King of Naples persists in claiming they are, are concentrating not far away in considerable strength. Now, we are in no condition to face an all-out attack, not even if the regiments that have been sent for should arrive in time. Unless I'm very much mistaken, we'll be leaving here before very much longer.'
'You think so?'
'I'd swear to it. What's more, ill or not, I'm going out to get the news tomorrow. Bonnaire is a good fellow but his understanding is not great. I'll find out in the office what's really happening.'
'But you are not well yet, your fever—'
'Is a good deal better. And it's high time I did something a little heroic. I've been pampering myself. And it's time you stopped lamenting, too. You have to stand up to life, by God! Else it will get the better of you.'
'Stand up to life?' Marianne echoed thoughtfully. 'Oh, my poor friend, I seem to have been doing nothing else for years. Life has treated me like a coconut palm. It's given me plenty of nuts – only it's dropped them all right on my head.'
'Because you were standing in the wrong place. You were born to be happy. If you can't be, it's entirely your own fault. Go and rest now. Something tells me you won't have to frowst indoors much longer.'
It almost seemed to Marianne afterwards that her friend must possess the gift of second sight because the very next day he came home with amazing news.
'We're off in three days' time,' he told her simply.
'In three days?' Marianne cried, feeling all at once as if the heavens had opened. 'But how?'
He bowed extravagantly, like an actor in a play. 'You see before you, fair lady, that most important person, the director of Reserve Supplies. General Dumas has just told me of my new appointment. The mission that goes with it is, unfortunately, no very simple one. I am to assemble supplies of food sufficient for two hundred thousand men in the three regions of Smolensk, Mohilev and Vitebsk. The Emperor is beginning to think of leaving Moscow and wintering in Smolensk or Vitebsk, it seems, so as to be nearer to the army on the Dvina. He can wait there in comfort until his reinforcements arrive and then march on Petersburg in the spring.'
'But when?'
'I don't know that. As far as I can make out, before settling down in winter quarters, his Majesty has some idea of going and chivvying old Kutuzov a bit, just to keep him quiet – and to check the truth of what Murat has to say about the cossacks. But that need not concern us. The important thing is that we leave in three days' time for Smolensk and I must ask you to let me have the use of this room because I am expecting several secretaries. I've got any number of letters to dictate. Somehow, I've got to get together something like a hundred thousand quintals of flour, oats and beef cattle – and I've not the faintest notion where I'm going to find them.'
Marianne was already rising to leave the room, when he stopped her.
'By the way, should you have any objection to dressing as a man? You could pass as my secretary.'
'None at all. I used to love doing so – once upon a time.'
'Splendid! Goodnight.'
That night, Beyle's voice droned on endlessly in the next room, dictating a host of letters to three weary secretaries whom he had to nudge awake from time to time. Marianne fell asleep at last and slept the tranquil sleep that came with a heart at ease and a mind freed from all her most pressing anxieties. She was not out of the wood yet but she was beginning to relax a little. All her fears and torments had crystallized into that one, obsessive longing to leave Moscow.
There would be time to think of other things when the road to freedom lay open before her. Only, she had to find Gracchus and Jolival as soon as possible, because she had to face the fact that, even when she reached the end of the journey, Paris was likely to prove as dangerous for her as Moscow as soon as the Emperor returned – the Emperor who was now her implacable enemy.
But even that disturbing thought must wait until another day.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Merchant of Smolensk
They left Moscow on the sixteenth of October, in weather that, while still dry, was beginning to turn cold. The exceptionally mild autumn which had lulled Napoleon into a sense of false security for so long was reverting to more normal temperatures.
As she followed Beyle into the carriage, which had been made more comfortable and weatherproof by the addition of leather aprons, Marianne paid tribute to her friend's talent for organization. Nothing had been left out, from the luncheon basket to extra supplies of warm clothing.
She herself, now dressed as a man and entered into her new career as secretary to the director of Reserve Supplies, had been thoughtfully provided by him with a full, dark green polonaise with silken frogs which reminded her a little of one she had worn in Paris, only that it was much bigger all round. It was trimmed and lined with grey fox and with it went a hat of the same fur, worn crammed down low over her ears to hide the hair which Barbe had plaited tightly round her head.
Barbe was up on the box beside Francois. She was bundled up in several layers of shawls and wore a thick scarf tied under her chin. Between them they had collected far too many rugs for the mere hundred leagues or so from Moscow to Smolensk but if Beyle's journey officially ended there, it was only a stage in Marianne's. For the auditor of the Council of State believed, with some reason, that in Smolensk he would be sufficiently his own master to be able to arrange for her to travel on quite comfortably to France.
If Marianne had expected that first stage to be accomplished very swiftly, she was singularly disappointed, and that even before they left Moscow. Instead of taking the most direct way over the Marshals' Bridge and through the ruins of the suburb of Dorogomilov to join the Smolensk road, the carriage turned in the direction of Red Square and took its place in the long convoy that was getting ready to leave: several hundred sick and wounded men and an escort of three hundred more.
Beyle shrugged as he saw Marianne's eyes turn to him questioningly and he said gruffly: 'You were so happy to be going. I didn't want to spoil your pleasure by telling you General Dumas had ordered me to travel with the convoy. The roads are so unsafe that, travelling alone in a European carriage, neither it nor we would probably have got there at all.'
'All the same, I wish you had told me straight out. You'd have done better not to hide it. I learned long ago, you know, not to fight against the inevitable. It's true the journey will take longer but nothing can spoil my happiness in leaving this city!'
All the same, she could not help a shudder of retrospective fear as she saw the Kremlin walls again. The old fortress was still standing amid the ruins that lay all about it, looking redder than ever in the rising sun, as though its very bricks were sweating blood. Marianne felt the bitterness swelling in her again as she recalled how eager she had been to get inside and see Napoleon. Because he had been her lover and she still felt affection and loyalty towards him, she had sacrificed everything, her love and almost her life, for his sake. And her reward had been a nasty bill pasted up on all the walls of Moscow.
'Don't lean out,' Beyle warned her suddenly. 'You could still be recognized, in spite of all our precautions.'
This was true. There were a number of brilliant uniforms to be seen here and there among the incredible collection of spring carts and private carriages that made up the convoy. Eugene de Beauharnais popped up without warning only a few yards away from them. With characteristic kindness, the Viceroy of Italy was personally seeing an old soldier, bundled in blankets and with a face as grey as his beard, put into his wagon.
Marianne sat back hurriedly, making sure the spectacles which Beyle had advised her to wear until they had put several versts between themselves and the Kremlin were firmly settled on her nose. She was praying that they might start soon, for she had just caught sight of Duroc, also going the rounds of the wagons dealing out encouragements and good wishes for the journey. Her heart was beating wildly and to calm it she tried to interest herself in what she could see from underneath the hood. High above them, on the gilded dome of the largest of the Kremlin towers, sappers of the guard were perched on makeshift scaffolding, engaged, at some risk to their lives, in taking down the great gold cross of St Ivan. A flock of black birds, crows or rooks, wheeled thickly round them, squawking so dismally that Marianne shivered, seeing an evil omen in their sinister cries.
