Marianne and the Lords of the East

ship?'

Richelieu stiffened and frowned.

'The ship? No. I am sorry but it is out of my power. By the law of the sea it belongs now to the Russian navy.'

'But surely, Your Excellency, you have no right to deprive a harmless foreigner of his sole means of livelihood? What good is a seaman without a ship?'

'I don't know, my dear, but I have already gone as far as I dare in offering to release a man whose country is at this moment at war with our ally, England. I have given a fighting man back to America. Don't ask me to give her a ship of war as well. The brig is a fine vessel. Our navy will make good use of her.'

'Your navy? Indeed, my lord Duke, I begin to ask myself if there is anything French left in you. Your forebears must be turning in their graves if they can hear you.'

Unable to contain herself any longer, she had allowed her indignation to blaze forth, and the governor blanched at the icy contempt that showed clearly in her tone.

'You have no right to say that!' he cried, his voice rising to the curiously shrill note it had in anger. 'Russia is a true friend. She took me in when France had cast me out and now she is mustering all her forces to fight against the usurper, against this man who, to satisfy his own insane ambition, has not shrunk from putting all Europe to fire and slaughter. Russia is prepared to shed her own blood to save France from this scourge.'

'To save France—but France has never asked to be saved. And if what they say in the town is true, you, the Duc de Richelieu, are going to march tomorrow at the head of the Georgian troops—'

'To crush Napoleon! Yes, I am! And gladly!'

There was a moment's silence, while both sides paused for breath. Marianne, breathless and blazing-eyed, could barely contain herself, but she meant to stop this man going to fight against his own people in the ranks of the tsar if it was the last thing she did.

'So, you are going to fight him? Very well. But have you thought that in fighting him you will also be fighting men of your own blood, your fellow countrymen, your brothers and your peers?'

'My brothers? The scum thrown up by the revolution and dressed up in fancy titles? Really, Madame!'

'Your peers, I said! Not Ney and Augereau, Murat or Davout, but men with names like Segur, Colbert, Montesquiou, Castellane, Fezensac and d'Aboville—to say nothing of Poniatowski and Radziwill! Because you will be raising your sword against them, too, Monsieur de Richelieu, when you charge at the head of your half-savage Tatars!'

'Be quiet! I am bound to aid my friends.'

'Say your new friends, rather! Very well, then, my lord Duke, but take care that you do not serve the tsar an ill turn.'

'An ill turn? What do you mean by that?'

Marianne smiled, pleased to have struck a spark of anxiety in the duke's eyes. She had a feeling that her blows had struck home more truly than she had dared to hope. And a fiendish idea had just occurred to her, one whose destructive power she meant to put to the test.

'Nothing. Or nothing I can be sure of. But please, never mind. Forgive me if I spoke too sharply just now. You see—I like you very much. I cannot help myself, and not for anything in the world would I have you come to regret your—your truly generous heart. You have been so kind to me and to my friends. I would do anything to keep you from falling into a trap, even if it made you accuse me of Bonapartist sympathies, although of course it is not true.'

Richelieu softened immediately.

'My dear Princess, I know that. And I believe in your friendship. It is in the name of that friendship that I beg you to speak. If you have discovered anything that affects me, you must tell it to me.'

She gazed into his eyes and uttered a deep sigh. Then she shrugged.

'You are right. This is no time for scruples. Listen, then. You know that I came here from Constantinople. While there, I became friendly with Princess Morousi, the widow of the former hospodar of Walachia, and it was she who gave me what I can hardly call a warning, for at the time it seemed to me no more than a piece of gossip of no great importance.'

'Tell me. She is not a woman with the reputation of an idle gossip.'

'Very well. Then I will go straight to the point. Are you quite sure of the regiments that have just landed? It was Prince Tsitsanov who sent them, was it not?'

'Yes, but I fail to see—'

'You will. It is less than ten years, I believe, since Georgia came under Russian control? The majority of the people there are loyal, but not all. As for Prince Tsitsanov, according to what I was told he seems to have been finding out that Tiflis is a long way from St. Petersburg and that his governorship had something vice-regal about it. From vice-regal to regal is not so very far, my dear Duke, and by asking the prince for troops you provided him with a convenient method of getting rid of unwanted troublemakers. He is not going to miss those two regiments, you may be sure of that. As to how they will behave under fire, shoulder to shoulder with the Muscovites whom they detest… But there, as I said, I am not sure of this. What I am telling you is idle drawing room chatter, nothing more. I may very well be maligning Prince Tsitsanov—'

'But on the other hand, what you say may easily be true.'

The duke had dropped into a chair behind the desk and was gnawing his thumb with a gloomy expression. Marianne stood for a moment, gauging the effect of her words. The man was certainly a genius when it came to organization. He was a great colonial administrator and possibly a great diplomat, but he was also a worried man, a man who lived on his nerves, and in these aspects of his character he was showing himself more vulnerable than she had dared to hope.

She hesitated, uncertain of her next move. Richelieu, staring into space, appeared to have forgotten her entirely. And then there was the order for Jason's release burning a hole in her pocket. She was impatient now to get away from the governor's palace and hurry to the citadel. And yet something drew her to that open letter on the desk, which was stirring slightly in a faint breath of air come from nowhere in that close room, almost within her reach as though to tease her.

The silence prolonged itself and at last Marianne gave a small cough.

'Your Excellency,' she said, 'I am sorry to disturb you when you are thinking, but if I might ask you to see me home? It is very late and—'

Before the words were out of her mouth he was on his feet and was stumbling toward her like a man half out of his mind with worry, where she stood like a ghostly vision in the dimly lighted room.

'Don't leave me,' he said brokenly. 'Don't leave me alone—not now! I don't want to be alone here tonight.'

'But why ever not? What have I said to alarm you so? For you are afraid, aren't you?'

'Yes, I am afraid. But not for myself. I am afraid of what I was about to do. But for you—but for the advice you have just given me, I might have gone to Alexander bringing disaster, betrayal, even death. And that to the man to whom I owe everything, who has been good enough to call me his friend—'

'You mean—that you will not go?'

'Just that. I will stay here. The Georgian troops will be sent back again tomorrow. Only the Tatars whom I have trained myself and can trust will set out for Kiev. And I shall remain behind.'

A wave of joy swept over Marianne. Even now she could hardly believe that she had won, won all along the line. Within the hour Jason would be free, and tomorrow Richelieu would remain in Odessa and two regiments of troops would never reach the battlefield. It was almost unbelievable. It was too much, and if she had only been able to recover the Sea Witch as well…

'Is it because of what I said to you?' she asked quietly.

'What did you say?'

'You will not fight against your own people?'

Marianne felt the duke's hands tremble as they gripped her shoulders.

'I cannot fight my own brothers, however misguided, yes, there is that… But you have also made me see that by leaving new Russia I should be leaving the field open for others' ambitions. If I go, what is to stop Tsitsanov or anyone else from stepping in? The Crimea needs to be strongly defended. I must stay. Without me, God knows what might happen.'