'No, no! He is alive. But he is hurt, Marianne, hurt badly.'
'Hurt? How? Why?'
Then Arcadius told them what had happened. When they halted at Pontorson, one of those on Jason's chain, a young lad of eighteen, had the ague and was calling for water to slake his raging thirst. One of the guards had amused himself by emptying a jug of water over the boy's head and then kicking him in the ribs until he lay still. This had put Jason in a rage. He had sprung at the man and knocked him down. Having done so, he had then knelt on his chest and done his best to choke the life out of him. The guard's fellows had come hurrying to the rescue with their whips and one of the officers had drawn his sword.
'He was wounded in the chest,' Jolival went on. 'The brutes would have killed him but for one of the other convicts, a man called Vidocq, who encouraged the rest to gather round him and protect him. Even so, the remainder of the journey was a nightmare…'
'But – wasn't he looked after?'
Jolival shook his head. 'His comrades did their best when the chain stopped, but they were made to walk two stages on foot as punishment. I thought he would not reach here alive.'
'It's horrible!' Marianne said tonelessly. She sat back on her heels, her whole attitude one of despair, and stared unseeingly at the familiar room. Instead, she saw a bleak road, swept by wind and rain, and a wounded man dragging himself along in chains, kept on his feet by other vague, human figures as exhausted as himself.
'They will kill him,' she said. 'He will never survive. Have these poor wretches even a hospital?'
It was Gracchus who answered:
'There is one in the bagne. But I thought the chain was supposed to have a medical inspection at Pont-a-Lézen before they even got here?'
'The guards refused to leave him there. It's too easy to escape from the quarantine camp. And the man he attacked was against it, saying he'd have sufficient treatment in the prison to make him able to endure the punishment that was coming to him. That man's nothing but a brute beast. He'll not be satisfied until he has his pound of flesh.'
'Punishment? What punishment?'
'A flogging first, and then the cells, where he may remain for several months, if he survives the flogging! And there's no escaping from there.'
The waiting, buoyed up by the very real hopes which Marianne had brought with her from St Malo, had been a time of comparative peace compared with the horror which now took hold of her. She knew now that Jason was caught in the jaws of a relentless and awful machine from which it would be terribly difficult to free him and which might yet destroy him. In his present state, escape was unthinkable and if he recovered it would only be to fall into a still worse plight.
While she sat lost in these dismal meditations, Gracchus, swearing fluently, had taken up the sailor's pea jacket which he had bought the better to mingle unnoticed with the inhabitants of the great port and was putting it on again. Then, pulling his brown woollen cap down over his ears, he made swiftly for the door.
He paused at the sound of Marianne's voice.
'Where are you going at this time of night?'
'To Keravel. There's a wine-shop by the prison gates where the guards go to drink. I'm known there now and I've struck up an acquaintance with a Sergeant La Violette who's a great one for the bottle. A tot of rum'll be enough to make him tell me anything I want to know – and what I want to know is what's become of Monsieur Jason.'
A light came into Jolival's tired eyes at these words.
'He sounds a useful man to know. Well done. You go alone for tonight, but tomorrow I'll come and assist in the saturation of your sergeant.'
When Gracchus returned, two hours later, Marianne and Jolival were still downstairs, he smoking by the fire in silence, she, incapable of sitting still, trying to calm her fidgets by putting away the crockery. The news which Sergeant La Violette had breathed out, along with the fumes of his rum, confirmed that brought by Jolival in all respects, but with one slightly more encouraging addition. One of the prisoners had been brought in wounded and sent at once to the prison hospital. It was his good fortune that the surgeon in charge of the medical arrangements in the prison was still there at the time the chain arrived. A former escapee being brought back to complete his sentence had managed to inform him and he had examined the injured prisoner at once.
