'You must not think escape will be a simple matter, Marianne,' she said gently. 'Men sentenced as he is are kept under strong guard. It will need long and careful preparation if the plan is to have the greatest possible chance of success.'
'That man I saw in La Force, François Vidocq, has escaped I don't know how many times. It can't be so very difficult.'
'He escaped, certainly, but he has been recaptured each time, hasn't he? Beaufort's only chance, if you should manage to get him away from his guards, is to embark instantly for his own country. The law officers will have little chance at sea. You must have everything ready, beginning with a boat…'
'We can arrange such details as that at the last minute. I am sure anything Vidocq has done, Jason can do too.'
'Marianne! Marianne!' Fortunée sighed. 'You are talking just like a child. I grant that his life is what matters most but take care, remember that the least slip could prove fatal. Vidocq is familiar with the insides of prisons, he knows what he is doing – Jason's situation will be very different. Take care you do nothing foolish.'
Too happy to be cast down by any such dismal forebodings, Marianne simply shrugged lightly, convinced that a rosy future lay before her and Jason. She was now picturing the penal settlement as a kind of seaside prison where the convicts worked all day outside in the fresh air and where, with the aid of a little money, it would always be possible to obtain special favours from the guards. She had ceased to be greatly concerned even about money. Her far-off husband might cut off supplies but she still had fabulous jewels which she would part from without a pang to win the freedom of the man she loved.
However, the following evening when, after the first joyful greetings were over, she heard Arcadius saying very much the same things, she did begin to feel the faintest suspicion of uneasiness. Arcadius was truly glad to know that Jason was no longer in danger but he did not conceal from Marianne that a sentence of hard labour in a penal colony was very nearly as serious and meant little more than a death sentence somewhat delayed.
'It is hell, Marianne,' he said gravely, 'and the way there a hideous ordeal. Death can strike in a hundred different ways: exhaustion, disease, the ill-will of the other prisoners, punishments, dangerous employment. There is very little mercy in commuting a sentence of death into one of imprisonment and if we mean to attempt an escape we shall have to proceed with infinite caution, and the greatest patience. A prisoner of his kidney will be under stricter guard even than the rest, and failure on our part could lead to his death. You must let me take charge of everything.'
Marianne had noted with amazement how these last weeks had aged Jolival. His usually cheerful face was sunken and silver threads were beginning to show among the black around his temples. He had returned from his journey to Aix with a disappointed heart and a more bitter knowledge of men for, against all his hopes, the Duke of Otranto had refused, stubbornly and categorically, to have anything to do with the Beaufort affair. He had said in coarse but unequivocal terms that it was no longer any concern of his and the Emperor's staff must get along as best they might with his successor. He had even delivered himself of sentiments referring to Marianne which Jolival was careful to keep to himself.
'Princess or no, that woman has a face and a body no man could tire of easily,' he had said. 'While she can make Napoleon want her, she'll get whatever she wants out of him, even now he's shackled himself to a wife. I'll do myself no good by getting mixed up in the business…'
And Arcadius had returned to Paris, stricken and grieving, to find Marianne had disappeared. Day after day, with Talleyrand and Eleonora Crawfurd, he had searched every avenue for news of what had become of her and her aged companion. Their inquiries had led them as far as La Force but there they stopped. The people at the prison had seen the supposed Norman and his daughter walk away comfortably arm-in-arm down the rue des Ballets and turn the corner – after which they had vanished as completely as if they had melted into thin air. All that had been found was the body of the cab driver, floating in the Seine with his throat cut.
'We thought you were dead,' Adelaide said, the traces of her grief still visible in her reddened eyes. 'It seemed impossible that you had not been dealt with in the same way. We were afraid – oh, so afraid! Until the day, last Tuesday it was, when Mr Crawfurd came back at last and told us you had been carried off by a woman and a whole lot of Spaniards, all wearing masks. He knew they did not mean to kill you – or not straight away at least – because he heard them say so. They were waiting for the outcome of the trial.'
