Marianne and The Masked Prince

by Жюльетта Бенцони

'I will take you to your room, Excellenza,' the housekeeper told her warmly. 'Matteo will take care of His Grace.'

  Marianne smiled and her eyes went to her godfather.

  'Go, my child,' he told her, 'and rest. I will send for you this evening, before the ceremony, so that the Prince may see you.'

  Marianne followed Dona Lavinia in silence, repressing the question that sprang instinctively to her lips. She was consumed with a curiosity greater than anything she had ever known, she felt a devouring urge to 'see' this unknown Prince herself, this master of a fairytale domain who kept such wonderful creatures in it. The Prince was to see her. Then why should she not see the Prince? Was the malady with which he was afflicted, as she now suspected, so terrible that she could not approach him? Her eyes rested suddenly on the housekeeper's straight back as she led the way, her keys chinking softly. What was it Gauthier de Chazay had said? It was she who had brought up Corrado Sant'Anna? Surely none could know him better than she – and she had seemed so glad to see Marianne…

  'I will make her talk,' she told herself. 'She must be made to talk!'

  The interior of the villa was no less magnificent than the gardens. Leaving the loggia, which was decorated in baroque plaster-work with gilded lanterns of wrought iron, Dona Lavinia led her new mistress through a vast ballroom that shimmered with the dull gleam of gold, then through a series of apartments, one of which was especially sumptuous, with delicate red and gold carvings setting off the dark shine of black lacquer panels. This, however, was the exception. The general colours of the house were white and gold, with floors of a black and white marble mosaic on which their feet slid silently.

  The bedchamber assigned to Marianne, which was situated in the left-hand wing of the house, was decorated in a similar style. Even so, she found it startling. Here, too, all was white and gold except for a pair of red lacquer cabinets which added a warmer note to the room. The ceiling, however, was painted with trompe-l'œil figures, who appeared to be leaning over the cornice, as though from a balcony, observing the movement of whoever was in the room below. The walls were covered in a profusion of mirrors. On every side, the two dark forms of Marianne and Dona Lavinia were reflected over and over again into infinity, along with the great Venetian bed hung with rich brocades. The bed was raised up on three steps like a throne and flanked by a pair of torchères in the shape of two Negroes dressed in oriental style, bearing clusters of tall red candles on their heads.

  Marianne gazed at this magnificence with a kind of appalled wonder, while the servants carried in her trunks.

  'Is – is this my room?'

  Dona Lavinia threw open a window and applied a deft touch to the massive spray of orange blossoms dripping from an alabaster vase.

  'It has belonged to every Princess Sant'Anna for two hundred years. Do you like it?'

  To avoid the necessity of answering, Marianne asked another question.

  'Why all these mirrors?'

  At once, she had the feeling that the question was an unwelcome one. The housekeeper's worn features tensed a little, and she turned away to open a door leading into a small room apparently hollowed out of a block of white marble. A bathroom.

  'Our Prince's grandmother,' she said at last, 'was a woman of such remarkable beauty that – that she desired to contemplate herself continually. It was she who ordered the mirrors put in here. They have been allowed to remain —'

  Her tone intrigued Marianne who found her curiosity about this family increasing all the time.

  There is no doubt a portrait of her somewhere in the house,' she said with a smile. 'I should like to see her.'

  'There was one – but it was destroyed in the fire. Would your ladyship care to rest, a bath, perhaps, or a little refreshment?'

  'All three, if you please. But first, a bath. Where have you put my maid? I should like to have her near me.' This was to the obvious relief of Agathe who, ever since entering the villa, had been walking on tiptoe as though in a church or a museum.

  'In that case, there is a small room at the end of this passage.' As she spoke, Dona Lavinia pressed a knob on one of the carved panels. The join was so fine that the door was wholly invisible. 'A bed shall be set up there. I will prepare the bath.' She was about to leave the room when Marianne stopped her.

  'Dona Lavinia —'

  'Excellenza?'

  Her green eyes gazing directly into those of the housekeeper, Marianne asked quietly: 'Whereabouts in the palace are the Prince's apartments?'

