Marianne and the Crown of Fire

Gracchus took Shankala by the arm to help her up into the seat between himself and the driver the girl tore herself free, with the same fierce, angry gesture as on the night before, and springing lightly up under the hood settled herself on the boards at Jason's feet, looking up at him with a smile that was an open invitation.

'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 Armee, 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 has. 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.