At Mariampol they learned that the Emperor had abandoned the idea of travelling by the direct route, by way of Königsberg and Danzig and had elected instead to go by Warsaw, so as to revive the waning enthusiasm of his Polish allies, chilled by the news of the reverses he had suffered. But Marianne had no reason to alter her own route and they pressed on towards the Baltic despite the difficulties of the road, where snowdrifts often made the going painful. More than once in the course of that long journey, Marianne blessed the encounter with Napoleon which had made it possible for her to travel in this unlooked-for luxury.

'In our kibitka, I don't think we should ever have got there,' she confided to Barbe.

'Oh, we'd have got somewhere right enough, only there's a good chance it would have been to heaven.'

Even so, with regular changes of horses and stopping at inns for no longer than they needed to snatch a bite of food, it took them nearly a week to reach Danzig. The cold was intense and as they drew nearer to the sea they ran into such a storm as wrought havoc in the countryside and sent the sea storming against the shore.

They caught their first sight of Danzig one evening through the raging wind that swept across the flat, low-lying plain whipping up flakes of frozen snow. Built on a marshy site between two rivers and the estuary of another, the Vistula, it loomed up beneath a darkening of ragged cloud like a ghost city among the massive white shapes that were the military earthworks ordered by Napoleon and discontinued when the first frosts came.

The land hereabouts was so low that it might have been Holland but for the high hills to the south-west. But beyond the dark mass of the ancient Teutonic city was the boiling whiteness of the sea, making a roar like gunfire as it bombarded the dykes.

Marianne had spoken little during the journey. She sat huddled in her furs, her face turned to the window, staring out at the snow-covered world through which their sledge was gliding smoothly now on its great wooden runners. She seemed, if not perfectly restored to health, at least a great deal better and Barbe could not understand why, as they drew nearer to Danzig, her mood seemed to grow more dark and sad.

She could not know that in this city by the sea, Marianne was to face a great decision in which no one could help her but herself. What lay before them in the drear light of that late afternoon was, for her, the crossroads, the point of no return. It was there that she must make the ultimate decision, on which all the remainder of her life would depend.

Either she would continue on the road mapped out for her by the Emperor, with a wisdom it did not even occur to her to dispute, or she must disobey him once again, for the last time, perform her final act of rebellion and burn her boats once and for all. If she did that she would go down to the harbour in Danzig and try to find a ship to carry her out through the bay, dotted with low-lying islands on which the sea broke in foam, and through the perilous Nordic straits to some Atlantic port where she could take passage at last for America. But what would she find there? That was the question she was asking herself, sitting silently in the sledge, throughout that long journey.

And the answer had been: the unknown, waiting for someone to come to her, for the end of the war, for love, yes, and happiness, perhaps. That it could be at most a partial happiness was certain. It could not be otherwise because Marianne knew herself too well now to be unaware that, even married to Jason and the mother of more children, there would always be one corner of her heart that would mourn for little Sebastiano, for the child who would grow up without her and who might one day, grown a man, meet with no feeling whatsoever, a woman who would be his mother.

Only in Danzig could that heartrending choice be made. Easy as it looked, it would be impossible to return to France and sail from Bordeaux, Nantes or Lorient. If she wanted to vanish, she must do it now, once and for all, because only then would it seem feasible. It was a long way from Danzig to Paris and the weather so bad that an accident was always possible. Her friends would believe her dead and it would not occur to Napoleon to revenge himself on her family. They would mourn her for a little while and then forget her. Yes, the thought of such an escape was tempting because it would effectively wipe out all trace of Marianne d'Asselnat de Villeneuve, Princess Sant'Anna. She would be born again and one fine day a new woman, without ties, without a past, would step out on to the quay at Charleston and start to breathe a new air…

A cough from Barbe brought her back to earth.

'Are we stopping here, my lady?' she asked. 'Or are we simply changing horses and going on?'

'We'll stop, Barbe. I'm tired out. I need a rest and so do you.'

