great bond of affection between us and I am anxious about her. She is so fragile, so helpless—'
He seemed to be very much disturbed all of a sudden and Marianne held out her hands to him impulsively. Two days before, she had not even met him, and yet now the feelings he inspired in her were so warm that they could readily be called friendship.
'You will find her – and you will see again the woman you love. What is her name?'
'Angelina. Angelina Bereyter. She is an actress.'
'She must be very beautiful. You shall tell me about her. It will help to pass the time. You told me the other day that you would like to be my friend. Would you like us to seal that friendship today – a real friendship, such as you might feel for another man?'
Beyle laughed. 'You are a deal too lovely for that, I fear! I am only a man, after all.'
'Not to me, since you love another. My heart, too, belongs to someone else. You shall be my brother. And my name is Marianne. It's as well for a husband to know his wife's name.'
His answer was to kiss the hands she gave him, one at a time, and then, perhaps in order to conceal an emotion he was ashamed to let her see, he hurried from the room, saying he would send Barbe to her.
The brief respite allowed to Beyle by the Quartermaster-General was over the next morning. A messenger was knocking on the door at the crack of dawn to tell him he was wanted. The Emperor did not mean to waste a moment in bringing Moscow back to life again.
'He's firing off orders in all directions,' the courier said. 'There's work for you.'
There was indeed. They did not set eyes on Beyle again until the evening and by then he was exhausted.
'I don't know who was fool enough to suggest that the Emperor was overcome by the amount of destruction done to this confounded city,' he said privately to Marianne. 'He's as busy as a bee. He's ridden three times round the ruins since this morning and orders are pouring out like hail. The Kremlin is to be put in a defensive state and the same with all the fortified monasteries in the vicinity. There are orders, too, to fortify all the posting houses along the road to France and institute a regular service of couriers. Orders have been despatched to the Duc de Bassano and General Konopka in Poland to muster a force of six thousand Polish lancers – 'those Polish Cossacks', as his Majesty called them – and get them here in double-quick time, since it seems that we have now run short of troops. Orders to station troops all along the way to Paris to guard our rear—'
'But you surely haven't had to do all that yourself? I thought you were concerned with food supplies.'
'I am. Men must be sent out into the country round about to bring in all the cabbages and other vegetables that have not yet been taken. There's the remainder of the hay to be got, and oats for the horses, the potatoes to be dug, the one remaining mill to be got into working order, stocks of oil and biscuit to be laid in, flour to be found from somewhere, for that is getting scarce, and lord knows what besides! At the rate he's going, he's quite capable of sending us off to get in the harvest in the Ukraine!'
'I suppose the fear that the army might run short of food is his greatest anxiety. It's natural enough.'
'Oh, if that were all,' Beyle said furiously, 'I wouldn't really mind. But in the midst of all this, he must needs think of settling his scores as well.'
'What do you mean?'
'This.' Beyle took from his pocket a large sheet of crumpled paper and spread it out on the bed where she could see it. It contained two 'wanted' notices to be displayed on walls about the city. One offered five thousand livres reward to any person giving information leading to the apprehension, dead or alive, of a certain Abbe Gauthier. This was followed by a detailed description of the wanted man. The second notice offered a further thousand livres in return for information leading to the recovery of the Princess Sant'Anna, 'one of His Majesty's personal friends, lost during the fire'. This also included a good description.
Marianne read both notices and then raised a woebegone face to his.
'He's hunting me – like a criminal!'
'No. Not like a criminal. That's just what I've got against him. Anyone at all might give you up without a qualm thanks to that word 'friends', put in to deceive the unwary. If you want to know my feelings, I'd say it was – despicable.'
'It must mean that he is very angry with me, that he hates me, even! At all events, you are certainly taking a great risk, my friend, in staying with me. You ought to go away.'
'And leave you all alone? At the mercy of any inquisitive person who might give you up. I'm even beginning to wonder if I ought not to send Barbe about her – er – business.'
'She's a wonderful nurse and she seems quite devoted.'
'Yes, but she's intensely curious, which I don't care for. Francois caught her listening at the door of this room. What's more, she asks too many questions. Obviously she has a poor opinion of our marital relations.'
'Well, you must do as you think best. In any case, I shall see to it that I leave Moscow as soon as I have found my friend Jolival and my coachman.'
'I'll see if I can pay a visit tomorrow to the first posting house on the Paris road. Probably your friend is there. I'll bring him back with me.'
But when Beyle returned the next evening, covered with dust from his ride, he brought disturbing news. Jolival and Gracchus were nowhere to be found. They had not been seen either at the posting house or at the Rostopchin Palace, where he had also gone in search of news.
'There is one more possible answer,' he went on quickly, seeing Marianne's face crumple and her green eyes fill with tears. 'They may never have left the Kremlin. A good many people stayed there even after the Emperor had left, beginning with the troops left behind to hold the fire in check if that were possible. It's not easy to move a man with a broken leg.'
'I've thought of that. But how can we find out?'
'Tomorrow, the Assistant Quartermaster-General is going to the Kremlin to make his report to the Emperor. He has asked me to go with him. It ought not to be too difficult for me to make my own inquiries and if your friend is there I will find out.'
'You would do that for me?'
'Of course, and much more if you should ask me. For to tell you the truth I did not mean to go with Mathieu Dumas at first.'
'Why not?'
He smiled a little wistfully and indicated the coat he was wearing.
'An audience with the Emperor in my present state—'
In fact this visit to the Kremlin which gave Marianne such pleasure posed considerable sartorial problems to her friend. He had lost all his baggage, having jumped into his carriage right in the middle of his dinner in the Apraxin Palace. He had driven back to his lodgings just in time to see the house burn down and had been obliged to look on, in helpless rage, while his belongings were destroyed. His entire wardrobe now consisted only of what he stood up in: a coat of blue superfine, of an excellent cut but no longer very clean, blue kerseymere pantaloons and a white shirt decidedly the worse for wear.
'We must think of some way to make you look more presentable,' Marianne said. 'The Emperor has a great dislike of slovenliness in dress.'
'I know that well enough. He'll favour me with one of those damned disgusted stares of his.'
All the same, a couple of shirts made of a reasonably fine linen were dug up from somewhere, with the help of Beyle's driver, Francois, now, by reason of the defection of his fellow servants, promoted to the office of valet. The coat was made fairly presentable by dint of a careful going over, followed by some energetic brushing. This left the elegant kerseymere pantaloons, for which no replacement could be found, and they were badly snagged in several places, one more than a trifle embarrassing. For his day-to-day work in the Quartermaster-General's office, Beyle had managed to discard them in favour of a coarse pair of infantryman's breeches but there could be no question of wearing these in the Emperor's presence.
'There's not so much as a yard of the damned stuff in our stores,' he complained. 'I'll have to resign myself to appearing before the Emperor bundled up in a pair of sergeant major's breeks or else in none at all.'
From this dilemma he was rescued by Barbe who, once she heard of it, promptly saved the situation. Francois, moved more by a sense of duty than by any real belief in what he was doing, had already washed and dried the offending garment. Barbe now carried them off and darned them with such exquisite neatness that by the time she had done with them they were virtually a work of art and infinitely respectable.
