Marianne and the Lords of the East

'No, nothing else,' said the Irishman, gloomily extricating his large person from the cart, revealing himself clad in a pair of baggy trousers tucked into short boots and a gray shirt buttoned at the neck and caught in at the waist with a leather belt. 'Except that I suppose I shall have to get used to these new fashions somehow and that I could do with a shave.'

'And so could I,' added Jason, also emerging and dressed in similar garb. 'We look just like our late keepers.'

Gracchus ran a critical eye over them, then nodded approvingly.

'Not bad at all. In any case, it's all that I could find. And if you'll take my advice, you'll stick to your beards. They make you both look like proper little sons of holy Mother Russia and that's the best thing we could ask.'

Gracchus, in fact, had shown himself a worthy general, and not liking to let his mistress travel deeper into enemy territory under her own name, he had taken it upon himself to have the podoroshna made out in the name of Lady Selton, an English traveler, and consequently eccentric, whose object was to see something of the tsar's empire and to study the patriarchal customs of his people.

Gracchus, Jason and Craig were entered on this all-important document as the lady's servants, while to Jolival, rechristened Mr. Smith, was allotted the role of secretary.

'Mr. Smith!' the vicomte grumbled. 'Was that the best you could think of? Where's your imagination?'

'Monsieur the Vicomte will pardon me.' Gracchus retorted with dignity, 'but Smith is the only English name I know, apart from Pitt and Nelson.'

'I've had a narrow escape, then. Well, Mr. Smith, so be it. And now I think it's time we were making a move.'

Dawn was already breaking in the glorious reds and purples of a blustery sunrise. From somewhere nearby came the chimes of a Russian orthodox monastery calling its monks to their morning prayers. The copper domes of a church gleamed like fire against a lurid sky suddenly filled with the gliding flight of gulls and the swift, darting black shapes of swallows.

The streets in the upper town were beginning to come to life. Those people who had run down to the harbor were drifting back again, talking noisily about what they had seen. Others, who had not thought it worthwhile to leave their beds, now opened their windows and threw back the shutters to shout their questions from house to house.

At the far end of the street soldiers were taking down the heavy chain that was stretched between the two squat bastions of the Kiev gate to close it for the night. The first of the day's wagons of grain were visible on the other side.

The travelers climbed into the kibitka and settled themselves as comfortably as they could on the mattresses. Gracchus hopped up beside the driver, who had apparently been continuing his interrupted night's sleep because he found that it was necessary to shake him awake before he could take his place beside him on the wooden plank which served as a box.

Having cast a glance inside to assure himself that all was well with his companions, Gracchus addressed himself to the driver and declaimed majestically, and not without some consciousness of the effect he was producing: 'Fperiod! Forward!'

The man chuckled to himself, but he touched up his horses and the huge wagon lumbered away lurching over the ruts, for such things as cobblestones were still unknown to the new town, and drew up to the gate.

Marianne slid her hand into Jason's and, leaning back against the side of the wagon, composed herself for sleep.

Not many moments later, the kibitka had left Odessa behind it and was beginning the long journey across the vast extent of Russia.

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Footnotes

1

The Ikbals aspired to the title of Kadine which would be theirs once they had borne the sultan a child.

2

The Greek quarter of Constantinople.

3

Governor.

4

Court interpreter.

5

Palace.

6

Turkish law officers restored.

7

AMDG: Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam the motto of the Jesuits.

8

Taken from an actual letter.