'François Vidocq again,' was Marianne's thought. But the thought of that odd, insouciant individual who had so annoyed her in La Force, now evoked nothing but gratitude. She could almost have remembered him in her prayers, knowing that it was thanks to him that Jason was alive at that moment. But for how long? The enmity of the man he had knocked down was all about him, watching its opportunity, and that thought, in the days ahead, was to breed in Marianne's heart a vague, but ever-present fear.
To an outside observer, those days would have appeared calm and unvaried to the point of monotony, punctuated only by the church bells and the castle gun. The inhabitants of the little house lived a quiet, ordered life, attending to their small domestic affairs or walking out, uncle and niece together strolling sedately arm-in-arm through the streets of the town or along the esplanade by the castle, visiting the harbour and the historic old quarters. The young servant, when he was off duty, loafed about doing nothing in particular, as was to be expected of a lad of his age. He would spend hours on the quays by the Penfeld watching the prisoners loading cases of shot and grenades aboard the warships, coiling the new-made ropes as they emerged from the hands of their comrades, working on vessels undergoing repairs and stacking the great baulks of freshly cut timber, still redolent of their native forests, for use in the shipyards. Yet there was another side to these innocent wanderings, which was to gather the greatest possible amount of information and, most important of all, to watch for the arrival of the Saint-Guénolé.
The lugger was taking an inexplicably long time. According to Jolival's calculations, it should have been sighted at least a week before and Marianne found the delay both fretting and alarming. The sea had been so rough of late that who could say whether the little craft would manage to get safely through the Fromveur channel, with its perilous reputation, round the Promontoire de St Mathieu and make the little harbour of Le Conquet without being driven on to the rocks? Even the fishermen mostly stayed at home and they were saying on the quays and in the taverns that no news had come through from the offshore islands for a fortnight or more. As so often in the winter months, Molène and Ushant were cut off from the mainland by the pounding seas.
Once the doors and shutters were safely closed, however, the occupants of the house devoted themselves to less innocent occupations. Jolival spent hours painstakingly cutting in half the big bronze sous, in size and thickness more than adequate for the purpose, and just as carefully putting them together again, but with gold coins concealed inside, money being an indispensable tool for the convict. He had also made a copy of the brass numberplate worn by every convict on his cap, with, on it, Jason's number-learned from Sergeant La Violette – only this time in steel with minuscule saw teeth which would enable it to saw through chains. Meanwhile, Marianne had been learning to bake bread and two large loaves had already been dispatched to the bagne, again through the good offices of La Violette. Inside each one was a piece of ordinary civilian clothing.
After dark, Jolival and Gracchus would slip out of the house and make their way down to Keravel, to the tavern known as 'The Girl from Jamaica' where they were looked on by now as regular customers. Nor was the news they brought back unencouraging. The injured man was recovering, slowly but surely. His youth and strong constitution had won. The danger of infection was past. Arcadius and the surgeon of the prison were, in fact, agreed on the beneficial effects of sea air on healing wounds; but still Marianne was unable to think without a shudder of the narrow pallet of seaweed and the chains which held the body of the man she loved, for the convicts were never released from their chains.
Christmas was coming and as it fell this year on a Tuesday and Fri
day was market day in Brest, Marianne went with Madame le Guilvinec on the Friday before, down to the rue de Siam to make the necessary purchases in preparation for the festival which was probably dearer than any other to Breton hearts. It would have looked suspiciously odd if the new inhabitant of Recouvrance had behaved differently from her neighbours in this.
The weather was mild but misty. The rue de Siam, always at its busiest on market days, was wrapped in a dense yellow fog, making the animation all about appear strangely subdued. The sailors' striped trousers and varnished hats, the rich, colourful costumes of the peasant girls, a different dress for every village, seemed to fade into unreality. The Leon girls, in their tall hennins with long, fringed shawls falling almost to their heels, took on the air of witches from a fairy tale, while those from Plouaré, all smothered in red and gold embroidery, were like so many figures of the Virgin, stepped down from their niches in the church. Everyone, even the old people in their sombre blacks, was transformed into a fantastic being from another world, while the men, with their embroidered waistcoats, wide, pleated trousers and little round hats were as colourful and gay as any.
