Marianne

'If it has come, then I am old enough to see that without your help. For the present, I should like to question this one without interruptions from you.'

'Very well, question her! But we are here. We are listening.'

The Riders of the Shadows withdrew to the far end of the chamber, a black wall against the grey wall of the crypt. Marianne and Bruslart were left alone by the table.

'Last night,' he began patiently, 'you were taken to the pavilion of Butard at Le Celle St Cloud?'

'That was the name I was told, certainly.'

'Who took you there?'

'The Prince of Benevento. He told me the house belonged to a friend of his, a bourgeois named Monsieur Charles Denis, a man who had recently suffered a cruel bereavement. My singing was to be a comfort to him.'

'And you were not surprised that such a man as Talleyrand should take the trouble to escort you, in person, to the house of a mere bourgeois?'

'Yes. But the prince told me that they were friends of long standing. I thought – I thought the prince might have known him perhaps in the Revolution, or that the name might be a cloak for some foreign conspirator—'

'We will come to that later. Who met you at Butard? A servant?'

'No. I think he was a friend of M. Denis. He was called Duroc. And I saw a manservant as well.'

'A manservant by the name of Constant, was it?'

'Yes – yes, I think so!'

The chevalier's deep voice became suddenly very gentle. He bent over Marianne and looked hard into her eyes.

'This M. Denis – you love him?'

'Yes! Yes, I love him. I think I loved him from the very first. I saw him and then—'

'And then,' Bruslart finished for her quietly, 'you found yourself in his arms. He attracted you, hypnotised you, bewitched you – they say he can talk love like no one else and write it better still.'

Marianne stared at him wide eyed.

'But then – you know him? He is a man who leads a secret life, is he not, a conspirator, like yourself? I knew he was in danger!'

For the first time, Bruslart smiled briefly.

'Yes, I know him. As for secrecy, it may well be, for it is true that he is often in danger. Shall I show you your Monsieur Denis?'

'Yes – yes, of course. Is he here?' she cried, carried away by a sudden wonderful hope.

'He is everywhere,' the chevalier said with a shrug. 'Here, look here.'

Taking a gold coin from his pocket he placed it in Marianne's hand. She stared at it in bewilderment.

'The face,' Bruslart persisted. 'Don't you recognize it?'

Marianne looked. A wave of colour mounted her face. She stood up, mechanically, staring with eyes grown suddenly huge at the fine profile stamped on the gold, a profile she recognized only too well.

'Charles!' she stammered helplessly.

'No,' the chevalier corrected her grimly. 'Napoleon! It was to him that old fox Talleyrand delivered you tonight, you little fool.'

The gold coin slipped from Marianne's fingers and rolled away over the ancient flagstones. She felt the floor heave under her feet. The walls were performing a wild dance around her. Marianne gave one cry and fell headlong, like a felled sapling.

When she came to herself again, she was lying on some straw in a dark place lit by a flickering brazier. A strange individual holding a candle was bending over her sympathetically. With his pointed face, receding hair, large ears and bristling whiskers, he looked like a mouse wearing a goatee. His black eyes, which were round and very bright, strengthened this resemblance. When he saw Marianne open her eyes, he gave a broad smile which split his face in two.

'Ah, that's right! We're coming round! Are we feeling better?'

Marianne made an effort to sit up and managed to prop herself on one elbow, though not without a groan. Her head ached horribly and her body felt bruised, as though she had been beaten.

'I – yes, thank you. I do feel a little better. But what happened to me? Where are we?'

The stranger with the large ears set his candle down on the ground and sat himself beside her, arms clasped about his skinny knees, carefully lifting the skirts of his coat before he did so. His blue coat and nut-brown pantaloons were of good cloth and well cut. They must have been elegant before the prison – there was no other name for the place in which they were, a kind of cavern shut off by iron bars – had worked irreparable harm on the tasteful garments.

'As to what has happened to you,' he said calmly, 'I cannot tell you. The chevalier de Bruslart, who uses these cellars as a meeting place when he is in Paris, brought you in a short while ago with the help of some of his friends. I believe I gathered that you were to take up residence in this charming spot while the gentlemen examined your case further. They did not seem able to agree. One was for putting you in the Seine to cool off, with a good, big stone, but the chevalier, a true gentleman indeed, declared roundly that he would kill anyone who despatched you without his express permission. As for our present place of residence—' the little man made an all embracing gesture taking in the rough-hewn chalky cavern around them – 'I am able to inform you, gracious lady, that we are in the old quarries of Chaillot which have been disused now for many years. If it were not for these bars, I could show you the old lime kiln still in very good order.'

'Quarries?' Marianne said, 'I was in some kind of crypt when I fainted.'

'It opens off these quarries. It is all that is left of the old convent of the Dames de la Visitation where the gentle Louise de la Valliere once sought refuge from the adulterous passions of Louis XIV, where Bossuet pronounced his funeral oration over Henrietta of England, where—'

This singular individual was clearly a most cultivated person but just at that moment French history was very far from Marianne's thoughts. She was amazed, and even a little disappointed, to find herself still alive. How much simpler it would all have been if the Riders of the Shadows had killed her while she was unconscious! Then there would not have been this waking with its train of heartache and bitter memories. If only they had thrown her straight into the Seine when they took her from her carriage! She would have had her moment of agony and nameless horror but it would have been comparatively brief and by now it would have been all over. She would be dead, taking with her the sweet and wonderful memory of the night she had just passed. She would have died with Charles's kisses warm on her lips, in the full, dazzling glory of love's dawn. She could have kept that, at least. But now, now that she had learned who he was and knew herself to have been no more than a plaything for an emperor's whim, now her whole life was in ruins indeed.

She had believed that when he took her in his arms, Charles had been mastered by the same attraction, had suffered the same irresistible revelation as she had herself. But no, she had merely served to distract a selfish man who, for the sake of establishing a dynasty, had just cast down from the throne the woman he had placed there, the companion of his youth, the wife whom the Pope himself had crowned in Notre Dame with such splendid ceremony that day in December. Marianne had given herself gladly to Charles Denis because that Charles Denis had needed love and tenderness but it made her sick with grief and horror to think that she had been simply a toy for Napoleon.

She understood it all now: the care with which Talleyrand had taken her there and also what the minister, at present out of favour, hoped to gain from making this handsome present to his master.

She understood the flurry caused by the so-called M. Denis's arrival and also the slight Mediterranean accent, and the Italian words of love. The Corsican! It was to the Corsican that she had given herself so trustingly, on the spur of the moment, simply because she had been drawn to him as she had never been to any man before. The memory of their kisses and caresses which, only a few hours before, had been so sweet now burned her life like a red hot iron. Utterly overcome with shame, she buried her head in her drawn-up knees and began to cry as though her heart would break.

A gentle, clumsy hand pushed aside the tumbled hair that hung over her face and began mopping her tear-stained cheeks with a handkerchief that smelled strongly of orris and a brotherly arm was put round her shoulders.

'There, there, you must not cry like that! You're not dead yet! And if you'll take my word for it, you aren't