'After the sentence was delivered we were nearly mad,' Jolival went on. 'I went to Mortefontaine, thinking Pilar might have had the audacity to take you there, and searched, but I found nothing. In fact, of course, you were already gone because all this happened this week.'
Shocked to read on their faces the agonies they had endured on her account, Marianne blamed herself bitterly for having to some extent neglected them. When she reached Paris after her escape she could have, indeed she ought to have, sent word to Adelaide at least, but when she heard that Jason had been condemned it had driven every thought out of her head except the one idea of how to snatch him from death. The rest of the world had simply ceased to exist for her.
There was such sweetness and real affection in her attempts to explain all this, that neither Adelaide nor Jolival would allow her to continue. Arcadius summed up their feelings in a few words:
'You are here, in one piece, and we are sure that Beaufort's head is safe. And that is that. After that, any complaints would be base ingratitude! We are going to drink to your return, Marianne!' Smiling, he rang the bell for Jeremy to bring them some champagne.
'Do you think we can start celebrating today?' Marianne said, with some asperity. 'When you told me yourself that Jason's life is still not wholly out of danger?'
'Not celebrate, no, merely enjoy a little respite before plunging back head-first into the fray. I may as well tell you at once. Another letter has arrived from Lucca. Your husband demands your instant return and threatens to complain to the Emperor and appeal to him as a vassal to his suzerain to have you sent back to Lucca.'
Marianne felt the colour drain from her face. She had not been expecting such a brutal set-down and Eleonora Crawfurd's stories came back to her mind, giving to this ultimatum an oddly menacing note. Clearly, the prince took her for an adventuress and meant to make her pay for having taken him in, pay with her blood, perhaps.
'He can do as he likes, I shall not go! The Emperor himself cannot compel me to. Besides, I shall probably have left Paris in a little while.'
'Again?' wailed Mademoiselle d'Asselnat. 'But, Marianne, where are you going? And I thought we were going to settle down to a nice quiet life here, in this house, with all it stands for.'
Marianne smiled, a fond and very understanding smile, and held out her hand to her cousin with impulsive tenderness. That elderly spinster seemed to have changed a little as a result of her little adventure, which had surely cost her some degree of heartache. The irrepressible energy which had seen her through more than forty years of an eventful and far from easy life seemed to be dead, or at least sleeping. What she must want now above all was quiet and peace. Her expression as she looked round the elegant salon with its fine furniture and ornaments, was almost greedily possessive and acquired a hint of an appeal whenever her eye came to rest on the big portrait of the Marquis d'Asselnat over the fireplace.
'You need not come with me, Adelaide. You need rest and tranquillity, and this house needs a mistress who is here rather more permanently than I have been. I am going away again, and you know I am. Jason's prison will not be in Paris, and I want to go with him now wherever he goes.' She turned to Arcadius. 'Is it known yet where he will be taken?'
'Brest, for sure.'
'That is good news. I know the town well. I lived there for several weeks with poor Nicolas Mallerousse, in his little house at Recouvrance. If I cannot manage to arrange his escape on the way, I
am sure I shall have a better chance in Brest than at Toulon or Rochefort where I have never been.'
'We shall have a better chance,' Jolival corrected her. 'I have already asked you to allow me to take charge of everything.'
'Will you leave me all alone?' wailed Adelaide, sounding like a hurt child. 'What shall I do when all these messengers start arriving from the prince, your husband? What shall I say to them?'
'Anything you please! Say I am away, that will be best. Besides, I am going to write to him myself and say that – that I have to go away – a long way away – on the Emperor's service, let us say, but that on my return I shall not fail to comply with my husband's — er — request,' Marianne said, thinking out her letter aloud as she spoke.