Marianne was wandering in Madame le Guilvinec's wake from a stall of oysters to another heaped like a small mountain with cabbages, when she saw a cart loaded with refuse coming towards her. It was being pushed and pulled along by a group of four convicts, one of them wearing the green cap of the incorrigible criminal, under the somewhat vague eye of the guard who was following on behind in a bored way, nose in the air and hands clasped behind his back, oblivious of the sabre banging against his calves. No one took any notice of them. Convict labour was an everyday affair to the people of Brest. There were even some who smiled at them, as at old acquaintances.
The man in the green cap seemed especially well known. A ship's chandler, standing smoking his long clay pipe in the doorway of his shop, gave him a friendly wave. The convict waved back and Marianne saw suddenly that it was Vidocq. He was quite close to her by then and, drawn as though by a magnet, Marianne could not withstand the longing to attract his attention. Madame le Guilvinec had paused underneath the awning of a market gardener's stall to gossip with another old soul in a similar dolmen head-dress to her own and had temporarily forgotten her companion. Marianne raised her hand.
The convict's bright eye caught hers at once. He gave a hint of a smile to show that he had recognized her and then nodded at the next street corner where a heap of refuse was waiting to be carted away. Next, he jerked his head back to where the guard was still ambling along behind the refuse cart and tossed a pebble in his hand, as if it had been a coin. Marianne realized that he was telling her to go to the heap of rubbish where, for the price of a coin, she would be able to exchange a few words with him.
Slipping swiftly between two groups of people, without Madame le Guilvinec's seeing her, she made her way hurriedly to the corner and waited for the cart to come up with her. Then, taking a silver coin from her purse, she slipped it into the guard's hand, saying under her breath that she would like a word with the man in the green cap.
The man shrugged and uttered a crack of ribald laughter:
'That Vidocq! He's a right one for the girls, he is. Go on, then, sweetheart, but not more than a minute, mind!'
It was dark in the entrance to the alley which was no more than a narrow passage, sucking up the fog. Marianne stepped quickly inside, while the convict, with an unnerving rattle of his chains, stationed himself against the slate-hung wall, half-hidden by a small, wooden shrine adorning the corner of the house.
Still out of breath from her haste, Marianne asked: 'Have you any news?'
'Yes. I saw him this morning. He is better, but still far from well.'
'How much longer?'
'A week, at least, maybe ten days.'
'And after that?'
'After?'
'Yes… they told me he… was to suffer some punishment…'
The convict shrugged with a gesture of fatalism. 'He's certainly earned a flogging. It all depends on the man who administers it… If he goes easy with it, he'll survive.'
'But I can't – not even the thought of it! He must escape first. If not, he may be crippled – or worse!'
Quick as a snake, the convict's arm shot out from his jacket pocket and clamped down on Marianne's arm.
'Not so loud!' he growled. 'You talk of it as if it were like going to church! Don't worry, everything's in hand. Have you a vessel?'
'I shall have – or so I hope. It has not arrived yet and…'
Vidocq frowned. 'Without a boat, the thing can't be done. As soon as the alarm is given from the bagne, everyone for miles round takes up the hunt. It's worth a hundred francs to capture a man on the run… and there's a gipsy encampment right by the gates with just that one thought in mind. Real bloodhounds! The moment the gun goes off, it's out with the scythes and pitchforks and away!'
The other convicts had by now finished heaping the refuse somewhat haphazardly on to the cart and the comite's head poked round the corner:
'Ready, Vidocq… on your way, now!'
Vidocq dragged himself away from the wall and began to move out into the street:
'When your boat comes, tell Kermeur at the Girl from Jamaica. But try and make it in a week from now – ten days at the latest. So long!'
