions towards him.

  Rounding the first log pile and coming to the river she saw nothing at all, for a curve in its course hid everything beyond. Her feet made no sound on the close-packed sand and she began to run. But when she reached the bend she clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle an exclamation and shrank back into the deep shadows between two piles of logs.

  Jason was there, a few yards away from her. He had his back to her and standing facing him was Shankala. She had let fall her dress and was standing naked before him in the moonlight.

  Marianne's throat felt dry. The witch was beautiful beyond a doubt. With the moon's rays silvering her brown skin she looked like a water sprite emerging from the shining river and born of its substance. Her arms hung loose at her slender sides, palms outward, her head was flung slightly backward, the eyes half-closed, and she stood quite still, allowing a sensuality so powerful as to be an almost palpable thing to work its own magic. Only the slight quickening of her breath, the rhythmic heaving of her heavy, round yet perfect breasts, be
trayed her desire for the man before her. Her attitude was precisely that of the statue of Dona Lucinda in the temple at the Villa Sant'Anna and Marianne almost cried out at the resemblance.

  Jason, too, seemed turned to stone. From her hiding place, Marianne could not see the expression on his face but the total stillness of his body clearly betrayed a kind of fascination. Marianne felt weak and red lights danced before her eyes. She was forced to lean back against the rough tree trunks, incapable of taking her eyes from the scene that held them yet longing desperately to sink into the water if Jason yielded to temptation. The silence and the stillness seemed to last for ever.

  Suddenly Shankala moved. She took a step towards Jason, then another. Her eyes were gleaming and Marianne, in torment, dug her nails into the palms of her hands. The woman's panting breath filled her ears like a rushing wind. She was moving closer to the man who even now had not moved. One step… and one more. She was about to touch him, to cling to him with that form whose very walk was vibrant with desire. Her lips were slightly parted, showing the small, sharp, carnivorous teeth. Marianne wanted to cry out in terror but no sound came from her throat, she was paralysed with shock. In another instant the love of her life would crumble at her feet, like a god with feet of day.

  But Jason had stepped back. His outstretched arm touched the woman's shoulder and held her at a distance.

  'No,' he said.

  Then, with a shrug of his shoulders, he turned away and strode swiftly in the direction of the inn, unaware of Marianne still clinging to the piled logs in her shadowed corner, weak and spent, yet filled with a relief so shattering that she almost swooned with it. For a long moment she stayed where she was, her forehead drenched with sweat, her eyes closed, listening to the frantic drumming of her heart return to normal.