[Marianne 6] - Marianne and the Crown of Fire

by Juliette Benzoni

  It was too late. Luckily for Marianne, the tower door had been left open. She was outside before the guards had even started after her. With a triumphant gasp, she plunged into the smoke as though into a protecting fog and ran straight ahead, regardless of possible obstructions, spurred on by the one thought of all escaping prisoners: to put as much ground between herself and her pursuers as possible. But the way sloped steeply uphill to the terrace and behind her she could hear shouts and yells that sounded horribly near.

  She did not know the Kremlin or its exits and those portions of the upper terrace that she could see through the smoke looked hopelessly full of people. She had to find some way or other of concealing her identity if she did not want to be caught between two fires.

  She was still wondering where to go when she caught sight of a tree not far from the top of the grassy slope, close up against one corner of the palace. It was an old tree, several hundred years old certainly, and its branches dropped wearily down to the ground. It was twisted with age but the mass of its foliage looked impenetrable. The noise of the wind in the leaves was like a rookery in full voice.

  Running before the wind, which was now gusting strongly from the south, Marianne found herself at the top of the slope, right up against the trunk. She measured the distance with her eye and decided that in the ordinary way it should not prove too difficult to climb. But would her injured shoulder allow her to do what would have been easy for her before?

  It is a well-known fact that the love of liberty can lend wings to the least able and, all things considered, Marianne had no wish to confront the anger of Napoleon. What she wanted more than anything in the world at that moment was to find her friends and be gone from that accursed city as soon as possible. Gasping with pain, but spurred on by the desperate longing to escape, she managed it. After what seemed an age but could not have been more than a few seconds, she found herself seated astride one of the great branches and completely hidden from below. She was only just in time. A bare half-minute later she saw her young captain pass directly beneath her. He was running like a hare and shouting 'Guards! Guards!' at the top of his voice, regardless of the blazing debris falling all about him.

  The fugitive's respite was brief. Her situation was less urgent but no less perilous, for the conflagration raging in the city had grown to terrifying proportions since her entry into the tower. Driven by the equinoctial wind, a rain of fire was falling on the Kremlin, from tenuous sparks to flaming brands that rattled on the metal-clad roofs of the palace and the copper domes of the churches like hammer strokes on the anvils of invisible blacksmiths. With the shouts and screams that rose on all sides, it made a terrifying and fantastic symphony. The whole city was howling to heaven, a blazing, fiery inferno in which the very air breathed fire.

  The green umbrella of the tree overhead gave Marianne a measure of protection from the incandescent shower, but how long would it be before even that refuge caught alight?

  By peering through the branches, she could see the parade ground between the palace and the Arsenal. It was crawling with troops, all trying, at the risk of their lives, to transport the casks of powder and bales of tow to a place of safety, unavailingly, since nowhere could be counted safe any longer. More men were stationed on the palace roof and, equipped with buckets and brooms, were sweeping away the burning particles as they fell and endeavouring to cool the scorching metal sheets by pouring water on them. The great Russian citadel, with its sumptuous churches and magnificent buildings was like a threatened island ringed by a sea of flame, a plateau emerging from a volcanic eruption. Everywhere that Marianne looked she saw huge flames leaping up beyond the encircling red walls. They were already menacing the imperial stables, where an army of grooms was struggling to lead out the screaming, panic-stricken horses.

  'Merciful heavens,' Marianne murmured, 'help me to get out of this!'

  All at once, she saw the Emperor. He was hatless and on foot, his short dark hair and the skirts of his grey redingote blowing in the wind as he strode towards the threatened Arsenal, followed by Berthier, Gourgaud and Prince Eugene, and disregarding the frantic attempts of one of his senior officers, General Lariboisière, to deflect him from his dangerous course. But when the general tried to block his way, Napoleon merely brushed him aside with an impatient hand and continued on his way. Next, a party of gunners engaged in moving boxes of ammunition flung themselves across his path, almost going on their knees to prevent him going farther. At the same time, Murat's absurd white plumes could be seen emerging from the stables and were borne towards the Emperor on a heaving sea of men. Marianne, perched in her tree, heard someone shouting: 'Sire! I beg of you!'