  The question was a perfectly natural one but clearly Dona Lavinia was not expecting it. Marianne could have sworn that her face paled.

  'When he is here,' she said with an effort, 'his highness resides in the right wing – the room equivalent to this.'

  'Very well. Thank you.'

  Dona Lavinia curtsied and went away, leaving Marianne and Agathe alone. They looked at each other. The maid's pretty face was crumpled with fright and all her pert, Parisian assurance had deserted her. She clasped her hands together in a gesture of childish entreaty.

  'Oh, mademoiselle – are we going to stay here long?'

  'No, Agathe, not very long, I hope. Don't you like it?'

  'It's very beautiful…' She cast a doubtful glance around her. 'But – no, I don't like it. I don't know why. I'm sorry, mademoiselle, but I don't think I could ever feel at home here. It's all so different…' Marianne smiled.

  'Well, go and unpack my things,' she told her kindly, 'and don't be afraid to apply to Dona Lavinia, she is the housekeeper, you know, for anything you might need. She will be kind to you, I think. Now, be a brave girl, Agathe. There is nothing to be afraid of here. It is just the fatigue of the journey, and being in strange surroundings…' As she spoke, Marianne became aware that in trying to comfort Agathe it was to herself that she was really talking. She, too, had been conscious, ever since entering the gates of this strange and splendid mansion, of an indefinable sense of oppression, all the more strange in that she could perceive no tangible signs of danger. It was something more subtle, like a bodiless presence, the presence, perhaps, of this man who kept himself so closely guarded. But there was something else besides and that, Marianne could have sworn, emanated from this very room, rather as if the ghost of the woman who had hung these mirrors still roamed here, intangible but supreme, as though in a shrine of which the great, gilded bed was the altar and the fantastically dressed figures on the ceiling a host of attentive worshippers.

  Marianne moved slowly to a window. Perhaps it was her English blood that made her believe in ghosts. She could feel something now, here in this room.

  The opposite wing of the house was hidden from view behind the jutting central block, but the windows commanded the whole extent of the peacock lawn, which ended in an immense cascade down which the water foamed and tumbled from pool to pool to fill a wide basin framed by two groups of plunging horses. It seemed to Marianne that these churning waters, in such strong contrast to the green and peaceful gardens, were a symbol of some powerful, hidden force penned beneath a surface of deceptive calm. But then, after all, those boiling waves, the restless plunging of the horses, these things were life itself, the passion to be and to act which Marianne had always felt fretting within herself. It may have been that which made this place, with its uncanny silence, strike her like a tomb.

  ***

  Dusk found Marianne standing in the same place. The green park had melted into indistinct shades of grey, the cascade and the statues were pale blurs and the regal birds had gone. Marianne had bathed and nibbled half-heartedly at a light collation but she had found it impossible to sleep for an instant. The blame for this could probably be assigned to the preposterous bed, which made her feel like a victim offered up to the sacrificial knife.

  Now she was dressed in a gown of heavy, creamy-white brocade, stiff with gold embroidery, which Dona Lavinia had brought to her, spread out in both arms as solemnly as if it had been some precious relic. Her head was crowned for the first time with a weight
y diadem of gold set with outsize pearls, the fellows of the ones that made up the collar and bracelets of almost barbaric splendour which adorned her neck and arms. She stared out into the darkening garden, trying to quell the nervous fears that mounted in her as the hour drew near.

  She saw herself, so short a time before, standing in another place, looking out at a different park, on the brink of another marriage. That was at Selton, on the eve of her wedding to Francis. Good God, was it possible that it was scarcely nine months ago? It felt like several centuries! She had stood at the windows of the marriage chamber, dad in a flimsy wisp of cambric, her girlish body quivering with mingled fear and anticipation, staring out as darkness shrouded the familiar landscape. How happy she had been that night! It was all so simple and beautiful. She loved Francis with all her youthful being and hoped to be loved by him, and she waited with passionate intensity for the moment when, in his arms, she would learn the overwhelming joys of love.

