[Marianne 3] - Marianne and the Privateer

by Juliette Benzoni

  Marianne had known, ever since Napoleon had told her that he held the criminal, that this was what she would hear. For her own part, she had known for so long that it was he who had killed Nicolas. Yet even now, she found it hard to believe that a man of his diabolical cunning could have allowed himself to be caught. Napoleon's last words, however, had thrown a blinding light even on this.

  One doubt, stronger than all reason, Marianne had still:

  'Sire! Are you sure that this time there is no mistake?'

  He stiffened, embracing her in a glance that was suddenly ice-cold:

  'You do not mean to ask me to pardon him, now?'

  'God forbid, Sire!… if it is he, indeed!'

  'Come. I will show him to you.'

  They entered the keep, passed by the guard-room, its door shut for once, and climbed the fine spiral staircase up to the first floor where they emerged into a gothic chamber, the four bays of the roof supported on a massive central pillar. Here, a warder was on guard, and with him was Vidocq, whose tall figure bent double at the sight of the Emperor. At each corner of the room was a heavy, iron-bound door, leading to the cells which occupied the four corner turrets. Napoleon made a sign to the warder:

  'Open the hatch. Try not to make a noise. This lady desires to see the prisoner.'

  The man walked over to one of the corner turret doors, opened a small judas window and bowed.

  'Go on,' Napoleon told Marianne. 'Look.'

  She went, reluctantly, over to the door, both wanting and fearing what she would see, yet fearing most of all to find herself looking at a strange face, the face of some poor wretch who, by one of those sleights of hand at which they were so adept, had somehow been substituted for the real criminal.

  The circular cell was lit by a lantern standing on a stool. A fire crackled cheerfully in the conical hearth, but the man who lay at full-length on the bed wore chains on his wrists and ankles. Marianne needed no second look to tell her that this was indeed the man whom she had both hoped and feared to see. It was Francis Cranmere, the man whose name she herself had once borne.

  He was sleeping, but it was a restless, fevered sleep which recalled to her mind the little Spanish abbé in La Force. It was the sleep of a man who is afraid and whose fear stalks even in his dreams… A fine, white hand came down and closed the window before Marianne's wide, horror-stricken eyes.

  'Well?' Napoleon asked. 'It is indeed he, this time?'

  She nodded, unable to speak, and was forced to lean back against the wall for a moment, overcome by the turmoil of her feelings, made up of a combination of an awful gladness and at the same time a kind of horror, mingled with surprise at seeing the devil who had so nearly destroyed her own life caught at last. When she had recovered herself a little, she looked up and saw the Emperor standing before her, watching her anxiously, while farther off Vidocq stood motionless against the central pillar.

  'So,' she said at last, 'it is for him… the thing I saw below?'

  'Yes. And I say to you again: I hate that instrument. I have seen it murder too many innocent people. I am appalled by it and yet that man does not deserve to die, like a soldier, before a firing squad. It is not to you, or even to Nicolas Mallerousse, that I am offering up his head, but to the shades of my own men, slaughtered piecemeal by this butcher.'

  'When – when is it to be?'

  'Now. See, here comes the priest.'

  An old man in a black soutane had emerged from the shadows of the staircase. He held a breviary in his hand. Marianne shook her head:

  'He will not want him. He is not a Catholic.'

  'I know, but it was not possible to procure a Protestant minister. Besides, what does it matter in the moment of death whose are the lips that speak of God and of the hope of His mercy, so long as the words are spoken?'

  The priest gave a little bow and then passed on to the closed door, the warder hurrying before him. Marianne gripped Napoleon's arm nervously:

  'Sire!… Must we stay here? I—'

  'You do not wish to see? I am not surprised. In any case, it was no part of my intention to oblige you to witness such a scene. I only wanted you to be quite sure that this time justice has not miscarried, and that nothing can halt its course now. Let us go down – unless you wish to bid him farewell.'

  She shook her head and almost ran towards the stairs. No, she did not wish to see Francis Cranmere again. She would not triumph over him as he went to his death, if only for fear of seeing the last thoughts of the man she had once loved, a man whose name she had borne, turn to hatred at the sight of her. If repentance were possible for such a man as Francis Cranmere, she would not have its blessed course turned aside for any action of hers.