  'No! Get up on the terrace there with the Prince of Neuchâtel and tell me what you see,' Napoleon roared at Marshal Bessières. 'I'm not leaving here before I have to! Let every man do his duty and we shall hold out safely enough.'

  Almost as he finished speaking, there came a sound like a cannon shot and the peculiar clatter of broken glass. The windows on one side of the palace had shattered. Whereupon Napoleon himself made for the terrace previously indicated in order to see for himself how close was the danger. Meanwhile, carried on the wind, there came to Marianne the echoes of the King of Naples' fluent cursing.

  She was obliged just then to let go of the branch she was holding and throw herself backwards to avoid a blazing fragment of timber which came straight towards her and struck the tree.

  'I can't stay here much longer,' she muttered through her teeth. 'I must find some way out.'

  The Saviour's Gate, the only one that lay within her field of vision, was impossible, being obstructed by the guns being brought in from Red Square. But by dint of wriggling round she was able to make out that there was a small postern at the foot of one of the towers whose pointed roof could be seen rising behind a small church in the foreground. A chain of soldiers was using it to pass buckets of water up from the river to the men on the Kremlin roof. But they were Engineers and had no connection with the ones she had come up against earlier in the prison tower. None of the officers organizing the chain was known to her and, in any case, she had no choice.

  She slid to the ground but was no sooner down than a gust of wind caught her and rolled her over and over down the slope to the bottom, wrenching her injured shoulder so cruelly that the tears came to her eyes. When at last she came to a stop, she lay for a moment or two in a daze, flat on the grass with a ringing in her ears and her bruised head aching again as if it would burst. But in another minute, she found herself miraculously on her feet again, and face to face with the oddest woman she had ever set eyes on: a matronly individual, heavily rouged, with a red handkerchief knotted bravely round her head and on top of that a grenadier's bearskin so covered in scorchmarks that it looked like a badly mown field of corn.

  From the cask slung round her neck, Marianne knew her for a vivandière. She was probably about forty years of age and her clothes, although bizarre, consisting of a print skirt, grey stuff bodice and leather gaiters in addition to her curious headgear, were at least clean. Having picked Marianne up, she set about dusting her down, shaking out her dress and brushing off the bits of grass adhering to it with vigorous sweeps of her hand.

  'There,' she said with satisfaction, when she had finished. 'Now you look presentable again, love! My but you came a cropper! Not to mention that great bump on your head – though you must have got that some time since, for it's colouring up nicely now.' She indicated the bruise on Marianne's forehead from contact with the Chinese vase, the instrument of the imperial wrath. 'And where d'you think you're going to in such a hurry, eh?'

  Marianne pushed back the strands of hair that were falling across her face and gestured to the blazing sky.

  'Who wouldn't be in a hurry at such a time?' she said. 'I want to get out of here. A branch of a tree or something fell on my head and I don't feel very well.'

  The woman stared at her.

  'And you think it's any better outside t
here? Well, you poor little thing! Don't you know yet those Russkies've sent the 'ole flamin' town sky high? Seems they must've got tired of it or somethin'. But there, it's true you don't look well. 'Cept for that bruise of yours, you're as pale as a bucket of whitewash! You just wait while I give you a sup of what'll set you up! A drop of my fire-water'd have a dead man dancing!'

  Detaching a cup from her belt, she poured a generous measure from her cask and put it to her protégée's lips. Not liking to refuse, especially as she really did feel in great need of some stimulant, Marianne swallowed a mouthful and instantly felt as if she had swallowed the fire itself. Coughing and spluttering and half-choked to death, she was grateful once more for the good offices of the sutler woman who thumped her on the back with enough force to fell an ox, laughing merrily as she did so.

  'Anyone can see as you're a young lady, gently bred! You've not got the way of it!'

  'It – it is a trifle strong but – but, as you say, it does set one up! Thank you very much, Madame.'

  The other only laughed the more, clapping her hands to her sides.