'That is madness! You yourself said not a moment ago that you did not wish to return to Lucca—'
'Nor shall I. You must understand, Adelaide, that I am simply trying to gain time… time to rescue Jason. Afterwards, I shall go away with him, away to his own country and live there with him, at his side, in a log cabin if needs must, in poverty, but I will never leave him, never, never again.'
Jolival was swift to intervene. His little black eyes held Marianne's huge ones steadily.
'You are deserting us, then?' he asked softly.
'No, no! The choice is yours. Stay here, in this house – I will give it to you – or come with me over there, with all the risks that involves…'
'Have you remembered that Beaufort is still married to that harpy? What do you intend doing with her?'
'Arcadius,' Marianne said, with sudden gravity, 'when that woman dared to use me as her footstool, and when, most of all, I heard her tell me coolly and implacably that she was determined to send her husband to his death, I swore that one day I would make her pay for it. If she dares to approach Jason again, I shall get rid of her without a second thought. There is nothing,' her voice shook with the intensity of her feelings, 'nothing I would not do to keep him for myself. I would not even shrink from a murder which, all told, would be no more than a just execution. I fought a duel with one man who debased me, I killed the woman who insulted me… I shall not let a wicked wife destroy the one love of my life!'
'You have turned into a terrifying woman, Marianne!' Mademoiselle d'Asselnat exclaimed, with a horror not entirely devoid of admiration.
'I am your cousin, my dear. Can you have forgotten that the night we met you were trying to set fire to this house to punish it for belonging to a creature you had decided was unworthy of it?'
The entrance of Jeremy bearing lighted candles forced them to break off the conversation. Absorbed in their discussion, not one of the three had observed that it was growing dark. Shadows had crept into the farthest corners of the room and crowded thickly about the curtains and hangings and under the lofty ceiling. The only light came from the fire blazing in the hearth.
They sat in silence while the butler disposed branches of candles about the room, clothing everything in it in a golden radiance. When he had departed, with a gloomy pronouncement that dinner would be served shortly, Adelaide, who was sitting bundled up in a vast, white woollen shawl in the armchair by the fire, stretched out her thin hands to the dancing flames and remained for a moment staring into them. Locked each in their own thoughts, Marianne and Arcadius, one seated on a cushion before the fire, the other leaning against the chimney piece, were also silent, as though waiting for the familiar sounds of the house to give them an answer to the questions which filled their hearts but which they dared not utter for fear of influencing, however little, the steps which would decide the others' futures.
At last, Adelaide looked up at Jolival and rubbed her hands together quietly.
'They say America is a wonderful country,' she said placidly and a flicker of the old fire shone for a moment in her grey eyes. 'And I have heard it said that in those southern parts it is never cold. I think that I should like never to be cold. You, Jolival?'
'I too,' the Vicomte returned gravely, 'I believe I too should like—'
The doors were flung wide open.
'Her Serene Highness is served!' Jeremy intoned from the doorway.
Marianne slipped her arms companionably through Jolival's and Adelaide's and smiled with deep gratitude upon them both.
'Indeed I am,' she said, 'I am served far, far better than anything I deserve.'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Road to Brest
Day dawned, grey and dirty, a sodden November dawn, soaked through and through with the thin, freezing rain that had been falling on Paris for some days, penetrating everything. Looming through the yellowish fog of early morning, the old hospice of Bicêtre with its soaring roofs, lofty gateway and nicely balanced buildings, recovered some ghost of its former elegance. The mist concealed the cracks in the walls, the chipped gables and the smashed and glassless windows, the dark streaks that mottled the crumbling stonework below gutters cracked by frost and all the unsightly decay of a building which had once been royal, a work dedicated to the loftiest aims of charity, now put to the meanest uses of the law. Ever since 1796, when it had replaced La Tournelle, it had been the last stage before the galleys, the antechamber to hell, whether the road led via the Conciergerie and the scaffold or to penal servitude, which was a death no less certain but more horrible because stripped of the last rags of human dignity.