  She went down the stairs, the Emperor following, and across the plank bridge without a glance for the dreadful instrument below, and found herself before long in the great, white desert of the courtyard. The wind, buffeting her body, revived her and she turned her burning face to it. It had begun to snow again and a few flakes touched her lips. She put out her tongue and licked them gratefully and then turned and waited until Napoleon, less nimble than herself, caught up with her. He took her arm and they walked back, as they had come but more slowly now, to the Pavilion de la Reine.

  'What of the others?' Marianne asked suddenly. 'Have you caught them as well?'

  'Old Fanchon and her crew? You need have no fear. They are under lock and key and there is enough evidence against them to hang them a hundred times over, or send them to rot in prison for the remainder of their lives, without so much as mentioning this business. They will stand trial and pay the penalty in the ordinary way. For him, that was not possible. He knew too much and the English might even now have found a way to free him. Secrecy was vital.'

  They were back in the empty room where Rustan was stirring up the fire. Napoleon sighed and removed his hat, from which the melting snow was running in thin streams.

  'Now it is time to talk of you. When the roads are somewhat better, you will return to Italy. I must accede to your husband's requests because they are perfectly reasonable. It is not in the Emperor's power to withhold the Prince Sant'Anna's wife from him.'

  'But I am not his wife!' Marianne protested wildly. 'You know quite well that I am not, Sire! You know the reason why I married him! The child is no more… therefore there is no longer anything to bind me to this – this… shadow!'

  'You are his wife, even if only in name. I do not understand you, Marianne. It is not like you to turn your back on your duty. I thought you so gallant. You accepted the aid of this poor devil… for so he must be in the conditions by which he has chosen to live… and now that you can no longer fulfil your part of the contract, you have not even courage enough to face him honestly. I am surprised at you…'

  'Say disappointed, rather! But I can't help it, Sire. I am afraid! Yes, I am afraid of that house, of what it contains, of that man whom no one ever sees and the evil which hangs about him. All the women of that family have died violent deaths. I want to live, and be with Jason again!'

  'There was a time when you wanted to live for me,' Napoleon observed with a touch of sadness. 'How things change! How women change… I think, in the end, my love was greater than yours, for all my feelings for you are not yet dead, and if you would…'

  Marianne lifted her hand quickly to stop what he would have said. 'No, Sire! In a moment you are going to offer me the – the solution to my problem that Fortunée Hamelin suggested to me once. It might satisfy Prince Sant'Anna, but I mean to keep myself now for the man I love… whatever risks that may involve.'

  'Very well.' Napoleon sighed. 'We will speak no more of it.' From the curtness of his tone, Marianne knew that she had vexed him. Perhaps, in his masculine pride, he had thought that an hour with him might help to soften her longings for Jason and bring her back, chastened and obedient, to the path which he had no doubt designed for her.

  After a brief silence, he resumed: 'You must go back, Marianne. Both honour and polic
y demand it. You must go back to your husband. But do not be afraid. Nothing will happen to you.'

  'How do you know?' Marianne said, more bitterly than politely.

  'I shall be watching. You shall not go alone. Apart from this curious old fellow who seems to have adopted you, you shall have an escort… an armed escort which will remain with you and act as you think fit.'

  Marianne's eyes opened wide:

  'An escort? For me? But on what pretext?'

  'Shall we say… as Ambassadress Extraordinary? In fact I am sending you not to Lucca but to Florence, to my sister Elisa. You may easily sort out your differences with your husband without incurring the least danger because I will charge you with messages for the Grand Duchess of Tuscany. I mean my protection to extend to you there, and to have it known.'

  'Ambassadress? I? But I am only a woman?'

  'I have frequently employed women on other occasions. My sister Pauline knows something of that! And I should not wish to hand you over bound hand and foot to the man you have – yourself – chosen to marry.'

  The implication was sufficiently obvious. She was to understand that had she, Marianne, showed more sense, she would have trusted her then lover to provide for her and not gone plunging off into impossible adventures… Judging it better to make no reply, she merely bowed and then sank into the ritual curtsy.

  'I shall obey, Sire. And I thank Your Majesty for your care of me.'

  Mentally, she was calculating that once in Florence it would be easy for her to reach Venice, much easier than she had feared. She had, as yet, no idea how she meant to settle her differences with Prince Corrado, or what form of arrangement he intended to suggest, but one thing was certain: she would never again live in the great, white villa, beautiful and deadly as one of those exotic flowers whose perfume enchanted but whose juice could kill.