  'Well, well! That's the first time anyone ever called me madame! I'm no madame, my poppet! I'm Mere Tambouille, vivandière to that lot.' She jerked her thumb at the chain of soldiers. 'I was just taking them a little something to keep their spirits up when you came tumbling right on top of me. And there now, you still haven't told me why you're so set on running out into that oven out there!'

  Marianne did not hesitate for an instant. The fire-water seemed to have sharpened her mental faculties astonishingly.

  'I am the niece of the Abbé Surugue, the priest of St Louis-des-Français.' The words came out without a pause. 'Someone told me that my uncle had come to the Kremlin to see the Emperor, so I came to look for him, but I could not find him here and so I want to go back home—'

  'Well I never! So your uncle's a priest, is he? Trust me to run into something out of the way! But my poor dearie, how d'you know you've even a home left?'

  'Perhaps I haven't – but I must go and see. My uncle is an old man and his legs are bad. I must find him or he will be very frightened.'

  Mere Tambouille heaved a sigh that rivalled the efforts of the gale.

  'Stubborn little thing, that's what you are! You remind me of my donkey, Lisette! Well, if you want to play Joan of Arc, it's your own affair. It's your skin, ain't it? Not but what you'd do better to stay with us and wait a bit, because the Little Corporal, he's not going to stay here for ever.'

  'But I heard that he would not hear of leaving.'

  'Moonshine! I know better. It was that sly old Berthier who did the trick, telling him that if he insisted on staying he'd likely find hisself cut off from all the rest of the army as was left outside. I 'eard it all as I was comin' 'ere. An officer chap was tellin' one o' the grooms and sayin' as he'd best be saddlin' Taurus, one of the Emperor's mounts. So wait a bit and we'll go together.'

  All this talk was agony to Marianne. She was desperately afraid that one of her pursuers would pick up her trail and find her standing chatting amicably with the vivandière. Now that she could regard the cardinal's escape as an accomplished fact, she was terrified by the thought of having to face Napoleon. She knew his uncontrollable temper only too well, and that he would regard the rescue of a man who desired his own death as a personal affront, capable of erasing all else that had ever passed between them. She was, in fact, in very real danger of finding herself arraigned as an accomplice and, as such, a traitor to her country.

  However, seeing that she remained firm in her determination to quit the Kremlin without delay, Mere Tambouille gave in.

  'Go, then, if you must,' she sighed. 'I'll come with you as far as the gate.'

  Together, they reached the postern where the men were still tirelessly passing their buckets of water. They greeted the vivandière with a volley of cheerful oaths and coarse jokes about the new assistant she had got herself. Marianne's shape, in particular, excited their interest and Gallic wit, coupled with more explicit invitations, began to flow freely, so freely, indeed, that Mere Tambouille lost her temper with them.

  'You stow your gab, my lads,' she bawled at them sternly. Where d'you think you are, eh? She's none of your lightskirts but a cure's niece! So if you've no respect for her petticoats, have some for her uncle's! Now step aside there and let the lady out!'

  'Out? That's no way to treat a lady,' observed a magnificently bearded, red-haired sapper, who had been winking so hard at Marianne that she began to wonder if it was a nervous tic he had. 'It's blazing like hell out there! She'll be burnt to a frazzle and that would be a shame – and all on account of a cure, too!'

  'We've been into all that already. So just you shove over. Out of the way and let her get through the gate. And keep your hands to yourself, what's more. It's a tightish squeeze.'

  'Hands? What hands?' panted a perspiring youth. 'Have to drop the buckets, wouldn't we?'

  And in fact, for all their joking, the men were wasting no time. All the while they talked they were passing the full buckets of water, not without spilling a good deal over their feet, while the vivandière poured generous rations of her famous fire-water down their throats. However, since they still showed no sign of making way for her, the officer in charge of that section of the line, who had so far taken no part in the affair, now came forward and took Marianne by the hand.

  'Forgive them, Mademoiselle. They are reluctant to let you go. And indeed, they are right. It is not wise.'