  It was another who had taught her love and every fibre of her body trembled even now with intoxicating gratitude at the memory of those white-hot nights at Butard and the Trianon. Yet it was this love also which had given birth to the woman whose image she had contemplated only a moment past in those ridiculous mirrors: a statue of almost Byzantine majesty and splendour, huge eyes in a set, pale face, Her Serene Highness the Princess Sant'Anna. Serene… most serene… ineffably serene, while her heart was wrung with grief and anguish. What a mockery!

  Tonight there was no question of love, only of a marriage, positive, realistic, implacable. A union of two people in trouble, Gauthier de Chazay had called it. Tonight no man would come knocking at the door of this room, no desire would come to claim her body in which life, secret as yet but already all-powerful, was growing… no Jason would appear to demand payment of a debt, fantastic yet disturbing…

  Marianne leaned on the bronze window hasp, fighting off the giddiness which overwhelmed her, thrusting back the mariner's image as she suddenly thought that if he had come she might have felt a real happiness. But he was not there and the world was strangely empty. She wanted to cry out, and she pressed her be-ringed fingers into her mouth to keep back that absurd call for help. Decked in jewels an empress might have envied, she had never felt more miserable.

  She was shaken out of her morbid state when the double doors of her room were flung wide open and the shadows were dispelled by the appearance of six footmen holding branched candlesticks aloft. Aureoled in the sparkling light of the dancing flames, his robes of red watered silk sweeping the polished floor, the cardinal entered in all the splendour of the Church of Rome and at the glory of his entrance Marianne blinked like a night bird brought suddenly into the light. The cardinal's gaze rested thoughtfully on her for a moment but he made no comment.

  'Come,' he said, merely. 'It is time.'

  Whether it was his words or the blood red of his garments, Marianne could not have said, but she felt like one condemned, being summoned to the scaffold. She went to him, none the less, and laid her bejewelled hand on the red gloved fingers he held out to her. Their two trains, the sweeping capa magna and the queenly gown, whispered in concert over the marble surface of the rooms.

  As they walked through them, Marianne saw with amazement that every room was lighted as if for a ball, yet nothing could have been less festive than this huge, magnificent emptiness. She thought, for the first time in years, of the fairy stories she had loved as a child. Tonight, she was Cinderella, Donkeyskin and the Sleeping Beauty all rolled into one, but for her there was no Prince Charming. Her prince was a phantom, invisible.

  In this way, in slow and solemn procession, they traversed the entire palace. It was as though the cardinal were proudly presenting the newcomer to the assembled shades of all those who had once lived, loved and, perhaps, suffered in this place. At last, they came to a small saloon, hung with red damask, in which the principal article of furniture was a tall mirror of the French regency period, set on a gilt console and framed by a pair of bronze girandoles bearing clusters of lighted candles.

  Bidding Marianne with a gesture to be seated, the cardinal stood beside her in silence with the air of one waiting for something. His eyes were on the mirror, which Marianne was sitting facing, but he had retained her hand in his, as if for reassurance. Marianne felt more oppressed than ever and she was already opening her mouth to ask a question when he spoke.

  'My friend, here, as I promised, is Marianne d'Asselnat de Villeneuve, my god-daughter,' he said proudly.

  Marianne shivered. It was to the mirror he had spoken, and now it was the mirror that answered.

  'Forgive my silence, my dear cardinal. I should have spoken first, to welcome you, but I must confess that I was dumb with admiration. Madame, your godfather endeavoured to describe your beauty to me but, for the first time in his life, his eloquence has proved unequal to the task; so far unequal that only the fact that none but a poet could find words to express such divinity can excuse him. Let me say how deeply – humbly grateful I am to you for being here – and for being yourself.'

  The voice was low and muffled. Its very tonelessness gave it a note of weariness and profound sadness. Marianne tensed, to control the excitement which was quickening her breath. She too looked at the mirror from where the voice seemed to come.

  'Can you see me?' she asked softly.

  'As clearly as if there were no obstacle between us. Let us say, I am the mirror in which you see yourself reflected. Have you ever seen a mirror happy?'

  'I wish I could be sure of that – your voice is so sad.'

  'That is because it is little used. A voice that has nothing to say comes to forget that it could sing. In the end, it is crushed by silence. But your voice is pure music.'