  Of course, there was still the matter of the escort. That would have to be got rid of…

  The door opened suddenly and Vidocq came in. He merely bowed, gravely, without speaking. The Emperor's body stiffened. His eyes turned to Marianne and met hers and she held his gaze steadily, feeling the colour drain from her face in spite of herself.

  'Justice is done!' was all he said.

  But Marianne knew before he spoke that Francis Cranmere's head had fallen. Slowly, she dropped to her knees on the stone floor, feeling it warm from the fire, and with bowed head and hands clasped together, began to pray for the man who would never again have power to harm her.

  Rather than disturb her prayers, Napoleon moved away silently into the shadows.

  The cannons were booming through Paris. Marianne listened to the salvos, standing at the window, with Adelaide and Jolival, counting the number.

  'Two… three… four…'

  She knew what they meant. The Emperor's child was born. Even before this, in the middle of the night, the great bell of Notre-Dame and the bells of every church in Paris had called to every Frenchman to pray to heaven for a happy issue and in the capital there had been no more sleep for anyone, for Marianne least of all for this was the last night she would spend in her own house.

  Her trunks were packed and loaded already on to the great travelling carriage and in a little while, when the promised escort arrived, she would take the road for Italy. The letters she was to present to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany lay on the chest, in all the glory of their red seals and ribbons. The furniture of her bedchamber was already clad in its uniform of dust sheets. There were no flowers in the vases. But Marianne's heart had quitted this house long ago.

  Jolival, as nervous as she, was counting aloud. 'Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen… If it is a girl, they say she will have the title of Princess of Venice.'

  Venice! It was no more than three months now before Jason's ship would drop anchor in the lagoon. The very name, delicate and colourful as the scintillating glassware of the city's own craftsmen, became clothed in all the varied brilliance of hope and love.

  'Twenty…' Jolival counted, '… twenty-one…'

  There was a pause, brief but so intense that it might have seemed as if the entire Empire were holding its breath. Then the brazen voices resumed their triumphant clamour.

  'Twenty-two! Twenty-three!' Jolival shouted. 'There are going to be a hundred and one! It is a boy! Long live the Emperor! Long live the King of Rome!'

  His cry was echoed and magnified as though by magic. Everywhere could be heard windows being flung open, doors slamming and shouting from innumerable throats as the people of Paris poured out into the streets. Only Marianne did not move but stood with eyes closed. So Napoleon had the son he so desired! His pink Austrian brood mare had done what was expected of her. How happy he must be! And proud! She could imagine him making the palace ring with the metallic tones of his voice, the nervous click of his heels… The child was born, and it was a boy… the King of Rome! A fine name, a name to evoke the mastery of the world! A heavy name, too, to lay on such tiny shoulders.

  'Come, Marianne! We must drink to this happy birth!'

  Arcadius had already loosed the cork from a bottle of champagne and was filling glasses, handing one to each of the two women. His sparkling gaze went from one to the other as he raised the clear crystal glass with the pale golden liquid foaming within: 'The King of Rome!… And to you, too, Marianne. To the day when we shall drink to a son of yours! He will not be a king, but he will be handsome… strong and brave like his father.'

  'Do you really think so?' Marianne asked. Her eyes moistened even at the thought of so much happiness.

  'I do more than think it,' Arcadius said seriously. 'I am certain of it.'

  Draining his glass, he sent it spinning over his shoulder in the Russian fashion to shatter against the marble chimney breast.

  'As certain as I am that I have broken that glass.'

  Intrigued and not a little amused, the two women followed his example. Then Marianne said:

  'Assemble the servants, Arcadius, and have them drink champagne also. I want to leave them happy, because I shall come back to this house happy, or else not at all. And now I am going to dress.'

  And she left the room to make ready for the long journey ahead of her. Outside, above the joyous clamour of the cheering Parisians, the cannons were still thundering.

  It was the twenty-first of March, 1811.

  Footnotes

  1. Performances in the Paris theatres began and ended much earlier in those days, enabling patrons to return home to outlying districts.

  2. It is a matter of historical fact that at this period a one-time felon named François Vidocq who had been working secretly as a police agent within the prisons was authorized to escape. From then on, he became a member of the official police force and even lived to become its head.