  'I am grateful, Monsieur, but it is imperative that I rejoin my uncle. He must be very much alarmed on my account.'

  With the officer's solicitous hand to guide her, Marianne negotiated the gateway, no easy task since a miniature landslide had combined with the water slopped from the buckets to turn the passage into a quagmire. When she was through, she thanked him politely, suppressing a sigh of relief at finding herself outside the citadel at last. Not that the view of the burning city which met her eyes was at all reassuring. All round the Kremlin was a ring of fire.

  'Over there, there's a gap in the flames,' called Mere Tambouille who had followed her out, still doling out measures of spirits to the men. 'If that's your way, you've a chance.'

  It was true. In the direction of St Louis-des-Français, the city was still standing and the fire had not yet become general. Only the Bazaar was burning, but less fiercely than elsewhere.

  'Yes, that's it,' Marianne called back, glad to see that there was still a possible avenue of escape. 'Thank you again, Madame Tambouille!'

  The vivandière's laughter followed her as she set off along the river and she heard her new friend crying after her through her cupped hands: 'Hey! If you can't find your uncle, come back here! I can do with a pretty girl like you – and so can the lads here, too!'

  The next moment, Marianne had plunged into the seething confusion of Red Square. The troops who had been bivouacked there the previous night were doing their utmost to save their guns and their ammunition and some of them were occupying the mansions and other buildings surrounding the square in an attempt to protect them from the fire. There was also a wild assortment of vehicles of every description, from gentlemen's carriages to tradesmen's carts, all of them filled to overflowing with plunder, for, acting on the excuse of saving what property they could, the troops had been pillaging to their hearts' content.

  Jostled on all sides and in constant danger of being run down by carriage wheels, Marianne succeeded somehow in reaching the Rostopchin Palace, only to run straight into the arms of Sergeant Bourgogne when literally on the doorstep.

  She started violently on recognizing him. Early that morning, when Gauthier de Chazay had launched his attack on the Emperor, Bourgogne had been in the gallery with the party of boutechniks he had taken prisoner. He must have witnessed all that passed. But she pulled herself together at once. He had seen what happened, certainly, but if he had come back to the Rostopchin Palace after that he could not be aware of what had followed.
<
br />   However he was barring her way.

  'And where are you off to, little lady?' he inquired with his usual good humour.

  'Inside. Have you forgotten that I was living here when you arrived the other evening, with a gentleman with a broken leg – my uncle.'

  He beamed on her candidly. 'Indeed I've not! In fact I'm fairly sure I saw you at the palace this morning. But you can't go in here. It may not be burning yet, but it's in danger and has been requistioned, on his Majesty's orders. Besides, all civilians are to leave the city.'

  'But I have to meet my uncle! He should be here already! Have you not seen him?'

  'The gentleman with the broken leg? No. I've not seen anyone.'

  'But he must have come here. Are you sure he did not go inside when you were not looking?'

  'Couldn't have done that, little lady. I've been on guard here with my men now for four hours. If anyone had come I'd have seen them, as sure as my name's Adrien Jean-Baptiste-François Bourgogne of Condé-sur-Escaut! If your uncle was in the Kremlin, he must be there still. So long as the Emperor is there—'

  But Marianne, giving him a pale smile of thanks, was already turning away. She made her way towards the church of the Blessed St Basil, meaning to think over her situation. Where could Gracchus and Jolival be? If the sergeant had not seen them, it could only be because they had not been there. 'That much is obvious,' Marianne muttered to herself, 'but what could have kept them? And where shall I find them now?'

  She stepped aside just in time to escape being run down by a spring van, piled high with furniture and bales of cloth and far too heavily loaded for its brakes to be of any use, which came plunging without warning down the hill from the church. Instinctively, she flattened herself against the circular, stone-built platform on which the punishments meted out by the Muscovite law were habitually carried out, then, the danger past, climbed on towards the church, thinking to find a few moments' peace and quiet inside, even if the place were overflowing with refugees at their prayers. Never had she felt in such need of divine support as at that moment, knowing that she was lost and alone in the midst of an unfamiliar and hostile city.