Without giving a further thought to Madame le Guilvinec, who had in any case disappeared from sight and was probably looking for her at that moment in some other part of the market, Marianne made her way back to the esplanade by the castle, eager to get back to Recouvrance at once and tell Jolival what had occurred. The street sloped steeply and the bumpy cobblestones were slippery with damp but she was almost running, Vidocq's words whirling round and round in her head: in a week – ten days at most… and Ledru had not come, might never come! They must do something – find a boat… They could not afford to wait any longer. Something must have happened to Ledru and they would have to make other arrangements…
As luck would have it, old Conan, the ferryman, was on her side of the river, sitting on a rock, smoking his pipe as placidly as if the sun were shining, and spitting from time to time into the water. Marianne was so excited that had he been on the other bank she might very well have jumped straight into the river in her haste to get across. As it was, she was in the boat before the good man had so much as noticed that he had a customer.
'Hurry!' she ordered. 'Take me across!'
The old man shrugged expressively. 'Bah!' he grunted. 'You young folks, always in a hurry. It's a wonder you take time to breathe!'
All the same, he plied his oars rather more energetically than usual and not many minutes later Marianne was scrambling out on to the rocks, tossing the man a coin as she went, and setting off homewards at a run. When she burst, panting, into the house, Jolival was standing by the table, deep in conversation with a fisherman who had just set down his basket full of fresh, steel-blue mackerel. The smell of fish mingled with that of the wood fire in the hearth.
'Arcadius!' Marianne began urgently. 'We must find a boat at once. I have seen—'
She broke off for the two men had turned and she saw that the fisherman was none other than Jean Ledru.
'A boat?' he asked in his placid voice. 'What for? Won't mine do for you?'
Feeling her legs give way beneath her, Marianne sank down on to the settle and undid her heavy cloak, which seemed to have grown suddenly too hot. Then she pushed back the linen bonnet which covered her hair and gave a sigh of relief:
'I thought you would never come – that something had happened to you!'
'No, all went well. Only I had to put in to Morlaix for a few days. One of my men was… sick.'
He hesitated slightly over this explanation but Marianne was too glad to see him to be conscious of any such detail.
'Never mind,' she said. 'You are here now. And you have your boat?'
'Yes, not far from the Madeleine tower. But I'm off again soon, back to Le Conquet.'
&
nbsp; 'You're going away?'
Jean Ledru indicated the basket of mackerel:
'I'm an ordinary fisherman, come to sell my catch. That's my only apparent motive for being in Brest. But don't worry. I shall be back tomorrow. Is everything ready, as we decided at St Malo?'
In a few words, Arcadius and Marianne told him all that had happened since she had last seen him: Jason's injury, the impossibility of his being in any condition to attempt an escape before another week was out, and the threat which hung over him as soon as he was in a way to be better which left them so small a margin of time in which to get him out. To all this, Jean Ledru listened, frowning and chewing the ends of his moustache with increasing discontent. When Marianne came to the end of her conversation with Vidocq that morning, he slammed his fist down on the table with such violence that the fish leaped on their bed of seaweed and rushes.
'You are forgetting one thing – one rather important thing. The sea. You can't treat that with impunity. The weather in a week's time will have made the Iroise impassable. Your prisoner must be aboard the vessel coming to pick him up at Le Conquet in five days at the latest.'
'What vessel is this?'
'Never you mind. The one that's to take him across the ocean, of course. It will be off Ushant in three days and it can't lie off the coast for long without the coastguard seeing it. We sail on Christmas Eve.'
Marianne and Jolival stared at each other speechlessly. Had Ledru gone mad, or had he understood not one word of all that they had told him? In the end it was Marianne who spoke first.
'Jean,' she said again, very quietly, 'we told you, a week at least before Jason will be strong enough to climb a rope or scale a wall or do any of the other things he will have to do if he is to escape.'
'I suppose he is strong enough, at least, to saw through the chain fastening him to his bed? You tell me you have managed to get all the tools he needs smuggled in to him, and money to buy himself extra food?'
'Yes, we have done all that,' Jolival said quickly. 'But it is still not enough. What would you do?'
Marianne and the Privateer Page 34
