stolidly in the driving seat, her eyes fixed on the line of the road, which was inclined to be haphazard except where it ran through trees. She had even used the gun against a pack of wolves, handling it with a skill denoting long practice. Her whole being was concentrated on a single thought: to get to Vilna, where the house where they were to put up belonged to a Jewish apothecary who was also a physician.
It was not more than a week after their adventure at Studianka that they caught their first sight of Vilna. Nestling in a line of hills, between the arms of two rivers, the Wilia and the Wilenka, it was built around an impressive mound, the long-ago tomb of the earliest Lithuanian princes, and surmounted by a red brick citadel. Streaming from its highest point was the imperial eagle of France on its tricolour ground, and beside it the personal standard of the Duke of Bassano, who governed the city for Napoleon. Here there was no longer any fear of cossacks. The town was undamaged, well-provisioned and well-defended.
In summer weather, the Lithuanian capital, set amid rolling hills, with its white walls, red roofs, domes and baroque, Italianate palaces and its magnificent churches presented a gay and colourful appearance but now the colours were dulled by the universal covering of snow. Even so, the sight of the lovely city drew a great sigh of relief from Barbe.
'Here we are at last! Now we'll be able to take proper care of you. All we have to do now is to find out where Moise Chakhna lives. And we'll stay there for as long as it takes to get you well again.'
'No!' Marianne protested, making painful efforts to sit up. 'I don't want to stay – not more than two or three days, so that you can have a rest, Barbe. Then we'll go on.'
'But it's madness! You are ill – very ill, I think. Do you want to die?'
'I – shan't – die! We must go on. I want – to get to Danzig as soon as possible – do you understand? As soon as possible!'
A violent fit of coughing shook her and she fell back, bathed in sweat. Realizing that it was better not to persist, Barbe shrugged and set out to look for their host in the city.
Moise Chakhna's house was in the suburb of Antokol, not far from the bank of the Wilia and next door to a pretty, half-ruined Italianate palace which had belonged to the powerful Radziwill family. Unlike the Jewish houses they had seen before, it was a place of some style, for the Jewish community in Vilna was both rich and influential. The majority lived in the centre of the city, in a jumble of dark and tortuous alleyways bounded by the three principal streets, but some of the most eminent dwelt on the outskirts, in houses befitting their wealth and abilities.
Marianne and Barbe were welcomed there with an almost biblical hospitality. As in the other places where they had stayed, no one asked them any questions, although it must have been apparent that they were not of the people of Israel. Solomon's letters clearly worked as a powerful charm. Moise Chakhna and his wife Esther did everything necessary for the invalid but when she told them of her wish to continue her journey in two days' time, the apothecary frowned.
'You cannot do it. You are suffering from severe bronchitis. You must stay in bed and, what is most important, you must avoid all risk of catching cold again, for you would be risking your life.'
Even then she persisted, with the obstinacy of the very sick. Her determination was strengthened now by fear of these vast, inhospitable wastes of country with their endless snows and sunless, hopeless skies. She wanted to escape from them as soon as she could. The thought had become an obsession with her, fixed in her head like the barbed arrow of some demon archer. To tear it out now might be to tip her over into madness.
What she longed for was to see the sea again, even in a port so northerly as Danzig.
The sea was her friend, a friend that had always spared her life, even though it had more than once put it in danger. The sound of the sea washing the shores of England had lulled her through most of her childhood and for years now it had carried all her dreams, her hopes, her love. In the depths of her illness, Marianne was convinced that somehow everything would be miraculously all right, her health restored and her sufferings at an end, as soon as she came safe to a harbour.
Barbe, worried as she was, could still understand the sick girl's overriding longing to be gone.
'Do what you can for her,' she said to Moise. 'I will try to make her stay another two or three days by telling her how tired I am, but I don't think it will be any good.'
In fact it was five days before Marianne declared that she would wait no longer and by that time the fever had almost left her.
'I must go to Danzig,' she kept repeating. 'I know I shall be strong enough for that. But I must go quickly – as quickly as I can. Something is waiting there for me.'
She could not for the life of her have explained just why it was that she felt so certain. Barbe, in any case, put it down to her illness. But as she had lain there with the fever on her, her mind wandering in vague feverish dreams, Marianne had gradually convinced herself that her fate was waiting for her there, in that Baltic port where she had so longed to go with Jason. Perhaps, after all, that fate would take the form of a ship…
Barbe was no actress but she was still trying manfully, and with no success at all, to portray a woman in the last stages of exhaustion, when she received the first direct order she had ever had from her mistress. She was to have the kibitka ready to leave tomorrow, Marianne told her, and when Barbe tried to argue she was told that Kovno, the next and final stage of the kibitka's journey, was no more than twenty leagues ahead of them. Marianne was in haste, too, to hand over the precious package entrusted to her to Solomon's cousin. It was beginning to weigh on her mind. In her weakened state, her mind had begun to play superstitiously with the belief that those jewels, taken from a church, might be a cause, if not the only one, of all her sufferings. Moreover, those pearls had only narrowly escaped ending in the Berezina along with herself.
Barbe found her orders all the more distressing because they were interrupted by frequent fits of coughing. As a last resort it seemed to her that the physician's voice might be more effective than her own, but much to her surprise she found, when she went in search of Moise, that his eagerness to detain them in his house had waned considerably. Unless, that was, they were willing to remain there alone and exposed to possible unpleasantness.
'I am leaving,' he explained. 'I and my family. We shall quit Vilna very soon for Riga where we have a house and kinsfolk. It is unwise for us to remain longer here if we care for our possessions – and even for our lives.'
When Barbe expressed astonishment, he told her of the latest news which was going about the country. It was disastrous news for the French, because it said that Napoleon's army, broken and starving after a series of catastrophic engagements, was now falling back on Vilna as its one port in a storm. It was said also that there had been some kind of battle that was more like a massacre when the fleeing army had tried to cross the Berezina at the very spot where Barbe and Marianne had made the crossing. The bridges were all destroyed and but for the heroism of the Engineers, who had succeeded in erecting makeshift ones, the whole army might by then have been destroyed or taken prisoner. Many had got across, including a host of civilians following the army, but since then repeated attacks by the cossacks had caused more tragic gaps in the ranks.
'As far as I can gather,' Moise said, 'all this took place on about the day that you reached here. Since then, Napoleon has been making for Vilna as fast as he can, dragging in his train a host of desperate and starving men to descend on us like locusts. They will want houses and huge quantities of food and we shall be ravaged to supply them. And we Jews most of all, for we are always the first to suffer when there is looting or requisitioning. Therefore I would rather take my family and my most precious possessions out of harm's way while there is still time. They can burn my house after that if they please. It will be no more than an empty shell. So that is why,' he went on gravely, 'I must, for my own sake, so far fail in hospitality as to beg you to resume your journey. All I can suggest is that you follow us to Riga—'
'No, no. We may as well continue on our own road. But can you give us some protection for my mistress, to save her as far as possible from the dangers of a relapse. In this cold weather it is still to be feared.'
'Of course, of course! You shall have furs, and lined boots, even a stove which you may keep alight in the kibitka, and food, of course.'
'Thank you. But what of you, will you be permitted to leave? The French governor—'
Then Moise Chakhna did something very odd for one of his quiet, even rather reserved, disposition. He shook his fist, as though at some invisible third person present in the room.
'The governor? His grace the Duke of Bassano does not believe the rumours of disaster. He is threatening imprisonment for anyone who spreads them. He himself is thinking of giving a ball. But I, I know that every word of it is true and I am going!'
The next day, the kibitka resumed its journey to Kovno and the crossing of the Niemen. True to his promise,