  It was strange, talking to someone who remained invisible, but little by little Marianne acquired confidence. She decided it was time she took her own fate in hand. The voice was that of one who had known suffering, or was suffering still. She determined to play this game for herself. She turned to the cardinal.

  'Godfather, would you leave me for a moment? I should like to talk to the Prince, and I should find it easier alone.'

  'It is natural. I will wait in the library.'

  No sooner had the door closed behind him than Marianne rose but instead of moving closer to the mirror she turned away towards one of the windows. It unnerved her to sit face to face with herself, hearing the bodiless voice speaking, as it was speaking now, with a shade of hesitation.

  'Why did you send the cardinal away?'

  'Because I must speak to you. There are some things, which must, I think, be said.'

  'What things? I understood that my eminent friend had explained the precise nature of our agreement?'

  'And so he has. It is all perfectly cut and dried; at least, I think so.'

  'He told you that I shall not interfere in your life? The only thing he may not have said – but which I will ask…'

  He paused and Marianne was aware of a slight break in his voice, but he recovered himself almost at once and continued: 'I will ask you, when the child is born, to bring him here sometimes. I should like him to learn to love this land, in my place, to love this house and its people, for whom he will be a real person – not a furtive shadow.' Again there was the slight, almost imperceptible break and Marianne felt her heart swell suddenly with a rush of pity. At the same time, another part of her mind was saying that all this was absurd, fantastic, and most of all this desperate veil of secrecy in which he wrapped himself. Her voice, when she spoke, was imploring.

  'Prince – pardon me, I beseech you, if my words give you pain, but I do not understand and I want to so much. Why all this mystery? Why may I not see you? Surely I have the right to know my husband's face?'

  There was a silence, so long and heavy that for a moment she was afraid that she had driven her strange interlocutor away. She was afraid that her impulsiveness had made her go too far, and too soon. But at last the answer came, slow and final
as a judgement.

  'No. That cannot be. In a little while, we shall be together in the chapel and my hand will touch yours – but we shall never be as close again.'

  'But why, why?' she persisted. 'My birth is as good as your own and I fear nothing – however terrible – if that is what restrains you.'

  There was a brief, low, mirthless laugh.

  'You have been here so short a time and already you have heard men talk, have you not? I know – they have all sorts of theories about me, of which the most agreeable is that I am the victim of a hideous disease, leprosy or something of that kind. I am not a leper, madame, or anything of the kind. Nevertheless, it is impossible for us to meet face to face.'

  'But in the name of God, why?'

  This time it was her voice that broke.

  'Because I would not risk becoming an object of horror to you.'

  The voice was silent, and this time the mirror did not speak for so long that Marianne realized she was truly alone. Her hands, which had been gripping the thick, shiny leaves of some unknown plant in a Chinese vase, relaxed and she let out her breath in one long sigh. The disturbing presence had gone, to Marianne's great relief, for now she thought she knew what she was dealing with. The man must be a monster, some wretched semblance of humanity, doomed to darkness by repulsive disfigurement, too hideous to be endured by any eyes but those which had known him from birth. That would explain Matteo Damiani's stony countenance, the pain in Dona Lavinia's and perhaps also the childishness of Father Amundi's old features. It would explain, too, why he had broken off their interview when so many things were still to be said.

  'I was clumsy,' Marianne reproached herself. 'I was in too much of a hurry. I should have approached the subject more cautiously, not rushed in at once with the question I wished to ask. I should have tried to penetrate the mystery little by little, by careful hints. And now I daresay I have frightened him.'

  One other thing which surprised her was that the Prince had asked her nothing about herself, her life, her tastes. He had merely praised her beauty, as if that were the only thing that mattered in his eyes. Marianne reflected a little bitterly that he could scarcely have shown less curiosity if she had been a handsome filly destined for his precious stables. Indeed, it was more than likely that Corrado Sant'Anna would have made inquiries into the health and habits of such an animal. But, after all, for a man whose sole object in life was the possession of an heir to carry on his ancient name, the physical characteristics of the mother were bound to be of paramount importance. Why should Prince Sant'Anna concern himself with the affections, feelings and habits of Marianne d'Asselnat?