Marianne and the Crown of Fire

CHAPTER THREE

The Player Queen

Pain bit sharply through the cocoon of thick mist which for Marianne had replaced the world of reality. It was like a persistent burning sensation and she tried to shake it off but her invisible tormentor refused to be dismissed.

A voice was speaking, a feminine voice with a lilting Italian accent.

'It's better than I feared. Madre mia, but she was lucky! I quite thought she was dead.'

'I too,' agreed a second voice, this time without an accent. 'But her assailant did not. She was just about to strike again when you shouted out and banged the shutters, Vania dear. Luckily we frightened her.'

The voices belonged definitely to the real world. Marianne opened her eyes and nearly closed them again at once at the strange picture made by the two women bending over her in the light of a candle. She who held the light was a handsome woman, no longer in her first youth, with red hair, a pale complexion and golden-brown eyes, dressed in the velvet farthingale, starched ruff and peaked head-dress of a renaissance princess, while the other, who was clad in the dark red draperies of a Roman matron, bent over the injured girl energetically sponging the wound, with such an expression of concentration on her fine, regular features below the piled-up hair and Roman diadem adorned with flame-coloured plumes that her black brows met in a frown above her dark eyes and the tip of a pointed tongue protruded from between shapely red lips.

She was dressing Marianne's wound with the aid of a bottle of brandy and a wad of lint with a thoroughness that drew a moan of protest from her patient.

'You're hurting me,' she protested.

The wearer of the plumes paused in her work and addressed a beaming smile to her companion.

'She speaks French! And without a trace of accent,' she cried, giving full range to a magnificent contralto voice. 'How strange that we do not know her!'

'I am French,' Marianne said. 'And I gather that you are also. But, please, you are hurting me.'

The other lady laughed, revealing small, pointed teeth, irregular but of a flawless whiteness.

'Be glad that you can still feel pain,' she observed. 'In any case, we cannot help it. The girl's knife may have been dirty. The wound must be cleaned.'

'Besides, it is finished,' the Roman lady said cheerfully. 'The wound is not very deep. I've probed it and by good fortune I have with me a quite miraculous ointment. I am going to bandage you up and, with a little rest, I think you will do very well.'

She was doing so as she spoke, anointing the wound with a kind of thick cream that smelled agreeably of balsam and concocting a makeshift bandage out of a pad and a long strip which the renaissance princess had ripped from the bottom of what had once been a white petticoat. This done, she reached for the brandy bottle again, poured a little into a glass and, placing two or three cushions under Marianne's head, obliged her to drink it.

Now that she was sitting up, Marianne could see that she was lying on a large sofa in a fair-sized room but the shutters, drawn tightly across the windows, made it too dark for her to make out many details. However, the candle in the princess's hand enabled her to make out strange shapes of stacked-up and dilapidated furniture.

She felt stronger after the brandy and made an effort to smile at the two women who were regarding her with some anxiety.

'Thank you,' she said. 'I think I owe you a great deal. But how did you find me?'

The Roman lady stood up, displaying a queenly yet graceful form, and moved to a window, her dark red robes swishing dramatically around her.

'We saw it all from this window. Not very clearly, of course, because you were at the far end of the square.'

'You saw it all?'

'Everything. The cossacks and that splendid duel… not that we understood much of what it was about, or of what happened afterwards. It was quite thrilling, and most mysterious. But we should never have interfered if it had not been for the last moment when that woman went for you with the knife. Then we threw back the shutters and shouted so that she ran away and we went down and fetched you up here. And that is all about it.'

'Not quite. Won't you tell me where I am?'

The woman in the ruff burst out laughing.

'That is the first thing you should have asked. Where am I? What's happening? What is that noise? That is the sort of thing heroines always say in plays when they come round after a faint. There is some excuse for you, though, because we must have looked very strange to you, so I will put your mind at rest. You are in a room over the stables in the Dolgorouki Palace. The place is left empty for the best part of the time and the porter, who is a friend of ours, let us in. I might go on to puzzle you still further by introducing myself as Mary Stuart and this lady as Dido, but I will rather tell you that I am Madame Bursay, director of the Theatre Francais in Moscow. And I daresay you will feel more honoured by the attentions of your temporary doctor when I tell you that she is none other than that celebrated singer Vania di Lorenzo, of La Scala, Milan—'

'And of the Theatre des Italiens in Paris! Admirer and personal friend of our great Emperor Napoleon himself!' Dido concluded with a triumphant air.

In spite of the pain in her shoulder and the misery which had returned with the return of consciousness, Marianne could not help smiling.

'You too?' she said. 'I have heard much praise of your voice and talents, Signora. I myself am Princess Sant'Anna and I—'

Before she could finish, Vania di Lorenzo had snatched the candle impetuously out of her friend's hand and was holding it so that its light fell on her face.

'Sant'Anna?' she exclaimed. 'I knew I had seen you somewhere! Princess Sant'Anna you may be but to me you are the singer, Maria Stella, the Emperor's nightingale and the woman who preferred a titled husband to a brilliant career. I know, for I was at the Theatre Feydeau on the night of your debut. What a voice! What a talent! And what a crime to let it all go!'

The effect of this outburst was almost magical because, notwithstanding Vania's genuine disapproval, it completely broke the ice between the three women by reason of that amazing sense of fellowship which exists between all theatre people under any circumstances, however bizarre.

To Madame Bursay, as to Signora di Lorenzo, Marianne had ceased to be a great lady, or even a lady of quality, she was simply one of their own kind, no more – and certainly no less.

While they made a meal of smoked pork and dried apricots washed down with beer – the diet of the refugees in the Dolgorouki Palace was distinctly unorthodox, being derived almost exclusively from the contents of the palace cellars – the actress and the prima donna explained to their new friend how they came to be there.

Madame Bursay and her company had been holding a dress rehearsal of Schiller's Maria Stuart in the city's Grand Theatre the previous evening and Vania had been trying on the costume in which she was to sing Dido in a few days' time, when the theatre had been invaded by a furious mob. The arrival of the first of the wounded from Borodino and the disastrous news they brought with them had driven the people of Moscow wild with rage. A wave of hatred against the French had arisen and spread like wildfire. The people had turned on everything in the city that had any connection with the hated nation. Shops had been broken into and plundered, private dwellings ravaged and even some French emigres with no love for Napoleon had suffered.

'We were the best known,' Madame Bursay sighed, 'and the best loved also, until this unhappy day.'

'Unhappy!' Marianne cried. 'When the Emperor is victorious and will soon be in Moscow?'

'I too am a loyal subject of His Majesty,' the tragedienne said, smiling a little, 'but if you had lived through what we did yesterday—It was horrible! At one time we thought we were going to be burned to death in our own theatre. We had barely time to escape by way of the cellars, just as we were, and then we had to wait for nightfall before we could leave our underground refuge. It was impossible to reach our hotel. Lekain, one of our company who was not rehearsing, did manage to get there unobserved and saw our rooms ransacked and all our belongings thrown into the street and burned. And what was worse, while we women were escaping, our stage manager, Domergue, was caught by the mob and nearly torn to pieces. Fortunately, a company of police coming to prevent the theatre from being burned down was able to intervene and he was taken into custody. It seems that Count