In the normal way of things, this gloomy edifice, brooding on its hillside with the waste lands all about, stood silent and alone, but on this day, despite the early hour, a swelling, noisy crowd was surging up against the rotting walls, big with a nameless joy, an unwholesome curiosity. It was the crowd which always assembled there, four times a year, to witness the departure of the 'Chain'. The same crowd of milling humanity, alerted by heaven alone knew what mysterious signs, pressed around the scaffold on execution days, no matter how quiet the thing was kept, a gathering of connoisseurs come together to watch a most choice spectacle with undisguised relish. They beat upon the closed doors of the hospice like patrons in a theatre stamping with their feet, impatient for the curtain to go up. Marianne gazed at this grisly mob with loathing.
She was standing, enveloped from head to foot in a great, black, hooded cloak, in the lee of a broken wall which had once belonged to the hovel whose crumbling remains still stood beside the road. She was up to her ankles in mud, her face was wet and her cloak already sodden with rain. Beside her was Arcadius de Jolival, grim-faced, his arms folded on his chest, also waiting, chewing the ends of his moustache.
He had wished to spare Marianne the pitiful sight in store and had tried, right up to the last minute, to dissuade her from coming, but in vain. She clung stubbornly to her pilgrimage of love, determined to follow every step of the cruel journey that lay before the man she loved, only repeating endlessly that some opportunity might occur on the way and that they must not let it slip.
'The chances of an escape while the chain is on the road,' Arcadius had explained tirelessly, 'are non-existent. They are all chained together, in batches of twenty-four at a time, and they are searched at the first halt to make sure that no one has managed to slip them any tool to sever their chains as they set out. After that they are kept under close guard and any man who is fool enough to try and escape is shot down on the spot.'
In the long days which had gone before, Arcadius had acquired minutely detailed information on everything which concerned the penal colony, the life the men led there and the conditions of the journey which took them there. He had penetrated, in ruffianly disguise, into the worst dens of the Cite and the Barrière du Combat, buying many drinks, saying little but listening a great deal, and, as he had told Marianne, his conviction had grown that any escape would need extremely careful preparation down to the minutest details. Nor had he concealed from her his fears regarding her ability to face the brutal facts about what awaited Jason. There had been a time when he had hoped to keep the greater part from her by advising that she should go to Brest and begin to make arrangements there
while he followed the convict chain on its journey. But Marianne had refused to hear of any such plan. Nothing would dissuade her from following Jason step by step from the moment of his leaving Bicêtre.
Jolival gazed with a jaundiced eye at the desolate scene about him. Here and there in the waste an occasional chimney was beginning to smoke. On the edge of the crowd a number of dark figures stood in isolated groups of two or three, with the wretched, hopeless air of people in great grief. They were the wives, relatives and friends of those about to be deported. Some were weeping, others simply stood, like Marianne herself, faces strained towards the hospice, eyes wide open, every feature turned to stone by the hard frost of unshed tears.
There came a sudden roar from the crowd. Creaking, grinding, the great gates were swinging open… Two mounted officers appeared, their bodies hunched against the rain which streamed from the angles of their cocked hats, using their horses and the flat of their swords to beat back the crowd, which was already surging forwards. A shudder ran through Marianne. She took a step forward, but instantly Jolival seized her arm and dragged her back.
'Stay where you are!' he said, with unconscious harshness. 'You need not go any closer. They will pass us here.'
The first wagon had already appeared, to be greeted by a horrid outburst of boos, catcalls and abuse. It was a kind of long cart, supported on two enormous iron-shod wheels and divided along the whole of its length by a two-sided wooden bench on which the prisoners sat back-to-back, twelve to a side, their legs dangling, held in place by a crude rail at waist level. Each man was chained by the neck by means of a solid, three-cornered iron collar attached to a length of chain, too short to allow him to jump from the wagon on to the road. This chain was in turn connected to the much heavier chain which ran the length of the bench, its end lying firmly beneath the foot of the armed guard standing at the end of each wagon.
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