They entered the city just as the courier bearing the mails was leaving it in a miniature whirlwind of flying snow after changing horses, clattering over a wooden bridge above the white and frozen waters of a moat. And as the sledge glided through the narrow streets of the old Hanseatic town it seemed to Marianne that she was being carried back into the Middle Ages. It was a medieval world of tall, gabled houses, timbered walls and upper storeys overhanging narrow alleys, dark as mountain chasms.

Here and there, round the corner of a street, a soaring red church would rise in gothic splendour, as though out of the mists of time, or it might be a mansion, a period gem bearing witness to the city's wealth in the fifteenth or the seventeenth century. Yet those few people they saw who were not soldiers of the mixed French, Dutch, German and Polish garrison commanded, since General Rapp's departure for Russia, by General Campredon, were plainly dressed and their cheerless looks were out of keeping with the beauty of this queen of northern cities. There was an atmosphere of constraint, of suppressed anger and an obstinate reserve.

The carillon in the imposing town hall, its belfy reminiscent of the Flemish towns, was striking four as the sledge made its way along the waterfront, lined with tall houses buffeted by the howling wind. Just opposite the Krantor, the corn exchange, was an inn. The snow lay thick on its gilded signboard and the lights that twinkled behind its small, bottle-glass windows were bright and welcoming. There was a continual coming and going through the low doorway, sailors in sealskin boots and soldiers muffled to the eyebrows, and those coming out were noticeably redder in the face than those who went in.

The sound of the sledge brought out the innkeeper attended by a beanpole of an ostler with heavy clogs on his feet, both bowing low at the sight of such evidently well-to-do travellers. Marianne had just descended and was about to enter the inn when she was jostled aside by a tall, red-headed individual coming out. He was singing loudly, evidently the worse for drink, and the song he was singing was an Irish air.

'Hie! Pardon me!' this person remarked, gently removing the human obstacle from his path.

Marianne would have known him anywhere.

'Craig!' she cried with amazement. 'Craig O'Flaherty! What in heaven's name are you doing here?'

He had been on the point of walking on, but at the sound of his name he paused and screwed up his eyes like someone peering through a fog.

'Craig!' she repeated rapturously. 'It's me! Marianne!'

He bent down at that and picking up a handful of snow rubbed it energetically over his face and head. Then he looked again.

'So it is, by St Patrick!'

Uttering a joyful bellow, he swept her bodily up off the ground and held her, like a little girl, at arms' length before setting her down, none too gently, and depositing a couple of smacking kisses on either cheek.

'Glory be! It can't be true! Sure and if this doesn't beat all! You! You here, me darlin', I can scarce believe it! But come away with you, into this thieves' kitchen here. You'll be perished with cold – and we have to celebrate this!'

In another moment, while Barbe went with the landlord to take possession of a well-appointed bedchamber looking out over the harbour, Marianne, regardless of the soldiers and sailors drinking and smoking their clay pipes all around them, was sitting with Craig beside the big white porcelain stove that was roaring like a furnace. The Irishman was calling loudly for brandy.

'I'd rather have tea,' Marianne said hastily. 'But tell me, Craig, tell me quickly – are you here alone, or did you find Jason?'

He shot her a swift glance that suddenly held no trace of inebriation in it.

'I found him,' he said briefly. 'He's on board just now. But tell me about yourself. I want to know—'

But Marianne was not listening. Her heart was banging like a demented gong within her and her cheeks were flushed with excitement. So she had been right! Her premonitions had not been deceiving her, nor those dreams which had so often seemed like nightmares: something had been waiting for her at Danzig, and that something was Jason! She clasped Craig's hand with both hers where it lay on the table while he rummaged with the other for his pipe.

'I want to see him. At once! Tell me where he is. What ship is this?'

'There, there! Keep calm! You'll see him, but for God's sake don't get excited. I'll tell you all about it. Sure, it won't take long.'

Nor did it, for there was little enough to tell. Craig had reached St Petersburg without much difficulty, thanks to the name of Krilov which he brandished like a passport whenever he fell in with Russian troops. In this way he had accomplished the entire journey on horseback, with an official escort into the bargain, since he had been obliged to pass through the lines of Wittgenstein's defending army to reach the capital. Once there it had been a simple matter to find the Krilovs' house and Beaufort.